I move, That the Resource Management (Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Repeal and Interim Fast-track Consenting) Bill be now read a second time.

Not a lot has changed from when I moved the first reading of this bill, some 50 minutes ago. Apparently we’re going to get a tikanga lesson from the Hon Peeni Henare. That’ll be very interesting, I’m looking forward to that, as he apparently stands up for his people. Actually, Mr Henare will find—if he hasn’t already discovered this—the law is for all, not just his people or our people, or Labour Party people, or National Party people, or Māori people, or Pasifika people. The law is for all. That’s actually the way Parliament works. He’s about to get the—

Hon Peeni Henare: Treaty clauses.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, the Treaty—oh, yeah, yeah. I’m happy to have a conversation about the Treaty clause, because there’s a Treaty clause in this, there’s a Treaty clause in the Resource Management Act (RMA), and there’s a Treaty clause in the Natural and Built Environment Act (NBA).

We’re getting rid of the NBA and we’re going back to the RMA 1991. Tell you what we are getting rid of: the amorphous and unclear legal term in relation to te Oranga o te Taiao, which would have caused chaos through the judicial system and the council planning system as everyone navigating the new regime worked out what—

Hon Peeni Henare: The High Court found a way through.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: What’s that?

Hon Peeni Henare: The High Court found a way through.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Oh, OK. Right. Well, firstly—I mean, that is not true. Secondly—

Hon Peeni Henare: On tikanga, it’s true.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s a wee way away from the debate, the issue of tikanga. But the point I’m making is the correct one, which is that when you introduce an unclear and new legal term into something as difficult and as complicated as planning, you need to know what you are doing, and the last Government did not know what they were doing with this. That is why many legal experts who have looked at this issue have made that precise point, which is that the RMA is guilty of many things and there are many issues with it, but, to some extent, people know where they stand. So they know what the Treaty clause in the current RMA means, they know how it is interpreted through the courts, and they know how it is interpreted through the various council planning documents that fall within the hierarchy of the RMA. There is well-settled case law and jurisprudence on what the Treaty clause in that legislation means.

The NBA strengthened the Treaty clause in a way that would have had unclear outcomes and, most importantly, it introduced a new legal term which would have ended up going all the way through to the Supreme Court before anyone knew what it would mean and what it would have meant in practice. In the meantime, people who actually want to do stuff in this country and also protect the environment would have been left unclear as to what the legal ramifications of that Act were.

So Parliament, through the repeal legislation that we are now undertaking, is going back to the status quo ante so that we can have a proper and thorough look at it. I questioned the Minister for the Environment during the passage of the NBA bill in the last Parliament, and the answers were, as I’m sure Mr Court would agree with me, wholly inadequate as to what the implication was of putting in place the phrase “te Oranga o te Taiao” and asking all decision makers pursuant to the NBA to uphold it.

The other thing that we are unpicking and doing away with is the subordination of everything to the protection of the natural environment. Our view, on the Government benches, is that the balance in the NBA was wrong. We canvassed, at length, during the first reading and second reading of the NBA in the last Parliament, exactly the problems with that. Look, reasonable people would disagree on that balance. But we took to the election a proposal to repeal these Acts by Christmas, and we are doing so.

It was interesting to listen to Megan Woods’ speech, the former Minister of Energy and Resources, because one of the notable things about the NBA was that the renewable energy sector was vociferous in their opposition to the NBA. Now, everyone in this Parliament, I think, acknowledges that we need more renewable energy. It’s going to be one of the key ways we meet our climate goals, our net zero commitments, and also, frankly, grow the economy while decarbonising it at the same time. That is the future.

Scott Willis: So why kill the Clean Car Discount?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: What’s that?

Scott Willis: Why kill the Clean Car Discount? That’s demand.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, because—we’ve been through this so many times. The Clean Car Discount is a reverse Robin Hood scheme. It makes people who find it hard to transition away from fossil fuel - burning cars—tradies and farmers—pay more and it recycles that money to people who can afford to buy Teslas. In the last two years that it has been operating, $100 million has been paid to Tesla owners—paid for by tradies and farmers. That is stupid. I’m sorry; that is a dumb idea. And it does not lower emissions—that’s the other thing. The Greens have got to get it through their heads how the emissions trading scheme works. There is a cap on emissions—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Yeah, Mr Bishop, the trouble with having an “in and out” across the House is you can sort of tend to get away from the bill. Can we come back.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: OK. Yeah, no, fair enough. Well, I was just responding to an interjection. But, you know, we’ll come back to that in due course.

I was making a point about renewable energy and the vociferous opposition from the energy sector. The Wind Energy Association turned up to the select committee and they were pretty critical of the bill. I said, very directly, “Will it be easier or harder to build a wind farm if this bill passes?” And they said it would be harder. Well, that fails the test, surely, of protecting the environment and growing the economy and also growing renewable electricity.

Contact Energy turned up—and, you know, members will have their views about private electricity and all the rest of it, but the reality is that they’re a major player in the electricity sector. They own a significant number of generating assets around the country—by the way, without any taxpayer dollars going into it; it’s a privately owned company, 100 percent privately owned. So the capital that’s invested into the electricity market, the taxpayer gets for free, in that sense. Anyway, I said to them, “Well, what do you think about the bill?” And the Contact Energy submitter said, “This bill”—which is now the Act we’re repealing—“is the single biggest barrier to decarbonisation of the New Zealand economy.” The single biggest barrier, because the reality is that our planning laws have a significant impact on how easy it is to get renewable energy up and running.

To take a simple example, the West Wind wind farm at Mākara—great wind farm; some of the best wind in the world in Wellington, as all Wellingtonians know, about a 43 to 44 percent capacity factor. It took two years to build it, eight years to consent it.

The Wairākei Power Station, which has been generating clean—well, relatively clean—renewable baseload energy—goes like the clappers, geothermal energy, baseload power, straight into the grid—been going since the 1950s. It took them nine years—not to consent the operation of it in the 1950s but to reconsent it so the thing could keep operating.

So we need to make it easier to build wind farms. We need to make it easier to build more hydro. We need to make it easier to build solar, which is becoming increasingly economic. We need to make it easier to build more geothermal, and that means smashing through the regulatory red tape that holds our energy system back from decarbonising. There are billions and billions of dollars of capital waiting to be deployed into New Zealand because of our enormous renewable energy endowment that New Zealand is blessed with. What we need to do is allow that capital to flow. The capital will not flow when people are faced with shorter consent times, like this Act provides; legal uncertainty about how they will get a consent; amorphous legal phrases that they will have to navigate and appeal through the courts and send up to the Supreme Court over nine long successive—

Scott Willis: How will you stop them sitting on consents?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: What was that?

Scott Willis: How will you stop them sitting on consents and not building?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: The member again does not understand markets—the member just does not understand. Firstly, he doesn’t understand the emissions trading scheme; secondly, he doesn’t understand the electricity market, right? So, over time, the price of electricity is going to rise and more and more investors will invest in order to make a return from the electricity market. That is the way the market works. The emissions trading scheme sets a price on carbon; that price will rise over time. Renewable energy is already economic and will become more and more economic.

Over time, if we get the system properly set up and well regulated and we let price signals work, we will exit Huntly from coal—and the last Government imported three times more coal than the Government before it, because they stuffed the market. And if we get rid of the regulatory barriers like Lake Onslow, which the last Government was obsessed with, which hung over the electricity sector for four years and people were not prepared to invest—getting rid of all of that will decarbonise the economy and grow the economy at the same time.

But the key point is this: you’ve got to get the planning regime right. This Act that we are repealing was a step backwards for that and that’s why we’re repealing it.

Sorry, Mr Speaker, I did make a call, I promise, but the House was rather rowdy. That was an interesting speech from the Minister there about his frustrations with the consenting of renewable energy. I agree. Renewable energy is very important for New Zealand, and we should be able to consent it in the appropriate places in a much faster way, in a much better way than what happens under the Resource Management Act (RMA). But what this bill does is it repeals this new legislation that would be helpful, and goes back to the RMA. The examples that the Minister gave were decisions made under the Resource Management Act (RMA), which is what we are going back to with the repeal of this legislation.

I also then heard from the Minister something I’ve heard many times before, and that is that he did sit in on some select committees and hear some submissions where people made negative comments about the bill. With all the kindness of my heart, I’m pretty sure that the select committee report does not have the Hon Chris Bishop’s name on it, because he was a part of that committee for a short time and he did attend select committee meetings, and that’s all on camera—we can all see that—and of course he’s always a very engaged member as well. But he was not there when the select committee was going through the analysis of the submissions and making the amendments to the bills. Because, of course, nobody on that select committee wanted to frustrate renewable energy that might be more easily passed under the RMA than this new legislation. That is not what the committee was interested in at all.

Of course, there were many amendments to the bills and, as I said in my first reading speech, part of the structure of this whole legislative change was that decisions are made up the chain rather than at the consenting stage. So the point of this legislation is to do better. And I totally refute the statement made by one of the newer members to the Parliament, the Hon Andrew Hoggard, I think it was, who said there’s going to be more jobs for lawyers with this new legislation. The point of moving things up the chain is that you don’t have all the lawyers and planners involved at the consenting stage. So I very much disagree with that point as well.

We heard also the Minister saying there that there were many new terms—and this is something that I agree was canvassed in the last Parliament; I do not disagree with that. And he said there’s words or phrases like te Oranga o te Taiao and nobody knows what it means and it will result in a whole lot of court action. But, of course, that was a point that was raised in submissions as well, and it was very purposeful to include the purpose of the Act being to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao.

Given the debates that happened in that select committee, the select committee then decided to define what that meant. So section 3 of the Natural and Built Environment Act talks about the purpose of the Act and te Oranga o te Taiao means all of the following: “(a) the health of the natural environment; and (b) the relationship between the health of the natural environment and its capacity to sustain life; and (c) the relationship between the health of the natural environment and the health and well-being of people and communities; and (d) the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment—”

Simon Court: How is somebody supposed to make a decision with all of that?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —“and (e) the relationship between iwi and hapū and te Taiao that is based on whakapapa.” Now, then there is at section 3A the means for achieving the purpose of the Act, because I hear Mr Court call out and say, “Well, how do we know how to use it?” That was why section 3A was included.

Now, these are new terms, and I don’t disagree with the fact that they are new terms—[Interruption] And I hear the noise in the Chamber at the moment—some in support of the new terms and some against the new terms. But the point is that if this is your fundamental problem with the huge amount of work that went into both the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act, then those things can be reviewed. And it would be possible to go back—if that was the thing that you hated the most about this legislation—to the purpose of the RMA, which is sustainable management, without undoing all the work that went into trying to change the system so that those bigger decisions are made further up the chain so that we can have a more efficient resource management system, and one with clear environmental bottom lines.

We’ve also heard that there’s going to be changes to the national policy statement on fresh water, and I have not yet seen where this is in the bill—of course, we’ve only just got the bill today—so we will be asking questions about that. But I’ve heard the other side laugh about swimmable water as if it’s a meme or something. This is a critical change between national policy statements made under previous National Governments and what Labour campaigned on in 2017, which is that we need our water to be swimmable. This is what people in New Zealand very much care about.

I also heard from the Hon Mark Patterson that we’re going to get stuff built and something about digging our way out of an economic malaise. This troubles me greatly. I’m not sure how going back to the RMA is going to do this. I presume that he means that because the fast-tracking provisions, or some of them, are not being repealed from the Natural and Built Environment Act, we’re just going to see diggers out all over the country, and that seems to have no regard to our environment and our biodiversity crisis that we have in this country. I don’t know how it relates to climate change either.

I’ve also heard that there was some speculation or some assertions that the farming communities were totally opposed to this new legislation and want to go back to the RMA and just want to do things their way, but when I go and talk to farmers, they are often worried about what the bigger commercial farmer across the road might be doing and they accept that there is a need for regulations. Of course, all regulations need to be sensible regulations and this also applies to our exports as well. Our trading partners are very interested in the fact that we have good environmental legislation and we need to continue with it.

We’ve also heard in the Speech from the Throne that “The Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Acts will be repealed and replaced with genuine reform that will make it easier to build.” Again, I’m not sure what this means and how that will be processed. Clearly, it doesn’t mean just going back to the RMA, but the way that the members across the House are talking, it does very much sound to me that they think that everything now can avoid the RMA because we know that the RMA takes a long time and is inefficient and doesn’t do as well for the environment as it could do, but it does do a lot better than having no regulations and no environmental standards. But it makes me worry that the Government, the coalition, thinks that we can just fast track everything, anything we want, and that it will make it the decision of the Ministers to fast track whatever it is that we want to dig our way out of this economic malaise that we heard about, and that is—

Simon Court: We’re just keeping the bits of the NBA that you wrote—the fast-track bits. Didn’t you write that?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: That is worrying. And I’m hearing now from Mr Court “Well, didn’t you write the fast track?” I’m not yet sure what provisions of the fast track are going to apply and how they’re going to apply. And I’m also not sure what’s going to happen to the RMA. We are going back to the RMA at the moment, yet we’re also hearing that the national policy statement for fresh water is going to be totally gutted. That is what we heard at question time today. There was no clear answer to my questions: if the pretty sensible objective of the national policy statement for fresh water would continue. These are statements referring to Te Mana o te Wai that go back well into National Party Governments, including the 2014 national policy statement and the 2017 changes when National was in Government as well.

This is quite a change and it’s not what people were voting for when they thought that cost of living was the big issue of the day and to change the Government at that stage. New Zealanders are very proud of their environment and this is a terrible piece of legislation.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise to speak on the second reading of this repeal bill and I want to start just by saying, as someone who studied urban planning and is a qualified planner, that the Green Party has long been the voice for having a better approach to planning—one that gets better outcomes for our natural environment, for our people, for our towns and cities, and that is entirely possible. However, it is not what is being achieved by this repeal bill.

The current Government has a pretty incoherent position when it comes to solid planning to achieve the outcomes that we need. The reality is that many of the outcomes that were frustrating people are not linked to the fundamental planning legislation itself but to the planning rules that sit underneath it. That was a problem that I long brought up about the Resource Management Act (RMA). In fact the Minister who gave the first speech in this debate—before either of us were members of Parliament, we talked at length about some of the harmful impacts of planning rules that had been adopted from North America that didn’t have evidence behind them, that were causing large compliance costs but also creating environments where it was harder for people to walk, cycle, take public transport; higher land costs because it forced car-dependent urban areas through planning rules that required large off-street car parks rather than managing parking appropriately. This unintentionally subsidised single-occupant vehicle trips but also spread our cities out in a way that makes them—well, it’s worse for the environment, it’s worse for the climate, it’s worse for health, it’s worse for our communities.

So there’s huge opportunities to do things better in a way that reduces costs but also, most importantly, recognises that the most important fundamental aspect of everything we do is the natural environment. That is the fundamental basis of life on this planet. It is clean air, it is clean water, it is healthy soil, and if we don’t have those things—if we don’t have forests, if we don’t have native, indigenous biodiversity then we are going to be in trouble as a species, and we are in trouble right now, as a species. So, fundamentally, we need to recognise that we can’t live on money. Money is just a symbol of value and, you know, it is a useful symbol of value in some cases but fundamentally it’s not the basis of life, and we have to have environmental and planning law that protects the fundamental basis of life or we will have nothing; we will have nothing in the future.

So when it comes to this repeal bill I just want to very quickly lay out some opportunities for better policies that would achieve the outcomes we want in our towns and cities, and with renewable energy and the climate. The Greens campaigned on some of these policies, like our climate resilient cities policy which would have laid out the funding tools and rules that would be necessary to ensure that we had nature-based solutions for water management; that we had better public transport and active transport to connect our towns and cities; that we enabled more housing in our cities, where it makes sense, along with more green spaces. Those things are fundamental; they’re easy to achieve with most cities. There’s heaps of cities around the world doing a good job of that. New Zealand is still not doing that and, fundamentally, the Greens are the only ones, I think, who have the practical solutions for that.

The clean power payment also would have addressed issues in our electricity market in a way that would have directly affected people’s cost of living; it would have reduced their power bills while massively increasing distributed solar energy and energy efficiency in our buildings. That’s something that Government could do that has nothing to do with resource management law.

This current National - ACT - New Zealand First Government is fundamentally incoherent and confused on these issues. They say that they care about renewable electricity, but they aren’t willing to take on the vested interests in the market and the four large players to address those issues. All they will do is say, “Remove red tape, remove red tape, remove red tape.” What is that a code for? It’s not for smarter regulation, which we would like it to be; we would love that. The Greens have been campaigning for better rules around renewable energy since National was last in Government and they did nothing to develop a national policy statement last time they were in Government that would have made it easier for more generation. Why not? Because fundamentally there’s a lot of vested interests that profit from high marginal cost of electricity that come from the coal-fired power station that that last National Government, last time they were in, did absolutely nothing about. So it’s totally empty rhetoric from the Minister and from National, ACT, and New Zealand First when they say they care about renewable electricity. It is rubbish, they don’t understand what the barriers are, and they’re not going to actually address them.

That’s the same when it comes to the farming sector and water standards. We have communities right across New Zealand being affected by high nitrate levels in the water, serious health concerns, and they will not do anything about it because—remember what happened last time they were in Government? They disestablished Environment Canterbury—elected people—because they wanted to make it easier for a few vested interests to continue getting permission to take water at a rate that is totally unsustainable; water they don’t even pay for. You’ve got private interests taking water, diminishing our aquifers, polluting the water to the point that there’s higher levels of colon cancer and bowel cancer.

Simon Court: Absolute rubbish; misinformation.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Simon Court says this is misinformation. So that tells you everything you need to know about this Government, which is they will not listen to evidence, they will not prioritise the health of our communities. They will prioritise the bottom lines of companies, corporates, at the expense of the environment and the health of our people because that’s fundamentally the people who put them in power.

So what we had with the RMA, and I’ve long been a critic of the RMA, is a permitting regime not a planning regime. The effects-based regime—and again this was something that initially was started under the neo-liberal fourth Labour Government and brought into law under the National Government that came afterwards. Ultimately it says, “If you have enough money and power, you can do whatever you want.” Because you can hire the lawyers and the experts and in the meantime councils are snowed under with high costs and high requirements around plan making but they aren’t really given the tools to do proactive planning about what should go where and respecting environmental bottom lines. Look at the jurisdictions in the world which have, by the way, thriving economies, high levels of employment, high levels of manufacturing—particularly I’m thinking of Germany—and really well-connected urban transport networks.

You know, in some parts of the Germany they’ve managed to achieve relatively high levels of renewable electricity; high standards for energy efficiency and building, and planning which enables homes and neighbourhoods to be completely planned around public transport and cycleways. We get, in those cities, lower transport costs, lower land costs, healthier environments, healthier people, healthier communities that can’t be delivered under our current planning regime because local councils do not have the ability to do that proactive planning to the same extent. Rather, it’s private landowners. The interests that these people in Government are representing are able to do private plan changes to maximise the profit and return on greenfield development to be subsidised by central Government with motorways here and there that they don’t have to pay for, that directly results in their land increasing in value but ultimately puts more traffic on our road networks, creates towns and cities that are expensive and expensive to live in.

So, ultimately, while our position is nuanced, because we didn’t think everything was perfect in the Natural and Built Environment, and Spatial Planning Acts—there were improvements and there was opportunity to do things much better. This repeal bill is basically throwing away six years of work, a quarter of a billion dollars, on something that might have gotten better outcomes, which should have gotten, definitely would have gotten better outcomes for the things that matter most: people and our planet. Ultimately, this National - New Zealand First—

Hon Member: And ACT.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —whoever they are—ACT Government are simply here to represent vested interests, to make it easier for people to profit—small groups of people to profit—while destroying our environment. They don’t even believe in public health, is what I’ve heard from Simon Court. They don’t even believe the evidence around the relationship between nitrates in the water and bowel cancer. This is the Government that we have to live with for now, but the Greens will continue to campaign, because we know that the values of New Zealanders align with the values of the Green Party and we’re the ones who truly understand the challenges and have the solutions.

Well, what we’ve heard there is the Greenpeace 1991 talking points, but that’s not relevant to what we’re here to do today. New Zealand needs resource management law that actually allows us to build infrastructure and housing and allows New Zealand businesses to invest with confidence in assets that produce things.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Come on—come on, Simon, medium-density residential standards.

SIMON COURT: That’s right, the Hon Rachel Brooking, we’re here today to repeal the terrible legislation that you and your Government spent five years cooking up; today it goes in the bin. What New Zealanders need is to be able to see the clear trade-offs between land use and environmental protection.

The Acts we’re repealing today do not provide that clarity. That’s why they don’t help New Zealand get ahead. We need to allow New Zealanders to enjoy and use their property with a minimum of red tape and a minimum number of people who have the right to object to how you use it, including minimising the risk that activists might turn up to try to get some kind of stake in the ground on your consent application that has implications for all New Zealanders.

We need bills. We need replacement legislation that makes it easier to build and grow. The Natural and Built Environment and the Spatial Planning Acts were not going to do that. That’s why they’re going to be repealed today. The former Labour Minister Rachel Brooking mentioned te Oranga o te Taiao. Did anyone in the House hear that member try to explain what te Oranga o te Taiao meant? Well, even a former practising resource management lawyer couldn’t explain it, and that’s exactly what her colleagues told me and others at various resource management law events I’ve attended in the past 12 months. They didn’t understand what it meant. It was going to take 10 years to define it through the courts. That entire time was going to be a period of great uncertainty for New Zealand businesses and primary producers seeking to invest.

Businesses, farmers, and public infrastructure builders need clarity on time lines and consent conditions in order to go ahead with investments. There is nothing in the legislation that Labour passed, that we’re going to repeal today, that was going to provide that clarity. When it comes to fresh water, this bill will pause—in fact, sorry, delay—the implementation of the national policy statement for fresh water, because it’s proving impossible to implement and provide fair outcomes for those who need water or discharge to water. It’s completely unworkable. Last week, a decision was handed back by a court to some applicants who opposed the granting of an exemption for vegetable growers in the Horowhenua and Pukekohe areas, where 80 percent of the vegetables in New Zealand supermarkets come from, and a number of groups had appealed against the exemption that vegetable growers in those areas had from the rules in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, because they said they should apply equally. Well, if the Horizons Regional Council is required to reduce on emissions or discharges by 100 percent, that means, potentially, all of the vegetables in those regions won’t be able to be grown. That’s 80 percent of the vegetables in New Zealand supermarkets. It’s totally impractical freshwater rules like that that will have to go and that this bill puts a pause on.

Now, restoring the Resource Management Act is only temporary. At least New Zealand businesses, growers, and farmers understand it, even though it’s not perfect. But what this Government is doing is retaining and enhancing the fast-track provisions that will allow all kinds of infrastructure to be stood up, consented, much more quickly. And I do commend the Minister, the Hon Chris Bishop, for the work he’s done to bring this bill to the House so quickly. We will pass it in the next 24 hours, and New Zealanders will be able to get on with building their businesses, growing their farms, and actually planning for their future.

Thank you. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First, who are not confused, to take the call on the second reading of this bill, and we are in support and commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s just really crazy to hear the arguments from the Government about wanting to repeal something that has had so much consideration, so much work—not just in the six years as alluded to by the Green member but for many years, by real experts in this field—to leave us with a big fat nothing. It would be one thing if they had a plan, but to have a big fat nothing is going back to the future. That is exactly what’s happening, and it’s crazy, because what we are going back to, this big fat nothing, in the meantime leaves this very discredited 30-year-old piece of legislation that absolutely nobody is convinced can do the job.

If we think about 30 years, that’s a long time. That’s 1991 that this legislation came in. That was when the Soviet Union was dissolved and we had Russia come back in, when we had Yugoslavia still in existence. We had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as being one of the best Christmas presents in that time. The apartheid laws: there was an announcement that apartheid laws in South Africa would be repealed.

This is how old the piece of legislation is that we are going back to while the Government sits there and tries to dream up a plan as a stop-gap measure to fill that hole. And I can tell you what kind of impacts it has had. In the Auckland Council, it is written in one of their planning documents that they have been using the consenting process under the Resource Management Act (RMA) as a money-making activity for the council. Now, that’s absolutely abhorrent to anybody who hears that, but it is written in their documentation, and I have seen it when we have been discussing this and the need for reform.

In my own electorate of Taieri, with the Brighton landfill, which very sadly has been granted consent, that whole process was so distorted in my view and so beholden to this 30-year-old legislation that meant that there were submissions that were 30 years old, that talked about the impacts of the landfill, and that were accepted because they were from neighbours and there was no other process by which to gather that evidence. There were huge questions over whether this should have been a notifiable event or not. Under that very old legislation, it wasn’t.

But not only does it leave a big fat hole, the problem—as the previous Minister, my good friend and colleague, the Hon Rachel Brooking, has referred to—is that the legislation is being rammed through with no due consideration. And if we look at what happened with the Act that is being repealed, that was the result of—

Hon Member: Two bills.

INGRID LEARY: Two bills, thank you. That was a result of not only the six years of work that went in by a really, really hard-working committee, but also there were people like Rachel Brooking who sat on there who had previously been on the panel that did years of work on the Randerson report leading up to the six years of work in this House. There was a huge amount of work done by the Hon Eugenie Sage in her role as chair of the committee.

Hon Rachel Brooking: A very fair chair.

INGRID LEARY: A very fair chair, as Rachel Brooking says, and also hours and hours of listening to evidence. Now, that is due process. What we are seeing here today in this House is just a complete—you know, it’s doing the middle finger to the due process that this House really should be doing when considering legislation that is impacting all of us.

The other thing is the terrible impact that it is having going forward. Already in my electorate in Taieri, Rachel Brooking and I have been quoted in the Otago Daily Times asking the council to please reconsider that it’s putting the kibosh on the planning documents and the planning that it has been doing for the freshwater plans around the region. It’s such a shame, because it has taken a long time to get to the point where there are freshwater plans. There’s been a lot of politics there. There has been a lot of water that is being used pursuant to historic mining permits that now farmers are using, and the consequence is the terrible degradation of the Manuherikia catchment. Suddenly, because this Government is saying it’s going to repeal the legislation, that council has chosen to put the pause on, which means that, once again, we won’t have a requirement for that river to be swimmable; it will go back to being wadable. There’s a massive difference. The degradation will continue. Farmers will be able to continue taking as much water from the catchment as they like, and all the reasons for this legislation that was put in originally to be able to find a better balance around our waterways and around our natural resources has simply been forgotten.

So it’s a really sad day to see so much hard work done and so much consideration—I apologise on behalf of myself and this House to all those people who submitted and put so much thought and care and time and money into making submissions on the previous legislation. It’s a terrible day. It’s being rammed through, and we do not support this.

Could I just say that the member resuming her seat has got about 4½ minutes available after the dinner break, if she wishes. Thank you very much for concluding.

Debate interrupted.