The government is to review regulations affecting businesses to see how compliance costs can be lessened.
A key focus will be whether the implementation of regulations are efficient and what improvements can be made.
Until now, the public has been confused by when they can have a drink at the pub or visit the garden centre on a public holiday, and now the government admits those kinds of rules are confusing for the industry too.
So it's launching what it says is an unprecedented assault on the red tape tying up businesses.
Minister for Commerce Lianne Dalziel says the review will look at the cumulative effects of different laws and the weight of compliance on business.
She says she has a lot of feedback from business that the problems lie not so much with the regulations themselves but how they are being applied.
Dalziel wants to streamline the rules around selling goods and services, and ten government departments are pitching together in an effort to cut the red tape.
"Why is it that the many arms of government cannot extend a single hand to gather all of its information needs," Dalziel says.
The wine and hospitality, retail, and food and beverage sectors will be the first to be studied. They will be asked to come forward with problems they face complying with a vast array of rules on tax, public holidays and other restrictions.
"Trading on Easter is a minefield for our industry. You're restricted from trading on Easter Friday and that starts from midnight and the same applies on Easter Sunday," Bruce Robertson of the Hospitality Association says.
"The hospitality industry won't be alone in this. Many
industries will face overlapping and conflicting laws and
regulations that they really have difficulty working with," Phil
O'Reilly of Business New Zealand says.
But Dalziel admits fixing this problem will not be easy.
"There isn't a silver bullet. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the issues that people face," she says.
This attempt at getting on with business is what Labour says is part of its agenda of economic transformation. But critics haven't missed the irony of having a review of red tape being led by the very people that invented it - officials and bureaucrats.
