Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2)

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I note on a column by the Labour members that there is a quite inappropriate sign in the Chamber. I think you should ask that it be removed.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): If there is an inappropriate sign in the corridor, I ask that it be removed.

There is a large sign.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): It shall be removed.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. We come to Part 1, which includes a total of 93 clauses. You will be aware that they are in 14 subparts. There is a very difficult dilemma, and we have a very unusual process. Originally, the bill had 18 parts. Members such as myself who have a strong interest in the bill would normally have had, if it were not for this very unusual process, 18 opportunities to debate each of those parts. They concern very substantive and different issues, and I want some clarification. This is the largest part of the bill. Can I, for instance, indicate that there are major issues in respect of historic heritage, notification, and the definitions of environment and amenity value. There are about eight different issues on which I wish to speak. The normal Standing Orders of the House are that members have only three speeches. I would appreciate some indication—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): There are four speeches—three on the title.

That is correct. I want some indication from you at the beginning about how the debate will be managed, with this very unusual large part, so that a member such as myself, who wants to make a substantial contribution on issues that are of very great public interest, is able to participate properly.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I inform the honourable member that a point of order was raised on 26 March with Mr Speaker in connection with this bill, and the decision was that, given the nature of the bill, the Chairperson should take that situation into account in Committee. Mr Speaker said: “I would expect that a considerably longer debate would be permitted on a part with numerous subparts than would otherwise be the case.” The member has indicated that he will speak eight times. If the member were to exhaust his number of four calls, he could seek leave to have more calls.

That is quite unsatisfactory because with the number of issues in this bill—and I note there are 14 subparts to Part 1—I need some indication at the beginning of the process. For instance, if I give a 5-minute contribution on a particular issue knowing that I will get only three or four calls, I will have a very different view about whether they will be effective. There are actually 14 substantive issues, but there are certainly eight on which I wish to make a contribution. I do not think it is unreasonable for me to ask you as Chair to be more specific about your interpretation of the instruction that has been given by the Speaker of the House, noting the very unusual process in the bill and the fact that it has not gone through the normal select committee process.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): There is a Standing Order that limits the member to four calls. I would suggest that the member test the Committee now and seek leave to have more calls.

Then I thereby do just that. I seek leave for the Chair of the Committee to have the discretion to grant more calls to members than the normal restriction of four, providing members are making new points and are relevant to the part.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That sounds sensible. Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is objection.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I speak in support of Dr Smith who has made a contribution in this bill, understands the issues, and is our spokesman on this issue. If you were to give the call to one other member in the Opposition, I would seek that that person could concede to Dr Smith so Dr Smith could speak in that member’s place. I do not know whether it is possible to do that, but maybe the Clerk can assist us in this matter. I think it would be only fair in the normal course of events that, if a call was given to myself, I could concede. Would I have to seek leave; is that what you are telling me?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Yes.

I have to seek leave. If leave were denied, would that mean that I took the call?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Because the Standing Orders are as they are, it means that the maximum number of calls any one member can have on this part is four. I am in the hands of the Committee when that decision is made, so it is really up to members to seek the will of the Committee. I cannot overrule the desire of the Committee, or its will.

Then I seek leave that, if a call is given to a member of the National team who wishes to concede that call to Dr Smith, this Committee approve that action. I seek leave along those lines.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Leave has been sought. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is objection.

At the Business Committee yesterday this matter was canvassed. At the suggestion of John Carter, the senior Opposition whip, there was a suggestion that there be a structured managed debate around the central themes of the contents of the two parts of the remaining discussion. That was something the Government was prepared to agree to, but it was not agreed to by the ACT party. You can obviously check the minutes of the discussion should you wish, Mr Chairman, and take advice. Given that reluctance by ACT to agree to that course of action, the Government’s position is that we proceed in the normal way under the Standing Orders on the ongoing debate of these matters.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): It is my intention to be extremely generous with calls, but it is still a matter for the Committee of the whole House to decide how many calls there will be, and it is up to the member to seek leave.

What is going on in this Parliament this evening is a damn outrage. That David Benson-Pope and Jill Pettis have denied leave on such a critical bill to this Parliament just shows the lack of respect they have for good quality law, and no amount of excuses that Mr Benson-Pope makes can hide that fact. He has a moustache like Hitler, and we may as well call him that. This bill, and the way it is being progressed, is quite wrong.

I firstly want to object to the heritage provisions of this bill, which will create a huge amount of uncertainty for New Zealand. There are four particular points on which I wish to focus. This bill, and this part, provides for and requires, as a matter of national importance, the protection of this notion of ancestral landscapes. The Local Government and Environment Committee asked officials to define what ancestral landscapes were. They said they did not know. We have asked resource management experts what protection of an ancestral landscape requires. I will give the Committee the advice of one expert: “Put your finger on a map of any block of land anywhere in New Zealand and it could be deemed to be an ancestral landscape.” My first question to the Minister is this: when has the public had an opportunity to debate putting that into law? How is it acceptable for this Parliament to make such a significant decision without any input from the public, for the select committee to go through a rushed process, and for there to be no public debate at all? What sort of draconian Government do we have that we are prepared to pass laws of that sort?

Back in 1998 I chaired the Historic Heritage Management Review. It is a matter of some disgrace that the key recommendations in that review have not been followed through, because there was a very strong consensus amongst the members of that review that the Historic Places Trust, at the moment, plays the role of both judge and jury. It is able to be an advocate for heritage, and at the same time have regulatory powers. So the original Resource Management Amendment Bill stated that we should integrate heritage decisions into this legislation, but also that we should repeal the regulatory powers of the Historic Places Trust. The Prime Minister wrote to the select committee and said that those powers were to be removed, supposedly with the approval of the Minister for the Environment. This Government said: “We want to do half what the heritage review said, but not the other half.”

Therefore we have a double-banger. We have a situation where the Historic Places Trust gets to participate in decisions under the Resource Management Act, and also, at the end, gets to put in place a regulatory control such as a heritage protection order. I want the Minister in the chair, the Hon Marian Hobbs, to give some justification for that. We have not heard from a single person within Government how that double regulatory model in some way will serve the purposes of New Zealand.

We then have the new spiritual provisions. We are to put into law a legal requirement for all decisions under the Resource Management Act, as a matter of national importance, to protect spirits. I want the Minister in the chair to explain how that is to be done. How do we protect a taniwha? Is this Minister effectively condoning the fiasco that occurred over the Ngawha Prison site when over $1 million in consent process was wasted on trying to find out where the taniwha lived? Can the Minister in the chair explain to me why the Prime Minister says that we shall not have prayers at State luncheons because we are a secular State, yet in the next moment she proposes a bill that will require every decision maker under the Resource Management Act to take into account the protection of spirits? The Prime Minister and the Government cannot have it both ways. Either we are a secular State and are consistent in that, or we include the recognition of all sorts of persons’ spiritual beliefs.

We on this side of the House are very clear. We respect people’s spiritual beliefs, but we think it is a gross error of judgment to have courts of the land and Parliament putting them into law. We make a mockery of the whole resource management process. New Zealanders are angry about this stuff. Why has the Minister not given an opportunity for members of the public to make comments on these provisions and to participate in the decision making? It is a tragedy that the public has not been given that opportunity, and it is a disgrace for this Parliament.

I would like to carry on from my esteemed colleague Nick Smith. He presented the case very clearly with regard to the poor process of this bill. It is an absolute shocker. It has completely denied the people the opportunity to make submissions on a very significant part of the bill—that is, the heritage provisions. Those provisions are really far-reaching, given that they now include ancestral landscapes, cultural landscapes, and—that ever-faithful from Labour—the spiritual definition, as well.

Could the Minister please define the area around cultural landscape? What does the Minister mean by “cultural landscape” and “ancestral landscape”? It also includes all of those areas surrounding cultural and ancestral landscapes. What piece of land in the country is actually exempt from being able to be held up through a resource consent process by this one definition that was not in the previous bill? That particular definition of heritage now affects every single piece of land in the country. I would go further and say that it also covers the marine environment. Is the marine environment included as part of those cultural and ancestral landscapes, and can it be made to be included in that definition? As it is pretty broad, we can have it mean whatever we want it to mean. Any objector to a resource consent can now hold up that consent on that basis for any length of time. The chief executive officer of the Ministry for the Environment said that extortion was just pub talk. We can give members plenty of examples—and some have already been given here tonight—where that is not the case. It is not just pub talk. The examples are out there in reality, and they are very numerous. This particular definition will have significant effects.

People have not had a chance to make submissions to this bill, because the Government has denied them that opportunity. We have plenty of submissions from people, and I have read one out tonight. Here is another one from the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society thanking the committee of Nick Smith, Ken Shirley, and Jim Peters for recognising the importance of public participation in relation to this important area of law. The society has recognised that there needs to be an opportunity to make submissions to this bill because of the very significant changes from the previous bill, but having gone through a considerable process at the 11th hour, it has been all for nought and a complete waste of time. That is one submission saying thank you very much for recognising the society’s concerns about the denial of its right to make submissions to this bill—particularly to the heritage provisions and definitions, which have been changed and are not the same as the previous bill. This is an incredibly important piece of legislation.

I also have another submission here from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. It states: “If the Government passes the amendment to the Resource Management Act, it will derogate from the public’s right to participate in decision-making. The Resource Management Act is New Zealand’s most significant environmental legislation, and you have denied them the right to participate.” The Minister has called this bill a child of democracy, but we have all these submissions stating that people have been denied the right to make submissions. The heritage provisions in the first part of this bill are a significant change, and you have denied people the right to make submissions to them.

That particular provision will be the result of the backlog of consents for every single project going, and for the important roading infrastructure we need in this country, which is absolutely vital. We will spend more money on consultation, process, and delays as a result of that particular definition, and because the Minister could not get her act together to allow people the right to make submissions and have that full democratic process accorded them.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Before I call the next person, can I just say to the previous speaker—who is a new member, and I did not want to interrupt her speech—that she used the word “you” on several occasions. That is not in order.

I just want to take a brief call. I have done this because there seems to be a huge hang-up on the word “cultural”. That hang-up could be based on a lack of understanding and empathy towards things that are not necessarily contained within the world in which some people move. The word “cultural” is a very wide and flexible term. Members who are interested in historic buildings might want to read the fine Historic Places Trust magazine that comes out on a regular basis—New Zealand Heritage. In its spring edition, there is a significant story called “New York Rebuilds its Cultural History”. I draw the attention of members to that, because I know they have access to that, as well. That story has no prejudice to it; there is no bigotry. The word Māori is not mentioned in it, at all, so I suspect that people look at it more openly and inclusively.

As New York seeks to rebuild its cultural history from the terrible tragedy that occurred there, it is talking about significant cultural sites, such as the Woolworth building, an art deco skyscraper commissioned for the New York Telephone Company in 1927, the Greek Orthodox community building, and other similar icons that are important to the people of that city. I suspect that while we in New Zealand might be far removed from New York—some of us might have never been there—we would applaud the rebuilding of a city’s cultural history. But, tragically, in our country there are people who live and move in a very narrow world where everybody they associate with looks just like them—their skin is white, they are middle class, and are no different from themselves.

I draw the attention of members opposite to the fact that cultural history is a very flexible thing. I applaud what they are doing in New York. They are not governed by prejudice, bigotry, ignorance, or lack of trying to repair the damage of the past, and move forward into the future in an inclusive and holistic way. I suggest that we in New Zealand could emulate some of the attitudes prevailing in New York, given the terrible disaster and awful events that its people have had to recover from. If we in this House could open our hearts and minds and think inclusively about what the term “cultural” might mean in a New Zealand sense, learn from what other countries are doing, and try to replicate that in our own indigenous way here in New Zealand, I suspect that we could end up being slightly better than we are today. Let not prejudice be the governor of what we are trying to do here tonight with a bill that is farsighted, far-reaching, and positive in the outcomes it can have for New Zealand today and into the future.

I would like to indicate that I will need a number of calls, given the complexity of this bill. Speaking to Part 1, I would firstly like to rebut some of the comments just made by Jill Pettis. She clearly does not understand what this bill is all about. Her plea for an “inclusive” and “holistic” way forward sounds wonderful, but it is bumper stickers. We are talking about the Resource Management Act here. It is meant to cover the sustainable management of natural and physical resources, and therein lies one of the fundamental flaws in this legislation. It has been captured by interest groups over the last 10 years, and its scope has been broadened to such an extent that it means whatever you want it to mean. It is something out of Alice in Wonderland. Things like kaitiakitanga are undefined, and the question we should be asking ourselves is whether this amendment bill before us tonight will improve the situation or compound the problem? I put it to you that it will compound the problem.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member must not bring me into the debate. He should put it to the members.

I put it to “you” in the collective sense. That is not addressing you in the second person, Mr Chairman. OK, I put it to you once more—all of you; I put it to you all.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can you say that you will put it to members? That would be more appropriate.

I put it to all of you members—not “you” in the second person. I put it to you that—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Members. “I put it to you members”, if you must, Mr Shirley. If you just use the word “you”, it is referring to me.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The Standing Orders make quite clear that you cannot use the second person. The word “you” can be used in the third person. It is not confined to the second person.

What we have in this bill is the introduction—under the definition of historic heritage—of terms like “spiritual and cultural”. How do they fit with basic legislation that is meant to cover the sustainable management of natural and physical resources? Spiritual, by definition, is metaphysical. How on earth does that belong here? That will just compound the problems we already have with the Resource Management Act. Then we clip on further definitions in clause 3(7), such as “cultural landscapes”. What on earth is that? We do not have it in the definitions, so that does not help. Then we have “ancestral landscapes”. What on earth is an ancestral landscape? I have forebears who were here before the treaty, but does that help me? Not a lot. It is nonsense; it is gobbledygook.

The member for Whanganui had a lot to say about how we should be “inclusive” and “holistic” as we move forward. When we are producing legislation, that is just gobbledygook.

💬 Jill Pettis: I am at least trying to be forward-looking.

What does it actually mean, though? When we are acting as legislators, as we are in this House, we have to be very careful how we use words. How will our legal frameworks interpret that? We know that we have had 10 years of agony with the Resource Management Act—given the lack of case history and case law, and the litigation associated with that—and here we are tonight throwing in a whole lot more ill-defined, nebulous concepts. Fine, they have their own merits, but they do not belong in this legislation; they belong somewhere else. I would actually be critical of the last Government. I believe that it was a mistake in public policy to clip “heritage” on to the Resource Management Act. That was not a smart thing to do, and that is really what triggered us down this path.

We then come to “biological diversity”—another bumper sticker. What on earth does it mean? I was part of a United Nations process, culminating in the Rio process, which signed up to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It started out as a country report, and it was meant to protect macro-fauna like the Bengal tiger and the white rhino, but now we are applying it to property rights. That is a nonsense.

I would like to make a contribution to this debate, particularly on the issues that have just been discussed. As a Māori, obviously I have a little bit of a direct interest in some of this stuff, but the reason I am taking a call is that I want to state that the way this Government goes about this whole process is designed to bring Māori people into disrepute. I want the Minister to think about that.

Jill Pettis was endeavouring to make some ground here, and I certainly appreciate some of the points she made, but the issue is that, in the end, we are the legislators. It is very easy to sit here at 8 o’clock on a Wednesday night, discussing these notions, but in the end we are not the ones who are out there, wanting to see development proceed and wanting to see a level of sustainable development proceed. We are not the ones who have to interpret or cope with the ideas in the bill. That is the problem, in my mind.

So what happens? Because the concepts are ill-defined, or not defined, and they are not well understood by a great many people—mostly non-Māori—who gets the criticism? Māori people do. That is wrong, because it is the job of the legislator, the job of us here in Parliament, to make the law as clear as we can. Now, in the process, local bodies out there, the Environment Court as well, and so on, will be tackling this stuff. So we will have this whole thing just being compounded, where Māori people will always get the blame for a lot of this stuff.

That is so wrong because in fact we have a Government that is not prepared to give proper clarity and proper definition to some of these concepts. It is very ready to include these concepts in legislation, partly for the fact, I suppose, that somehow it has to hang on to the Māori vote in the face of a New Zealand First party that probably will increase its share of the vote. So, all in all, unfortunately we give room for politicians in a sense to look like they are taking it out on Māori people. That is very unfair. I am a Māori person, and I have to sit here a lot of the time and listen to that, and it is not always easy to do so.

The problem here is that, without any public input, this Government has extended the historic heritage provisions to include the notion of spirituality. I personally have no problem with that. I also know that it will be the case in the future that it will not be only Māori spirituality that we come up against in this provision, because Māori are not the only ones who might want issues of spiritual interest protected. But the way all of this is always framed and the push and the way this Government approaches Māori issues is to bring the focus on Māori people alone, and, as I said at the beginning, that is unfair.

I refer now to cultural landscapes and ancestral landscapes. There is nothing in there that suggests that that is only Māori, either. I know Pākehā people where I live who hold that concept very dearly. I know a Pākehā family on a farm between Taupo and Rotorua, out in the Reporoa area. They have a long association with the farm. There is a part of that farm that they would hold as dearly to them as I would a wāhi tapu where ancestors of mine are buried. I would say that that probably qualifies as a cultural landscape, or an ancestral landscape, for them. So, again, the approach of this Government, I think, is first of all to bar anybody from having some input into this. That is not the way legislators should be behaving. We should be behaving in a far more responsible manner.

I rise to speak to the issues in clause 3, and the matters surrounding the definition of “historic heritage”. I wish to draw members’ attention to the amendment I have put on the Table to deal with some of the things that have been discussed. We have heard a great deal of concern regarding these definitions, and they also refer to clause 4, where the matters of historic heritage are given national importance. This also relates to the debate. We have received a number of comments from people, and letters, about the possible ramifications of this.

I want to begin by making something very clear. Simon Upton’s original bill contained the concept of elevating historic heritage to matters of national importance. The wording was slightly different, and it was amended by the select committee, but the concept was the same. I agree with Simon Upton. I believe that matters of historic heritage have to be of national significance and national importance to us as a nation. If we agree that these sites of historic heritage are of national importance, then it does lead to the next question as to the issue of private property rights, who pays for compensation, and the cost of protecting those sites, and that will be a matter for further discussion and perhaps another amendment bill. But let us be clear: there has been no substantive change to the concept of elevating historic heritage to matters of national importance.

The second issue that has caused concern is the definition of historic heritage. The words “spiritual”, “cultural landscapes” and “ancestral landscapes” have really stirred up the concerns of many. These words were added by the select committee in the last Parliament. That select committee was entirely entitled to do that, and it happened after the select committee had listened to the submitters and made amendments. This happens all the time in the parliamentary process. Select committees are entitled to make changes to the bill, after having listened to submitters. It does mean, though, that the public did not have a chance to say what they thought about those definitions. I do not even know whether any of the original submitters requested those definitions, but the select committee put them in.

To be entirely clear here, though, I point out that by the rewriting of the bill, from the No 1 version to the No 2 version, and sending it back to the select committee without public submissions, no rights were being denied to the public of New Zealand. It would have been exactly the same if the No 1 bill had been presented to the committee in its 18 parts. The only opportunity for the public to comment would be via their elected MP, as he or she spoke on their behalf during the Committee stage, which is what we are doing right now.

But people’s concerns are always important, and that is why I have moved this amendment. There does need to be a distinction, however, between genuine concerns and frivolous, nonsensical ones like the ones that Dr Smith raises when he pretends that he cannot distinguish between protecting sites of spiritual significance and protecting spirits. The definition in clause 3(7)(a) makes it very clear that this means those natural and physical resources that contribute to an understanding and an appreciation of New Zealand’s history and cultures. It is dealing with natural and physical resources, and to begin to suggest that the bill would be protecting taniwha is frivolous. In fact, it goes as far as scaremongering, which was what the reporter from the New Zealand Herald said they were about when they had their rebel select committee in Auckland. I would hate to have that member as my neighbour if I was applying for resource consent, because he would raise all kinds of frivolous objections to anything I proposed to do, and he would be part of the problem of the resource management process, not part of the answer.

The truth is that there are places that have spiritual significance, like sites in the Middle East: Jerusalem, Mount Zion, and Mecca. Here in New Zealand there will be similar places. The idea that this bill was going to be used to protect taniwha is ridiculous and should be discarded. My purpose, however, in moving this amendment is not to ignore the relevance of spiritual places, cultural landscapes, and ancestral landscapes.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: A war memorial would be one.

That is right. War memorials would fall into that category. My purpose in moving this amendment is to remove any confusion over the use of these terms, and to recognise the fact that these categories are adequately covered by other definitions already included. For example, I have had difficulty in thinking of a spiritual site that is not also an historic site, and, of course, that would be the case in the international examples.

It is incredible having the opportunity to follow that contribution from the United First member of Parliament, Mr Larry Baldock.

💬 Larry Baldock: United Future!

United Future—God help us if that is our future! Mark my words: as United Future supports the passage of this legislation through the House today—and members should remember that it will be passed only because United Future supports it—we are creating legislation that, before too long, will be back in this House for tidying up. This bill will haunt the “Labour and United Future Government” until the next election. Mark my words.

I want to comment, firstly, on the abuse of process. If we look at the way in which the bill has been drafted, we can see that a substantial piece of legislation has now been designed so that it has two parts to it, as a means of limiting debate. I think that that is an absolute abuse of parliamentary process, and I am disgusted that United Future could be party to that.

The second thing I want to comment on is the abuse of process, whereby Mr Larry Baldick talked throughout his contribution about the submissions that have been made on this legislation. He is not correctly portraying the situation. The Local Government and Environment Committee was not allowed to hear submissions on the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2), and consequently submissions were heard by a rebel committee, which Mr Baldick decided he would not be part of. But if he had been part of it, he would have heard a very valuable contribution from Federated Farmers, which expressed a very genuine concern about the heritage provisions.

💬 Larry Baldock: I have heard their submissions.

Mr Baldick now says he has heard their submissions.

💬 Larry Baldock: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairman. I do not normally take offence at people making a slight mistake with my name, but it is going on pretty frequently, and I would like Hansard to record my name correctly. “Baldock” is my name.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I thank the member for that. Can I just say to the member on his feet—

I apologise to the member. I thought I was pronouncing his name correctly. I certainly meant no offence. [Interruption] I assure members that I meant no offence to Mr Baldock. I was saying that Federated Farmers appeared before us to say that the heritage provisions, which Mr Baldock supports, will cause catastrophe amongst the farming community. They made the point that they have just had significant problems with the previous legislation—passed by the National Government, I admit—that created the opportunity for district councils to create significant natural areas. I come from Bank’s Peninsula, and I can say that there would be no other council that has created so much controversy around the declaration of significant natural areas—a declaration that occurred without consultation with private landowners, but greatly restricted what private landowners could then do legitimately with their land.

The point I want to make is to repeat what Federated Farmers said to us. They said: “If you thought you had problems with significant natural areas, you now have huge problems with this historic heritage provision.” There is simply no definition to it. Mr Baldock read out that “historic heritage provision” means natural and physical resources that contribute to an understanding and appreciation of New Zealand’s history and culture. I ask Mr Baldock what that means. It seems to me that it means that anybody can make a claim on any piece of landscape of New Zealand, and say that it has historic significance to them. John Carter, who spent time on that rebel select committee with me, pointed out that he had a great uncle who had ploughed a piece of land in the Hokianga, and he may, therefore, think that that land has historic significance for him—and it may, in the meantime, have reverted to indigenous bush. I ask Mr Baldock who is going to win that argument.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: The lawyers.

Mr Tisch is absolutely right. This bill will mean that the lawyers will have a field day sorting it out. But in the meantime, who pays? It is the farmers of New Zealand—the 34,000 of them who pay in excess of 20 percent of all the rates levied by local government now—who will pay.

This is the part of the bill that is just so offensive to those of us from rural New Zealand who, as I am sure has been pointed out in this Chamber earlier on, have a huge historical and cultural attachment to the land. As one who has sold land, I say that I still have a huge attachment to the first farm I bought in Balfour in 1972. When I drive past the gate I still have this feeling of attachment to the land, even though I was paid a substantial sum for it and I moved on. But it does not mean that I can then go back to that property and demand of the new owner that he should not transfer his property from a sheep farm, as it was, to a dairy farm, as it now is. What gives me the right to do so?

💬 Hon David Carter: This bill.

This bill will give that right, and that is what is so offensive. I have a property in Roxburgh. I make no apology to the Committee, or to anybody else, for using personal examples. Part of the reason I am here, in this House, is the Resource Management Act and the impact it is having on the farming community. I have a site, and I am sure the Green Party will be pleased to know this, of some cultural significance to Ngāi Tahu. It is an old quarry site that I have ensured I did not put the cattle in there and I did not put the bulldozers through it. I have looked after it. But here is the rub. I said to Edward Ellison of Ngāi Tahu that I understand that this 5 or 10 acres next to the main road is of such importance to him and that I would sell it to him and to Ngāi Tahu for $1 so that he can reaffirm his spirituality with this land. Do members know what the reply was? The reply was: “No thank you. You are to continue with the responsibility of this asset, and we will accrue the benefits.”

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: You pay the rates.

My colleague is absolutely right. “You pay the rates, you have the responsibility, you make sure the fences are absolutely correct, and you make sure that nothing is disturbed. You have all the responsibility; we get the benefits.” That is what the farming community, rural landowners, landowners throughout this country, feel so grossly offended about. We are perfectly happy to ensure in many cases that the cultural and historic significance of much of our properties is maintained. But the offensiveness of this bill, which comes in and takes away the asset without any compensation, is just outrageous.

What will happen is that we will create an attitude in rural New Zealand that does not exist today, that this is no longer mine, who cares. Who gives a stuff? I am not going to make an effort to protect this. So I have also to protect the natural area of my property where the goats constantly eat some of these herbs and high values. I go down there and chase them away or shoot them to make sure they do not destroy these values, and I do it for nothing.

As soon as Chris Carter’s Department of Conservation takes away that area from my control, I will not give a damn. It is the Government’s responsibility. This is what this bill is doing to every farmer, every landowner, in this country who has had the good sense—and it is good sense—to ensure the high values that so much of society today values, remain with that property, with that farmer, and with that natural attachment. I say again that that is why this bill is so offensive. It ensures that the farming community picks up the liabilities, but the asset is taken away for nothing.

I have some clarifications that I would like to offer particularly on this area of historic heritage. Dr Nick Smith asked me in his first speech after dinner why the Government did not devolve the decision making to local government, as the review said in 1998. The review said, firstly: “Put historic heritage into matters of national importance in this Act.” The committee agreed with that at that time. Secondly, it said: “Would you devolve the notion of what is historic heritage to local level decision-making?”.

The Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage in the new Government—in 1999-2000—signified to the Local Government and Environment Committee, and I understand this from reading the notes of the report back, that the Government did not think that local government had the expertise at all 77 council levels to make that decision, so it wanted that power to remain at the national level. I was asked about the two parts of the double. That is why the two parts were not given over. The committee did put “historic heritage” into matters of national importance in the Act, but it left it to the Historic Places Trust to handle definition at the national level.

I think there is still work to go on that particular issue, and I understand from my colleague Judith Tizard that there is continuing and expanded work in this area. However, the select committee agreed with the 1998 review, and I want to read from the report of the committee on the No. 1 bill, because some people are intimating that this issue has just come up in the No. 2 bill. It stated: “Government and Green members recommend that the definition of historic heritage be modified to refer to natural and physical resources that contribute to an understanding and appreciation of New Zealand’s history and cultures. We also recommend including the phrases spiritual qualities, cultural landscapes, wāhi tapu, and ancestral landscapes. However, we recommend that the phrase historic gardens and reference to the contents of historic places be omitted from the definition.” That was not something that came out of the blue; that was as a result of submissions and argument, and it was reflected in the report back on the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 1).

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: When did the public comment on it?

It came out of—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: It’s 2 years old—

Excuse me! Have I the floor or not? It came out of the discussions that were had, and submissions to the bill that the committee reported back. That is no different. Had we continued with the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 1), it would not have been sent back to a committee because the committee arrived at this decision and reported it back to the House. We amalgamated it by taking that decision into the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2).

The third point I want to pick up on, and I really agree with my colleague Georgina when she made the comment about the notion—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The Minister must use the person’s full name, title, or portfolio.

I am sorry. I really agree with my colleague Georgina te Heuheu. I want to make a comment about the definition of the word “spiritual”. I have to admit that I too have difficulties with the definition of this word. “Spiritual” is different to different people. The interesting thing about it is that when I have discussions with people from the Historic Places Trust they say that “spiritual” is a church. Looking at a good friend and colleague of mine in the gallery I would have to say that “spiritual” is a community that may use a building as a church. It is not necessarily the actual building itself. But there are definitions in the bill—namely, about cultural and historic—that may well include the preservation of a church, so I am kind of interested in the discussion occurring in the Chamber tonight on this issue. I wanted to clarify some of those issues with members, and make a response to them.

I would like to cover a number of issues as a result of what, I hope, will be Mr Chairman’s generosity in allowing me multiple calls. But first, I commend the Minister for being present in the Chamber during the Committee stage of the bill. Certainly, National has high aspirations in respect of this Minister. We hope that she will be able to remain for the entire Committee stage, and that she will be able to contribute at various parts of the debating process with regard to the issues that arise in the multiple subparts of Part 1.

If I may for a moment, I would like to traverse the history of the town planning and resource management legislation that we have had in this country, because it is relevant to the issue that speakers have spoken about to date in connection with Part 1. The history of town planning legislation in New Zealand has been chequered; there is no doubt about that. We had the first Act in 1926, and it had a very curious feature. When land was down-zoned the citizen whose land had been blighted was entitled to make a claim for compensation. When, as a result of up-zoning, a property had an increase in its inherent value, then the landowner came under an obligation to pay compensation. Those provisions were not continued through in the legislation, but they are relevant as we look at this bill and reflect that in the argument that is taking place on historic heritage we are seeing the potential for there to be significant blight on a number of private properties.

I know that the Resource Management Act is all about striking balances in pursuit of the purposes of the legislation. But one thing that this Government will not grasp is the critical importance of striking that balance in a way that protects private property rights to the greatest extent possible. Georgina te Heuheu has made a very valuable contribution to this debate, and I hope that Government members will not overlook what she has said about the definition of historic heritage. I am alarmed by the Minister expressing doubt about the wisdom of including reference to the word “spiritual” in the definition of historic heritage. In entering that reservation she identifies what will be a fundamental problem for those who are tasked with interpreting this legislation. Whether that will be a burden on lawyers, on the Government, on the Minister in the discharge of her responsibilities, or on the Environment Court, which is similarly tasked with interpreting this legislation, we will see. But it is an appalling start, as we commence the debate on Part 1, to have such a significant reservation entered by the Minister. I can only echo her concern as to what the word “spiritual” means.

Georgina te Heuheu has wisely identified that the provisions that touch the definition of historic heritage will give a real opportunity for those who take the view in this community that Māori are privileged. When Parliament is involved in defining terms in legislation of this type, it is really important for it to erect signposts and to give indicators about what words like “spiritual” mean.

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to make a contribution to this debate. I notice that the Minister’s head has been down for most of the evening, and I say that she should hang her head in shame. I think this is some of the worst legislation that has been perpetrated in this Parliament since I have been here. The dribble that came from Jill Pettis was no better. It was the cringing type of lounge-bar liberal muck that we get from members on the Government side of the Chamber, who sit around while they sup their Chardonnay and try to frame this type of legislation, which has caused the divisiveness that she is now taking exception to.

While I am on that tack, I say, Larry Baldock, that you are a political vigilante. You know this legislation is wrong—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member cannot bring the Chairman into the debate. The member used the word “you”.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I accept your direction, but I ask you, please, to apply it even-handedly. I heard the Minister, when she was on her feet, refer to “you”, and you took no action.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): You are right. That escaped me at the time, but you are absolutely right and I agree with you. But, at the same time, two wrongs do not make a right.

I am a relatively new member in Parliament, and I look for direction from those people who have been around for a long time. I assumed, because you let that go through, that it was acceptable.

I am desperately concerned about, in particular, the heritage provisions, the cultural provisions, and the cultural landscape provisions. I respect people’s right to be concerned about the environment. However, this amendment bill just does not do that. In the way that the present legislation is framed, at least it has genuine aims. What is being suggested now will put us into reverse. It will not just be a handbrake on growth; it will put us into reverse.

One of the great lies that comes from this Government—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member may not use the word “liar” in this House. It is totally unacceptable, and that is a longstanding convention. The member will withdraw.

One of the great mistruths that has come from this present Government is that compliance costs—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I asked the member to withdraw when he used that word.

I withdraw. I am sorry; I did not hear you, Mr Chairperson. One of the great mistruths that has come from this Government is that compliance costs will come down, and that that must be true because the Government has told us that. This is the same Government that told us that we live in a benign strategic environment. The current instability in the Solomon Islands, East Timor, and the Middle East suggests that Helen Clark has probably been spending too much time with Nandor Tanczos.

The linkage between sustainable use of our resources and our standard of living is there for everybody to see. Companies are closing their doors and sacking workers, because the Resource Management Act means that projects that once took months to get approval for are now taking years. I have spent considerable time working in and visiting Singapore, for example, and that country has a highly regulated society. However, it turns around all its environmental consents in 7 days. We can now take years to do that. We cannot afford to say goodbye to the wealth creators who sustain our standard of living, and to drive away those sorts of people and those sorts of jobs. The wealth creators are the people who support our hospital system and underpin our education system. They are the people who will help to drive down our crime rate, because they will keep people employed.

I accept that National introduced the Resource Management Act. I accept also—[Interruption] Did it? I apologise.

💬 John Carter: We passed it.

I accept that we have that Act and that its intentions were well founded. I accept that it needs to be amended now. However, the amendments that National has put forward have been completely ignored. Instead, we have been forced to bow to an unholy alliance of bureaucrats, Greens, and lounge-bar liberals, who say that nature comes first and people come second. That lot on the Government benches think that people should live in urban ghettoes surrounded by wilderness. If one suspected all along that the Act, as it has been suggested now, would result—

I shall take a very brief call to acknowledge the debate as being predictable tonight. The grizzling about the length of time that this bill has taken to come before the House is a bit rich given that the members currently in Opposition, when they were in the various forms of Government during the 1990s, had quite some time to deal with amendments to the Act during their time in office, but did not. So that has been addressed.

I really want to acknowledge the work of the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee of the last Parliament, not all of whom are still members of this House. Most of us—and I was a part of that select committee—were the people who heard the submissions that have been talked about. I acknowledge the input of a member who is no longer in the House, Mr Joe Hawke. He was very keen as far as the Māori issues in this bill were concerned—and this is in response, a little bit, to Georgina te Heuheu’s comments before. It was quite an achievement, small though it may seem, that we increased the status of iwi planning documents. Instead of local authorities being required to “have regard to” those documents in their planning documents, the wording has been changed to “must take account of”. That may sound small and insignificant to some people, but it is quite significant in many respects to the credibility of iwi planning documents and things like that. I acknowledge Joe Hawke, and I say many of the other members of the select committee did not object to that.

On the issue of wāhi tapu, ancestral historical sites, and things like that, I remember citing an example of a situation that occurred when I was Mayor of Carterton District and had to do a hearing application for a coastal area. Often some applicants would find it advantageous, or otherwise, when Māori would use the last straw. Sometimes Māori were seen as the saviours, because of being iwi who could stop something going ahead by being prohibitive, or who could slow things down. On that particular occasion, a Māori person who was objecting to the application concerning a matter in the Carterton District, sort of spread his arms wide and said it was all wāhi tapu.

💬 Hon David Carter: That’s a worry.

It was, so I think trying to make some definitions and to bring some clarity to what many Opposition members are arguing for and against is helpful, despite one’s opinions about the Opposition.

National and ACT members have been asleep for the last 2 years. The terms they are objecting to in this bill have been in front of this House for 2 years. All the words to do with cultural and historic heritage were in the Resource Management Amendment Bill reported back 2 years ago this month. They have been sitting in front of Parliament for 2 years. There was ample opportunity for anybody who thought those terms were a mistake to do some negotiating and to have some discussions with the Government about putting forward some alternatives, but none of that happened. Opposition members have now gone around the country persuading people that these are new ideas, that those words have just come in through the No. 2 bill, and they have not been consulted on them. They are relying on the fact that most people have not actually read the bill.

The consultation that happened on the No. 1 bill happened so long ago that most people have forgotten they were consulted. Some of the angriest letters that we have had about the lack of consultation on the No. 2 bill were from people who presented at length to the Local Government and Environment Committee on the No. 1 bill on the same issues. As has already been remarked, when a committee makes some changes to a bill before it, it does not send the revised version of that bill out for consultation again. If it did, no bill would ever get back to this House, because there would always be somebody objecting to the changes that had been made. But the changes in this bill were made by the committee, and I do not remember a huge rumpus on the committee over those issues in the No. 1 bill at the time. Those issues certainly did not hold us up for a long time, and I do not remember alternatives being put forward.

The reasons for upgrading the cultural and historic heritage provisions stem partly from a report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment a few years ago, pointing out that we are failing dismally to protect Māori cultural and historic heritage. We are doing OK on buildings put up by the early settlers, but we have serious shortcomings when it comes to Māori heritage, because it takes a different form. There are not very many old buildings where Māori heritage significance lies, but there is intense significance attached to places. Those places may be a rock, a coastal promontory, a stand of trees, or a hill, and they are highly significant because of the things that happened there, sometimes over hundreds of years, and because of the people who are associated with those events and the significance of those places. The significance of those places will have to be argued to the satisfaction of a court, which will not just buy any line that is being peddled. The fact is that Māori will have to make their case, and now they can do so.

I am glad that Georgina Beyer has raised the issue of iwi management plans, because although the attacks on those plans have not yet surfaced tonight they will—as they did in the committee. The upgrading of the status of iwi management plans from the words “have regard to” “take into account” was put in the No.1 bill by Simon Upton. Simon Upton was not a Māori-basher; he was actually quite focused on solutions. He could see that if planning is done without any great reference to Māori there will be a pile of objections, delays, and hold-ups when matters reach the Environment Court. So he said we should let Māori lay out in a decent planning document what is important to them, let them discuss that with the local council, and let that have some influence on the council’s plan. He argued that then Māori could hardly turn round and raise a whole lot of issues at the Environment Court stage that they had not raised when they put forward their iwi planning document.

The committee was presented with some very good examples of iwi planning documents. Ngāi Tahu has done a really good iwi management plan on water for the South Island. It makes it really clear what is significant to Māori. The committee strongly supported maintaining Simon Upton’s proposal that we should raise the value of those iwi planning documents, so that we have the debate upfront. If we get the debate and the consultation into the documents when they are first written, we will reduce the amount of controversy and flack that happens further down the track. That is what we have tried to do in the Local Government Act and in many other bits of legislation.

The member who has just resumed her seat has misled the Committee, because what she neglected to tell the Committee was this. Simon Upton certainly did introduce the Resource Management Amendment Bill—there is no question about that. But then there was a change of Government. The Minister who was then in charge of the legislation—I understand it was Helen Clark, but I can be corrected on that—introduced new parts into the bill after the public submissions had closed that introduced things such as ancestral landscapes, cultural landscapes, and spiritual values.

The point is this: the problem with that member’s contribution was that she tended to suggest that the public has had the opportunity to have an input on those issues. That is not so, and the member knows that. The member should have said to the Committee that while there certainly were public submissions, nobody from the public had an opportunity to make his or her point on those sorts of issues. When the member said no concern was expressed that is true, because the public did not have an opportunity to express concern. Was there concern expressed? Yes. Opposition members of the committee certainly expressed concern. But what happened then? The bill lay around on the Table of the House for about 2 years.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: It was 100 weeks.

It lay about for 100 weeks, until such time as the Government decided that the best thing it could do was to discard that bill, jam its provisions down into this two-part bill, call it the Resource Management Act Amendment Bill (No 2), and ram it through without submissions. There would have been no public submissions had my colleague Nick Smith not taken the initiative to say that if the proper select committee would not hold a hearing, National, ACT, and New Zealand First would hear submissions from the public. He said that because we thought the public should be able to make a contribution—and they did.

I will draw one submission to members’ attention: that from Meridian Energy. Meridian Energy is a State-owned enterprise—and does the word “energy” ring a bell with anybody? Let me tell the Minister in the chair, Marian Hobbs, one or two things that Meridian Energy said. The Minister is nodding. There may be one or two people at home, listening to this debate on their crystal sets, who would like to know what Meridian Energy said, as well. Meridian Energy said, for example, that it was worried that national environmental standards would unintentionally frustrate the Local Government and Environment Committee’s emphasis on providing increased certainty to resource users. That sure as hell does not sound very helpful to people in Northland, let alone to those in the rest of New Zealand. Meridian Energy did not know what clause 18 meant, and was uncertain as to its effect. It went on to say that consent-holders would be undermined by the lack of certainty.

Who said that? Meridian Energy said it. What is Meridian Energy? It is a State-owned enterprise. What does it provide? It provides power for hot water for showers, and for us to have the lights on, with no blackouts. Meridian Energy went on to comment that the requirement to review consent conditions would cause problems and increase uncertainty. It had other technical concerns with the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy provisions, and had several concerns about technical uncertainties. Why did it keep using that word? Did the Minister consult Meridian Energy? Let us go on. Regarding clause 54, Meridian said, “We do not agree with this proposal.” That comment is from the State-owned electricity generator, which provides lights, power, and hot water.

💬 Brian Connell: Who is the Minister?

I think it is someone called “Pistol Pete” Hodgson. Meridian Energy said it did not agree with clauses 7, 61, and 63. It said that clause 67 does not provide a remedy, and it did not agree with clause 11.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. During my colleague John Carter’s contribution, he asked the Minister whether she had read the submission, and I understood that she indicated that she had seen that submission, and that she had had discussions with Meridian. Have I misinterpreted the Minister?

💬 Hon Marian Hobbs: Go on.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): It is not a point of order, but I am happy to listen.

It certainly is a point of order, if I correctly understood what the Minister said. I wanted to seek clarification as to whether the Minister had clearly given my colleague the impression that she had discussed the submission with Meridian.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I thank the honourable member, but—

I have had zero response from the Minister. This is a serious matter.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Any response is entirely up to the Minister, and that is as far as we will go on that.

I want to join with my colleague John Carter and say what a mess we are making of the energy crisis. While the Minister in the chair, Marian Hobbs, tries to avoid questions in the House, she is partially responsible for the energy crisis we have right now in New Zealand. What happened with the change of Government in 1999, and her rejection of 14 of the 16—

💬 Hon Marian Hobbs: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think that members are not allowed to make references to whether a member has or has not been in the House. This is the second time in this debate that I have heard Dr Smith say I avoided question time. I make the point that I am quite sick, and that is why I was away during question time.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. In response to the Minister’s point of order, I said she was avoiding questions. She has repeatedly refused to answer questions in this debate. If she wants to put me wrong, I would like to put some questions to her right now. She was not present in the House during question time, and the question I would like to ask is this.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): There will be no reference to a member not being present in the House, but it is fine to make references to a member not answering questions.

The question I would like the Minister to answer is why is she ignoring the submissions and concerns about 24 clauses in this part from Meridian Energy, which is a State-owned enterprise and New Zealand’s biggest producer of electricity? Why ignore that? This is not some joke; this is the single biggest crisis facing our nation. Here we have Meridian Energy saying that there are 24 clauses in this bill that will increase the obstructions for the generation of electricity in this country, and the Minister just smirks. She does not think that is worth worrying about.

We then hear from an organisation like the Petroleum Exploration Association of New Zealand. It said that the provisions in this part would make it well nigh impossible to expand the gas and petroleum resources of this country. Again, the Minister is not prepared to answer questions as to why she has ignored that advice. We will hold her accountable when the lights go out—when 500 people in my electorate are put out of work because of a lack of electricity. The Minister carries some responsibility for that.

I also want to draw the Minister’s attention to the provisions in this part that remove any capacity for the court to order security for costs. Let us be clear about what that means. It means that any group of citizens can, with absolutely no risk, form an incorporated society that can cause huge disruption and costs for those who are trying to create wealth or development in this country, and the court will have absolutely no capacity to hold them accountable for it.

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: It’s appalling.

It is an appalling provision. This is the Minister who has introduced legal aid for those objectors. I want to know from the Minister, from the members opposite, and from that fellow Larry Baldock, who supports this stuff, how that is common sense. It is not. How will that meet the bill’s purposes of reducing costs and uncertainty? That is what the Government said this bill would do. How does removing security for costs increase the certainty around this legislation? It does exactly the opposite. The Minister might as well write to every loopy in the country and say there is a free-for-all to object, to cause havoc, to shut down and turn this into some sort of—

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: Every time she sends out an electorate newsletter.

Well, the Minister in the chair actually introduced legal aid. Can she tell the Committee how introducing legal aid for objectors reduces the costs, the uncertainties, and the delays in the Resource Management Act? We know that there are cases where the community is desperately trying to build roads to get rid of traffic congestion, and this Minister is funding people to object to them. Even in respect of roads that her colleague the Minister of Transport is on the public record as supporting, she is writing out cheques for people to oppose them. What sort of hideous nonsense is that?

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: It’s a boo-boo.

The Minister is one big boo-boo, and it would be a joke if it were not so serious. The provisions for removing security of costs—that right from the courts—are the provisions in this law that all our major energy companies object to. For 43 days we have had resource consent hearings over Contact Energy, which has been trying to renew its consent for the Clyde Dam. To date, that has cost $5 million. Does the Minister think that is acceptable? Will we do what was done in Tasmania and take the dam out?

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: You’re joking!

No. There were 43 days of submissions—$5 million of costs—for a public facility that already exists. That is the sort of thing that this Minister is not only condoning but will make worse. Yet she pretends that she is about reducing the costs and uncertainty of the bill. She is making it a whole lot worse.

I just wanted to clarify the question that Dr Nick Smith asked. I have stood up here at least three times tonight and answered questions raised by him, so I have been answering questions. It is a shame he is not always aware of that.

He asked why I was ignoring Meridian. Today I received a copy of the letter that Meridian wrote. It is now being replied to. It arrived during my absence from this country for the last 3 weeks. The member noted that I had nodded. I was nodding because I have worked with Meridian on a number of issues. I fully recognise Meridian’s, and Meridian’s lawyers’, concern about any change that occurs to the Resource Management Act. The previous Government wanted to make a change in redefining the meaning of the word “environment”, but the Local Government and Environment Committee advised it not to do that, because the resulting legislative change and casework would have brought about too much uncertainty. The work of the select committee over the last wee while has been to retain the language of the Act to reduce uncertainty, while at the same time trying to make it a finely balanced Act that really understands the meaning of sustainable development—which is to develop and grow, yet allow the community to ensure that it has choices and a future. I think I have answered the questions this morning.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. We have a serious issue here. The Minister has just told the Committee that she read the Meridian letter this morning. In the House this afternoon, the Minister said that she had not seen it.

I wasn’t in the House this afternoon.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, the Minister of Energy answered questions on her behalf, because she was not here. In response to a question, the Minister said she had not seen the letter. The House has been misled.

I was listening to the comments that the Minister made, and I wrote an answer for him. I think the primary question was: “Have you received any advice …?” It did not ask whether I had received a letter from Meridian. The answer I dictated to be read out was that I had received no advice on the current energy questions from my officials.

I congratulate the Minister, Marian Hobbs, on being in the chair and taking questions tonight. I will say this about her: I have never seen her knitting while she has been the Minister in the chair. That is a good point, and it is nice to be able to say that. I am very sorry to hear she has been sick. I thank her for being here tonight and enlightening us about letters and advice, and the difference between them, and about officials and Meridian.

I would like to speak tonight about the spiritual issues in this bill. I take up the point made by my colleague the Hon Georgina te Heuheu about how constantly going on and on about spirituality in bills like this serves to bring Māori into disrepute. In addition, I need to say that Māori are not the only people who have spirituality. Again, I think that was something that Georgina te Heuheu mentioned—that the bill was not only about Māori spirituality. I have Irish heritage, and if members ever ask people who have Irish heritage how they feel about land, they will note that they tend to get very emotional, because the Irish were not allowed to own land in their own country. It is a shame they did not have a treaty.

One of the problems with spirituality connected to land is that sometimes families sell that land. My own family sold its land in the Waikato after about 50 years. That was the only home I felt was mine, and my mother sold it just before she died. I feel a deep spirituality towards that land—so deep that I refuse to go anywhere near it at the moment, because it would upset me. I know that the land might not be exactly the same as my parents left it, and it would upset me to see that. So spirituality is there, but I will tell members this: it is none of my business what the current owners do to that land. It has nothing to do with me—

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: It will after this Act is passed.

Yes. My mother sold the land for fair value. It is a shame she did not keep it for a few more years, as it would have been of more value, but she sold it for fair value to people who bought it honestly. It is their right to do whatever they want on that land, as long as it does not affect other people, or unnecessarily damage the property of others or the environment. Under this bill, I believe I would have the right to say to the current owners of that land: “You shall not do anything on this land, because it is a place of spiritual significance to me. There are things that have happened on that land that mean a tremendous amount to me and my family.” That is not right. We cannot have that sort of silly legislation, because once people sell land, they have to be able to let go and let other people get on to it. The world does not stop turning because we happen to have an allegiance to land, or whatever.

People who own land, or who wish to buy land, must know for certain what they are getting. They cannot buy land, pay a tremendous amount of money for it, put themselves into debt, shift their families on to the land, and then be told that they cannot do what they want to do because someone whose family happened to own the land 200 years ago is now saying they cannot. That is absolute nonsense. There is no reason even to say 200 years ago—it could be 50 years ago, 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, because nothing is defined.

I congratulate the Minister on saying tonight that she had concerns about that. Good on her for saying that. She has real concerns, so why are we rushing this legislation through? It has not even been back to a select committee, or had proper submissions on it since all those new provisions have gone in. If the Minister and the other Labour members who have spoken tonight are right when they say that there was extensive consultation, which bill was there extensive consultation on? It was, of course, the No. 1 bill, and there have been significant changes since then. The first bill was the one before the No. 1 bill—Simon Upton’s bill. What has happened is that there have been changes, and those were so significant that when the rebel committee set itself up, it had over 30 submissions from the very people who had been heard before.

I want to draw to the Committee’s attention tonight the fact that at the same time as we are debating this bill, the Government has announced that the Historic Places Trust will receive another $4.5 million of funding for the identification of wāhi tapu. I alert the Committee to what happened with wāhi tapu in Welcome Bay in my electorate. On 180 hectares of land on the hills of Welcome Bay, four families have been making their living and planning their futures. They discovered that the Historic Places Trust had entertained an application from local Māori to have 180 hectares of their land declared wāhi tapu. There was a flawed and totally inadequate consultation programme by the Historic Places Trust, and as a result, those four landowners found that wāhi tapu was registered on their property.

The consequence of wāhi tapu worried those people. They sought dealings with the council, from which they got the very clear impression that wāhi tapu would limit any ability they had to use their land. As a result, the Leader of the Opposition and Dr Nick Smith held a public meeting in Welcome Bay, which 300 Tauranga residents attended. What became clear was that there was real concern about wāhi tapu. It got to the stage of becoming a national issue, and the Prime Minister made the comment that statutory protection for wāhi tapu could come only from a district council listing, as under the Resource Management Act. She said it was up to the council to decide. But at the same time as she was saying that on nationwide television, she was in the Cabinet room passing a bill through the Cabinet process that will have wāhi tapu declared a matter of national importance. According to the Resource Management Act, what that means is that if a matter is of national importance, the decision-making authorities shall “recognise and provide for those matters”. That means that if someone has wāhi tapu on his or her land, it is a matter of national significance, and it overrides what the council’s plans say. It becomes a matter of national importance that the authorities must recognise and provide for.

So what is the consequence of that for the people of Welcome Bay? What it means is that when they thought they would now be covered by the district plan and could chop down the trees, harvest the forest, build the house, and add to the garage—as they could under the district plan—all of that was out of the window. The Prime Minister’s pledge that it would be the council that decided has been found to be a nullity. As the Prime Minister was on the Holmes show saying that it was the council’s district plan that would be predominant, she was in the Cabinet room shepherding through a bill that makes wāhi tapu an issue of national significance and importance, and that means it overrides what the council says. That has really big consequences.

I cannot understand why the Government wants to set the spa-pool liberals of the Historic Places Trust upon the landowners of New Zealand with another $4.5 million of the taxpayers’ money to identify wāhi tapu around the rest of this country. We will end up with the outrageous situation where 180 hectares of land has been declared wāhi tapu in Welcome Bay and now, with the progress of this bill, the council’s views will be completely overriden and the wāhi tapu will determine the future use of that land—not the landowners operating under the district plan. It will be the local Māori who decide what happens, and that is not right.

I want to pick up an issue raised by Nick Smith a few minutes ago, and explain to the Committee the process that the Local Government and Environment Committee went through in introducing new section 284A in clause 80 of the No. 1 bill, which has become clause 80 of this bill. When Simon Upton’s bill came before the select committee, the committee had recently received a member’s bill in the name of Sandra Lee, called the Resource Management (Costs) Amendment Bill. That bill sought to protect from outrageous impositions of costs those persons and groups who were genuinely bringing a case representing some matter of the public interest and who just happened to lose, because one can never absolutely predict what the courts will do.

As I have said in my previous speeches, the Act relies on a contest of evidence and ideas between developers and members of the community in order to ascertain what complies with the Act and what does not. Because we had that bill before us, the committee decided to call for submissions on both bills simultaneously. It decided that, in the interests of good legislation, whatever we might decide to do with the member’s bill we would do as part of the amendment bill so that we did not have another little bill sitting out to the side. After hearing submissions and advice, the committee members felt that we could not give a blanket exemption to awards of costs to community groups, because there must be some sanction for wasting the time of the court and the applicant. If the case has no merit, there must be some sanction for failing to comply with directions of the court, and there must be some incentive for people to prepare a case properly and observe the normal rules that go with running the process. That sanction is the ability of the court to award costs against any party to the court that misuses the process.

However, what submitters told us—those who had been through the experience of objecting to the Environment Court—was that their main worry was not the possibility that, if they lost, costs might be awarded against them. That was a risk they felt they could foresee and manage, and have considerable influence over. They told us that the much bigger issue was that developers were using the ability to get security for costs awarded at the start of the process as a threat and as a way of preventing participation in the cases at all. They cited a number of cases where groups had never gone to court, even though they had a good legal case, because the developer had said: “Well, we’ll seek security for costs.” The court has been known to award up to $30,000 for security of costs at the start of a case, and that is a huge disincentive for people getting involved in the court at all. It is true that the courts have not done that often, it is true they have not done it lightly, and it is true that they have not done it frivolously, but the fact is that community groups do not necessarily know that. They do not have all the research facilities to find that out, and they are frequently told by applicants that they will have to pay the money upfront if they want to take part.

The fact is that the Environment Court did not always have that power. For the first few years of the operation of the Act they could not award security of costs. It happened only by accident in 1996, when an amendment to the Act gave the court the powers of a District Court; and what happens by accident can equally well be taken away. Environment Court proceedings are so often David and Goliath undertakings, where the applicant is backed by millions of dollars. It is true that applicants also have millions of dollars to lose, but they have all the resources. The community group has nothing but what it has raised through its cake stalls, so it is appropriate that it be given the opportunity to obtain justice, providing it abides by the rules. The committee therefore decided to take away the right of a court to award security for costs at the beginning, but to leave in place, at this stage, the ability to award costs against groups, in the hope that it would encourage them to run their cases as well as possible.

It has been pointed out in the debate already that the Minister in charge of this bill, Minister Hobbs, is, regretfully, rather poorly. She has contracted a flu-type virus and is relatively sick. I cannot help but reflect on the fact that most landowners in this country, when they look at what is happening in this bill, will be as physically ill as the Minister is.

The impact of this bill is huge. I ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Damian O’Connor, what price a spiritual value? How much is a spiritual value worth? I ask the Minister whether a spiritual value can be traded. I am not getting any answers here. Can a spiritual value be bought? These are terribly important questions. Can a spiritual value be bought? I am not getting an answer from the Minister in the chair. The reality is that the answer is, yes, it can. Ngāi Tahu put a value on its spiritual values by accepting $1.5 million when it came to ensuring water rights on the Clutha River. It said: “Our spiritual values are worth $1.5 million.” They can be quantified.

So what, then, is the worth of the spiritual value of a river to a fisher and his family who have fished that river for, sometimes, as long as Māori have been associated with it? I have people in my area, down in Ettrick and beyond, who have huge historical and spiritual association with the river, but according to this bill their spiritual attachment is worth absolutely nothing. I ask the Minister to explain why there is a difference. From the way that the bill reads, it is only Māori who have spiritual values, and Pākehā, people from Europe, Chinese—wherever people may come from—do not have spiritual values.

A spiritual value comes from within an individual. It is not found in a river. A spiritual value is not found in a mountain. Society in this day does not believe in the animist belief. We do not worship mountains; we do not worship rivers. Perhaps we understand the life-giving forces within them, but they do not possess a spiritual value. The spiritual value comes from within the individual who has the capacity to understand the importance and the significance of those things that are important to us. We each of us have our own value, whether we live in the town or the country. At my own property in Roxburgh I have special spiritual attachment to certain areas that I find have a quality that cannot be defined. But that ability comes from within me. It is not recognised by other people. It is not recognised in statute, nor can it ever be. It is something that comes from deep within the individual. How, then, can this bill attempt to quantify a spiritual value?

I want to shift to a slight different tack. Members have talked about the energy crisis. This bill talks about landscape values. It was not so very long ago that one could not—and one still cannot in many areas—build a shed or plant a block of trees because it would upset the landscape value. According to the Minister of Energy, we will now have massive wind turbines placed on ridgelines. That will totally destroy the aesthetic values of scenic corridors, such as those on the Old Man Range, for example. I cannot put a shed or build anything—

I want to make a relatively brief contribution to this debate. I was interested in listening to the previous speaker, Gerrard Eckhoff. I think it is important to focus on the key changes that this bill introduces. It was my pleasure and privilege to be a member of the previous Local Government and Environment Committee in the last Parliament, and to be the deputy chair. My good colleague Richard Worth and I—

💬 Richard Worth: We worked hard.

It was a very good committee, and I take the opportunity to pay tribute to people like Eric Roy and Owen Jennings. I found Owen Jennings to be a good member of that committee and a good member of Parliament—

💬 Gerrard Eckhoff: A good ACT man.

Yes, and well should the member nod. We had some philosophical disagreements, but he was a good Kiwi and a good New Zealander. I am not going to say how his party treated him, because that is provocative, and I think we can have a positive discussion.

What this bill really involves is the balance between our need as a country to develop, and our need not to lose, by stupidity or by accident, the very special qualities that make us the unique and beautiful nation that we are. It is really sad that members opposite immediately seize on this, and moan and groan—but not all of them, because there are one or two very good members in the Opposition. Let me pay tribute to Richard Worth, who was a very good member of the Local Government and Environment Committee, and whom I found personally very helpful.

One of the things this bill is about is not repeating the mistakes of the past. One of the programmes that I became involved in, as a very young environmentalist, was, lest we forget—and I think we should not forget—the Lake Manapouri campaign. Within our lifetimes and within our generation, there was a Government, which happened to be a National Government, that was going to raise Lake Manapouri. It was going to lose a lake and an ecosystem that had evolved over millions of years, for the so-called greater economic good. I wonder whether we could find anyone in this Parliament who would stand up, be counted, and be identified with that. Yes, indeed, we have the deputy leader of the ACT party. It is a shame he was not the deputy in terms of his list ranking. But he has made a good contribution, and I do not bear any personal rancour against Mr Shirley. Stand up those who would still raise Lake Manapouri!

The sort of thing that distresses me about this kind of debate, and even in the community at large, is a very distinct lack of balance. All the blame for some development issues and some processes are laid at the Act’s door as against the resourcing of the Environment Court. But, dare I say it, one of the dangers of ensuring that balance, one of the issues that arises if we are not careful, is that, bit by bit, we will lose what makes this country special. Because it is special, it is competitive. It is an attractive place to invest in, work in, and live in. It is a bit like the whole thing about the loss of some of our public estate, our high-country estate, but particularly our coastline, as it is subdivided and built on. Coromandel is a really good example; Jeanette Fitzsimons will know this extremely well. One day we will wake up and find that the last bit of unplanned development is happening, and what was special about that area will have gone. We have lost, squandered, and stolen from our grandchildren what makes this country special. I think there are a number of members of this Parliament who in their heart of hearts know that to be true.

Having said that, I say that the other balance that we grappled with as a committee, particularly around issues of introducing limited notification of resource consents—and I acknowledge the difference of opinion that Labour members have with the Greens on this issue and others—was the balance between what is in the broad community interest, and the ability of what one calls the vexatious litigant to hold up unduly and unfairly, and potentially compromise, what indeed could be very positive development. I have experienced this at the local government level.

I want to spend a few moments talking about Part 1. I want to start with the changes to notification.

At the moment about 50,000 consents have been approved. Of those, 47,000 are non-notified and about 3,000 are notified. [Interruption] The 3,000, as Richard Worth mentions, that have to be notified are too many. The bill, of course, brings in limited notification. One would have thought that, of the 3,000 that have to notified now, there probably would be an even split; that 1,500 would have to be notified, and 1,500 would require limited notification. But when we look at this a little bit closer we see that the limited notification consents will be 1,500, but the number of notified consents could well go up to about 3,000. So here we have increased compliance costs. The point I make is that at the moment there are about 47,000 consents that are non-notified, and one would have hoped and expected that they would stay at that figure. But, no, the research that we have done suggests that that figure of 47,000 non-notified consents would drop down to 45,500, and the balance would go back to being limited notifications or notified consents.

Government members earlier on talked about how this bill will reduce compliance costs, and how this bill would be good for business and good for all those people whom we expect to make investments in the community, but in fact that will not work. I want to give two examples. In the rural electorate that I represent, Piako, there are huge developments with chicken farming. Some have new contracts to supply chickens to Inghams Enterprises, and chicken meat to KFC and big firms like that. At this stage many consents are coming forward to the district council. There have been a lot of hiccups, and there will certainly be more now that there will need to be limited notifications and, probably, further notifications.

For example, if I already have a chicken operation, and I want to extend that operation, I have to let the neighbours know. There is no problem with that, and usually, because these are established operations, they are allowed to proceed. But of recent times there have been people who have objected to the addition of chicken sheds, and the operators have had to go through the consent process. What will happen now is that even all those neighbours who have consented will have to be re-notified, and the whole deal will have to start again. That will add compliance costs and time, and it is certainly not something that we would support.

Perhaps I have a 200-cow cowshed and I want to increase the capacity to 220. I should have to look only at the increase—the extra 20—but under this arrangement, I will have to go back to square one and talk about a whole consent process for 220 cows, not just the extra 20. So although there is a role for limited notification, the view we hold is that because of the extra compliance cost, which is a factor we are really concerned about, this policy will probably not achieve what it was designed to do in the first place.

If we look at some of the opportunities that have been lost in this amendment, opportunities that we have talked about before, such as having independent hearing commissioners, having a contestable process for resource consent applications, and allowing direct referral through to the Environment Court, we see that those opportunities, which we believe are important, have disappeared. There is also the issue of the creation of a register of professional hearing commissioners who could hear the cases. Although that would cost a little bit of money, at the end of the day they would be professionals in the field who did not have a vested interest, and they could sit and hear cases in good time. The Ministerial Panel on Business Compliance Costs wrote 50 recommendations to reduce the compliance costs borne by business as a direct consequence of the Resource Management Act, and there were another two that related to the Building Act.

This is the first time I have had the opportunity to speak on this somewhat iniquitous Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to concentrate on the area of historic heritage. I think it is in the interpretation clause, in subpart 1. There were, of course, 18 parts, which have been compressed so skilfully and manipulatively by this Labour Government.

I want to go over the area of historic heritage, with particular reference to one of the most significant developments or consents that have taken place in New Zealand in the last few years.

I am referring to the Hampton Downs dump—the largest proposed dump in New Zealand’s history. To add insult, this dump is next to the prison.

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: They put rubbish in both of them.

That may be so, but the difficulty is that it is rubbish coming from halfway around New Zealand. I will point out the relevance to the historic heritage part of the bill. The extraordinary thing about this development is that it was consented to under this Labour Government—the Government that propounds an interest in waste minimisation. It is allowing the largest dump in New Zealand’s history to take place in the virgin Waikato countryside, to take garbage from Auckland, Tauranga, possibly Rotorua, possibly Hamilton, and all around, yet in this bill the Government is bringing in this historic heritage part.

I have ticked off the various aspects of the definition. In relation to archaeological value, this area was pristine countryside, so we cannot say that—nor was it of architectural value. However, we then come to cultural value. This is an area absolutely steeped in culture from as far back as New Zealand has ever existed. As for historic value, it has been of huge historic importance to Māori and to Pākehā, particularly during that very sad period of the New Zealand wars. In relation to spiritual value, being next to the Waikato River it is of huge spiritual significance both to Māori and, of course, to all those who live in the Waikato. It also includes “historic sites, structures, places, and areas;”. Cultural landscapes are undoubtedly there, as are archaeological sites, and sites of significance to Māori. They are all there.

But when it is convenient to this Labour Government it does not give a toss. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Damian O’Connor, might like to take a call. The Minister at the time, the Hon Marian Hobbs, had the opportunity to use her call-in powers because this area was of such huge significance to New Zealand. However, she said that it was a local issue. What is the use of putting all these provisions in this bill when, if it is convenient to the Government, it takes absolutely no notice whatsoever? That is the absolute hypocrisy of this Labour Government.

💬 Hon David Carter: No objection! The truth hurts.

The truth hurts, as the Hon David Carter said. This is a hugely important development in the Waikato. It is hugely important for those people living in the area who, hopefully, under the Resource Management Act, had the opportunity as small landholders to have a reasonable say about this enormous development. They had nowhere near the resources of the applicant. This was one opportunity where a Labour Minister for the Environment could show that she was truly sincere about the environment.

I would like to follow up the issue of Hampton Downs. It is a classic example of the protracted delays that have frustrated development in this country, and there is nothing in this bill that overcomes the basic problems or even addresses them.

💬 Hon David Carter: It’s worse!

Mr Carter is quite right. The bill actually compounds the problems, and makes them considerably worse. Hampton Downs is a very good example. Over a number of years I was involved with Olivene’s proposal at the Meremere power site—a decommissioned station. Olivene was proposing a process of high-temperature incineration, involving picking up solid waste from Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, and Rotorua, then vitrifaction of the ash, through to the production of roading material. One would not believe the delays and the frustrations that the company encountered, associated with the Resource Management Act, in dealing with the Waikato District Council and Environment Waikato. It was utterly unbelievable. There were absolute delays and frustrations at every turn.

Finally, of course, Olivene gave up and went off to Australia. The company had been battling for 5 years in this country, and I forget how many millions of dollars it cost, but in the space of a few months it got approval in Australia and is now building its high-temperature, state-of-the-art incinerator in Perth. The company got the approval, and everyone there is delighted.

It could have been generating energy for this country. A lot of people do not realise that solid waste—the stuff we send to our landfills—has an energy value almost level with coal. So we would have recovered the energy, solved the problem, created an inert substance for roading from the ash, by a vitrification process. But the proposal was totally rejected by our planning process. Olivene described it to me as “just like kicking a haystack”. One could go nowhere.

We have many other examples. I know Claymark Sawmills in Te Puke, right in the heart of our “wall of wood”, shall we say, in the Bay of Plenty. It is adjacent to the volcanic plateau, has substantial plantations, and has been trying for 6 years to get a process through under the Resource Management Act. It cost the company $2 million, before it finally managed to make the progress that was required. This is the difficulty faced by small business all around the country. This is not pub talk; these are hard, hard facts. The Government’s own compliance cost report that Minister Swain commissioned identified the part that the Resource Management Act plays in this, but this bill does not—

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: No. 1 issue!

It is the No. 1 problem! What was the Speech from the Throne all about? It was about removing the barriers to growth. Does this bill do that? The Government’s own report identified some 50 measures, but none of them in this bill before us tonight actually amends the Resource Management Act.

I would like to come to a very specific point in respect of clause 41(1). The New Zealand petroleum industry made the point to the Opposition select committee, because that is the only select committee that heard any evidence in respect of this bill. The Government would not even hear submissions. It did not want to hear all the horror stories and be exposed to them. Opposition members took it upon themselves to hear submissions, as we thought it was a critical part of our democracy to hear some submissions on a bill of this significance. We were told by the petroleum industry that it wanted to see an amendment—and it is a very practical amendment that we could have had—to clause 41(1) that would have amended section 92(2) of the principal Act. The simple point is that a consent authority can commission a report on any matter that is raised in relation to an application for consent approval, without the applicant’s consent. This is what councils up and down the country are doing. If they are not sure, and often there is a bunch of lay people sitting in judgment, then that is how they wait it out. They say they want another report.

All committees tend to do that. If they are not sure they call for a report. So applicants have to stump up for all sorts of costs, and half the time they do not even know what these reports are for. They are of very spurious worth, but the applicant has to stump up to purchase the report. It is the time value of money, but members opposite do not appreciate the time value of money

I would like to speak briefly to introduce the two amendments I have tabled for voting at the end of the session. The first one amends clauses 34, 41, and 42. The amendment to remove clauses 41 and 42 actually removes limited notification from the bill and restores the status quo of the Act as it stands at the moment. I outlined in my second reading speech why the Greens believe that is necessary, and I think that can stand on its merits.

The addition we have made to clause 34 remedies a major failing in the Act itself, which is that one currently does not have to consider whether the effects of a controlled activity are minor, one simply does not have to notify it at all, no matter how great the effects on the environment or on people might be. There is an assumption, which has been underlying this for a while, that if it is a controlled activity that the council cannot refuse but can only put conditions on, the effects must be minor. There are a number of cases where this has not been true, and in fact there is no reason that it should be. It simply relates to the way the plan is written, and we believe it should be subject to the same test of minor effects as other activities. If I am wrong, and if controlled activities do always have minor effects, this amendment does no harm whatsoever, because they still will not be notified. If, on the other hand, I am right, and some controlled activities have more than minor effects, it would be a good idea and it would be consistent with the rest of the Act, for them to have to be notified when they do have more than minor effects. So that is the first page.

The other page of amendments inserts new clause 82A, which is exactly the wording of the Simon Upton bill that has been removed by this Government. I am looking forward to the support of National members in restoring this provision of their colleague in the bill as it was first introduced. This is the provision that allows a review of notification decisions at the Environment Court instead of the High Court, which I spoke about in my second reading speech. That bill was introduced by Simon Upton because he saw it balancing limited notification. In fact, if National members wish to vote for this and not vote for the removal of limited notification, they will be voting in accordance with the bill that their party introduced. The select committee agreed with Simon Upton’s proposal and reported it back, the Government at the time agreed with it as well, the Government then changed its mind, and in the No. 2 bill removed those clauses. This simply gives Parliament an opportunity to decide that Simon Upton was right all along.

💬 Hon Tony Ryall: Well, come and talk to us about it.

I have, and I will.

I am ecstatic to have the opportunity to ask the new Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Agriculture, the Hon Damian O’Connor, the same series of questions I asked the Hon Marian Hobbs. [Interruption] No, and I can remember the questions. What I want to know from the Associate Minister of Agriculture is whether he has had submissions personally from Federated Farmers, listing their large concerns with this bill. I mentioned to Marian Hobbs earlier that the rebel Opposition select committee, of which I was proudly a member for one day, had a substantial presentation from Federated Farmers, and if, in the event the Associate Minister of Agriculture has not had the time to give them an audience so that they can express their concerns about the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2), I will take this opportunity of doing so to the Associate Minister of Agriculture. He, after all, has a duty to represent the concerns of the farmers.

So what Federated Farmers said to us, I say to Mr O’Connor, is that this particular amendment bill will be worse than the current legislation. They have spent years and years and years telling Governments of both colours that there are problems with the Resource Management Act—as it exists tonight—yet the Labour Government, supported by United Future, advances legislation, the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2), which in their opinion will make it worse. One of the most telling comments we heard from Federated Farmers was their concerns about significant natural areas and the way they have been imposed on private landowners all around New Zealand. But, then, they commented that the historic heritage provisions of this bill will make those problems associated with significant natural areas look minor.

I have to congratulate Marian Hobbs on making a contribution, finally, but I want the Committee to reflect on the comments she made. As people criticised the definitions of historic heritage listed in this legislation, the Hon Marian Hobbs got to her feet and said that she was also concerned about the definitions. The Minister in charge of the bill was concerned about the way we are defining historic heritage, and basically told the Committee tonight that it will be for the courts to sort out. How can the Associate Minister of Agriculture support legislation that the Minister in charge of the bill says that she herself is concerned about, then pass the responsibility from parliamentarians to the courts to clarify? I say to Damian O’Connor that it is our job as parliamentarians to pass law that is clear and concise. It is not our job to pass nebulous rubbish like this and hand it to the court.

In my closing moments I point out to Damian O’Connor that the most telling comment made by the Federated Farmers’ submission was that unless we get it right, the incentive will be on farmers to destroy sites of historic significance on their farms. If farmers feel that this legislation will unreasonably restrict their ability to earn a living off land they own, the threat made was that they will have little choice but to destroy areas.

💬 Stephen Franks: And they will be serving New Zealand’s interests.

Stephen Franks says they will be serving New Zealand’s interests. I happen to farm on Banks Peninsula, and was afflicted with the Banks Peninsula district plan, which had huge swats over my land of significant natural areas. They missed the most significant part of the farm. I say to Damian O’Connor that I would not be so irresponsible as to destroy it. But it just goes to show that if we want to advance laws that protect our landscape, we have to do it with cooperation.

I believe that the review I have just been giving this bill is the sort of review that the select committee stage was intended to cover. When the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee have been through the provisions in detail, over a really long period, they are, of course, very familiar with them. But someone coming cold, or relatively cold, to a bill—like a member of Parliament, who is now expected to vote—looks at the words that have become familiar to those who spent so long with them, and looks at them with the eye that is a little closer to the eye of the person who is going to be subject to it—namely, the ordinary citizen.

What struck my eye in a quick flick through was the amendment to section 31 in clause 10. There it is in paragraph (b)(iii), in subcause (1): “the maintenance of indigenous biological diversity:”. The method that subsection (2)(1) suggests, in subclause (2), is to “include the control of subdivision.”

It struck me that most of New Zealand’s coastal environment at the moment is probably in the position that a friend of mine had his farm in, about 14 or 15 years ago. I helped my friend at one stage to collect the seeds of karakas. He knows a lot about trees. He has planted and fenced-off many hectares of land on one of his farms, around dams. He has built dams to regenerate wetlands. He is very interested in the state of the natural environment and in what I imagine is meant by indigenous biological diversity—in other words, probably patches of bush and patches of native vegetation. We made a special trip around the south coast—Palliser Head—to collect karaka seeds from a variety of karakas and other plants that we found in those groves. He told me to put them in the fridge. They need to go through a winter. They have to be chilled for 6 weeks in order to get a good strike. He was going to strike a whole lot of these karakas, to plant on his coastal property.

About 4 or 5 years later I went to his place and I asked him where the karaka grove was. He had reached the common-sense decision that he would have to have rocks in his head to carry on with his plan. In fact, where the karakas were supposed to be there was a plantation of eucalypts. The reason was very simple. He had realised that if he planted what he wanted to plant there, he would never be allowed to use his land. He wanted to regenerate native bush, he wanted to attract pigeons, and he wanted to plant the land so that it recreated what might have been there 150 years ago, but if he did that he would be ruining all economic prospects for that land. In fact, he would be setting it up to be confiscated by the consent authority.

So what he did was plant eucalypts. It was the only rational thing to do with that land, or to leave it in what it had been planted, which was probably a monoculture of rye grass, replanted every 5 or 6 years, and grazed. He did this because he did want the area to be attractive. He does not regard New Zealand’s landscape without trees as the kind of landscape he wants to spend time in. He planted a variety of different eucalypts. The only reason he chose eucalypts was that they were not indigenous. It was the only way he could see to protect him land from confiscation.

Fellow members of Parliament, when we pass legislation like this, knowing that it is a rational response, knowing that the only sensible thing for people with any kind of alertness to their own interests is that they will have a bias against natural heritage, that they will regard it as stupid to buy land that has regenerating scrub and not knock it off, that they will want fires on their property, that they will want to graze it heavily so that they do not get anything unusual regenerating, and that if they find a rare species they will put a bulldozer through it, we deserve all the odium we get.

I am much obliged to be able to take this call. This afternoon the Government announced, in a pre-Budget announcement, that an additional $14.5 million will be given to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, for the identification of wāhi tapu throughout New Zealand. The term wāhi tapu came to the attention of most New Zealanders when they discovered, to their horror, that a group of landowners in Welcome Bay had effectively lost control of their property to local Māori.

What became clear in the public furore that followed the Welcome Bay wāhi tapu case was that the Prime Minister misled the country as to the status of wāhi tapu. She appeared on the Holmes programme and said that the fact there is a wāhi tapu on this 180 hectares of land at Welcome Bay was of no consequence. She said that it was the local council that would decide.

Progress reported.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.