Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5), Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3)

on behalf of the Minister for the Environment: I move, That the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) and the Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time. Labour is committed to a clean and healthy environment, and to giving people a say in environmental decision-making. Protecting our environment is a strategic investment in New Zealand’s future. The Resource Management Act is about striking the right balance between using our environment and protecting it for future generations.

There are those who have signalled their intention to gut the Resource Management Act. They want to tilt the playing field so that development will win out over the legitimate concerns of communities. I think most New Zealanders would regard that as incredibly short-sighted, and would be most concerned. New Zealanders in major surveys consistently rate quality of life much higher than economic drivers.

I wish to affirm today the belief that the Resource Management Act can be improved. However, those improvements are not to be found in changing the sound, fundamental principles of the Act, but in listening and responding to the genuine concerns of those who use the Act. The Government’s view of the Resource Management Act, after 18 months of consultation, has highlighted concerns associated with delays, costs, inconsistency, and a lack of national leadership since 1991. The solutions contained in this legislation relate to those very real problems.

There are people who are trying to put up phantoms, distortions, and out and out lies in their bid to rip the Resource Management Act apart. They would have us believe that we have had no new roads and no new power infrastructure and, in fact, that all projects requiring any sort of resource consent have had to be cancelled. Of course, that is just nonsense. Attacks of that kind are big on slogans but very short on facts.

In recent times the New Zealand economy has grown 3.5 percent against an OECD average of 2.2 percent. In fact, growth has been significantly higher in New Zealand compared with most other OECD members for a number of years now. In excess of 49,000 resource consents are issued by local government each year, and 95 percent of them are considered minor and non-notified. Fewer than 1 percent of consent applications are declined each year. A comparison of environmental compliance costs internationally shows that New Zealand is a better place in which to be doing business than many of our competitor nations, including Australia.

The New Zealand system of environmental management places huge responsibilities on local government—more so than anywhere else in the world. The amendments proposed in this legislation tackle decision making at all levels. Local authorities and the Environment Court have made huge improvements in implementing the Resource Management Act since its inception in 1991. Due to increased funding and new case-management systems, the backlog in the Environment Court has been slashed by 50 percent since 2001. Those who have been dealing with the Environment Court know that cases get attention within weeks now, not years as it used to be. The court now puts pressure on parties to mediate or progress cases as soon as possible.

The legislation builds on those improvements by introducing accreditation for hearing consents and by requiring local decision makers to set out the matters that inform their decisions. Councils will be given more tools to conduct robust hearings. Decision makers will need to be accredited, and when they have achieved that accreditation they will have new powers to deal with vexatious submitters. I am delighted to inform the House that nearly 600 local government elected members have already committed to and completed the training process.

The legislation introduces a series of timely, sensible, and well-thought-out improvements to the workings of the Resource Management Act. It provides greater certainty and efficiency in the way the Act operates while not sacrificing protection for the environment. It will enable the Resource Management Act to work even better.

This legislation is about achieving the right balance between national and local interests. The Government recognises that local authorities are increasingly being asked to consider projects that raise issues of national significance. The current policy environment provides little guidance on balancing local and national interests. This legislation provides a new way for councils and Government to work together when matters have more than local implications—when they raise issues of national significance. The legislation implements policy developed by Local Government New Zealand to give the Minister for the Environment more tools to deal with matters that need to be decided at a national level, or with assistance from central government. Those tools will be exercised only after consultation with the relevant local authorities. The Minister has also been granted new powers to investigate local authority performance, to make recommendations, and to direct local authorities to prepare plans.

The Government is committed to greater central government leadership in the Resource Management Act. It has already adopted 14 national environmental standards, and the Ministry for the Environment is currently scoping a further five national environmental standards and three national policy statements. Changes in the legislation will facilitate both the development of national policy statements and the implementation of national environmental standards. The legislation is a reinforcement that national standards should be able to set clear and consistent environmental bottom lines without allowing significant adverse effects on the environment.

The legislation also supports local policy formation and makes improvements to its design and process. It reaffirms the local authority’s role in setting local policy. It elevates the status of regional policy statements, and thereby promotes integrated regional planning. The Government has placed emphasis on working with local government and communities, and this legislation focuses on empowering councils so that they have the skills and the resources needed to implement improvements to the Resource Management Act process. We can, and do, as a nation need economic growth, but in such a way that it does not ride roughshod over communities or the clean air, water, and soil guaranteed and necessary for generations to come.

The Resource Management Act is a good one. We want to make it work even better for all New Zealanders. I am pleased to commend this legislation to the House.

That was a fitting valedictory speech from the Associate Minister for the Environment for the mess that he made of one of New Zealand’s most important statutes. One need look only at the traffic congestion problem in Auckland or at the concern in every one of our daily newspapers about the security of electricity supply, and one needs only to read the magazines of small business and farmers to understand that this Government has made a complete hash of the Resource Management Act. Six years ago, when Labour came into Government, it rejected a very important bill to reform that Act. It said, in the words of Marian Hobbs, that the Act was beautifully written, was beautifully crafted, and was not in need of any change. That, in fact, was the policy of the Government for that 3-year period. I notice the Minister is running to hide.

💬 Jill Pettis: Oh!

Well, he is. I tell the Minister that he is an embarrassment in terms of the way in which he has treated the House in respect of this amendment legislation.

The great irony is this. Labour has put out repeated press statements, stating that National is going to take away the rights of people to be able to be consulted and have a say in decision making.

💬 Jill Pettis: That’s right.

Can the member who has chipped in explain this to me: why did the Government, this morning, introduce Supplementary Order Paper 389 in the name of the Hon David Benson-Pope, which included 45 pages of changes? Today the Government introduced and passed 140 clauses. The silence is deafening. This Government says we should do as it says, not as it does. If the Government wants to change the law, it puts forward a bill, rams it through Parliament, and tells everybody else to get lost. But a council, a farmer, or a small-business person will have to consult for months—for years—before being able to make any of the important resource management decisions.

The Minister says we are brewing up and exaggerating the problems with regard to the Act. Well, let me give members some information about the Government’s own reports on it. In 2002 the Government commissioned a compliance cost report, with all its cronies—all its people—on the committee. They came back and said that the No. 1 concern in respect of compliance costs in New Zealand was the Act. Then we had the IMD study, which was an international study that ranked countries in terms of their competitiveness. Overall, New Zealand went down under this Labour Government. That is not a surprise, but what was surprising was the fact that in the area of environmental lawmaking New Zealand ranked bottom—No. 60 out of 60. If that is not a message for reform, I do not know what would be.

One of the really important industries for New Zealand is our forest industry. We have a wall of wood that is coming on, and I do not know any New Zealander who does not want to see that timber processed and have value added to it in New Zealand, rather than be exported as logs. What is interesting is that we have a greater forestry industry our near neighbour, Australia. Right now Australia has 21 new major timber mills being built, and in New Zealand we have none. If we were losing an All Blacks game to the Aussies by that sort of margin, there would be nationwide uproar, yet that is what is occurring in one of our most important industries.

I will give some good, practical examples of what occurs. Transit New Zealand, which is given the job of building the roads, told a parliamentary select committee that it now takes 7 years, on average, to get a consent for a new highway. Can we wait 7 years to fix the traffic problems that are affecting cities like Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, Nelson, and Wellington? Of course we cannot. I also have some little examples. A boating club in Auckland wanted to put in a boat ramp. It cost the club $160,000 to get consent for a boat ramp that cost $35,000. The stories go on and on, and this Government does not understand what is occurring.

Then we have the issue of the speedway. It is just an example, but it really does bring home the attitude of this Government. Fifty-thousand people signed a petition to try to ensure the survival of the Western Springs Speedway, but the Government chose to give $28,000 to 34 residents, every one of whom had moved in and bought a house after the speedway was there, and in January the residents, using taxpayers’ money, successfully shut down the speedway. Now the Auckland City Council, unanimously—the councillors are Labour members; hard-left members—wants to have the power to be able to change the council’s district plan. Under this Government legislation, that will take 3 years. The Western Springs Speedway will be well and truly dead and buried in 3 years, so during the Committee stage I put forward a very simple amendment. It simply stated that we would empower the Auckland City Council, and every other council in New Zealand, to be able to make a change to its plan with effect straight away, if it so wished. It was designed to empower councils. The interesting thing was that not one Labour member got to his or her feet and explained why he or she opposed that amendment. Effectively, today the Green Party and the Labour Party have killed the Western Springs Speedway. I acknowledge New Zealand First, United Future, and ACT for supporting that amendment, but I would love to hear from a Labour member as to why Labour does not trust councils to have discretion in respect of those plan changes, rather than automatically applying the most stringent provision to them. It does not make sense.

Then we have the Government’s approach to try to clog up the Environment Court. This legislation provides that every single little one of the 50,000 resource consents—and that is far too many—is now able to be appealed to the Environment Court on notification. I have never heard of such a dopey idea. Yet that is what we have put in the law, and it will make the delays, the uncertainties, and the blackmail that occur under the Act even worse.

Every person in this Parliament would know that the most important speech that has been given in the term of this Parliament was the brave speech made by Don Brash at Ōrewa in respect of how we deal with relations between different sorts of New Zealanders. Don Brash said that all New Zealanders should be treated equally in the law. But in this legislation we have a continuation of the situation, and that will make it even worse.

💬 Jill Pettis: Tell us what that means.

The member Jill Pettis, the retiring member for Whanganui, asks me to explain. National says that the Act should be colour-blind. Whether one is a Māori, an Asian, a Pacific Island, or a Pākehā New Zealander, one should be treated absolutely equally under the Act—and that provision will be in a bill that we will introduce to this House as a new Government in a few weeks’ time, because that is what New Zealanders want for their future. This legislation from Labour introduces co-management, whatever that is. It will mean that people will have to write out even bigger cheques in order to be able to deal with those who claim that taniwha live in the neighbourhood, when one wants to build a road or something of that sort.

In no area of policy has National been as explicit as in outlining the 22 changes that it would make to the Resource Management Act. National wants to have high environmental standards. We want to make sure that this country uses its resources wisely, but we want to end the gravy train, the waste, the costs, and the uncertainty that has grown around the Act. This legislation is a big disappointment. It is noteworthy that the single most significant change—as said by the Minister himself—in this legislation has subsequently been rejected. This legislation is a dog. It takes us nowhere. I know that the people of New Zealand are looking forward to having a Government that does know how to fix the Act and ensure that New Zealand has a clean environment and a prosperous economy.

After listening to that last member, one would think that even the present Resource Management Act has stopped any progress on the development of new electricity generation facilities.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: It has.

Well, let me give members a list of some of the things that have recently been approved under the Resource Management Act without undue delay. There was the re-consenting of schemes on the Waitaki River and the Clutha River in my area.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Those are old schemes. They’re not new.

That is quite right. They account for more than a third of New Zealand’s power output, but they are old schemes and they have been re-consented. What about new schemes? I will give the member a list. There was the extension of Manapōuri power station. Improvements to that scheme—actually in the middle of a national park—gained resource consent under the Resource Management Act.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That was under National.

No, I am sorry, I say to Dr Smith, but the Manapouri scheme has just been completed within the last year.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: The resource consent was under National.

Oh, zip up! The Te Āpiti wind farm near Palmerston North was granted resource consent under the Resource Management Act, and extensions to Te Apiti were consented under the Resource Management Act. Gas and coal-fired plants in the central North Island were consented under the Resource Management Act, and the oil-fired backup facility at Whirinaki was consented under the Resource Management Act. So it is not as dire as Dr Smith would have members believe.

It is true that there were very considerable delays in appeals being heard in the Environment Court, and that provided fertile ground for stand-over tactics by unreasonable objectors. I agree that that was a problem. That was a problem when National had conduct of the Resource Management Act. Appeal periods were normally around 2 years. There was a 2-year period in which people had to wait before they could get a decision from the Environment Court on their appeal. So at times people were persuaded that to avoid 2 years’ delay they should come to a compromise with objectors on terms. There were some stand-over tactics.

We have remedied that. The simple remedy was to bring appeal periods down to a more reasonable period. Now the norm is 6 months, rather than 2 years or more. Most of those blackmail tactics have already dropped out of the system. We have gone further in this bill. We have made it clear that no applicant has to consult anyone prior to making his or her application and having that application heard, and that is the way the law should be. So in this bill we have fixed the extent to which there was a grey area as to whether some groups—in particular, Māori groups—had to be consulted prior to an application being made. But members would not believe that, if they were listening to Dr Smith.

In relation to requests for information, one of the complaints we have had from some groups is that requests for information can be made ad nauseam by councils, and sometimes those requests are unreasonable. Of course, some of the accusations that the council’s requests are unreasonable are, themselves, wrong, and reasonable requests from councils for further information as to adverse environmental effects have been wrongly refused by applicants.

How does central government deal with that in a fair way? The solution this bill comes up with is quite good. It states that if an applicant is asked for further information, the applicant can call the bluff of the council and say no, and proceed to a hearing. The council then can either grant the consent, or it can turn it down on the grounds that it needed that further information and the applicant would not provide it. The applicants or objectors can then appeal against the decision to the Environment Court if they are dissatisfied with that decision. But if the Environment Court finds that the information requested by the council, and refused by the applicant, was, in fact, properly requested, then the Environment Court has to turn down the appeal and it goes back to the start. That is quite a nice way of managing the tension so that applicants cannot be unreasonably forced to provide additional information, but councils can turn down applicants who refuse to comply with reasonable requests.

I turn also to a question raised by Dr Smith about trees not being logged in New Zealand at the moment. The main reason trees are not being logged in the volumes that might have been contemplated a decade ago, is that prices are very low, and landowners, or tree owners—if they just own the trees on the land—are taking a rational, economic decision to leave their trees in the ground where they continue to grow, while they wait for prices in forestry to recover. Given the cyclical nature of the timber industry those prices are expected to increase again in the future, and at that time the tree owners will log and process their trees.

I refer also to the question of appeals. It is true that in the initial draft of the bill that came to the select committee some pretty radical surgery was proposed to appeal rights—that is, to limit appeals to a rehearing on the evidence that had been given in the council hearing, with some limited exceptions for additional evidence to be given.

At the start of that process I was in favour of that as a suggestion. But I was wrong. What I am pleased about is that it flushed out the somewhat irrational criticism we had heard at times of the Resource Management Act. The vast bulk of submitters to the select committee, be they councils—local or regional authorities—developers, environmental groups, or the Law Society, all said: “Hey look, it’s not that bad. Please don’t gut the Resource Management Act of the protections that citizens and the environment need.” They told us that we need to be a bit careful, given that only one in 10 cases—or even fewer than that—does go to appeal. We would not want to load costs on the process for the nine cases that do not go to appeal, just to save costs on the one in 10 cases that did go to appeal.

They pointed out that had we not changed the provisions to the form in which they now appear in the bill today, the effect would have been to create additional formality in all council hearings. Everyone would have had to cross every “t” and dot every “i” in the first hearing. As a consequence, initial council hearings would have become more formalised and longer. There would have been more expense of expert evidence, and it would have been more costly for the councils, applicants, and objectors. So cost would have been added in all 10 cases, even though cost savings were being saved only by shortening appeal times on the one case that went to appeal.

So what did we do about that? The Government came up, through the ministry, with a very neat solution. It said that it was not good enough that at the moment the Environment Court could completely ignore what happened at council. At the moment, under the present law, the Environment Court can absolutely disregard what happened at the council hearing and conduct its de novo hearing on appeal. We said that that was not good enough, if the council had made a reasonable decision. They are people who are empowered to make decisions for their local people, and they should not be overruled unless there is good reason to overrule them.

So the proposal that the Government, through the ministry officials, recommended to the select committee, and that the select committee adopted, was that the Environment Court must now have regard to the original decision. It must have regard to the council’s decision. The effect is that for the Environment Court to overrule a council decision it will have to give reasons—and so it should. If the Environment Court does not have good reasons to overturn an original council decision, why should it overturn it? I think that is a very good amendment. This legislation will improve the function of the Resource Management Act.

I make one further reference. I am very comfortable with what is happening on the Waitaki River. It is a very fair process where an independent board of inquiry with considerable expertise, chaired by an Environment Court judge independent of political interference, applies Resource Management Act principles to the writing of a plan.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Do you support the draft?

Dr Smith asked whether I support the draft plan they produced. I support large parts of it, but of course, it is only a draft. If it were not just a draft, there would not be a need to have a draft, and neither would there be a need to have submissions. Obviously, a draft is not perfect. That is why a draft is produced and that is why there are submissions, so that one can perfect a plan following an inquiry.

In my opinion, the criticisms of those independent judicial officers on that board have been reprehensible. The critics have been unprincipled, and the people now on the Opposition benches who say that if they were in central government they would know best and they would overrule a decision of an independent board, really showed the National Party for what it is, and what it has always been. It is “think big”, and the Clyde Dam. To hell with principles, just do what is necessary in order to scratch the itch that they need to on the day. This is the response they also give in relation to Māori issues in this bill.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) and the Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3). I begin by going back to the policy that we looked at early last year as we thought about the changes that were needed to the Resource Management Act. We noted then that the Act in 1991 was designed to promote sustainability when managing economic development in relation to our resources. But after 13 years we thought last year that the Act required provisions to improve processes and procedures, to reduce compliance costs, to clarify the expectations that people had of the system, and, most of all, to make certain that there was progress, yet protection for our resources. To some degree, I rise to support the fact that much of that is achieved in the legislation before the House.

But I do not come to the House as one who thinks the Resource Management Act has never ever worked. In Northland right now, as we speak, there is an application by Mighty River Power for a coal-fired station. The application, by the way, has had a response from the community of 3,200 submissions. A panel was appointed, and it went as far afield as Perth in regard to gaining the skills and expertise needed to hear the application. The joint hearing is on behalf of the Whangarei District Council and the Northland Regional Council. The Minister for the Environment has agreed that the staff have the expertise and the ability to handle such a project. As I said, the hearing is now in progress. No doubt, when the decision is made there will be an appeal to the Environment Court.

That is the system that we know; that is the Resource Management Act operating today and working. When I hear the calls I have heard during the course of this debate and elsewhere that the Act is responsible for so much that is not happening, I cringe because it is not the reality. We all know that every major development project in this country, not least the one to develop Transmission Gully or an eastern highway here, requires adequate planning, sequential phasing, and funding, and that the consent process under the Resource Management Act is but one part. The National Party’s stance is to take no responsibility whatsoever. That party was in Government between 1991 and 1999, and it did not undertake any significant, major development in that time, in regard to either land transport or energy, yet it now has the gall to come here and, in speech after speech, express concern about the fact that nothing has been done. That is indicative of what the Rt Hon Winston Peters always says—that National is but a tired old party, somewhat renewed in the past 6 years but not much different.

When I think of the present Government’s response to some of these matters at this very late stage, just before the election, when it is trying to cobble together something of a development phase to please some of its recently acquired supporters—no doubt, party funders—again I cringe to think that so much time has been wasted and so much has yet to be achieved.

So far as New Zealand First is concerned, we saw the original bill as an opportunity to catch up on some of the issues we know are inherent in the Act in regard to processes and making decisions. We were surprised, as we have already expressed, at how many of the submitters who came to us, particularly those from councils and the legal profession, were relatively satisfied with the Act, and were looking for major change in regard to the first bill, which we saw back in December of last year. As I have already mentioned, the Local Government and Environment Committee went ahead and took out much of that bill. The final legislation that we are looking at now, despite the late call on the Supplementary Order Paper, is remarkably better than what we saw at the start. We acknowledge that the issue mentioned by other speakers, in relation to increases in staffing and funding for the Environment Court, has had a very good result in terms of reduced time for appeals. That has all been acknowledged.

But, for New Zealand First’s part, I still find it very interesting that the policy statements and the national standards remain largely undefined. That is a substantial reason why we find it very hard to support this revised and improved legislation. We do not have in it an explanation of what is national interest, nor do we have a clear indication of who should be heard in various matters. As we were told in Hamilton and other places, there does appear to be a belief, in various parts of the legislation, particularly in regard to the supposed vexatious and frivolous submitter, that natural justice ought not to prevail. I have here a comment made by Megarry in 1971: “It may be that there are some who would decry the importance which the courts attach to the observance of the rules of natural justice. ‘When something is obvious,’ they may say, ‘why force everybody to go through the tiresome waste of time involved in framing charges and giving an opportunity to be heard?”—and this is the issue for this bill—“The result is obvious from the start.’ ” For us. we would always hope that there was a part for the battler, the ordinary person in our society, to have an unfettered and unobstructed path in regard to what happens in his or her community. At times, that ability of the ordinary ratepayer, the ordinary citizen, to have that part seems to be almost lost. It is one feature that we found interesting. I agree with the co-leader of the Green Party that the rights that that person has still are not clearly defined.

The other issue, which I wish to conclude on, is that we have heard much debate in this Chamber about the issues pertaining to Māori. I reaffirm on behalf of New Zealand First that in the future we would look at removing from the Resource Management Act reference to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, but in no way would that denigrate sections 6 and 7, in Part II. We would expand them, after a fuller discussion of what sustainable development would be. I go back to the fact that we acknowledge absolutely—which other parties do not appear to do—that Māori in this country authorised, by the Treaty of Waitangi, wholesale European settlement, and that the treaty promised them that they and their possessions would be treated fairly, and that Māori language, arts, tribal histories, and so on, which have remained different from the European equivalents, would remain. Again, I restate what Dame Anne Salmond said early last year: they exist nowhere else in the world and help define what is special about New Zealand. Any attempt in the Resource Management Act to move away from that position would be one that New Zealand First would not favour.

In this country we have no option except to find common ground. Our task in this Parliament and in the community must be to build a successful country in which people are always able to find a common cause. We should always be mindful in our legislation of our heritage, whether Māori, Pākehā, or other—all of whom have sought to become members of our country. We should share our pride in our shared heritage with Māori and others. That should be the mark of any rethinking or redevelopment in regard to Part II. Having said that, I say that we look forward to the opportunity in the future to redevelop and look at Part II. We believe that the concept of sustainable development, with all the values and ethical issues it has, and most of all its emphasis upon the property rights of the occupier and the owner, has been lost in the past in regard to this legislation, and needs to be asserted. We look forward to seeing whether this legislation really works.

On behalf of New Zealand First, I am sorry to say that we do not support the legislation going any further but will watch with interest the way that it operates.

I rise for the ACT party on the third reading of this legislation and confirm that our vote will be a regretted vote. We will vote against the legislation regretfully because some parts of it are long overdue. But we also will vote against it regretfully because of such a wasted opportunity. We will vote against it because it is a patch, and perhaps it is the kind of patch that makes a very poor vehicle last slightly longer. It is a patch that only just touches on many of the things that are wrong. One of them, which the Hon Jim Peters—

💬 Jim Peters: Thank you.

The member can share his brother’s honours! One of them, which Mr Jim Peters has just talked about, is the fudge that is left, after this legislation, of the position of Māori under the Resource Management Act. The Rt Hon Winston Peters has made a feature of going around the country declaring his discovery that so-called principles of the treaty do not mean anything—that no one can tell him what they mean. At his recent conference he made a real feature of declaring in ringing terms that he would dump them—he would get rid of them. But he has not told us what theory he does work on. We got a glimmering of it just now from Mr Jim Peters, that it is a theory based on the fact that Māori were here first and that the treaty was a deal that enabled Pākehā to settle peacefully in Māori territory.

But that does not deal with the problem of race privilege under the Resource Management Act. What this legislation does is state that the worst feature of it, namely the consultation processes that have made a misery for so many people, including Māori who are loathed because of it, will be limited to the planning stage, instead of being on every application for a resource consent. But both Mr Winston Peters and Mr Jim Peters have said that they are not tackling the really big myth, the really big fake, in this whole treaty industry. The big myth is the so-called partnership. The big myth is that the partnership that was invented in the mid-1980s entitles Māori in perpetuity to some kind of trump card that overcomes electoral democracy, some kind of eternal privilege that means they get a power, which is called consultation, but that delay can often veto, in the Resource Management Act.

All we have heard from the New Zealand First Party is that it will look at developing the role of Māori, consistent with the original concept in the treaty. Partnership does not appear anywhere. The role of consultative power does not appear anywhere. It was all invented at the same time as the so-called principles. I tell Mr Peters that if we take out the principles, what is left is no better. It is the fake partnership.

💬 Jim Peters: Justice Cooke stuff.

It is Justice Cooke stuff, exactly. I know that at least Mr Peters is well aware of the problem. But it does not deal with the problems that this legislation leaves in place. For example, who is Māori, for this purpose? Is it tangata whenua, local iwi? Possibly it is, but the Local Government Act does not say that. The Local Government Act requires that local authorities involve Māori in decision making, not tangata whenua, not the people whose rohe it is. So what do we do about that? There is nothing in this legislation.

It does not tell us how long this will go on. Will this privilege still pertain to the third generation that has been living in Sydney? Is it a race privilege, or is it some kind of privilege that comes from still living in the area—the kind of respect that any community would want to give to those who have been there for a very long time, and whom one would ask about a land-use proposal because we might assume that they knew a bit more about the area and had a stronger feeling for it than the more recent arrivals?

That kind of consultation we can understand, but instead, it is cast as a race privilege. It is cast as an inherited aristocratic power—the inherited status of lord of the manor whom the other tenants must approach and obtain consent for the way they use their land.

The real problem with this is that the New Zealand First Party has not identified the essence of the property rights promised by article 2 and the property rights that have been trashed by the Resource Management Act. This legislation does nothing to reinstate full, exclusive, and undisturbed possession—the right to use and enjoyment that was promised in article 2. That has been trashed.

This legislation does everything that Mr Baldock says it will do, which is maintain the communalisation of New Zealanders’ property. Instead of property being a glory to us, instead of property rights protecting every ordinary New Zealander—[Interruption] The rangatiratanga is exactly what it is, I say to Mr Baldock. It is what Gordon Copeland’s bill should do. But why, then, does United Future vote for a Resource Management Act that simply undermines all those rights?

United Future members tell me that their bill to insert property rights back into the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, where they should be, will fix the problems that they are about to vote for in the Resource Management Act. Why not cut out the middle man? Why not face the fact that that bill will vanish with the closing of this Parliament, and there is no right on the part of New Zealand First to insist that it be revived in the new Parliament?

In fact, the bill to protect property rights—which was picked up from Owen Jennings of ACT, and I commended Mr Copeland for that—will be gone when this Parliament is dissolved. [Interruption] They dissolve. They are picked up only if the new Parliament decides to pick them up. United Future is counting on the fact that it will have the same pulling power with the new Government. I think it is being pretty hopeful. I think there might be a Green Party that says: “We don’t think we want that one.” The Green Party trashes property rights. The Green Party will not allow that one.

So we have a United Future vote for this legislation, but it does not believe in important parts of it; and we have a New Zealand First vote against this legislation, because it has concerns that we did not exactly hear. National and ACT are voting against it, for the simple reason that they are looking after the interests of the New Zealanders whose costs have been elevated, whose power costs have gone up, whose water rates are going up, who are stuck in traffic jams, and the young workers who can see the price of a house moving out of their reach, now that land prices in many areas, because of the obligations imposed on developers, have gone out to three or four times their annual pre-tax income.

No wonder so many young New Zealanders are looking at property rights that they cannot cope with! It is not the free market. I say to Mr Baldock that this is the market that is created when a developer takes 4 or 5 years to do a simple subdivision, when everyone’s neighbour is enticed into objecting to try to preserve the status quo, to stop infill housing, to stop anything going over two or three storeys in the centre of a city. Then, at the same time, they are begging for public transport.

We can have effective public transport only when we have high-density housing. But we have created a Resource Management Act that means that anyone can say: “I don’t want high density on my neighbour’s land. I don’t want high density until I decide that I too want to sell out and see it.” We have a completely constipated property market, because of the Resource Management Act. We have constipated traffic in Auckland. They have money and land, but they cannot get permission to put the bulldozers in and build the roads.

The Labour Party is panicking. and promising to throw billions of dollars at Auckland traffic, but here it is, passing legislation that does not fix the Resource Management Act. I would say that in 3 years’ time we will still see people wasting hours of the only life they have, sitting in cars, wishing that they had even the traffic flows of Sydney.

This legislation should be rejected as a disgrace. For 6 years the Minister for the Environment has been telling us that it is perfect legislation. Then, today, we had dumped on us 35 pages of fine print, which are now embodied in the legislation we are being asked to vote on. I would guarantee that there is not a member in this House at the moment who could say exactly what that fine print does. There would not be a person in the Chamber who could read 35 pages of fine print, dumped on us without any kind of red-lining assistance, and know what it does for the Resource Management Act. Yet this House is about to vote on it, at the last minute.

It is being rushed through, under urgency, because they are too ashamed of the nonsense that has been spun by the Minister for the Environment, and the nonsense that has been spun by Cabinet in charge of this legislation. Now they are trying to undo some of the damage at the very last minute, with rushed legislation. It would be much easier if we were able to vote for the bits we thought were sensible. I have said there are one or two.

💬 Phil Heatley: There are now, because you changed them at the select committee.

There are one or two, exactly! A few changes in the select committee brought some common sense into this legislation, and there has been some redrafting at the last minute, which I trust has further improved it. But when $10 million of power goes whooshing down the Whanganui River because not to send it down might offend the Māori of the water, because going through turbines somehow offends the spirit of the water, when we have oil and coal being burnt because New Zealanders cannot put in small-scale hydro because it is simply too expensive to go through the Resource Management Act process, and then we get trifling legislation like this, that says that it is time for this Government to go.

Debate interrupted.