Don’t Build a Profession, Govern a System

Rethinking regulatory capability

Abstract

For over a decade, New Zealand built regulatory capability without a central mandate to do it. That work laid real foundations, but it could never reach the leadership and governance where regulatory performance is decided. Training, common qualifications and practitioner networks have all played a part. Regulatory performance is shaped by many factors, including resourcing, statutory design, the political cycle and the capability of the workforce, and no single lever explains success or failure on its own. This article makes a narrower argument: that one lever, the regulatory leadership and governance that determines whether good practice is possible, has been harder to move than the others, and that the arrival of the Ministry for Regulation now provides a stronger platform for shifting it than earlier arrangements were able to. The case for investing in workforce capability is settled. The argument here is about what must travel alongside it.