Keith Manch has spent nearly five decades in New Zealand public service regulating almost every domain that touches ordinary life. In this first episode of The Modern Regulator Podcast, he sits down with Simon Corden and I to talk about what that journey taught him – and what the regulatory profession still needs to figure out.
This is a conversation about the work behind the rules: how capability gets built (and lost), what stewardship looks like in practice, and why the question of whether regulation is a discipline has never been fully settled.
In this episode:
- How Manch came to see regulation as a single profession – and the moment that changed how he thought about his career.
- The origin of G-REG: how a room of 25 Wellington regulators turned a shared frustration into a cross-government movement.
- Why the gap between rule reform and practitioner capability is still the hardest problem in the system to solve.
Manch’s final observation – on what regulation ultimately is – is worth hearing in his own words.
Episode 1 of The Modern Regulator Podcast, featuring Keith Manch in conversation with Paul Leavoy and Simon Corden. Listen now below or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Also, subscribe to The Modern Regulator newsletter for monthly analysis and practitioner insight.
