Although Bridges has blamed Labour for "excessive" regulations, many of those that Bridges is looking at are from National's own nine years in power, in particular the health and safety regulations it passed in 2015.
To be able to cut red tape, you have to stick some up to begin with.
People have had a lot of fun with Bridges' promise of a bonfire.
There were swift comparisons to US President Donald Trump's 2017 pledge to cut two current regulations for every new regulation.
Bridges was always going to be subjected to a chorus of mockery for coming up with regulatory reform after urging the Government to do more, faster about the economic impact of coronavirus.
He made a big hoo-ha about bringing his own economic plan forward to try to show them up, and then delivered ... the bonfire of regulations.
It was a classic over-hype, under-deliver. He was very lucky Labour had not yet managed to pull together something comprehensive of its own on coronavirus, and instead announced only intentions and decisions "in principle".
By way of linking it to coronavirus, Bridges took aim at the new requirements for rental properties to have insulation and heating, saying it was driving up rents when people needed more money in their pockets.
He highlighted the $65 increase in median rents for new tenancies over the first two-and-a-half years of the Labour administration. He conveniently failed to mention that was not out of kilter with the $70 increase in the last three years of National from September 2014 to September 2017.
It was not the first time National had come up with a red-tape policy.
In 2011 and 2015, when National was in coalition with Act, the Government ordered red tape stock-takes and then proudly crowed about the red tape they would tackle.
In 2015, they even produced a report on "loopy rules". That found many of the loopy rules people were worried about did not exist at all.
National also created the role of Minister of Regulatory Reform for then Act leader Rodney Hide, a role that ended up with Paul Goldsmith who is leading the charge of the Red Tape Brigade.
Part of the policy is to reinstate that role.
Bridges was unrepentant in the face of mockery.
The reason is that while "regulatory reform" sounds dry as a big-picture item, talking about the small bugbears of people's lives does not.
Seemingly unnecessary rules which make something more difficult or expensive for people than they think it should be will always be good politics.
The first one Bridges isolated was scaffolding rules – passed in 2015 – which sometimes require expensive scaffolding for a single-story building and can dramatically drive up the price of a house paint or repair.
There are other examples, small and large. One compost company's website says its delivery people can no longer carry the compost up steps or long pathways because of the new health and safety rules. They will only leave it by the letterbox or on the driveway.
A Sky TV technician recently advised he could not fix or remove my old Sky dish because it was closer to power lines than the new rules allowed. Instead, he had to install a new one smack-bang on the front of the house.
Bridges has promised not to go too far, but to run a "common sense" ruler over the various rules.
The health and safety rules National passed in 2015 were ridiculed at the time for some excessive aspects, such as the short-lived designation of worm farms as a high-risk proposition.
The greater liability of those reforms also led employers to take a very cautious approach - sometimes more than was warranted.
But they were overhauled for a very good reason: as a response to the Pike River disaster and concern about other workplace deaths.
Asked about this, Bridges said he had no intention of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".
Perhaps the bathwater will douse the bonfire.
