Estimating the cost of new public health legislation

Abstract

Objective To develop a new method for estimating the cost to governments of enacting public health legislation. Methods We adopted a central government perspective in estimating costs. The parliamentary cost of legislative acts and regulations in New Zealand was calculated from the proportion of parliamentary time devoted to law-making (i.e. sitting days in the debating chamber), and the cost of associated policy advice from government agencies was calculated from the proportion of documented policy issues related to law-making. The relative costs of acts and regulations were estimated from the number of pages in the legislation. Findings We estimated that, between 1999 and 2010, 26.7% of pa..