Michael Mills

Michael has led and managed work in support of regulatory and public-policy reform across many sectors over the last 30 years, most recently water services.

He is often called on to lead complicated, high-profile policy initiatives – especially those that involve multiple government agencies and require government to consult with communities and businesses. He is also called on to review regulatory settings and to advise on machinery-of-government arrangements needed to implement policy and regulation.

Examples of Michael’s work

• Leadership and analytical support for water services reform – including managing the regulatory response to the Havelock North contamination crisis, leading the initial phase of work to establish the Water Services Regulator (Taumata Arowai), and policy leadership and analytical support for work to provide for Water Services Entities legislation and implementation of Local Water Done Well
• Leadership and analytical support for resilience – leading reviews of the Building Act to provide for a proportionate, risk-based approach to building consenting and to address issues that led to the leaky-building crisis, supporting a review of EQC’s readiness to respond to major events, leading a review of earthquake-prone building policy settings following the Canterbury earthquakes, analytical leadership for land-zoning decisions in Christchurch post-earthquakes, and advice on the role of government in climate-change adaptation
• Policy leadership and management of work in the primary sector, including project management of the design of the regulatory framework for the merger of dairy cooperatives to create Fonterra, and the design and implementation of the Forest Emissions Trading Scheme.