Resource Management Reform Bill

I move, That the Resource Management Reform Bill be now read a second time. I would first like to thank the chair and members of the Local Government and Environment Committee for their work on the bill. I would also like to thank all those who took the time to make a submission to the committee. I understand the committee received 234 submissions to the bill and heard 147 oral submissions in hearings in both Wellington and Auckland.

The Resource Management Reform Bill represents the first step of phase two of the Government’s programme of resource management reform. Phase one of this programme led to the enactment of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Act 2009. The provisions of that Act made important and overdue improvements to the operational efficiency of the resource management system. Amongst other changes, this has resulted in significant improvements to the consenting process. The percentage of resource consent applications processed on time has increased from just 69 percent in 2007-08 to 95 percent in 2010-11. There still exists, however, frustration with the resource management system as it currently operates. There is considerable uncertainty in the outcomes of the planning and consenting process.

The recent Statistics New Zealand Business Operations Survey highlights the impact of the Resource Management Act on business performance. According to the survey, only 3 percent of businesses think that the current processes enhance their business practice, and 430 businesses had cancelled projects worth over $100,000 each because of Resource Management Act - related delays and difficulties. Businesses have also blamed uncertainty in Resource Management Act processes for the cancellation of projects potentially worth more than $800 million over the last 2 financial years, and some have even had to spend up to 25 percent of their total expenditure on applying for resource consents.

Interestingly, it is the small and medium enterprises that feel the most constrained by the Resource Management Act. The issue for most is not what they can or cannot do; it is the time and cost it takes to get an answer, and it is not just businesses. Communities, homeowners, and families suffer from the same uncertainty and cost, either directly or through higher prices and fewer jobs. These issues need to be addressed so that New Zealanders can benefit from a resource management system that provides good environmental outcomes while still supporting economic growth.

The Resource Management Reform Bill makes several important changes to the Resource Management Act that will be of real benefit to New Zealanders. The bill delivers on two areas of reform. It makes discrete changes to improve the functioning of the Resource Management Act and provides a streamlined process for the delivery of Auckland’s first unitary plan.

Firstly, the bill will provide for a 6-month time limit on council processing of resource consents for medium-sized projects. The current average time for processing a medium-sized consent is 9 months, so this proposal may represent a reduction in the delay for many communities and developers of about one-third. The cost per day of delaying a hypothetical $10 million project was estimated in 2007 as being around $2,200, so this proposal could represent a saving of about $140,000 for a project of that size, compared with average consent processing times.

The bill also introduces improvements to the quality of analysis underpinning local authority decision-making. More robust cost-benefit analysis will now be required before councils and hearings commissioners make decisions on significant plan changes and projects. Section 32 of the Resource Management Act now specifies the requirement to consider economic growth and employment. The level of analysis required will be proportionate to the size of the project or the plan change in question. This means that although major projects and proposals will require careful and detailed analysis, small projects will not be burdened with undue cost or effort. I support the select committee’s recommendation that positive as well as negative impacts on economic and employment growth should be considered.

An option for simpler, direct referral to the Environment Court for major regional projects is also included in the bill, and will help increase business certainty. Once regulations are made, councils will be required to agree to a request for direct referral, unless there are exceptional circumstances. The types of projects that will qualify for this option are those that represent a regionally significant investment. I support the select committee’s recommendation to introduce criteria that must be regarded in setting regulations to determine the investment thresholds for what constitutes a major project. The views of council, iwi, and other key stakeholders will be taken into account when developing these regulations.

The policy intent of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Act 2009 to remove blanket tree protection rules has been clarified, and I also accept the recommendations of the select committee in strengthening this clause. The bill clarifies how councils may make rules in relation to tree protection. A rule in a district plan may restrict the felling, trimming, removal, or damaging of trees on private property in an urban environment only if the allotments have been identified by a street address, or a legal description of the land and the trees are described in a schedule to the plan. Groups of trees that cover adjacent allotments may be identified if they form a cluster, grove, or line. This does not affect the ability for regional or district councils to identify areas of significant vegetation or to create and use bush protection zones. Although most councils already operate in this way, the provision will come into force after 2 years to allow those that have, to date, used blanket rules to update their schedules.

As I have mentioned, the other area of reform in the bill is a proposal to develop a one-off hearings process for Auckland’s first unitary plan. The streamlined process for developing and making operational the first plan is essential for developing a set of consistent planning policies and rules within a workable time frame. Long-term costs and uncertainty around the delivery of the plan will be lowered, while ensuring the delivery of a high-quality document that has comprehensive input from the public and key stakeholders.

Once Auckland Council has developed the plan, it will be referred to a hearings panel to be appointed by me and the Minister of Conservation in consultation with the council and the independent Māori Statutory Board. Board appointments will follow strict guidelines, and appointees will be competent and have a strong degree of local knowledge and an understanding of tikanga Māori. It is my intention that the board will be chaired by a retired High Court judge or Environment Court judge. The board will consider the plan and hear public submissions and then deliver recommendations to the council. Accepted recommendations may generally be appealed only on points of law. In respect of any recommendations that the council does not accept, full appeal rights to the Environment Court will be available. Delivery of the plan within 3 years, as opposed to the 10 years it might have taken under the current processes, will have real benefits for Aucklanders and the country as a whole. Getting the plan right for the future of Auckland matters, but there is no benefit to having an overly drawn-out process that will cause significant cost and delay.

I support the select committee’s decision to exclude the district-level provisions relating to the Hauraki Gulf islands from the first iteration of the Auckland Unitary Plan. Auckland Council requested that the Hauraki Gulf islands section of the district plan be excluded, as it is on the verge of being made operative now, 7 years after it was notified in 2006. It is not the intention of the bill to force the council to re-notify these district-level provisions, reopen unnecessary and expensive litigation, and place further costs on the Hauraki Gulf islands community.

The bill also addresses some minor and technical issues. Environment Court procedures have been amended to explicitly promote timeliness and cost-effectiveness, and access to emergency provision under the Resource Management Act to all lifeline utilities has been extended.

The Government will be putting forward amendments at the Committee stage to address a number of minor issues that have been identified. I intend to move amendments to divide the bill into its three separate parts, which is a straightforward move for an omnibus bill such as this. I am also seeking further advice from officials on amendments to ensure that the bill aligns with Auckland Council’s intention to notify the unitary plan in September of this year.

In conclusion, the Resource Management Reform Bill makes a valuable contribution towards increasing our long-term economic and environmental prosperity. A robust, accountable, fair, and workable resource management system is required to meet these goals. This bill makes significant changes that will help to achieve those goals, and a further package of resource management and freshwater reforms will follow later this year. I commend the bill to the House.

I rise to speak to the Resource Management Reform Bill, which Labour will be opposing. This is the first of the onslaughts on the Resource Management Act that we are seeing from the National Government. It is not going to be the last one. We have had items foreshadowed by the Minister for the Environment that are raising concerns up and down the country about the dilution of environmental protections. However, that may well be a speech for another day.

I just want to set this bill in the context of a range of plans that the Government appears to have to, as it sees it, balance the environment against development agendas. To me and to the Labour Party, that is a wrong-footed way of approaching environmental protections. The Resource Management Act is an environmental protection Act; it is not a development Act or an economic development Act. And it is primarily for the purpose of laying down, in fact, some world-leading standards in environmental protections, which should not be conceded easily, if at all.

We are in favour of improving the processes around the Resource Management Act. The Labour Party believes that there may well be room for improvement in the processes of the Resource Management Act, and we are not averse to making those more efficient and achieving some expediency around how the legislation is implemented. But we are opposed to any undermining of environmental protections or of the right of communities to be engaged in the consent process, and that is where we begin to differ from the National Government.

I want to talk about three things in particular. I want to talk about trees and the protection of trees, particularly in Auckland. I want to thank the Minister for some of the changes that she has made in respect of tree protection, but I do have some serious reservations about it, even as it stands amended. I want to talk about the cost-benefit analysis clause, clause 69, which deserves closer scrutiny. And I want to talk at some length about the transitional regulations, which have caused a great deal of concern as they stand in Part 2, clause 124, of the bill as it is. I want to address all of these things both in general and in particular. Obviously, I will have more opportunity at the Committee stage to pick through the detail of some of my objections, but I do want to sit all of these things together because they form the fundamental opposition that we have to this bill as it currently stands. So tree protection, cost-benefit analysis—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Just before the dinner break I had outlined the things that I was going to cover, including trees, the idea of a cost-benefit analysis, and the transitional regulations that appear in this legislation.

When this legislation first came to the Local Government and Environment Committee it had very onerous provisions around the identification of the trees that were going to be allowed to be protected by local authorities. Instead of allowing local authorities to say: “Trees in this area are protected.”, or “That line of trees over there is to be protected.”, or, in the case of Auckland City, “The coastal pohutukawas are all to be protected.”, in the legislation the Minister originally wanted to name and to give a birth certificate and a christening ceremony for every tree that was to be protected. So the council, in the original bill, would have to go out, measure the girth and everything else, identify a tree by a number or a name or who knows what, and say: “This is a protected tree; this ‘Jimmy Tree’ over here at this address is to be protected.” We obviously found that to be slightly ridiculous.

I did refer earlier to the fact that the Minister had made some changes in this respect by allowing patches of bush to be identified and lines of trees to be identified, but still and all, they all have to be identified by property—by street address or title. That becomes quite problematic. So right in the middle of this discussion, the heart of this is individual property rights versus the community environment. Whether it is the intrinsic worth of trees in an environment or, as we heard from some of the submitters on this particular area, the fact that a tree next door in Titirangi or up the bank behind you in a steep area in Titirangi in West Auckland might affect one’s own property—by virtue of the fact that it retains water, it stops subsidence, and all of those things that trees are known for—could not be taken into account in a collective way, in a community-based way, in the legislation.

There were 99 submissions on this bit about trees. Of the 99 submissions, 67 of them were opposed, and 11 of them were opposed in part. So of the 99 submissions relating to trees, 17.2 percent were in support and 78.8 percent were in opposition, and still the Government proceeds to make what are quite difficult provisions for councils, should they wish to protect areas that have trees and are wooded.

The particular example I come back to again, because it relates especially to a couple of members on the select committee who live in the area, are those coastal pohutukawas as one heads north across the harbour bridge. The coastal pohutukawas ought to be able to be protected as a group without having to be identified section by section, address by address, unit title by unit title. There will be a lot more to say about this in the Committee stage.

The second thing I wanted to touch on, which I thought was one of the more ridiculous provisions, was the one that the National Party makes a lot of song and dance about, and that is the cost-benefit analysis—the cost-benefit analysis that has to go into applications. So I asked one of the submitters just how they worked out the cost-benefit analysis of a swimming hole in a favourite river. He said: “Well, what we would do is have a look at it in the height of the summer and work out how many children use the swimming hole and then we would multiply that by the amount that it costs to take them to the local swimming pool, and we would get some kind of cost-benefit analysis.” I am sorry but the man misses the point—the man misses the point. There is intrinsic value, not just monetised value, attached to the environment.

My concern and Labour’s concern with this legislation is that the Government is preparing the ground in this assault on the Resource Management Act for even worse assaults on the Resource Management Act to come in the next onslaught. So this is preparing the ground by taking away some of the fundamental principles underpinning environmental protections and allowing development to rule.

The last point I wanted to make was about transitional regulations. The Regulations Review Committee wrote to the select committee. The select committee considered those concerns in detail and with some seriousness—which I do appreciate—from the chair and the committee. But still and all, there remain transitional regulations in clause 124—which I will talk about, again at length, in the Committee stage—that give the Minister too much power to alter the primary legislation by subsequent regulation, and that is not how we do things. Thank you.

I am delighted to speak about this Resource Management Reform Bill at its second reading. This bill builds on our phase one Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Act, which we passed in 2009. That bill, although it was defended by the Opposition, has actually proved to be very successful. We have had very few complaints that it has undermined anything to do with the environment, and it actually has improved the process and sped up the process. In this bill that we are looking at now, we want to build on those successes. It also looks forward to phase two, which is larger-scale Resource Management Act reforms, but we believe that we are in the right space now. Most of the things we are discussing in this bill are pretty much uncontroversial, although Maryan Street has raised some issues that I would like to make comment on as well.

This bill is actually in three distinct parts. The first, as I have noted, is the further amendments to the Resource Management Act 1991, basically focused on improving the consenting process and the quality of decision making. It is not that we want to undermine the environment; we want to get to good decisions more quickly and more effectively. The second part of it responds to the request of the Auckland Council. It amends the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010. Again, it is to streamline the delivery of the first Auckland Unitary Plan. The third part amends the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. This is basically to create consistent environmental indicators so that we have data for effective environmental reporting in the long term. This is something we have been working towards ever since we have been in Government.

But, first, I want to focus on Part 1. Most of the changes in Part 1 are relatively minor changes. Most are uncontroversial. But there are three areas of debate, and we made changes in each of these areas during the select committee process. The first is about section 32 reports. This bill does look to improve the quality of those reports. In actual fact, most submitters agreed in principle that they want consistently good-quality section 32 reports. But what this bill does is specifically include economic outcomes and employment in these reports, and some of the people who submitted felt that this could unbalance the result and may undermine environmental outcomes. Of course, that requirement was already in the bill, but the fact that it has been made more specific concerned them. There was a mixed reaction. Some submitters were very much in favour, but some were concerned that these specific outcomes might outrank environmental factors. So the Local Government and Environment Committee agreed to amend the original to improve the consistency and the balance, to ensure that both the positive and the negative outcomes of any economic outcomes were considered, and also to provide guidance in the implementation of this legislation.

One of the complaints we have had about the Resource Management Act in the long term is that although the regulation and the legislation itself are good, the implementation of them are inconsistent. So we were very concerned to talk to our officials to see how we can make sure that councils get better support and more help in interpreting the legislation and making sure that there is consistent enaction of it right across the country.

The bill also introduces a 6-month time frame for consenting medium-sized projects. There were concerns about the complexity of this part of the bill, and a lot of work has been done to clarify the requirements and the time frames. The key to efficient processing and better-quality outcomes really is more complete applications at the beginning of the process. It seems to be a universal theme that we need to get as much information upfront as possible, and then we get better outcomes at the back end. So the changes encourage that.

The bill also increases the availability of the direct referral for major projects, and includes a threshold value to be set by regulation. Some councils were concerned about a loss of local control, but, of course, they are still involved in the decision-making processes even if it is a direct referral, and that weighting needs to be considered against an increased certainty for applicants in time frames. To mitigate the concern about the threshold being decided by regulations, we included a criterion in the bill for the Minister for the Environment to consider when making those regulations, and I think that has improved that part of the bill too.

Looking at Part 2, this is the part that streamlines the delivery of the first Auckland Unitary Plan. The Auckland Council asked for this legislation because the Unitary Plan will be the largest and most complex planning exercise ever undertaken in New Zealand, and it is expecting over 10,000 submitters to provide input to it. This will be the council’s main tool for achieving integrated management of the region’s natural and physical resources, and it provides the rules for what people can do on their land and property. So it is important that this is delivered efficiently and is not bogged down for years and years and years in the process.

The new legislation replaces the existing two-step schedule 1 process—which is a council hearing and then a subsequent Environment Court hearing of appeals—with a combined hearing process that incorporates the reduced formality of the council hearing but with key parts of the existing Environment Court process, including cross-examination and mediation. So it really delivers the best of both processes but in a more controlled and tighter time frame. The Auckland Council, as a democratically elected body, is responsible for making local planning decisions, so it will have the ability to accept, amend, or reject the recommendations of the hearing panel. However, parties have full rights of appeal to the Environment Court if the council amends or rejects recommendations.

The select committee visited Auckland, we listened carefully to the submitters on the bill, and we have recommended a significant number of changes to improve the legislation. The most controversial issue was the tree protection rules, and we received and heard a huge number of submissions on that issue. We worked hard to get the right balance between protecting significant trees and not turning managing your garden into a bureaucratic nightmare.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: Tried and failed.

Well, again, we made significant changes to the bill, and I believe we have got it right. Maryan Street thinks that it is wrong and is concerned that those trees must be linked to a property, but there is a reason for that. Unless those protected trees are actually on a land information memorandum, how can we protect them? So it is very important that they are actually listed and that people know where they are.

The final part to Part 3 is to do with the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act. Most councils, particularly regional councils, already collect environmental data, and they are working together informally to make sure that they have the right data for monitoring. This legislation is designed to formalise that process. There was some concern from councils that this could be expensive and complex, so we recommended that all monitoring standards and methodologies should be developed in consultation with councils, in order to manage this fear.

The committee listened to a lot of submitters during this process and we worked really well to incorporate the very best improvements we could make to the legislation. I think it is a good piece of legislation, I think it will be very effective, and I think it will be particularly useful to Auckland as it continues its very important planning work. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take a call on the Resource Management Reform Bill and say that Labour opposes this bill at its second reading. This bill is part of a trend of the Government, as it enacts a series of reforms to the Resource Management Act and related legislation. It is a step in that general trend of removing environmental protections from the Act and reducing local decision-making to allow for the centralisation of power. A pattern has emerged from this Government. Instead of acknowledging and recognising the value of local government, this Government views local government as an extension of central government, and it treats local government as a Government department to do the bidding of the National Government. The National Government sees local government as playing a subservient role to central government, and it views mayors and councillors, really, as people who ought to do the bidding of Mr Key, Mr Nick Smith, Mr Joyce, and Mr English. National continues to fail to recognise that local government is an equal partner—and ought to be treated as such—in the delivering and achieving of quality outcomes for the people who elected local government politicians and parliamentarians to the positions we hold.

This bill, in my view, destroys the ability of local communities to make local decisions and to arrive at local solutions, because this Government wants to centralise power in its hands—in the hands of Mr Key, in the hands of Mr Nick Smith, in the hands of Mr Joyce, in the hands of Mr English, and, as my colleague says, in the hands of Gerry Brownlee. Why? Because its attitude is that it knows best. It thinks it knows better than the collective wisdom of local communities. This Government’s focus is clearly about supporting its business mates, and not hard-working New Zealanders. Also, I think the Government does not understand what it means to have a real and genuine partnership with local government. Partnership requires trust, and I think that National members’ mentality is that they were born to rule. They think that no one else can or should, least of all local representatives on local councils. That is the kind of mentality they have.

Look at the way the Government treated Environment Canterbury and that particular region, replacing duly elected councillors with Government-appointed commissioners, and promising that elections would be held this year and then reneging on that promise and postponing elections to whenever it feels like it. Despite protests from Cantabrians, this Government persists in holding that power. Look at the way it has treated Auckland Council. Firstly, Mr Nick Smith pretended he was negotiating in good faith, and then, once he was back in Wellington, he announced that if Auckland did not do as it was told, this Government would override Auckland Council and run Auckland from the Beehive in Wellington. How is that for arrogance? Those two examples give ample evidence of National’s complete and utter arrogance when it comes to local government. It is further evidence that National does not like local government. National members might from time to time use the word “partnership”, but they do not believe in it. Partnership is not based on ultimatums, such as we have seen and heard from Mr Nick Smith—“Do as you’re told or we will override the power of local government.” That is not partnership. That is the kind of behaviour that was seen from Mr Bainimarama in Fiji, or people will liken it to the behaviour of Mr Mugabe of Zimbabwe. It is terrible behaviour, but that is how this Government has been treating local government ever since it came into power in 2008.

This bill forms part of a group of several bills that make up phase two of a series of Government reforms to the Resource Management Act, with a substantive change coming later this year. The substantive part of this reform will include the Government amending sections 6 and 7 of the Resource Management Act to change its purpose, and a raft of other changes. This bill must be considered in the context of that larger reform coming later. The essence of these reforms is the centralisation of power and the undermining of the environmental protections, as in this bill. The consistent theme that I read in this bill is the centralisation of power in central government and the reduction of the power of local government in local decision-making, in allowing it to arrive at its own local solutions for matters that we on this side of the House know that local communities and its local government authorities are well qualified to make.

It needs to be noted that the Resource Management Act is one of the fundamental pieces of legislation for local authorities. The Productivity Commission’s report earlier this year identified that regulations made under the Resource Management Act are the most significant regulatory responsibilities that local authorities have. Yet the changes we see seem to focus more on economic development than anything else, and there is a big question mark over whether the benefits benefit the rest of New Zealand. The changes this bill proposes will affect the role that local government plays, and will risk imposing significant added costs to local councils and ratepayers.

The Labour Party is committed to improving processes under the Resource Management Act so that unnecessary and vexatious delays in decision making around consents can be avoided. We do not support any undermining of environmental protection or of the right of communities to be engaged in the consent process. This bill is seen as a power grab by the Government, and Labour will not support it, because it takes so much power away from local communities. We need a Government that works from the grassroots up, not the Beehive down. One wonders what the Government has against trees, with its overturning of an Environment Court decision. Although the tree provisions have been improved at the Local Government and Environment Committee, they are still unwieldy and will impose unnecessary costs on communities.

The changes to section 32 unpick the balance of the Resource Management Act. These are designed to fit with the Government’s wider agenda to turn the Resource Management Act into an economic development Act, rather than an environment protection Act. The section 32 test requires that any proposal be monetised or given some quantitative monetary value, as opposed to any intrinsic value of the environment affected by the proposal, which makes it unlikely to work and biases it towards economic development. The decision to allow the Minister for the Environment to set an investment level by regulation to require councils to refer consents takes power away from local people to protect their communities. It is also unclear to us what this investment threshold will actually mean in practice. The documents released to the Labour Party under the Official Information Act show that the investment threshold was written just 2 days after a private secretary to the Minister suggested it in discussions with officials on 12 September last year, and it went to Cabinet on 14 September. Advice on the risk around the proposal did not come back until after this date. This is poor practice from a Government that is making major changes to the Resource Management Act.

Labour supports the fast tracking of the Auckland Plan in principle and the improvements to provisions in the bill, such as clause 124 being added at the select committee, which will make it more manageable. It is good that we see the Government putting in place the ability to set regulations to monitor the environment more accurately. However, when the next comprehensive environment report is meant to be completed this year, and the Government is putting forward the legislation for regulation-making power only now, it seems to be too little, too late. Labour would be an active, hands-on Government that would improve the Resource Management Act without undermining environmental protections or shutting out local communities. As my colleague the Hon Maryan Street has said, Labour will repeal any provisions of a new Resource Management Act that undermine environmental protection.

I am pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Resource Management Reform Bill. The Green Party supports improving the Resource Management Act to ensure that decision-making processes are timely and efficient. The Minister for the Environment’s goal of having robust, accountable, fair, and workable legislation is one that the Green Party shares, but the problem is that this bill does not do that, and the Green Party will continue to oppose it.

When the Resource Management Bill had its third reading more than 20 years ago, this Parliament passed it unanimously. It is a hallmark of robust legislation when you get that cross-party agreement. As the Environmental Defence Society has said, it is disappointing that this bill and the Act have now become a political football. That is because of the very different ideological considerations at play. This bill is about the Government’s ideological agenda to promote development at the expense of the environment. This is because of its shallow and short-sighted economic policy that if you make it easier for developers, whether they be irrigators, miners, or property developers, then the boat will go faster, even if it is headed towards a waterfall of unsustainable development.

This bill promotes speedy decisions, rather than well-informed, sound decisions where effects are properly evaluated and addressed. One of the ways it does this is by having a 6-month deadline for consent processing. That fails to recognise the complexity of some major development applications and the value of community input, and that often it is applicants who are responsible for delays because they submit applications that are incomplete and where effects are not properly assessed. This 6-month deadline will mean that council staff are forced to do a once-over-lightly evaluation, that potential environmental effects will be discounted, and that there will be limited time for negotiation and discussion between the applicant and submitters to reduce the impacts of the development and to address submitters’ concerns.

When you look at the reality rather than at the rhetoric, you have to ask what the problem is. The Ministry for the Environment’s own survey showed that 95 percent of the 36,000 consent applications that councils considered in 2011-12 were processed on time; that 94 percent of the consent applications were not notified, so there was no opportunity for public comment; and that only 1 percent—around 350 applications annually—are appealed to the Environment Court, and 99.9 percent of those cases are settled without the need for an Environment Court hearing. So what is the problem that this bill is trying to fix?

One of the major reasons the Green Party opposes it is the reduction in community decision-making. We believe that resource management decisions are best made by the communities affected by those decisions. The principal Act has a really strong commitment to public participation, which this bill undermines. It is part of the whole tranche of Government attacks on the Resource Management Act that we are seeing in this bill and also in the third tranche of changes that will be introduced later this year. They cut right across community decision-making. They deform the Resource Management Act, rather than reform it.

Here we are seeing the bill removing the council’s discretion to agree to or decline an applicant’s request for direct referral to the Environment Court for projects above a yet-to-be-specified investment threshold, which the Minister will set through regulation with no opportunity for this Parliament to consider it. Direct referral erodes local decision-making. It is likely to reduce public participation because of the much greater formality of Environment Court procedures and the greater expertise that is required to participate there. Nor is it likely to be more cost-effective than a two-stage hearing process. A lot of the issues are resolved at that first council stage, and then the issues that actually go to be considered by the court are narrowed and you get the court’s focus and scrutiny on a much narrower range of issues. Now the court is going to be expected to deal with the full gamut of concerns.

The Minister claimed that the changes to section 32 in clause 69 would improve the quality of the cost-benefit analysis that the Act requires, which councils do before they put rules in a plan, and which the Minister is also required to do before she gazettes a national environmental standard. But the Green Party believes that the variable performance across local authorities in the section 32 analysis has much more to do with their capability, the resourcing of local authorities and their capacity, and the lack of guidance from the Ministry for the Environment than it does with the provisions of the Resource Management Act. That is one good reason we are opposing the changes to section 32 in clause 69 of the bill. The changes that are being put in there may well be beyond the capacity of some local authorities, and risk paralysis by analysis.

One of the major reasons we are opposing the section 32 changes is that the new criteria that require the assessment for opportunities for economic growth and unemployment bias evaluation in favour of new measures that have quantifiable economic benefits, and against those that benefit the environment and ecosystem health. These new criteria risk obstructing councils that want to regulate land and water use to promote sustainable management. The Government is making it much harder for councils to regulate, because it did not like the decision that the Environment Court handed out on the appeal of Fish and Game on the One Plan in the Manawatū, in which the Environment Court upheld the need for rules to control land use and nutrient leaching. Requiring councils to consider the effects on economic growth and employment will make it much more difficult for councils to actually put in place rules to control the use of land and water, so short-term thinking will prevail.

The Minister for the Environment in her speech talked about uncertain outcomes, but this bill and the proposed third tranche of changes, where the Minister proposes to gut Part 2 of the Act, are all about making it much more certain that the environment will suffer, that community input will be reduced, and that poorly conceived development projects will get rubber-stamped. The changes are about certainty for applicants, not the environment.

One of the worst examples of this in the bill is the tree provisions. I would like to acknowledge and pay tribute to the more than 234 individuals and organisations that made submissions. The majority of those submissions were on the bill’s attack on the protection of urban trees. The bill is about making it much harder for councils to protect and control the loss of urban trees, because it effectively allows landowners to trim or fell any urban trees with no need for resource consent, unless the trees are individually described and their location is identified by either a street address or a legal description. It overturns a 2010 decision by the Environment Court that upheld councils’ ability under the 2009 legislation to have general plan rules that required a resource consent to fell or trim classes of trees, like coastal pōhutukawa, or trees above a certain height or girth. So it is all about private property rights winning out and property developers and landowners being able to fell and cut down trees.

Many submitters, including the Tree Council, Auckland Council, and the Environmental Defence Society, strongly opposed the bill’s ban on general tree protection rules and the changes to section 76 of the principal Act. Certainly, the Local Government and Environment Committee has made some changes, but the bill is still a major attack on tree protection. Submitters told us that trees create a liveable city and that they are a community asset, not just an individual property right. They highlighted the loss of mature and amenity trees that would result from the change, especially in Auckland, given current development pressures. They said that these changes would be costly, impractical, onerous, and unworkable and would involve huge amounts of time and resources, given the work that a council would have to do to legally identify every single tree or group of trees that it wanted to schedule in the plan.

The Green Party agrees with those objections, and opposes these provisions. We certainly support a combined plan for Auckland, but we totally oppose the fact that the hearing panel will be appointed by the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation, rather than by the Auckland Council, which is elected by Aucklanders.

I rise in support of the Resource Management Reform Bill in its second reading. We from the National Party have made it very clear that we believe—in fact, we know, and I guess farmers, foresters, and those in tourism know it best—that the natural environment is New Zealand’s greatest asset. We believe that successful economic and environmental policies can and must go hand in hand. They always have. One of the best examples of this is aquaculture. We have a beautiful marine environment and we all fish, we sail, we water-ski, and we dive—or, at least, that is me. We do a whole bunch of things to do with the beach and the ocean environment, but we also believe that we can grow mussels, oysters, and salmon. We believe that our environment, as beautiful as it is and as much of a provider as it is, can also provide economic benefit.

The Greens, of course, are all against unemployment and they are all for jobs, but they are against aquaculture. Another example, of course, is our oil and gas industry, which has gone very well in Taranaki for the last 50 to 100 years alongside dairy farming and tourism. We believe that the industry’s environmental record up in the Taranaki is good. It has had issues from time to time over the last 50 to 100 years, but it is always improving. There is an opportunity there to expand that in other regions of the country, an opportunity where again the environment and economic development can happen. The Greens, of course, are against unemployment and they are all for jobs, but they oppose aquaculture, and oil and gas exploration.

It is the same on the West Coast, where you have mining. I guess it is the home of the Labour Party. There has been mining down there on the West Coast, which has a beautiful environment and more national parks and Department of Conservation land than you shake a stick at. Of course, the Greens are against unemployment and they are all for jobs, but they do not support aquaculture, oil and gas exploration, or mining.

You cannot get a better example of agriculture in New Zealand than dairy farming, which is seen right throughout New Zealand. Dairy farming is very, very successful. In Canterbury the farmers irrigate, as they do in some other areas of the country, like Northland. I ask where else than dairy farming do you get such a good example of the business person working with the environment to create, if you like, jobs and something for our economic future. I ask where is there a better example of that than dairy farming right throughout the country, and, of course, in Canterbury. Of course, the Greens are against unemployment and they are all for jobs, but they oppose irrigation and they do not like dairy farmers. Apart from not liking aquaculture, mining, oil and gas exploration, dairy farming, or anything else that you might like to put up there, the fact of the matter, the interesting thing, is that the Greens are against unemployment and they are all for jobs, but they oppose every opportunity you point to out there.

That is why in this bill we have considered it a very good idea to introduce an opportunity for 6-month consenting for major developments. Members of the House and members of the public will know that for what we call developments of national significance we have a 9-month consenting regime. We have decided to introduce a 6-month consenting process for major developments that you may not call nationally significant but that are major just the same. We could have called them activities of regional significance, but they may very well be activities of some sort of national stretch or they may not be regionally significant but major in their own right. We believe that a 6-month consenting process is a very, very good idea for those medium-sized projects.

We understand there are about 1,600 medium-sized projects processed each year. They include subdivisions, supermarkets, industrial developments, and infrastructure projects. I think that is a good thing. I know that the Greens are against unemployment and they are all for jobs, but they oppose subdivisions, supermarkets—because they grow their own—industrial developments, and infrastructure projects. Just the same, I support this bill. I am against unemployment, I am all for jobs, and I am for every opportunity that we can present that balances environmental objectives with economic ones, unlike the Green Party.

I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Resource Management Reform Bill. New Zealand First does have a policy of supporting streamlining legislation in this country to improve our productivity, to support economic development, and to grow the economy and jobs. However, in this particular instance, we have some grave concerns about what is happening here with the Resource Management Act. I will quote from the regulatory impact statement on the bill, which says here: “The RMA is New Zealand’s principal statute for managing natural and physical resources.” The Ministry for the Environment also states that New Zealand’s main piece of legislation that sets out how we should manage our environment is the Resource Management Act. So the Act is a most important piece of legislation. It was brought to this House and passed in 1991. For over 20 years it has been on the statute book, and it is highly regarded around the world as one of the best pieces of legislation anywhere, in terms of environmental safeguards. Many other countries around the world have studied it and have adopted the measures that are in our Resource Management Act. It is often referred to in international legislation and in international case studies in terms of good legislation that other countries would also like to abide by. In terms of when we were looking at the 200-mile exclusive economic zone last year, the Resource Management Act played an important part in that. We were extending out to the 200-mile limit, but we also wanted to ensure that many of the safeguards that were in the Resource Management Act were in our 200-mile limit exclusive economic zone bill that went through.

But in this regard we do wonder what the real motives of the National Government are in relation to this bill. Once again, the Government does seem to be having a cheap attack on local government with many of the measures in this bill. Throughout the select committee process and in the Local Government and Environment Committee, which was considering the submissions that came in, it was apparent that the Government did not fully understand the ramifications of many aspects of the bill. An example of this would be, for instance, that the tree provisions have changed considerably from what were first introduced with this bill. In the initial legislation, the Government was going to allow the fact that virtually all trees could be chopped down, and they could be saved only if they were individually gazetted and individually highlighted on property titles throughout New Zealand. That was a nonsense. That was a total nonsense because we are a tree and bush-clad and covered country, and if you had a situation where every property owner had to literally name and note the trees on their property in order to save them, otherwise they could be bowled over by any person wishing to develop the property in the future, it could have a huge impact on many of the bush areas of our urban environment and, indeed, of our rural environment as well. This was shown up in many of the submissions on trees, such as the one on Le Roys Bush on the North Shore. We managed to convince the Government that it was crazy not to allow aerial mapping of bush areas and bush zones and to allow an area that is naturally bushed—some of it public reserve bush; some of it on private land—to be taken in as a bush zone where the properties could be listed but you did not have to actually name every single tree on individual properties.

That was just a small example under the trees part of the legislation where the Government got it wrong, and through this bill there are many other areas where, similarly, the Government does not appear to have a great understanding of what happens with issuing resource consents. Where it says that there will be a 6-month time limit for projects up to a medium size, it does not always understand what is required in terms of issuing those resource consents for a proposal. What we will see very much—and this will be particularly so in the case of Auckland—is holus-bolus development going on in Auckland. Sure, the Government wants to see that. It wants to see a vast acceleration of development, but it will not necessarily be in the best interests of the people who are dwelling there, the residents of individual urban areas. It will not necessarily be in the interests of the city itself. It will be very much in the interests of many of the developers, who will be able to fast track and basically put things on the table in front of council employees and say: “Get this through quickly. You’ve got only a few months, and you’ve got no opportunity to hold it up.”, and they will get it through. This will be abused. There will be many people who will wish to abuse the process as a result. Those who feel that they are not going to get a fair shake from their local authority will see that it is perhaps, therefore, better to divert it directly to the higher authority in Wellington. Many of them will choose to take that option. Many of them will simply choose to say: “We’re not going to work with the local authority. We’re not going to work with the local regional authority. Let’s just get this sent directly to higher powers in Wellington. Let’s work with the bureaucrats in Wellington and see whether we can get it through at a faster pace through the bureaucratic process in Wellington, which will perhaps turn a blind eye to half of the concerns.”

I can remember being in Taupō a year or two ago and hearing so many complaints about the apartments that were built directly overlooking the Waikato River, by the bridge leading into Taupō. That development was diverted to central authority for approval because all the locals opposed those apartments being built. No one wanted them on the entrance to the Waikato River, but they got approved through some other means, through central government, through central authorities. And Taupō people now, to this day, regret the fact that those apartments got built. We will see more and more of that happening around New Zealand. We will see more and more of the bending of the rules, going for the direct line, and going for the quickest option, and, as a result, the environment will suffer.

When you look at the overview of the current Resource Management Act, it says that, under the Act, resource consents are required whenever a person proposes to undertake an activity or development that does not comply with the rules of regional, district, or unitary plans, with national environmental standards, or with the Resource Management Act itself. What we have grown up with in the last 20 years is a situation where district plans and regional plans have been developed after extensive consultation with the local people. I can recall that the North Shore district plan was started in 2001 and was finally operative in about 2009. It was staged over a period of years and came in over a period of years in different stages as different parts of the plan became approved. But it was done with full consultation through the community, and the community had full buy-in to it. So at the end of that period the community could say: “This has absolutely been thrashed out, and for everyone who develops within this community, everyone who does anything within this community, these are the rules of this community. We are buying in to this club. We are joining this club. This is the club of x, y, z community. These are the rules that we abide by.”

Unfortunately, under many of the proposals in the Resource Management Reform Bill, the Government is basically, again, moving in on local government and saying that it knows better than the local authorities, that it knows better than the local communities, who may have consulted on their district plans for 1, 2, 3, or 4 years to get their district plans into line with what their community expectations are. It will be unfortunate because, once again, we will see the big hand of central government playing a big role in the future. It will move in, and if it is not happy with what local authorities are doing and if it is not happy with decisions that are made locally, then the Government will, once again, step in and say: “We know better.”

Unfortunately, we are seeing this too often under this Government around this country. We are seeing it in Canterbury, in particular. We have seen it in Auckland, in particular. We are seeing it in more and more communities around New Zealand. Unfortunately, we have only two tiers of government in this country. We have central government and we have local government. Unfortunately, this Government seems to think that there is only one tier of Government, which is central government, and that local government really does not count. I think it is a great shame, and I think we will look back on this and ask how legislation that was brought in in 1991—it was unanimously brought in in this House in 1991—was trampled on in 2013 and allowed to be watered down, when we actually had a very good piece of legislation.

The problem that the Opposition has with this Resource Management Reform Bill, in its second reading, is that Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens will say that they want economic development—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: This is the person who can’t chair a committee—hopeless.

Oh, that is Mr Mallard. That is Mr Trevor Mallard, the anger-management problem member of this House, who just cannot help himself. No, he just loses his rag at every opportunity. OK, so the problem that Labour, the Greens, and New Zealand First have with this bill is that on the one hand they say they want to tackle the housing problem in Auckland. They say they want to tackle economic development. They say they want to protect the environment. And yet, here they all are, to a man, to a party, opposing the very piece of legislation, which this Government is promoting, that will do just that.

It is deeply ironic that the member for the Greens will flail against the statutory taking over of Environment Canterbury and putting it in the hands of the commissioners so that at least it will get on and do its statutory duties, which Environment Canterbury failed to do in the time when that member was one of the elected representatives of that organisation. This is a Government that gets on and does things, and this Resource Management Reform Bill does exactly that.

I am just going to talk a little bit about 6-month consenting. This is for medium-sized projects—those very projects that we need in Auckland, that we need in the big cities around New Zealand, and that Labour, the Greens, and New Zealand First are so fond of saying that we really, really need. This is the mechanism that is going to make that consenting much more efficient. Underlining the 6-month consenting process is a requirement on all parts, on both the council receiving the submission and the developers—somehow, under the hands of New Zealand First, “developer” is a dirty word. Well, not under this Government actually, because it is the developers in New Zealand who get things going. But under the provisions in this bill, those developers, those good people who get things done, who build houses, build supermarkets, and build infrastructure, will be required to put in really decent, robust applications. It is a win-win. I commend the bill to the House.

Labour opposes this bill, the Resource Management Reform Bill, not because we are against more efficient consenting processes and not because we are against reforming the regulatory framework to encourage economic development, but because it seeks to do those things at the expense of the environment and at the expense of the community. That is why we are opposed to this bill. It takes away the right of communities to have a say and it weakens environmental standards. That is the bottom line.

I want to focus my comments on the two aspects of this bill that I think illustrate the Government’s particularly tortured relationship with Auckland. I am going to talk about the Auckland Unitary Plan provisions and the tree protection provisions in this bill, because both of those sections in the bill show what a conflicted and difficult relationship the National Government has with Auckland. They show this tendency that it has, which we have seen every year since John Key became the Prime Minister, to chip away at the powers and the freedoms of local government and hand over those powers to central government. This is a centralising, power-hungry National Government.

The Auckland Unitary Plan—in fact, Labour supports the provisions in this bill that fast track the Auckland Unitary Plan. I want to just say briefly what a significant development the draft unitary plan in Auckland is. It is the first time our country’s biggest city has ever had a comprehensive public debate about the future shape of the city. It is the first time it has happened. It is because we have a fine Labour mayor, Len Brown, in office, providing the right kind of leadership. It would not even occur to this National Government to promote the kind of progressive, forward-looking agenda like funding the City Rail Link, for example, or supporting a quality, compact city, which are the things that Auckland Council has provided strong leadership on. It has had the courage to open up a process that is not without its flaws, and there are plenty of critics, but it is at least a process where people are having a chance to have a say about the future of their city.

It is good that in this bill there is a provision to fast track the unitary plan. It puts the National Government in an interesting position, because members on that side of the House are not averse to the odd bit of fast tracking of legislation. In fact, they have got strong tendencies in that direction—a bit of the old streamlining here, a bit of fast tracking there. But Labour agreed with Auckland Council’s request for fast tracking the unitary plan because we did not believe that it was tenable with the new unitary plan—with all the rezoning involved, and a raft of measures to promote housing affordability—to expect Aucklanders to wait the 7 or 8 years that it could have taken for the plan to go through the Resource Management Act processes and get bedded down. So we supported in principle the fast tracking.

As I said, National is not averse to a bit of fast tracking, but in this case those members found themselves very conflicted, and the reason for that is that they have a problem with Len Brown. They have a problem with the fact that their guy lost the mayoralty in 2010. They do not like that, they have never got over it, and their mission in life is to make life as difficult as possible for Mayor Len Brown and the Auckland Council.

The Government agreed to much of the request for a fast-tracked unitary plan, but it could not stomach two aspects of it and it knocked back Auckland Council on these two elements. Instead of allowing Auckland Council to appoint the members of the hearings panel, which will be a kind of one-stop shop, decision-making forum for the unitary plan, the Government has insisted on appointing people who inevitably will be its cronies to the Auckland Unitary Plan hearings panel. It could not bring itself even to share joint responsibility with Auckland Council for appointing that panel. It had to seize control of Auckland’s decision-making process by insisting on the Minister of Local Government and the Minister for the Environment having exclusive power to appoint that panel. That says a lot about this Government and the fact that it does not trust Auckland Council and it does not trust Aucklanders. It prefers to make the decisions from its ministerial offices here in Wellington. It is not willing to allow Aucklanders and their democratically elected representatives to have responsibility to appoint the panel that will make the decisions about the future shape of Auckland City, and that, I think, is a sad reflection on this Government.

It also rejected Auckland Council’s request that the unitary plan have legal weight from notification. The whole process of the drafting, the consultation, and the amendments will be completed by about September this year. The plan will then be notified, and it will be put out to the public for the Resource Management Act appeal processes to commence. Under the law as it was prior to 2009, the plan would then have had legal weight. That does not mean that the plan would be fully operational, and that all decisions made would be made on the basis of that plan; it simply means that the plan would be taken into account. It would be considered by decision makers when they are ruling on consents and new developments, and so on. I think, in light of the fact that until 2009 the plan would have had legal weight from notification, that was not an unreasonable request by Auckland Council in those circumstances, if you accept the fact that there are urgent things like housing affordability that need to be dealt with, and the unitary plan offers a comprehensive package of measures to deal with the housing affordability crisis.

Having refused those two very reasonable requests from Len Brown and the Auckland Council—first, that Auckland Council be allowed to appoint the hearings panel and, second, that the unitary plan have legal weight from notification—Nick Smith, the Minister of Housing, then found himself in a very interesting situation. The polls were clearly telling Steven Joyce that housing affordability had become a red-hot political issue and that the Government was vulnerable in Auckland. Secondly, the overheating Auckland housing market was posing a threat to the overall economy because of the inflationary pressures it was generating. That advice was coming from Treasury and the Reserve Bank to the Minister of Finance.

Nick Smith was spurred into action, but his ability to actually make a difference was totally hamstrung by the fact that Amy Adams has refused to allow the Auckland plan to take legal effect from notification. So we then saw this dance of the seven veils from Nick Smith in the following 2 months, rampaging around Auckland, accusing Len Brown of having killed the dreams of Aucklanders, and threatening to legislate to override the Resource Management Act powers of the Auckland Council, all because the Government had already decided that the plan would not be given early legal effect. So the upshot was that Nick Smith was forced to bring in the hastily cobbled together Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, which simply fast-tracked two elements of the Auckland draft unitary plan: streamlined consenting and greenfields land being brought in sooner than otherwise would be the case. What a ridiculous wild goose chase Amy Adams and Nick Smith have led Aucklanders on for the last few months.

This is just the latest bit of evidence of National’s tortured relationship with Auckland. The Government created a super-city that it could not easily kick around, and for the last 3 years it has been paying the price of that. To be quite honest, it is a pain for Aucklanders to have to put up with, and the sooner the National Party gets over itself in relation to Auckland the better.

I want to make brief mention of the tree protection provisions, which Nick Smith tried to extinguish in 2009. It was one of the first debates that I took ever took part in in this House, and David Cunliffe and I took the fight to the Government on behalf of west Aucklanders who wanted to retain the right to protect the Waitakere Ranges and protect the trees. In fact, all Aucklanders appreciate the social, environmental, and cultural amenity value of our urban forest. There are huge environmental reasons to protect the urban forest, particularly in Waitakere: high rainfall and a high erosion environment where trees make a critical difference. The effect of this bill is to make it virtually impossible for councils to efficiently, cost-efficiently, protect the urban forest in Auckland. That is the point of it—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Gosh, that speech from Phil Twyford was a long half-hour. I rise with great pleasure to speak to the Resource Management Reform Bill in its second reading. I am entirely in support of the provisions in this bill and I find it an excellent piece of legislation.

I would have to say it was mildly diverting listening to the irony from the Greens talking about the feeling, the absolute wonderment, that the Resource Management Act, in its original form, passed unanimously through the House in 1991. I wonder why that could be. It was pre-MMP, for a start—pre - the divisive and increasingly bitter Greens coming in, they who oppose everything. Other colleagues of mine have pointed out that they oppose mining and oil exploration, dairy farming, irrigation. Anything, basically, that will grow the economy and grow jobs, they oppose. And guess what? They are even starting to oppose their own policies. They are turning in on themselves. Quantitative easing, once the banner that they all fought and died under, they have flip-flopped on and have decided to sell off because it might not give them the power they desperately crave. Not even supporting their own policies is, I guess, a kind of consistency—a rare sign of consistency—from the Greens.

But back to this bill. It is an omnibus bill. It is going to be split up into three bills when it goes through the Committee stage, and I think that is appropriate. It is appropriate that we have rigorous and robust debates in the Local Government and Environment Committee, which is very ably chaired, I must say, by Nicky Wagner, who made some excellent points around the detail of the provisions and the detail of what has already happened at the select committee level. There have been a lot of modifications, a lot of changes. We have listened to the submitters, we have taken note of them, we are duly consulting with them, and that is reflected in the second reading of the bill.

I would have to say the improvements in the resource consent regime are well overdue. People in my North Shore electorate are constantly telling me what an extraordinarily foolish business the consents were, because the bureaucracy just burgeoned. It would take months of delays and tens of thousands of dollars of extra money to do basically very simple things. So the streamlining and the resource consents that we are putting through, putting in 6-month consenting times for medium-sized projects, will make a big difference. There are a number of other amendments that are coming through that others have spoken of and we will deal with them in the readings that are to come. But I certainly commend this Resource Management Reform Bill in its second reading to the House. Thank you.

Hon David Cunliffe—5 minutes.

I very much welcome the opportunity to take a call on this bill, which stinks. The Resource Management Reform Bill is the bill that is going to allow the developers’ lobby to put another death by a thousand cuts through the Waitakere Ranges. It should never have got here. It should have been fixed in the Local Government and Environment Committee and it was not, and the only good thing about this bill is that it will—I repeat, will—cost Paula Bennett the seat of Waitakere, unless she stands up and co-sponsors the local bill that will be brought to this House by Auckland Council to overturn the egregious, blanket tree-trimming, regulation-axing clauses of this bill. This is part of a broad agenda to undermine local democracy. It is vested here in measures that please the bulldozer brigade. They override, through the Resource Management Act, the legitimate and hard-fought provisions of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act, which requires conservation values and cumulative effects to be considered in every resource consent issued for the Waitakere Ranges area.

The Government tried making changes to the Resource Management Act in 2009 that would have overridden that and would have removed blanket tree protection from west Auckland. The Environment Court effectively overruled the interpretation that the Government might have been seeking to pursue by upholding the ability of the council to schedule or regulate groups of trees. So, in a fetish of retribution, the Government and its developer mates, the bulldozer brigade, have got the blanket tree-felling provisions back in this bill. It means that any tree can be trimmed off at ground level with a chainsaw—down to zero—and the only way to protect it would be to schedule every individual tree. It took 4 days of hearings in the Waitakere Ranges to schedule 190 trees. There are 150,000 vulnerable trees in my electorate in New Lynn alone, in the areas of Langholm, Titirangi, and Woodlands Park, 150,000.

Give or take a little bit, National is creating a bureaucratic nightmare: a mountain of red tape requiring the council to schedule each individual tree. “But no,” those members say, “out of the goodness of our developers’ hearts, we have introduced amendments at the select committee that will allow us to schedule eeny-weeny, bitsy groups of trees on every individual property.” Sorry, not good enough. The people of west Auckland are going to rise up and throw that out.

The evidence for that is that the Titirangi Residents and Ratepayers Association and the Waitakere Ranges Local Board have already held public meetings that have unanimously passed resolutions calling on Auckland Council to bring to this House local legislation that will overturn the provisions of this bill. I would like to say now to this House that if that council brings forward such a bill, I will challenge the member for Waitakere to co-sponsor it with me. The Hon Paula Bennett would have the opportunity to stand up for the overwhelming views of her constituents, rise above petty party politics, and be the kind of greener type of MP that she tells her electorate she is.

I make this prediction: if the Hon Paula Bennett declines the opportunity to co-sponsor this local legislation, she will soon be the former MP for Waitakere. She will deserve it, because she is responsible, along with her colleagues, for bringing legislation to this House that trashes the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act—which she did not vote for—and that undermines local democracy.

It is part of a broader agenda that is absolutely undermining our community values and undermining civil liberties. Whether it is the Resource Management Reform Bill, whether it is the housing bill, or whether it is the spy bill, New Zealanders are about sick of it. They are going to stand up and fight back, and the fight back is going to be big, fast, and strong on the tree-trimming provisions of this bill.

The Resource Management Reform Bill as reported back to the House is admittedly softer than what went to the Local Government and Environment Committee, but it is not soft enough and it is still very nasty, so we will not be supporting it. It is still an attack on urban trees, as we have heard from the previous speaker, the Hon David Cunliffe, and it still continues to ensure that economic considerations get precedence over environmental protections like water use, for example, in planning decisions. It undermines local decision-making and it will reduce public participation in planning processes, but it leaves councils with more risk around litigation, and it completely messes around with unitary plan process and democracy and accountability in Auckland.

The bill, essentially, takes the Resource Management Act, which is a comprehensive piece of legislation that has been in existence since 1991, and fiddles with the bits that the Government finds inconvenient. The bill is another attack on local government. It is an ongoing theme from this Government, and it will not stop with this bill.

This afternoon in the House during question time we heard the Minister for the Environment say that she is thinking about another amendment to the Resource Management Act, before this one has even been finalised. This time she wants to amend it because some pesky councils might want to restrict the planting and use of genetically modified organisms in their area—some councils might feel they want to safeguard their environment. It is smart for them to actually think about safeguarding their environment, because most councils have had to deal with a deregulated building sector that brought forward the saga on the leaky buildings, which actually cost councils an enormous amount of money.

The Greens are also opposed to the 6-month time limit for processing medium-sized developments, which forgets to take into account that sometimes it is the developer who slows down the process.

It is the removal of local participation in decision making that I find most offensive in the bill as reported back. Democratic processes seem to be unheard of in the National Government vocabulary. Hardest hit by this lack of consideration, of course, is Auckland. The bill continues the Government’s track record of stomping on Auckland Council and Auckland ratepayers who elected the Auckland mayor, the Auckland councillors, and the 21 local boards and their members. The provisions in this bill around the Auckland Unitary Plan are designed to undermine the council and hastily push through a unitary plan that favours the Government’s developer friends.

We are not opposed to having a combined plan in Auckland. What we are opposed to is the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation appointing the hearings commissioners and setting their terms of reference. We maintain that this decision should be made by our Auckland Council representatives because it is an Auckland plan.

The short time frame to get the unitary plan finalised is also a concern. It reduces genuine public consultation. When it is combined with the sidelining of the Environment Court and is allowing appeals only if the council rejects a hearing panel recommendation, it is designed to cut out ordinary citizens from the processes. The plan, effectively, becomes a one-stop process, which means that the quality of the decision making may be a lot worse than unitary plans elsewhere. Once more, Auckland is being singled out. Aucklanders will not be able to challenge this plan except on very narrow points of law. We oppose the provisions in this bill that give hearing panels the power to make recommendations on any other matter that no submitter may have raised, because this goes against natural justice.

On a personal note, I am pleased that this Government has decided that the Hauraki Gulf islands district plan will not be included in the Auckland Unitary Plan. That is because it has taken an enormous amount of effort and time and expertise to get as far as we have with that plan, and there are still problems with it, which are still being resolved. All in all, we will not be supporting this bill, because it does not do what it is set out to do.

Pō atarau. I rise to speak to the Resource Management Reform Bill. This bill is sponsored by the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Amy Adams. I want to remind us all what it is all about. It is about simplifying the complexity, speeding up a sluggish process, and reducing the number of consents through efficiency and improving the system.

I want to mention my honourable colleague the matai matua rangatira Su’a William Sio and ask him whether it is arrogant to want to improve the resource consent regime. I want to ask him whether it is arrogant to want to improve the quality of local decision-making. I want to ask him whether it is arrogant to want to improve workability, and whether it is arrogant to want to improve the streamlining of the delivery of Auckland’s Unitary Plan.

The Resource Management Reform Bill is about more jobs for New Zealanders, for every New Zealander, including iwi. It is about more infrastructure for New Zealanders, for every New Zealander, including iwi. It is about New Zealand being productive. This bill delivers a system that works for all New Zealanders. This John Key - led National Government, as well as the reform bill, has a genuine engagement with iwi Māori, with tangible, upfront solutions based on tikanga-a-iwi. This was supported by both Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and Ngāpuhi during their respective submissions. This is about giving power to the people, the kind of power my colleague the matai Su’a William Sio spoke about.

Effective resource management is critically important to our economic, environmental, and social well-being. Resource management decisions need to ensure natural and built resources are used and protected sustainably now, today and tomorrow, for future generations. This bill is about chucking out processes that are cumbersome, processes that are costly, and processes that both Ngāi Tahu and Ngāpuhi agree are time-consuming. This Resource Management Reform Bill makes the difficult manageable. It encourages active participation, investment, and innovation. I commend this bill to the House.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.