All information supporting your claim regarding Regulatory Standards Bill Submissions
Aaron W made this Official Information request to David Seymour
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From: Aaron W
Kia ora Deputy Prime Minister Seymour
On RNZ today (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/5629...) You noted that:
"You're smart enough to know that those 23,000 submissions, 99.5 percent of them, were because somebody figured out how to make a bot make fake submissions that inflated the numbers"
You later noted that "any decent journalist would know the online campaigns I was referring to, I suspect the general public certainly will. Any decent journalist would also know that presenting non-representative samples as reflecting public opinion is breaching basic standards of journalism"
I am interested in how you ascertained that this was the case - any whether you've received any evidence that the small percentage of people who supported the Bill (less than 1%) were also bots/template responses or whether it was just people who didn't like the bill that you considered aren't real.
Please provide all evidence held by your Office that supports the statements you have made during the interview linked above (that these submissions were either as a result of bots or template submissions). I am particularly interested in how you came to the 99.5% figure given the precise nature of it. Surely this means you've done some qualitative analysis that could be shared with the public. I note that the report from the Ministry for Regulation made no such claim on the submissions in its report.
Please also provide all information held by your office discussing the submission process relating to the Regulatory Standards Bill (both the submission process undertaken by the Ministry for Regulation and the Select Committee (noting there may be an element of privilege's that applies in the latter case). This includes emails and things known to your Office but not yet written down including recollections of meetings and discussions.
Finally, please provide all evidence held by your Office that shows public support for the Regulatory Standards Bill.
I am aware that Ministers in the Coalition have refused to respond to requests in the past noting that these were comments made in their personal capacity particularly when the topic is controversia;. However I note that you are the Minister in charge of the Bill. It is not a member's bill so I would not expect this to be the case here.
I also am aware that this might trigger a transfer to the Ministry for Regulation, however it is not my intention to cause public servants more work. So to be clear, this request relates to what information you or your office holds not the Ministry for Regulation.
Thank you in advance for the time and care taken to respond to this request.
Yours faithfully,
Aaron W
From: David Seymour (MIN)
David Seymour
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From: David Seymour (MIN)
David Seymour
Dear Aaron
Thank you for your email in which you submitted an Official Information
Act request as follows:
“Please provide all evidence held by your Office that supports the
statements you have made during the interview linked above (that these
submissions were either as a result of bots or template submissions). I am
particularly interested in how you came to the 99.5% figure given the
precise nature of it. Surely this means you've done some qualitative
analysis that could be shared with the public. I note that the report from
the Ministry for Regulation made no such claim on the submissions in its
report.
Please also provide all information held by your office discussing the
submission process relating to the Regulatory Standards Bill (both the
submission process undertaken by the Ministry for Regulation and the
Select Committee (noting there may be an element of privilege's that
applies in the latter case). This includes emails and things known to your
Office but not yet written down including recollections of meetings and
discussions.
Finally, please provide all evidence held by your Office that shows public
support for the Regulatory Standards Bill.”
We received your request on Wednesday 4 June 2025. We will endeavour to
respond to your request as soon as possible and in any event no later than
Thursday 3 July 2025, being 20 working days after the day your request was
received. If we are unable to respond to your request by then, we will
notify you of an extension of that timeframe.
The response date takes into account Matariki (20 June 2025).
Kind regards
Office of Hon David Seymour
Deputy Prime Minister
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Oliver Mould left an annotation ()
Hi Aaron,
1. Have you seen https://www.regulation.govt.nz/assets/Pu...
2. If Seymour says bots have been submitting, he's wrong - they can't: "Google reCAPTCHA is used on the website to help secure the site against cyber attacks that could flood the submissions system with computer generated submissions and cause it to crash." as said to me by The Finance and Expenditure Committee Secretariat.
Cheers, OliM (find me on BlueSky)
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