David Seymour: Regulation Minister on the review into the hospitality sector

0:00Back home, HOSPO Regulation Reviews. This is David Seymour's lot paying too much and fees are our HOSPO businesses licensing decisions taking too long. Some don't even make sense. Sometimes what happens is individual agencies don't appreciate what they're doing is running counter to what another government department is doing. No decisions made yet on this review. David Seymour, Minister for Regulation with us. David, good morning. Good morning. Hey, so one of the things that's come up, do we need a Minister for alcohol or regulating responsible for alcohol and potentially another new agency? Yeah, well that's the recommendation that has been put up by the Ministry. Not really one that I would go with, my view is that these things can be achieved by getting the people we have or ideally less ministers and departments to do their job, but I think what they've identified is that there is a problem in that too many people

1:02don't know what the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing when it comes to the point of view of a cafe or a restaurant or a food truck or a farmer's market storeholder. Often they'll find that they've got a deal with, you know, in some cases half a dozen different agencies. I think people understand that. I think, you know, there's a substance that is right, but just from an optics point of view, David, you've got this Ministry of Regulation set up to get rid of regulations recommending a new minister and a new agency, you know. It's like you talk about the left hand and the right hand, how many hands do we need? I'll end up with an octopus. I think from the point of view of the Ministry for Regulation, and I know there's people say, oh, how can you have a bureaucracy to stop bureaucracy? But in time and again, what they've proven is that when you have some embassal business or what we call the regulated party with multiple government departments regulating them, first of all, they

2:07don't know where to start. And second of all, even if they did, they're very unlikely to complain, because if you're regulated, you rely on having an easy life and a good relationship with your regulator. You don't really want to tell them to be honest. We think you're crap, because that means they might start picking on you. So if you look at everything from early childhood education, we've totally flipped over the way that they're regulated, thanks to the MFR going and talking to, you know, literally thousands of people in that sector. You know, now we're doing hospitality in the past with don't tell communications and even just the importation of, you know, veterinary medicines and agricultural products. So that's the power of the ministry for regulation. A, you can talk to them and B, they're not actually a regulator themselves, but they can tell the rest of the government what to do. And this will without creating, without taking that particular recommendation, this is going to make life a hell of a lot easier for people just trying

3:11to make a buck in the hospital industry. All right, David, see more at party later. Deputy PM and Minister for Regulation.