Scott Simpson: Deregulation in Disguise
From Public Service to Market-Centric “Reform”
Scott Simpson’s legislative pattern is one of quiet deregulation — reshaping financial law, patent rules, and now retail payment systems to favour market control over public transparency. He speaks the language of “streamlining” and “modernisation,” but his policies consistently redistribute cost and risk from corporations to consumers and small businesses.
Current Portfolios
- Minister for ACC
- Minister for Commerce and Consumer Affairs
Scott Simpson doesn’t make headlines. He works in the shadows of legislative reform — rewriting borrower protections, shifting oversight from the Commerce Commission to the Financial Markets Authority, and erasing automatic remedies that once ensured fairness in the credit system.
His approach? Quiet, precise — a legal technician of deregulation. He speaks of “modernisation” and “streamlining,” but what he delivers is a system that prioritises market stability over consumer safety.
The Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill (205–1)
From Transparency to Concealment
Introduced under Simpson’s Commerce and Consumer Affairs portfolio, this Bill is framed as a victory for consumers — banning visible surcharges to make payments “simpler” and “fairer.” In reality, it conceals true costs, transfers network fees onto small merchants, and hands sweeping powers to regulators to extend bans without parliamentary scrutiny.
- Redefines transparency: Shifts the goal from cost visibility to “convenience,” recasting silence as fairness.
- Expands delegated power: Enables bans by network, merchant class, or payment method through regulation — bypassing Parliament entirely.
- Distorts competition: Large retailers can absorb fees; small traders must hide or spread them across all prices.
- Relies on opaque data: The “$65 million excess surcharge” claim rests on untested Treasury and MBIE modelling.
Beneath its consumer-friendly language, the Bill exemplifies Simpson’s wider approach — market protection through deregulation of visibility. What begins as “clarity” ends as systemic concealment, replacing informed choice with managed ignorance.
“When truth in price disappears, fairness soon follows.” — Ukes Baha
Further reading:
Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill (137–1)
Removing Borrower Protections Under the Banner of “Efficiency”
Simpson’s earlier flagship reform rewrote the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, transferring enforcement from the Commerce Commission to the market-aligned FMA. Sold as “cutting red tape,” it eliminated automatic borrower relief, widened exemptions for lenders, and introduced retrospective application — eroding accountability while privileging finance interests.
- Repealed s99(1A), ending automatic relief for lender breaches.
- Expanded exemptions and discretionary deregulation powers.
- Applied changes retrospectively, weakening rule-of-law safeguards.
The pattern is clear: reduce oversight, call it streamlining, and recast consumer loss as regulatory “modernisation.”
The Patents Amendment Bill (154–1)
Retroactive Favour for Corporate Patent Holders
Marketed as a tidy “harmonisation,” this Bill retroactively applies 2013 Act standards to inventions filed under 1953 rules — an extraordinary reach that advantages large corporates while penalising small innovators and universities.
- Applies 2013-level novelty tests to historic filings.
- Creates hybrid legal standards, enabling selective invalidation.
- Increases Commissioner discretion with limited right of appeal.
Once again: deregulate oversight, elevate discretion, and let power concentrate quietly.
Financial Markets Conduct Amendment Bill (Amendment Paper No. 446)
Dismantling Climate Transparency Under the Banner of “Streamlining”
As Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Scott Simpson issued Amendment Paper No. 446 — a major rewrite of New Zealand’s climate-related disclosure regime. Sold as a “simplification,” it is in fact one of the most consequential transparency rollbacks in recent memory.
- Legalises unsubstantiated climate statements by exempting them from the Fair Trading Act’s substantiation rules (new s 26A).
- Removes independent assurance, allowing companies to publish emissions data without verification.
- Raises reporting thresholds from $60 million to $1 billion — exempting most listed issuers and high-pollution industries.
- Eliminates director liability for defective climate statements (clause 29B).
- Allows entities to stop reporting immediately, even for periods already underway.
- Expands ministerial discretion to alter thresholds and exemptions through regulation.
These changes strip the climate-disclosure system of its core purpose — replacing transparency and evidence with unchecked discretion, unverifiable statements, and regulatory silence.
The beneficiaries are clear: extraction industries, mining interests, high-pollution emitters, and large corporates whose environmental liabilities become easier to conceal. At a moment when the Government is advancing mining expansion and resource exploitation, the timing is not incidental.
“A disclosure system that permits concealment is not transparency — it is corruption by design.” — Ukes Baha
Simpson describes the amendments as “reducing compliance burden.” In practice, they erase accountability, undermine investor trust, and permit unverified claims in a sector built on accuracy.
Further reading:
Conflict of Interest: Supermarket Decisions Handed Off
In March 2025, Simpson recused himself from supermarket-regulation decisions after it was revealed a close family member owned a supermarket. Finance Minister Nicola Willis assumed the file “to avoid any appearance of conflict.” The episode exposed both weak ministerial vetting and the fragility of “commerce-neutral” reform when personal and market interests intertwine.
Source: RNZ, 5 March 2025
Poster Controversy: “Pigeon English” and Co-Governance
In June 2023, a National Party survey poster in Katikati was found defaced with handwritten phrases about “co-governance” and “pigeon English.” As the local MP, Simpson called the remarks “inappropriate” and blamed a volunteer, yet the incident revealed underlying cultural tensions inside the Party’s base and its uneasy approach to partnership and representation.
Source: NZ Herald, 27 June 2023
Pattern Analysis: Deregulation by Stealth
- Language of neutrality: Simpson frames major changes as “streamlining,” “tidying,” or “simplifying,” masking deep shifts in accountability.
- Consistent targets: Each reform weakens oversight of powerful actors — lenders, patent holders, payment networks, and now high-pollution and extraction industries.
- Method of delivery: Embed major policy reversals inside “technical” amendments or ministerial papers, avoiding scrutiny while expanding delegated powers.
- Tools of erosion: Remove verification, remove substantiation, raise thresholds, eliminate liability, and shift decision-making to regulation rather than Parliament.
- Systemic outcome: Gradual erosion of transparency and public protection — replaced with discretion, opacity, and industry-aligned governance.
A Consistent Ideology: Market-First Pragmatism
Simpson publicly calls himself a “practical environmentalist,” but his legislative actions show a consistent pattern: weaken environmental reporting, prioritise industry discretion, and redefine environmental integrity as administrative convenience.
His climate-disclosure amendments rely on the same formula seen across finance and patents: remove liability, remove verification, raise thresholds, and let the market self-monitor.
“We’re the party of practical environmentalism — we get stuff done.”
— Scott Simpson, Hansard Debate, 1 June 2021
The contrast is stark: the rhetoric of practicality versus the reality of policies that allow unverified climate statements and unmonitored industrial pollution.
Public Interest Response
The Financial Markets Conduct Amendment Paper is not an outlier but part of a continuous pattern: reduce oversight, expand discretion, conceal costs, and weaken accountability.
Across credit law, patent law, retail payments, and now climate-disclosure rules, Simpson’s reforms:
- shift enforcement from transparent rules to ministerial discretion,
- replace evidence requirements with unverifiable statements,
- weaken protections for the public, consumers, and small operators,
- benefit large corporations and extraction-aligned industries.
Together, these initiatives map a policy arc from visibility → concealment, protection → exemption, and democratic oversight → regulatory discretion.
Read, share, and act:
What You Can Do
- Read the opposition to Scott Simpson’s bills
- Share this exposé: Scott Simpson’s quiet facilitation of deregulation.
- Challenge every “streamlining” claim. Demand accountability for conflicts of interest.
- Defend borrower rights as essential to fairness — not a footnote to market power.
Image source: New Zealand Parliament record (fair dealing for public accountability).