Patch 2025.03

March 2025 proposals

Bills would change credit oversight, speed medicine approvals, alter drug-driving rules, strengthen dispute safeguards, protect sexual-violence cases, and reform children’s care oversight and electronic bail.

• Credit rules and oversight would change — It would move credit oversight to the FMA and replace lender certification with licensing, while changing consumer-credit rules.
• Some medicines could reach patients faster — It would allow medicines approved in two recognised overseas jurisdictions to be approved here through a faster pathway.
• Proposal to change drug-driving rules — It would change rules about drug driving.
• Financial dispute schemes would face stronger oversight — It would strengthen oversight and independence requirements for free dispute schemes covering banks, insurers, KiwiSaver providers, and others.
• Proposal to strengthen care safety rules — It would change worker checks, searches in youth residences, care oversight, and public-records rules.
• Proposal to strengthen sexual-violence protections — It would change how sexual-violence cases treat child consent and complainants’ name suppression.
• Proposal to change children’s care oversight — It would make the Children’s Monitor independent and replace commissioners’ board with one Children’s Commissioner.
• Proposal to manage electronic bail absences — It would let electronic-monitoring assessors approve some court-authorised absences from a defendant’s bail address.
• Financial markets rules would be streamlined — It would simplify fair-conduct requirements and reduce some compliance costs for financial markets businesses and regulators.
• Anzac recognition would cover more service — It would broaden official Anzac recognition to more conflicts and people who served New Zealand.
• Proposal to change privacy law — It would change the law on privacy.
• Dairy export quota access would change — It would allocate dairy export quotas using applicants’ export history instead of the amount of milk solids they collect.
• More overseas building products could qualify — It would allow recognised overseas standards and certifications for building products, while the building code would still apply.
• Packaged freshwater extraction would be banned — It would ban extracting freshwater to sell in packaged form.
• Proposal to protect Māori land dropped — This dropped proposal would have stopped ministers and local authorities taking Māori freehold or customary land for public works without consent.
• Public service plain-language law would end — It would repeal legal plain-language requirements for public service agencies.
• Parliament’s operating rules would be combined — It would combine Parliament’s main operating laws and change rules for security, funding, and members’ work expenses.
• Proposal to confirm government spending — It would confirm certain government spending made without existing parliamentary approval.