In a speech to the Otago Chamber of Commerce and in a later interview with the Otago Daily Times, Mr Hide said his motivation for regulatory reform was the Government's strong commitment to lifting the poor productivity-growth rate in New Zealand.
"It is no exaggeration to say that we - and I mean households and businesses - have endured a tidal wave of regulation."
Between 2000 and 2009, more than 68,000 pages of regulation were passed by Parliament.
That was significantly up on the previous decade and the decade before that, he said.
It was hardly a surprise that productivity growth was a "pathetic" 0.7% from 2000 to 2006, down from a 2.1% rate in the previous two decades.
"The poor productivity-growth rate is why we keep slipping further down the international income rankings. It is why many of our best and brightest head to Australia."
Regulatory reviews were under way, Mr Hide said. They included the second phase of Resource Management Act reforms, review of the Building, Food and Overseas Investment Acts, and of electricity institutional arrangements.
However, the minister acknowledged progress was not as fast as he had hoped or anticipated when he took over the portfolio in 2008.
Behind the scenes, an enormous amount of work was being undertaken by government agencies and departments through a process called "regulatory scanning". Cabinet had agreed all agencies must install systems for continually and systematically scanning existing regulation to identify possible areas for reform or review.
Mr Hide was committed to introducing an annual Regulatory Reform Bill to provide a vehicle to improve regulatory frameworks and more quickly reduce business-compliance burdens.
"At the most fundamental level, I think we need to change the institutions that drive the behaviour that generates poor regulation. What we need is to have them operating in a framework which will produce much better results than we get from the current environment," he said.
