National says its "regulations bonfire" will support businesses facing the threat of Covid-19.

And it planned to start with heating regulations for rental homes, rental laws, changes to the Overseas Investment Act, and rules governing music teachers.

At the announcement of the first of its five-part economic plan on Monday morning, National leader Simon Bridges said the party would repeal Labour's proposed reforms to the Residential Tenancy Act, which included limiting rent increases every 12 months, allowing pets on a property without the landlord's permission and rules allowing modifications to be made without the landlord's permission.

"When you add on that cost and compliance and the ability to prosecute landlords all we've seen what happen is rents go up and up and up.

"We want to clear that away. We want less red tape and regulations for landlords."

He said the government lacked a clear long-term plan to support businesses struggling from the coronavirus threat.

"Our economic plan involves a series of things we should be doing anyway, given that last year growth was 1.6 per cent. Business confidence is incredibly low and that's not good enough," Bridges said.

"The arguments for these things just becomes stronger as a result of Covid-19 where, probably, we're in recession the first half of this year and the uncertainty beyond that worldwide is very very strong."

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"Clearing away red tape means businesses are freer to get up in the morning to hire people and building houses, cutting hair, doing the things that need to be done without the unnecessary rules and regulations," he said.

As well as scrapping regulations that are no longer fit for purpose, the party is promising to appoint a minister for regulatory reduction, repeal and replace the Resource Management Act, simplify anti-money laundering rules and introduce a "common sense test" for health and safety.

"National wants businesses to thrive and not be strangled by red tape, regulation and bureaucracy," he said.

RYAN ANDERSON/STUFF National leader Simon Bridges wants a "common-sense test" applied to red tape.

He said it would get rid of 100 regulations in its first six months and for every new regulation introduced, two would be removed.

This echoed a policy introduced by the Trump administration in 2016.

Bridges said while the National Party had outlined 30 "bad regulations" it could probably come up with 200.

"The ones we want to get rid of fall into two categories, first the ones with unnecessary cost and compliance...and the other is rules from 100 years ago that no one's actually following."

Finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith said there were tens of thousands of regulations in New Zealand.

"There are so many that officials don't know how many there are or where to find them all.

"National recognises many of these regulations have built up over the years and are no longer fit for purpose. Some of them protect and preserve the interests of industries or highly risk-averse government or council officials.

"National will remove the barriers to new entrants to the market and streamline unnecessarily slow and expensive bureaucratic procedures."

Last month Bridges said in his "state of the nation" speech National's focus was on keeping taxes low and growing incomes.