RTV NZ supports the proposed Amendment to AML bill.

RTV NZ Submission on the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill

Submission of Rock The Vote NZ Party on the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (Supervisor, Levy, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Submitted on 21^st August 2025

Rock The Vote NZ Party (RTVNZ) welcomes the opportunity to submit to the select committee regarding this bill. After careful analysis, RTVNZ supports this bill overall. It promotes a smarter, risk-based AML/CFT system while aligning with our principles of sovereignty, transparency, proportionate regulation, and respect for individual rights. RTVNZ recognises that a well-crafted balance is needed to ensure that the rules target genuine criminal risk while reducing unnecessary burdens on honest New Zealanders, including small firms and rural enterprises that simply seek to do honest business. We have heard too often of people being interrogated.

Why the bill should proceed

1. Clear objectives that match public interest. The bill’s general policy statement commits to reducing business compliance costs, improving regulatory effectiveness and efficiency, maintaining compliance with international obligations, and securing sustainable funding for the regime. These are legitimate aims that benefit consumers and compliant businesses without weakening enforcement.

2. A single supervisor to improve consistency and reduce duplication. Moving from three supervisors to one will reduce complexity, lift consistency of guidance and decisions, and allow faster, more coordinated responses to emerging risks and technologies. That is expressly what the bill intends by replacing the three supervisors with a single public service agency.

3. Right-sizing obligations through modern secondary instruments. The bill shifts details from rigid regulations into codes, rules, and notices so obligations can be tuned to risk and updated quickly after consultation. This is a practical way to cut red tape for low-risk activity while sharpening the focus on high-risk conduct.

4. Immediate relief on low-value checks. Clarifying that address verification is not required for standard due diligence removes friction that hits everyday customers the most, without reducing identity assurance. This is the kind of precision we support, and ultimately, we should be assuming innocence before guilt in these situations.

5. Transparent, reviewable levy funding. Cost recovery can be fair if it is transparent, proportionate, and accountable. The bill requires annual public reporting on levy collections and use, and a three-year review of levy settings, with publication of findings. It also ties levy use to the national AML/CFT strategy and the published regulatory work programme, which promotes discipline over spending.

How the bill aligns with RTVNZ principles

The reforms reduce government over-reach by removing one-size-fits-all rules, empowering individuals and small businesses through clearer, proportionate obligations, and demanding transparency from the agencies that exercise power. These outcomes reflect our commitments to national sovereignty, individual rights, and accountable government, not regulation for its own sake.

Recommendations to strengthen the bill

• Provide that any future rules or notices which materially expand obligations must be subject to an affirmative scrutiny step, to uphold transparency and protect individual rights while still enabling agile updates.

• Publish the levy methodology, sector banding, and any small-entity relief alongside the annual report, to ensure fairness for small businesses and rural service providers.

• Require the work programme to include measurable targets for reducing low-value compliance and for improving access to services for legitimate customers, consistent with a risk-based approach.

Conclusion

This bill achieves the right balance: stricter where risk is significant, lighter where it is not. With the proposed refinements, it will better safeguard New Zealanders from financial crime while reintroducing common sense, transparency, and proportionality to AML/CFT. Rock The Vote NZ Party therefore supports the bill’s passage and urges the select committee to consider individual privacy carefully when deliberating on key clauses in the bill.

Thank you for reading.

Daymond Goulder-Horobin - Deputy Party Leader of Rock The Vote NZ