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

The Resource Management Act has for 14 years had the purpose of ensuring that people can provide for their social and economic needs without damaging the life-supporting qualities of ecosystems, while ensuring that resources are still there for future generations and avoiding—or at least minimising—adverse effects on the environment. For 14 years it has done a rather imperfect job, but nevertheless has done the job, of protecting our future, protecting our environment, and protecting the rights of the public to participate. Some projects get stopped, as they should. An Act that ticked off everything would not be doing its job.

Today we have seen three approaches to the future of that Act. It is perhaps fitting that today Parliament ends a session and goes into an election campaign, because this issue will be an issue in the campaign. We have seen Labour scared to leave power with communities. It started off supporting the environment and people, but it has given into pressure and has been panicked by National’s relentless demands for more “think big” projects, more big roads, more big power stations, and more power lines. The Labour Government has amended the Act to give itself the power to override communities and to impose big infrastructure projects on them.

But as we go into this election, we need to look at what National would do instead. It wants to wipe away all impediments to anyone’s development projects. In particular, it does not want the Environment Court to have the benefit of all the relevant information on a project; it wants only the information that comes from the developer. Nick Smith has been claiming all day that the amendment in this bill that allows called-in projects to be referred directly to the Environment Court is the same as direct referral, as proposed in the Upton bill in 1999. That is absolutely not true. The difference is that in this bill the power of the Minister to directly refer a project is subject to criteria in new section 140, and it is judicially reviewable against those criteria. By contrast, what the National Party wants is an automatic right for any developer that wants to bypass the local community and local council just to go straight to the Environment Court in order to save itself time and money.

National wants to cut out any reference to the treaty or Māori cultural values in the Resource Management Act. It wants a monocultural society where Māori are expected to be brown Pākehā. It wants a law that does not recognise that the values of the indigenous people of this country have special status here because they exist nowhere else.

National wants to reintroduce standing, like we used to have under the Town and Country Planning Act, where only those directly affected are able to have a say. Standing has a history that we should be very worried about. “Directly affected” is interpreted by the courts to mean that one’s property is affected. People whose personal health may be affected have often been held by the courts to have no standing to make a case. Nick Smith is saying that he, as a South Islander, should have no right to be heard on the question of how polluted Lake Taupō should get, because he does not live there. It is a national icon, but he does not want to have any say about it. He is saying that I, as a resident of the Coromandel, should have no right to comment on the ecological importance of our South Island braided rivers, which are unusual in a global sense.

National wants to scrap the environmental legal aid scheme. It costs less than $1 million a year, so it is obviously not the costs that he is concerned about. What he is concerned about is that when local community groups form incorporated societies and want to bring the information they have to the table at the Environment Court, he does not want that information heard. He wants to shut them out. He knows that the David and Goliath battle between the local environmental protection group and a multinational is such an unequal contest that if the group does not have that $25,000 to $30,000 of legal aid, it is unlikely to be able to make a good case. He is also ignoring the fact that without that money and without the legal advice it can give the group, it is likely to waste more of the court’s time by raising issues that are not relevant under the Act. So in fact he shoots himself in the foot. And he wants to put back the provision that was in the Act for a few short years, until the previous committee removed it, whereby a developer can stop a community group from bringing any evidence, and taking part in a case at all, by saying that if it puts in an objection, the developer will seek security for costs against it, right upfront. The developer will go to the court and demand that the group put up $30,000 to prove that if it loses, it can pay. At that point, most community groups drop out of the process because they cannot participate.

So the National Party’s programme is a clear and unambiguous recipe for cutting out public participation and for degrading the environment. The Green Party initiated that environmental legal aid project, and we persuaded Marian Hobbs in the year 2000 that it was a good idea to resource the community to participate well. It has meant that David, when he faces Goliath, is not totally barefoot.

The Green Party says that property rights, which we have heard a lot about today, stop at one’s boundary. The idea that people can do what they like on their own land does not give them the right to affect the rights of others by imposing noise, spray drift, flooding, sedimentation, nitrate runoff, or faecal coliforms into other people’s space, on to other people’s land, or into the common property of rivers, the coast, our air, and our water bodies. Property rights have never meant the right to damage and downgrade the property of others or the public property that we all hold in common. If property rights are circumscribed in that way, so that people cannot have any impacts outside the boundaries of their own land, people will find that property rights are actually a great deal less than what some members of this House have been arguing for for some time. The Green Party is now the only party that stands up completely for the right to participation under the Act, for the right for all the information to be brought and heard in court, and for the natural environment.

I finish by reading a short piece from an editorial in the Otago Daily Times, which the Associate Minister for the Environment has been quoting from considerably during the debate. I want to read a bit that he has not been reading: “Despite the tourist advertising about some fantasy New Zealand where everything is 100 percent pure, the realists who actually live here know this is far from the truth. The destruction of much pristine land with ribbon housing development, the conversion of top-class agricultural and horticultural soils to accommodate vanity farming, the gross pollution of many, if not most, of our rivers, and the wholesale assault on ancient and limited aquifers for immediate commercial gain—there is hardly a limit to the examples of our longstanding reckless environmental stewardship.” That is why we need to protect the Resource Management Act.

I rise to speak in the third reading debate of the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) and the Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3).

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

As I begin this third reading speech, I want to pay tribute to a few people who I have had the pleasure of working with throughout the last 3 years on the Local Government and Environment Committee. First of all, I thank the chair, Jeanette Fitzsimons. Although I have disagreed with her on many occasions, I have found her to be very hard-working and a servant to the committee. I appreciate all she has done for us during that 3 years. I have appreciated all the members of the committee, and I have learnt a great deal from them. They have had many years of experience, from which I have been able to draw. I have also enjoyed working with Ministers Marian Hobbs and David Benson-Pope in order to bring this bill to completion. United Future is particularly pleased to see this bill passed before the House rises for the election.

I want to review United Future’s position over the last 3 years. United Future made it very clear early on—in fact, in a speech I made in the first reading debate of the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2)—that we were very keen to see Resource Management Act reform become a major part of our work with the Government during this term. Reflecting back over 3 years, I see that a number of things have been accomplished and have also changed. I remember 3 years ago when Winston Peters stood up a few months after the election and said that United Future would not be around for more than 3 months. Here we are 3 years later—we are still here, and we have had stable Government.

It is interesting. People say that imitation is the highest form of praise, and now the leader of New Zealand First is talking about supply and confidence agreements. He has sat here for 3 years and watched how we have operated, and he has learnt that he made the biggest mistake of his life in 1996 in the way he approached his relationship with the then National Government. Imitation is the highest form of praise, and we have seen other parties in this House begin to adopt our policies. Even with regard to the Resource Management Act, National has come out with policies that include three things that are already in the bill we are passing today. The National Party has virtually adopted our outdoor recreation and conservation policy, and I guess that is high praise. We fully expect National to announce that it will adopt income splitting in its tax policy, which is soon to be announced, because it is such a good policy. It will not surprise us if National adopts it. New Zealand First has copied us also, and not just in terms of our supply and confidence agreement. It has stolen our marine reserves policy almost word for word. ACT is about the only party that has not stolen any of our policies. That is because the ACT party does not have any policy; it just attacks everybody else’s and hopes that that will see it through.

The passage of this legislation today is a statement about a number of things. It is, firstly, a very good example of how MMP can work. Despite the fact that only United Future is supporting the Government to pass this bill, it is a fact that all parties—or nearly all parties; we did not see Ken Shirley very often during this process—have made positive contributions toward making this legislation what it is today. I think that is a tribute to the way that parties, despite the debating that goes on in this Chamber, do work together at the select committee table. Secondly, the passage of this legislation is a testament to what can be achieved by a small party that works constructively within the rules of a supply and confidence agreement. Our supply and confidence agreement with the Government had only four requirements, and no mention of Resource Management Act reform. The last 3 years, however, have seen significant developments in Resource Management Act reform, so much so that we are dealing today with the Resource Management Act Amendment Bill (No 5).

I take members back to the some speeches I made in 2002 and 2003. On 2 October 2002, speaking on the Resource Management (Controlled and Discretionary Activities) Amendment Bill, I said: “… it is the view of United Future that the first priority is to get the main Resource Management Amendment Bill, which has been languishing on the Order Paper for so long, through the House, before attempting to introduce even more legislative amendments.” Despite enormous criticism from the Opposition, United Future did support the Government to get that bill moving and passed, and then we were prepared to move on and work with the Government constructively to deal with other reform to the Resource Management Act. Speaking in the third reading debate on Tuesday, 13 May 2003, I said: “When the 47th Parliament convened last year, United Future made it clear to the Government that we considered the reform process of the Resource Management Act to be a priority. When it asked us for our support to pass this legislation, which had been sitting on the Order Paper, we gave our support.”

We also indicated early on how important it was to us to deal with some specific issues in the legislation, and we wanted to see the passage of the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). We said it represented a first step rather than an end point. We believe, as I said in a speech earlier today, that the Resource Management Act will always need some reform. It will be a work in progress forever. It is a huge piece of legislation, and managing the balance between environmental concerns and business development concerns will require constant monitoring. That is why United Future’s policy is that every 2 years there should be a review of the Act to see how it has worked—not necessarily the vast review that we have been through in the last 12 to 18 months, but a review none the less to see whether any further fine-tuning or improvements can be made to the legislation. That is something United Future will continue to be committed to.

In a speech during the second reading debate, on 6 May 2003, I said: “One of the things we in United Future are very interested in, comes from one of the recommendations referred to earlier”—which were the earlier recommendations in 1999 made by Simon Upton—“—that is, that we may have direct referral to the Environment Court for projects of national significance such as power and road projects.” Members can imagine that United Future is very pleased that the Minister adopted my suggestion that rather than have direct referral, as was originally intended, we have direct referral as one of the tools that Ministers can use when they deal with the call-in powers. We thank the Minister for listening to our advice on that and bringing it into the legislation at the select committee stage. We believe it will enable the Minister to address the specific needs of each project that is of national significance to this country. It is important that the infrastructure in this country can be addressed in a timely fashion, but not, as National is suggesting, by running roughshod over any environmental concerns. We must maintain that balance, and that is something United Future will remain committed to.

I also said, way back then, that when it comes to overriding private property right concerns, in the national interest, for things we want to preserve, it was important that those should be paid for out of the national purse. Although that provision is not in this legislation, I am pleased that Gordon Copeland’s bill—and members can be assured that Gordon Copeland will be back in the next Parliament; I intend to be back, as well—which protects private property rights, will be brought through the select committee process and back to this House for further debate. It is important, if we are asking property owners to preserve something of national interest, that the taxpayers of New Zealand make some compensation payment for that purpose to the property owner. That will lead to the success of another of United Future’s initiatives, which we indicated way back then needed to be brought into the Resource Management Act.

The passing of this bill today is evidence of United Future’s commitment to work, little by little, inch by inch, at nudging the Government along. We are only 8 MPs, but we are enormously proud of what we have accomplished in this 3 years, with 7 of us being newcomers to this process. We believe we have a significant list of achievements, and we are ready to go out into this campaign to let the people of New Zealand know what we have achieved. We believe that they will respond when they know what we have done—we have been terribly ignored by the press throughout this 3 year process, as most people have noticed. When people know the truth about what United Future members have achieved, such as this resource management legislation, we will be returned to this Parliament with additional colleagues, so that we can continue to serve the people of New Zealand.

I am very happy to rise to support the third reading of this legislation. I am glad to see the improvements to the Resource Management Act that are expressed in this legislation. I owe a great many thanks to the members of United Future because they understand the notions of compromise and working an issue through but they also understand that complex legislation like this requires constant improvement—as does my other favourite, the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act.

I want to put this legislation into context—the context of planning. People sometimes think that the Resource Management Act is all about the environment, but it ain’t. It is about our living and working together. Those members who can look far back to their first marriages and think about the arguments about how they operated in the bathroom, the bedroom, the living room, or wherever, and how they and their partners organised their lives together—[Interruption] I thank Mr Cullen. I am referring to people squeezing the toothpaste from the middle, or whatever.

Those members will know that there are always difficulties. That is what the Resource Management Act is about. Environmental planning is far more than legislation. It is about councils that make decisions. It is about paying for training of their councillors. It is about demanding that they are able to make good decisions out there. It is about supporting the quality planning website where people can go to avoid reinventing the wheel, because it gives them access to the arguments of other good planners in other councils up and down the country.

It is about strengthening the Environment Court. When I assumed this ministry 6 years ago, people were waiting 2 or 3 years to get their cases heard. The average was 18 months. Now the waiting time is down so far that one can get a case heard in that court in 6 months. We had a backlog there of, I think, over 3,000 cases. The backlog is down to about 1,200 and falling.

How did that come about? It came about through appointing more judges. It came about through setting up the system of mediation, so that 80 percent of the cases are now mediated successfully and do not go to court, with all the money that that involves. And it came about through simple processes of recording and planning for the Environment Court and the registry.

Then we have questions around enforcement and monitoring. As the Minister for the Environment, I do have concerns about this. That is why I have some strange problems with National going on and on about that speedway. The speedway may well be a good thing, but the problem is that a rule was made and ignored. It is the same story with some of the problems we have had in Environment Waikato, where consents have been set and ignored and we have had some very strange habits as regards discharge of contaminated water. So we have some real issues around enforcement and monitoring.

It is also about the review of effects of plans and consents. It is all very well when people sit down and write up a plan or give a consent because they think that X is going to happen. Do they ever check whether X has happened? That is the role of the Ministry for the Environment. A whole division has now been set up in that department to be involved in looking at enforcement and monitoring as we work through it.

Then there are things like the national environmental standards that were set up by this Act so many years ago—15 years ago—and totally ignored for 9 years. In fact, I was told when I first became Minister to ignore the whole idea of a national environmental standard, because it would cost $4 million to introduce one. Now, at this very moment, the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand headquarters staff are saying: “Whoa, we’re being left out.” They do not understand that so far in the setting of further environment standards, we are just at the stage of scoping to see which standards may actually be of use, before we impose something written out of someone’s head and not tested out there in the industry. A standard will be set, as will a time line, just as was done when we set the air quality standards—on which, I note, the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society made no submission. [Interruption] It did not tweet. For us to be involved in something that will have significant effects on the environment—effects such as clean air—is terribly important.

The last thing I want to say to do with that—as the Minister looks round at me—is that setting standards alone is not enough; it has to be supported with some finance. So if we set a standard for clean air, we have to do something about supplying warm homes. We do not just tell people to turn off their fires or their wood-burners without finding something to replace them, and working with those people, particularly the most vulnerable. I have just been in Tokoroa and in Christchurch, where some excellent work is being done on that matter.

New Zealanders say that a clean and healthy environment is an aspect of living in New Zealand that they value highly. But we do not get such a healthy environment merely by wishing for it. We believe, with many other nations, that economic development, environmental health, and social justice must be balanced. The Resource Management Act is a matter of balance. So are district plans. They are matters of balance. That demands good process. It demands the type of compromise between the competing demands that often exist between United Future, the Greens, and ourselves. But that planning and consent can be informed only by efficient, inclusive procedures. That is what this legislation achieves, and it is why I strongly support it.