Patch 2025.07

July 2025 proposals

This month’s bills would target antisocial driving, speed medicine approvals, ease council-rate pressure, reshape water and healthcare, change childcare and tribunal rules, while dropping home-buyers’ sunset protection.

• Stronger action against antisocial driving — It would create new offences and stronger penalties for fleeing police, illegal racing, intimidating convoys, dirt-bike gatherings, and excessive road noise.
• Faster medicine approvals and prescribing changes — It would create a faster overseas approval route, expand nurse practitioners’ prescribing, and allow funded unapproved medicines during shortages.
• Proposal to put pressure on council rates — It would change council responsibilities, spending, performance reporting and oversight, with the aim of reducing pressure on rates.
• Sunset-clause protection for home buyers dropped — It would have required a buyer’s written consent before a vendor could usually use a sunset clause.
• Changes to early childhood regulation — It would change how early childhood services are regulated and create a new Director of Regulation.
• Changes to tribunal access and operations — It would change tribunal rules to improve access to justice, fix gaps, and help tribunals do their work.
• Proposal to change water services — It would set up the long-term system for delivering water services, including economic regulation, consumer protection and water quality rules.
• Proposal to refocus Health New Zealand — It would refocus Health New Zealand on timely care, infrastructure, planning, monitoring and working with private healthcare providers.
• Changes to court rules and powers — It would change court rules and powers to address delays, administrative burdens, and gaps in the justice system.
• Changes to anti-money-laundering rules — It would clarify anti-money-laundering duties, strengthen enforcement, and reduce compliance costs for businesses.
• Proposal to change Crown minerals rules — It would change rules for Crown minerals.
• Updates to Internal Affairs rules — It would update regulatory systems overseen by Internal Affairs and remove some unnecessary compliance requirements and outdated provisions.
• Proposal to change election administration — It would change enrolment and special-vote processing to support faster, more digital election services and results.
• Proposal to change cybercrime law — It would change laws connected with the Budapest Convention and related matters.
• Proposal to change Tribunal rules — It would change the rules for the Disputes Tribunal.
• Proposal to regulate ground-based space infrastructure — Operators of certain ground-based space infrastructure would need authorisation for regulated activities in New Zealand.
• Proposal to change occupational regulation — It would change three occupational regulation systems to improve consumer protection and reduce unnecessary compliance costs.
• Proposal to register boarding-house landlords — Boarding-house landlords would need to register, giving the government better information about these homes and their operators.
• Freshwater on-selling ban dropped — It would have banned extracting freshwater to sell in packaged form.
• Proposal to simplify money-laundering supervision — Businesses covered by money-laundering rules would have one supervisor instead of the current more complex system.
• Changes to Māori laws and bodies — It would update laws and regulations covering Māori organisations, trusts, land, language, broadcasting, and related processes.
• Changes to public service leadership — It would change public service leadership, performance oversight, political neutrality, and management of national-security risks.
• Proposal to keep ministers in office — Ministers would remain in office until election processes finish and new MPs are appointed.
• Proposal to confirm existing regulations — It would prevent certain secondary regulations made between July 2024 and June 2025 from being revoked or becoming invalid.