Resource Management Amendment Bill, Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2), Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill

The Minister who has just resumed her seat, the Minister for the Environment, is not wrong. This collection of bills arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill now before the House for third reading is part of a grand plan. Be in no doubt that this Government does have a plan for the environment and for all of those pieces of legislation that impede, in its view, economic development and so must be undermined or cut away or diluted or defused in some way. What we have seen is this legislation take its place alongside reforms of the Local Government Act, for example, which strip local government responsibilities back, basically, to roads, rubbish, and rates, and takes away responsibility to deal with social and economic and cultural and environmental well-being in local communities.

That is not too distant from this legislation, the Resource Management Reform Bill in its three composite parts, because all of these things are of a piece. In fact, I commend the Government for being so coherent about it. Although it has been trying to get one piece of ideology through at a time, there is no doubt it has been working to a plan. Some of the things that it considers to be the stumbling blocks to progress and development in our country are some of the things that New Zealanders hold most dear. What we see in this piece of legislation is a movement that builds on the previous amendments, to which the Minister referred in her speech, and will be followed by an additional piece of legislation, again to which the Minister referred in her speech, which we might expect to see in the House in October of this year. All of these things, piece by piece, little by little, are having a cumulative effect on our environmental protections and on the things that New Zealanders hold dear.

I want to begin the main part of my rebuttal of this legislation by going back to the kind of—I want to say urban mythology but it is also rural—mythology on which the presumptions of this Government in changing the Resource Management Act have been based. There is a mythology out there, and the Minister uses it quite readily when it suits her, that it is very hard to get anything done under the Resource Management Act—it is really prohibitively ponderous, expensive, and slow. The example that she uses frequently is the example of somebody building a deck on their house. That is held up as one of the main blocks to progress. That is not what this Government is about. It is not about the deck on the house; it is about very substantial economic development, whether it is construction or extraction or any other kind of industry, which in its view should not be impeded by the intrinsic, the inherent worth of the physical environment that we so enjoy.

It is as if the Government has not quite worked out that our environment in New Zealand is our economy. The environment is the economy. It does not matter which way you slice and dice it, our environment is our economic well-being. It does not matter whether it is just vegetables grown in gardens or it is comprehensive plans for development of renewable energies. These things contribute to our economic and our social well-being. I just wanted to draw out the mythology that this is based on.

Some of the telling facts from the Minister’s own ministry are not often referred to in the Minister’s discussion, or the discussion of Government members opposite, of the bill and these changes to it. They ignore the fact that under the Resource Management Act in 2010 and 2011, 36,154 resource consent applications were processed through to a decision. Of these, 0.56 percent, that is, 203, of resource consent applications were declined—so 0.5 percent. Four percent, 1,414, of resource consent applications were publicly notified, allowing third parties to comment on them. Four percent were publicly notified, which meant that people could make comment on them. Two percent, 849, of resource consent applications were notified to only affected parties for their comments. Two percent of resource consent applications were notified to only affected parties for their comments. One percent, that is, 357, of resource consent decisions were appealed. Local authority officers acting under delegated authority made 91 percent of decisions on resource consent applications, and 95 percent of resource consent applications were processed on time—within the 21 working days that the Resource Management Act allowed. These are the facts that the Ministry for the Environment itself declares are the facts around the application of the Resource Management Act.

So why is there the perpetuation of this mythology that the Resource Management Act gets in the way of development? Yes, there are cases. The supermarket on the North Shore is certainly a case in point, and I am pleased that that has been resolved satisfactorily. But that is not the Resource Management Act’s fault, actually. There were some malcontents on both sides of that argument who were keen to see the matter drawn out—certainly on one side of the argument they were keen to see that project drawn out.

It seems to me that although there may be room to improve and streamline the Resource Management Act—and we have no objection to improvements to the process—a wholesale, staged implementation of a plan against the Resource Management Act is not justified. There is no justification and this will become even more obvious when the Minister’s third attempt at undermining the Resource Management Act comes to this House later this year. This is all of a part. This is all of a pattern, and the thing that the National Government cannot tolerate is that New Zealanders have come to appreciate, even more than they have previously, the intrinsic and amenity values of our environment. It is not satisfactory now to put a tunnel through from the Dart River to Milford, so the Minister of Conservation chose not to. The basis on which the Minister for the Environment proceeds with these wholesale onslaughts on the Resource Management Act is not proven, is not demonstrated, and is based simply on ideology over environmental protection.

This will be another weakening of our environmental protections in New Zealand. People are aware now of what the Government is doing and its intentions with the Resource Management Act. Turning it into an economic development Act is not what most New Zealanders want to have happen. The Government needs to think—if it is committed only to jobs it needs to think of the jobs that can be created in clean technology and ways that preserve and enhance our environment rather than constantly running over it and asphalting it. These are not pieces of legislation that are going protect our environment and enhance it.

The purpose of the Resource Management Act is to promote the sustainable management of our natural and physical resources. It is also our major planning tool, so it is important that it works well. It is important that it supports the environment, it safeguards the environment, and it provides the rules that underpin the well-being and the future of all New Zealanders.

The Resource Management Amendment Bill is focused on improving the functioning of this legislation so that we can get the best possible outcomes for the environment and support economic growth. There is an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied, and that is relevant here because long, drawn-out, clumsy decision-making processes add absolutely no value to the environmental outcome. They stymie economic growth, they stop development, and, most important, they hamper the creation of jobs. When it comes to planning and consenting we all want consistent, good-quality, timely decisions, and this bill will encourage that. It will encourage time-effective and efficient decision-making.

The bill requires better-quality analysis in section 32 reports. These reports underpin important local government decision-making on plan changes and projects, but they tend to be inconsistent in quality. The new bill requires much more careful consideration and more robust cost-benefit analysis. In particular, analysts must consider how their decision will affect economic growth and the creation of jobs. Some submitters were concerned about the time and expense this sort of work may take for councils, but we made it very clear that the analysis should match the size and the scale of the projects. The Local Government and Environment Committee also amended the legislation to ensure that both the positives and the negatives of the economy in economic growth must be considered.

The bill also provides for a 6-month time limit on consents for medium-sized projects. When you look at consents presently most of them get through in about 9 months, but some take many, many more months—a lot longer. We believe that a quality decision can be produced within those 6 months. The quality means that there is no loss to the environment, but a consistent 6-month timetable will provide significant cost savings, and, again, will help increase job opportunities.

Under this legislation major regional projects will have the option of direct referral to the Environment Court. They may still choose to go through the local government process, but unless they are in exceptional circumstances councils must support their applications to go directly to the Environment Court. This will avoid the time and the costs of duplication of processes. Overall, the changes in Part 1 of the Resource Management Amendment Bill will provide better, new mechanisms to deliver better-quality environmental outcomes in a timely, cost-effective way.

The second bill arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill, the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill, provides a streamlined process for making operational the Auckland Unitary Plan. These changes will mean that the Auckland Council will be able to deliver its plan within 3 years as opposed to up to 10 years, which would have been done under business-as-usual processes. This plan will have a huge significance for Auckland. It is the largest and most complex planning exercise ever undertaken in the country, and is expected to involve over 10,000 submissions, so the Auckland Council requested a new legislative framework. This framework will combine the normal two-tier process of council hearings for consenting and planning with appeals to the Environment Court. It will combine them in a one-step process, but it still allows for all the opportunities for mediation and negotiation. It will deliver good outcomes in a faster and more efficient way. It will be good for Auckland to get its plan in place within the next 3 years.

I would finally like to just comment on the amendments to section 360 of the Resource Management Act in the Resource Management Amendment Bill. This Government is particularly interested in facilitating better environmental reporting. At present regional and local councils do significant environmental testing and monitoring and they collect a lot of environmental information, but there is no consistent framework around that information and how that information should be presented. The amendments in this bill allow for the introduction of regulations. These regulations will be agreed in consultation with the councils and require local authorities to monitor according to specific priorities and methods. This will provide us with the data so that we will be able to deliver much-improved environmental reporting, and I strongly support that.

This legislation is designed to safeguard the environment but provides rules that work better for all New Zealanders. I commend these bills to the House.

I carry on where the Hon Maryan Street left off in, I think, usefully characterising this legislation—the Resource Management Amendment Bill, the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2), and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill—and locating it in an agenda that this National Government has pursued for several years now through a number of different pieces of legislation. It is part of an agenda to undermine and strip away regulations that are designed to both protect the natural environment in this country, and to manage the trade-offs and decisions that we make as a nation and as communities around development processes that guarantee the right of individuals and communities to have a say in development processes. The rationale of this Government for that whole agenda is to promote economic growth—never mind that the Resource Management Act is built on the very notion of sustainability, and never mind that the Resource Management Act recognises that the protection of the natural environment is a higher good that we are all entrusted with for the sake of future generations.

I think Maryan Street was quite right to place this legislation in the context of that very deliberate campaign over the last few years to undermine the environmental bottom lines in the Resource Management Act and to undermine the public’s right to have a say. There are now many, many pieces of legislation that can be characterised in that way. She was right also to point out that the Government’s claims about the processing times of consents under the Resource Management Act by councils, while not perfect, are far from the bogey that National has made them out to be.

I suppose the thing that really irks me about this is that the so-called Business Growth Agenda of this Government is reduced here to trimming away and undermining environmental regulation, supposedly as a way of spurring economic growth—of trading off economic growth against our natural environment. Instead of doing the hard work, instead of adopting policies that would genuinely promote innovation by New Zealand firms and would genuinely encourage and support New Zealand’s firms to export and sell our ideas and our goods and services on global markets, instead of looking at ways that we can add value to an export economy that is so dominated by primary production, instead of looking at ways that we can build a modern manufacturing sector in this country that would reverse the structural imbalance that we have in the economy, instead of seriously and proactively investing in a much more skilled workforce that would raise the productivity that we desperately need, and instead of looking for all those kinds of smart ways that would allow the State to enable high-value economic development—instead of doing those things—this kind of obsessive tinkering with the Resource Management Act and weakening the protections that have been so much a part of the fabric of this country seem to be pretty much all we can expect from the Government these days. I think it is a little depressing that that is what it comes down to.

I want to touch on two specific parts of this legislation: the Auckland Unitary Plan provisions and the tree provisions. I think the Auckland Unitary Plan, in the context of local government and planning in this country, is a very, very significant development. In fact, it is an advance. It has allowed Auckland, for the first time in a generation or more, to have a serious public conversation about the future shape of the city and to tackle some of the problems that are associated with the significant population growth that Auckland continues to experience. The unitary plan and the zone changes—dramatic changes of zoning—right across the region will enable the intensification that Auckland desperately needs.

Unless that intensified urban development takes place, then there are only two other options. One is sprawling endlessly into the countryside, where low-income families and workers are forced into cheap housing on the fringes of the city, where the costs of commuting to work every day are so prohibitive that it drives people into poverty—a completely unsustainable urban development model—or, secondly, urban containment, no intensification, and then astronomical increases in the price of land and the price of housing, which is what we currently see in Auckland. The unitary plan offers a way out of that. It allows Auckland to go up and out and find a new development pattern, and that is extremely significant. Because of that, because it could take up to a decade to bed in the new unitary plan under the current resource management law, and because the challenges—not least in affordable housing—are so acute in Auckland, we support the fast tracking of the unitary plan that is included in this legislation.

But there are two key elements that we again need to put on the record that we are disappointed the Government has not taken up. One is that the Government has refused to allow the Auckland Unitary Plan to have legal weight on notification. The plan will be notified in September, very shortly, and Auckland Council, as well as requesting this fast tracking of the plan, asked that the Government on a one-off basis allow the pre-2009 Resource Management Act rules to apply, which would have meant the plan had legal weight from notification—not to be operative, but simply to have legal weight. This means that the unitary plan would be taken into account by decision makers when making consenting decisions, alongside all of the other plans and statutory considerations. If the Government had just allowed that to happen, the unitary plan, with all its zoning changes and a whole raft of provisions designed to tackle affordable housing, would have taken effect almost immediately. There would have been no need for the ridiculous Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill, which the House will be debating, and all of the armoury in the unitary plan designed to deal with managing Auckland’s growth—bringing in new greenfield land, encouraging intensification—would have taken effect immediately, and Auckland would not have to wait another 3 years and have the National Government holding back its prosperity, its development, its jobs, and its growth when dealing with affordable housing. All of that could have been avoided, and it could have taken effect from September. So that is a real lost opportunity.

Again, I want to put on the record how disappointed we are that the Government has insisted on it having the sole prerogative to appoint the hearings panel that will administer this fast-tracked process for the unitary plan. It is Auckland’s plan. Aucklanders will live with the consequences. Aucklanders pay the bills. Why should the democratically elected Auckland Council not at least share the responsibility for appointing the personnel on that hearings panel?

We have made it very clear that we protest vigorously against this legislation putting handcuffs on councils in terms of their ability to use effective tree protection rules. This is again a deliberate move by the National Government to make the rules so cumbersome, to wrap councils up in red tape, to add costs to ratepayers, and to make the rules so impossible and unwieldy that it will be very difficult for councils like Auckland Council to protect the urban forest in Auckland, to protect the pōhutukawa forest on the east coast of Auckland, and particularly to protect the Waitakere Ranges trees. What this legislation does is make tree protection rules unworkable, and, even though there have been some small improvements, we protest against that. Labour will not be supporting this legislation.

We should not be debating changes to our most important environmental law, the Resource Management Act, under urgency. We should not be having Government members moving premature closure motions to shut down the debate on Part 1 of the Resource Management Reform Bill, given that it makes so many substantive changes to the Act.

The Green Party continues to oppose this legislation, the Resource Management Amendment Bill, the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2), and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. We agree with the Greater Wellington Regional Council when it said in its submission: “The Bill in trying to streamline the process seems to be making things more prescriptive, less accessible to public participation and more costly for councils with no provision for additional funding support.” In this third reading speech on the legislation I would like to comment on two of the proposals in it, clause 69, around cost-benefit analysis, and the changes to state of the environment reporting, because they highlight the anti-environment, anti-regulation ideology and agenda that are at the heart of this legislation.

Section 32 of the Resource Management Act currently requires councils, when they are developing a plan or a policy, and the Minister for the Environment, when she is developing a national policy or a national environmental standard, to consider the benefits and the costs of those rules or regulations and other methods, and the risks of acting or not acting if there is uncertain or insufficient information. This evaluation is to ensure that the proposal is the best way to achieve the desired objective. The Green Party does not oppose these cost-benefit evaluations if they are done under the existing Act, because under the Act as it stands there is no focus on the evaluation being largely an economic evaluation. But the amending legislation, through the changes it makes through clause 69, singles out two economic effects that must be included in this cost-benefit evaluation, and they are the opportunities for economic growth and the opportunities for employment that are anticipated to be either provided or reduced. There is no mention of opportunities for environmental enhancement. As the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said in her submission on the amending legislation: “This does not in itself say that economic effects are to be given more weight than environmental, social, and cultural effects. But the result will be that it will. Simply specifying these two economic effects while failing to specify other effects will unbalance a section 32 evaluation.”

That is what this bill is all about. It is about evaluating short-term economic growth above other Part 2 matters. That is what the whole tranche of changes that the Government is making piece by piece to the Resource Management Act is about. It is about unbalancing the Act so that it becomes law that promotes short-term economic development at nature’s expense, rather than promoting sustainable management. With this legislation and the upcoming legislation, the Resource Management Act will no longer be an Act that safeguards the environment and the needs of future generations. It will be all about economic development now.

What the John Key Government is doing is making the Resource Management Act into a national development Act, much like Sir Robert Muldoon did with the National Development Act at the time. That is because the decision-making criteria in the Resource Management Act are being substantially changed to promote economic growth. They fail to recognise that a healthy economy is based on a healthy environment. The changes increase ministerial powers, they centralise decision making, and they erode local democracy. They will have more decisions being made behind closed doors in the Beehive, rather than in the open around the council table. We see that with decisions like appointing the Auckland hearings panel and with the changes to state of the environment monitoring, where it will be the Minister who tells councils what they have to do in terms of environment monitoring.

These changes to section 32 and the whole cost-benefit analysis around plan making are really important because if a regional council, for example, is considering new plan rules to limit nutrient losses from dairy farming in order to protect water quality, it is going to have to analyse and quantify the economic opportunities and costs of doing this, but it will not have to specifically consider the environmental benefits, such as improving the health of a river and making it safer to swim in. It is much easier to quantify those economic costs and benefits than it is to quantify the benefits of sustaining wildlife, allowing people to go rafting down a river, or ensuring that the river is healthy to swim in. That means there will be much more of a focus on what is easily quantifiable, and much more of a reluctance for councils to introduce rules, because they know that they risk being challenged in the Environment Court if they have not done this economic analysis and if they have not quantified the costs and benefits.

These changes will also impose extra costs on councils. We heard at the Local Government and Environment Committee that it costs councils between $3,000 and $50,000 to do a section 32 evaluation. Because this legislation is making the economic analysis mandatory, it means that that will get first call on council funding, rather than one that evaluates the environment or cultural benefits. If the Minister was genuinely interested in improving practice under the Resource Management Act, she would get her ministry to do some generic analysis of the costs and benefits of subdivision controls and of land-use controls to protect water quality. But the interest is not in doing that; it is all about speeding up short-term decision-making in favour of development interests. It is all about making an easier ride for miners, for irrigators, for agribusiness, for dam builders, and for property developers, and that means undermining the capacity of councils to regulate and have sound rules that protect environmental quality.

I would like to follow up Nicky Wagner’s comments about state of the environment reporting. Certainly, we want consistent measures around doing that, but this legislation is about offloading on to councils the costs of doing state of the environment monitoring, rather than funding a robust and independent process through the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment estimated that it would cost her office about $1.6 million to employ the extra staff to do that. What does the legislation do? It allows the Minister to direct through regulation, which this Parliament will have no opportunity to scrutinise, and for the Minister to say what environmental indicators councils should use and what standards and methods they should use, but it is not about providing the funding for councils to do that. What will that mean? This will be another cost to councils, without central government providing any revenue to do that. So, once again, the Government is beating up on local authorities, but it is not providing them with the revenue to do the job when it shifts extra costs on to them.

We want robust state of the environment monitoring, particularly when the Government is promoting more irrigation, which is likely to reduce water quality. But what the Government is doing is making sure that we will get lesser-quality, less robust, and less independent monitoring, because the Minister is breaching the promises her predecessor made that it would be done by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and that it would be independent. Instead, she will, through this legislation, be telling councils what they have to do, without providing them with the funding that allows them to do that properly. There is a whole lack of robustness there, and councils were quick to point out in their submissions that that will, as the Palmerston North City Council said, “increase the costs associated with monitoring at a time when many councils are struggling to meet their existing monitoring requirements due to resourcing limitations”.

Once again, this legislation is anti-environment and anti-regulation here and with the provisions around urban trees, which will make it so much more cumbersome for councils to protect urban trees by requiring them to legally identify every single tree or group of trees that they want to apply resource consent controls to. That is the thrust of this legislation and of the other legislation that the Government is going to introduce later this year. It is all about short-term economic thinking, not about a smart green economy that recognises that the environment is the basis of that economy.

I rise to support the third reading of the Resource Management Reform Bill, which has been divided into three parts: the Resource Management Amendment Bill, the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2), and, of course, the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. This legislation makes four or five significant changes to what we have grown to know as the Resource Management Act. In fact, I remember a member of the Labour Party saying some 6 or 7 years ago, Marian—oh, what was her surname? Minister—

💬 Hon Member: Hobbs.

That is the one. She said it was a beautifully crafted piece of legislation. She was in love with it, ignoring the fact that it had stopped so much legitimate development in this country. What this bill does is a number of things, as I said. First of all, the direct referral process allows notified resource consent applications to be decided by the Environment Court, bypassing the local council. The reason is that so many of these consents, if not all, that go to the council go through a process that is elongated, painful, and expensive, and ends up in the Environment Court anyway.

The 6-month consenting provision in this bill allows medium-sized projects to fall under a category where the consent needs to be granted within a 6-month period. There are about 1,600 medium-sized projects, on average, throughout New Zealand each year. We are saying that they should be consented within the 6-month process. We have seen projects of national significance done in a 9-month process, and now we are doing a 6-month consenting process here.

Also, we have got the section 32 amendments, where councils have to ensure that the economic consequences of any decision they make are fully examined and reported on. Of course, there are the amendments to do with trees as well, which members from the other side of the House have talked about ad infinitum, as if a tree is the most significant issue on New Zealanders’ minds at this time.

Parts 2 and 3 deal with the Auckland Unitary Plan. This legislation, as I commit to the House in the third reading, does again underpin National’s environmental successes. We have got improved air quality. We have passed effective legislation in the exclusive economic zone, which the previous Government ignored, even though it was backed by the Greens. There was no legislation out in the exclusive economic zone. The Greens never thought of it. We put some legislation and regulation out in the exclusive economic zone and the Greens opposed it, saying it was not good enough—it was not as good as the nil that they did. We passed legislation dealing with climate change, and we are seeing more renewable energy. I commend this legislation to the House. I thank the Hon Amy Adams for all the work she has done with her Cabinet colleagues and for her support. Thank you very much.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to address the reforms of legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. The National Government would have us believe that the current Resource Management Act is the current blockage in the road to economic development and prosperity. The philistines over there on the Government benches would say that the Resource Management Act is a barrier. National says: “Take out the teeth from the Resource Management Act and suddenly all will be transformed. Suddenly there will be economic growth with a surge. Suddenly there will be a new golden age in New Zealand. Suddenly there will be a dawning of a whole new economic growth because the Resource Management Act has been reformed.” As the Tui billboards go: “Yeah, right.”

The bonfire of the Resource Management Act regulations causes serious damage to our environment and massive unintended consequences. It will impose potential costs in the manner of the leaky homes fiasco, which the National Government brought about back in the 1990s. Yes, we did require some efficiency and streamlining processes to be brought about in the Resource Management Act, and everyone would agree that there were areas for fine-tuning. But it did not require complete gutting, as this National Government has moved to do.

This Government does not really want to solve problems. It wants to use problems to pursue its own ideological agenda. It now claims that changing the Resource Management Act is somehow about solving the problems of first-home buyers. What a massive leap of logic. How absurd that it has used the Resource Management Act and says that by gutting the Act, suddenly tens of thousands of new homes will be built, all as a result of taking away the rules around the Act. It is breathtaking. How a bonfire of the regulations is going to translate into more affordable houses is never explained. Only a National Government would have the gall, the temerity, and the sheer effrontery to pull this sort of stunt.

National has not adequately justified this legislation. It is in a world of assertion. It is all claim and spin with nothing to back it up. The facts are there before you in the regulatory impact statement—2 percent of resource consents were notified, and 98 percent of resource consents were not notified. Yet the Government would have New Zealanders believe that a large chunk of resource consents were having to be notified, when only 2 percent were. Of those 2 percent, only 1 percent ended up being appealed and going through to the Environment Court—1 percent. That is such a low percentage. It is hardly something that means that the country is being held to ransom, when such a low percentage is being appealed.

We have also heard that a large percentage was being processed on time. Only 5 percent of resource consents were not actually being processed on time. The vast bulk of those consents were actually being handled by council officers—over 90 percent by council officers—not by commissioners and not by elected representatives. They were being done through the council processes, and 95 percent were being processed on time.

We did have the odd exception, and I will agree that there were some exceptions. It was mentioned by the Minister for the Environment that Pak ’N Save in Wairau Road was one example of the Resource Management Act being used to hold up a supermarket for 17 years. That is true. The two supermarket chains were using the Resource Management Act, vexatious litigation, and trade competition to hold each other out. Basically, it was a situation where for every month that one supermarket chain could hold the other supermarket chain off from building its supermarket, its other five supermarkets in the greater area of about a 7 or 8 kilometre radius were making significant revenues by stopping the competitor from being there.

There happened to be a certain mayor on the North Shore who became the mayor and said “We are going to stop this, and we are going to move on this very quickly.”, and who knocked their heads together and also brought the staff together. Many of the council officers themselves had very fixed positions on this. It basically became a situation of the leadership moving in, talking to all the various parties, sorting it out, and bringing them together. Within 12 to 18 months it was done, and I cut the ribbon to open that supermarket within 2 years of that. So 17 years of grief was brought to a head within 18 months during my mayoralty, simply because we saw fit to use logic, the Resource Management Act was put aside, and we came to a common-sense position and got it sorted out.

We have heard also that as a result of these Resource Management Act reforms there will be many other instances where things will be improved. But what we are seeing here are things such as the trees issue. Again, I can tell you from a North Shore perspective that it prided itself on having very, very good vegetation on the North Shore and a very, very good governance of our trees on the North Shore. The North Shore was seen as being the jewel in the crown of the Auckland area in terms of our tree coverage and our rules around trees and ensuring that the communities were brought into this.

During our Local Government and Environment Committee hearings we heard from many, many groups, a large percentage of which came from the North Shore, who talked about areas like Le Roys Bush in Northcote, the electorate of Jonathan Coleman. Jonathan Coleman will agree with this. There, under our former situation, we ensured that it was not just the bush in the public reserve but all adjoining properties around that in a global sense that were impacted. If somebody started cutting down all the trees bordering on to the public reserve, the public reserve amenity would be greatly reduced as a result. The community accepted that and they all agreed that if you buy a property bordering on to Le Roys Bush, you do not start chopping all the trees down.

Under this legislation, and as a result of this, what the council will have to do is go and Gazette every single property and ensure that every single property bordering Le Roys Bush—and you are talking probably a couple of hundred—will all have to be gazetted, in terms of bordering on to Le Roys Bush. They will all have to go through a process. It will all be council time. It will all be council staff time. It will be very, very time-consuming, and it will be costly. At the end of the day, this Government talks about reducing compliance costs, reducing costs to councils, and reducing costs to local authorities, but there is one example of one reserve on the North Shore of Auckland that will tie up a considerable amount of council staff time in simply gazetting all the properties that border on to Le Roys Bush to ensure that the properties adjoining there continue to be protected. Because what—

💬 Maggie Barry: Money well spent.

—we are seeing in Auckland, and the member for North Shore, Maggie Barry, might realise this, is unscrupulous developers moving in who have no affinity and no connection to the areas. They are a bit like the member for the North Shore, who moved to the North Shore just recently. They come into the areas, buy out properties, and chop down the trees. Somebody who has lived in a property for many years, who has been used to trees on their property or on the border of their property with the adjoining property, suddenly finds a bare, barren section next door. We are seeing it happening increasingly in the last 1 year to 2 years as a result of the National Government. It is a great shame that you will not see Auckland the same in 10 years’ time as it is today.

By contrast, the city of Melbourne is actually increasing its tree coverage from something like 20 percent tree coverage—they actually have a 10 to 15-year target—to go up to something like 60 or 70 percent canopy coverage in the Melbourne area, because of the improvement to the environment and improvement to the climatic conditions as a result. So there in Melbourne they are trying to increase the coverage, but here this Government is impacting on it.

The Resource Management Act has been an Act that has been seen globally—around the world—by many, many other parliaments and many other countries as being a fine example of some of the best legislation in the world in the sense of environmental protection. This National Government is gutting the Resource Management Act. It is taking it down to the lowest possible level that it can get away with. It is doing this so it can help its friends, its mates, its developers—the people with the money. This is another case of the National Government getting in behind the developers, the financiers, and all those with money to develop properties. They will have an easy road as a result of this. This legislation weakens the Resource Management Act, it weakens our democracy, it weakens our local government structure in New Zealand, and it weakens the protection of the environment. New Zealand First does not support this, and it thinks this is a very retrograde step in terms of the history of New Zealand.

I am very happy to rise to speak in the third reading of this legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. I am a little dismayed, as always, at the contributions of some of the members across the House, who use inflammatory language such as “unscrupulous developers”, “rich developers”, and “National’s rich mates”. I find that language a little bit offensive.

💬 Chris Auchinvole: A bit old-fashioned?

It is slightly old-fashioned, and it brings to mind a development just north of Christchurch. It is called Pegasus Town and it is a development just north of Christchurch. It is, in fact, yes, the project of a developer. I would argue not that that developer was unscrupulous or rich, but, in fact, I would argue exactly the opposite. But I would say that that developer is one of a group of companies that are providing housing for people in Christchurch after the earthquake.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No, no. The Todd Corporation took over after he went bust.

Please, over the other side of the House, tell me that that kind of development is bad for New Zealand. Please tell me that the Pegasus Town development, which has happened just north of Christchurch—I do not know how many sections there are, and let us widen it out to some of the developments that are happening around Rolleston, all around Christchurch. These are the so-called rich, the so-called unscrupulous, mates of the National Party who are providing housing for people in Christchurch. So I ask those Christchurch-based MPs who are railing against this Resource Management Act reform to please tell me how that can be bad. These people are taking a punt, providing housing and providing sections and providing the infrastructure for people in—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Oh, a punt in Christchurch—building a house in Christchurch isn’t taking a punt.

I see that the ex-member for Waimakariri, whose name escapes me at the moment, cannot accept the fact that here are some developers doing exactly what is needed in New Zealand—that is, providing housing, providing sections, and providing homes for New Zealanders. So please stand up, I ask the ex-member for Waimakariri. Stand up and give me the rationale behind why that can be a bad thing.

The member for New Zealand First gave us a salutary story—a very self-congratulatory story—about how he managed to fix what was a 13-year impasse—

💬 Andrew Williams: 17-year.

It was a 17-year impasse between two supermarket chains. One was vexatiously preventing the development of the other. He managed to fix it within 18 months, and, in fact, he even cut the ribbon. What a guy—18 months. Well, I have got good news for that member from New Zealand First, the failed mayor from—

💬 Maggie Barry: The clown of Campbells Bay.

—thank you very much—Campbells Bay. I have got good news for that ex-mayor and now New Zealand First list member. This legislation, which is shortly to become the law, and thank goodness for it, is going to cut that consenting time down to 6 months. So that member from Campbells Bay can rest assured. He can rest assured that although he might have toiled away under the previous regime of the Resource Management Act, under this legislation that consenting regime will be cut down to 6 months. So let us hear that member, or somebody else from his party, get up on their feet and say “That’s a good job, Hon Amy Adams. Actually, you’ve done a good job with the Resource Management Act.”, because that is what I believe. Far from the fantasy that is expounded throughout this House that developers are rich and unscrupulous—and I wrote down other notes that I will not bother this House with—this kind of legislation is about getting good decision-making. It is not about affecting the nature of the decision; it is about coming to a good decision in a timely, cost-effective manner. Why? Because we can build houses, and because we can build supermarkets.

I just want to finish my contribution on the other old saw—the old 20th century saw—that the National Party does not care about the environment. I will not go through the environmental gains that this Government has put into effect—oh, more money has been spent on water rehabilitation in the 5 years that we have been the Government than under any other previous Government. I just want to pick out a couple of small examples about how the environment does benefit from development, and they are the Ōpuha dam in South Canterbury and the Waiareka Stream in North Otago. Both of those water catchments have been affected by irrigation development, and guess what? Both have benefited in terms of water quality. This is good legislation. This is a good Government. Amy Adams is a very good Minister for the Environment. I commend this legislation to the House.

I will take a short call on this third reading of the legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. Jacqui Dean, the member who just sat down, has argued that for the sake of economic growth the destruction of the environment is justified. She claimed that there have been houses built and said that for the sake of creating jobs it is OK to put our environment at risk. Yet there is a shortage of houses throughout New Zealand and there are now 153,000 people still unemployed, all under this Government’s watch, so I am not sure whether that member understands what this legislation puts at risk—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Patronising.

No, no, no, it is not patronising, Miss Collins. That is the claim made by that particular member, and I am saying that she is wrong. She is totally wrong.

As my colleague Maryan Street has said, the changes in this legislation, and past and planned legislative changes by this Government, are part of a package by this Government that does four things, in my view: it puts at risk New Zealand’s environment, it destroys the ability of local communities to participate in local democracy, it undermines local government’s ability to function properly and to deliver for its constituents, and it undermines the fact that local government has a critical role to play in local development. It is the Government’s argument that we should be destroying local government and removing local democracy, all for the sake of economic growth. Let us ask it for the proof. Let us ask it for the proof. It has had 5 years in Government, and all we get for the rest of New Zealand is 153,000 unemployed people, low-income people, and people who do not have a house to get into, and it is becoming harder and harder to get into a home. That is the legacy of this particular Government, and if it goes ahead with these changes now and with further changes, it will continue to undermine the ability of New Zealanders and ratepayers to participate in local decision-making.

I say that that has not gone unnoticed by local government. That has not gone unnoticed by councillors and mayors throughout this country. They would have noted—or maybe not, because most local government people sat through the local government conference recently and did not say a word, but they were murmuring behind when the Prime Minister spoke and they were grumbling behind when the Minister of Local Government spoke, because they have had enough of this. They have had enough of the bullying tactics of this Government. They have had enough of the local government Ministers from this Government going about, prancing along, and telling local people that they know best and they know better and therefore they can go ahead. It is just unbelievable that this Government believes that it is doing something good for New Zealand. By the time those members leave office, they will have left this country in a mess. Shame on them.

It is quite difficult to keep awake, actually, after a tedious dissertation like that one. That member Su’a William Sio has not—not to my knowledge, anyway—sat in on any of these reforms. He has not actually sat in on any of the submissions and seems to have a particularly poor grasp of the legislation, which is, let me say out loud, just in case you would benefit from this at the last moment, the Resource Management Act reform legislation in its third reading. When we talk about the track record of Governments, let us look a little bit at what Labour contributed to the Government, propped up by its pals the Greens.

💬 Tracey Martin: You’ve got to speak about the bill. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

This is in those long, dark years—the 9 years in the wilderness. There is a chihuahua yapping somewhere in the Chamber, Mr Assistant Speaker. Is that allowable? Anyway.

In the exclusive economic zone legislation, which is a piece of legislation that we passed late last year, it was very important that that very important piece of water be protected. Under 9 years of Labour and the Greens, what happened? There were 46 mining consents in our precious oceans. Those parties did nothing to protect them. There was not a single regulation and there was not a single protection put down. That is bad enough. That is appalling—46 consents granted. They made it worse, though. They compounded the problem, because they then stood against what we put through. They voted against the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. So not only did they not protect it when they were in a position to but also they stood against the actual protections that this Government put in place. I am very proud of what we did there. It was important.

A lot of stuff and nonsense and mythology has been spun by those on the opposite benches about the Resource Management Act. It is a fabulous piece of legislation, according to “Planet Labour”—22 years old, nothing wrong with it. That is not actually what Sir Geoffrey Palmer said a few weeks ago. He actually agrees with a lot of the things and a lot of the reforms that our Minister for the Environment, Amy Adams, has put through.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Ha, ha!

It would pay to pay attention to this, particularly that member who guffaws up the back, ruddy faced and paying little attention. When we looked at the 234 submissions on the Resource Management Act and listened to 147 of them in Wellington and Auckland, a lot became clear. For example, Statistics New Zealand’s Business Operations Survey maintained that the Act was expensive, that it was time-consuming, and that it was having a significantly bad effect on business performance. The business survey cited the Act specifically, saying that it had led to an uncertainty that in the past 2 years had led to the cancellation of projects potentially worth more than $800 million. The uncertainty had led to the cancellation of about two-thirds of those projects. Another 430 businesses cancelled projects, each worth more than $100,000. Again, they blamed the Act’s processes.

So “lies, damned lies, and statistics” were quoted by the member with her head down over there, Maryan Street, a little bit earlier in the evening. She very selectively looked at the statistics. She did not consider the lost opportunities and the people who were defeated by the Act. Some businesses—can you believe it; it almost does beggar belief—have spent up to 25 percent, a quarter, of their total expenditure, just on applying for resource consents. The lost opportunity costs of the Act are truly appalling. To dispel some of that nonsense and mythology that we have been hearing, I say that more than half of the resource consent applications are cancelled in the pre-application stage due to uncertainty and time delays. These are the sorts of problems that we were being confronted with as a nation, so we addressed them. We looked at them and we did something about them. Perhaps the most damning thing of all is that only 3 percent of the businesses surveyed said that the current Act enhanced their businesses. The others pointed to it as a roadblock and a problem that caused delays. That is something that needs to be addressed.

In 2007 there was an example that estimated that for a $10 million project, the cost of the delay per day was $2,200, which, if you extrapolate that over 3 months—I know you are not too crash hot at the maths over there, but bear with me—means an additional $140,000. If that delay extended out into 9 months, which is about the average time of delays around consents, those costs blew out to nearly $600,000. So who is the winner there?

There is not time to go into the issue of the Environment Court. People say it has been diminished; it continues to have a very important role in interpreting and applying policy and safeguarding the rigour of planning and consenting processes and the quality of incomes. What it does not need to do is determine values or policy, which is the role of communities and their elected representatives—namely, the council and the Government. I commend these bills to the House wholeheartedly.

I understand that the next call is a split call. The Hon Ruth Dyson, 5 minutes.

That is correct. It is very hard, after you hear that member, Maggie Barry, to think why on earth she would be so poorly liked not only within her own caucus but within her own party and in her own electorate. Let me give myself a minute to figure out why that might be. It does not take long. I love watching the faces of her colleagues as she makes a contribution to the House. They all start wincing and whingeing.

I am very pleased to speak to the third reading of the Resource Management Amendment Bill, the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2), and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill to make sure that it is on the record that not only I personally but also the Labour Party opposes this legislation. My colleague the Hon Maryan Street quite correctly pointed out that these bills are not one-off amendments to do anything that the members opposite purport them to do, but, actually, they are part of a series of measures to undermine the principles of the Resource Management Act. The reason that the Resource Management Act was developed over both National and Labour Governments was actually to move from a centralised planning perspective to an effects-based piece of legislation. Around the world, that process is envied. It has done New Zealand very well.

I also want to put on record that this process is not perfect and that where councils are underperforming, they should be called to account and given proper support to improve their processes. This should not be about delaying; this should be about have a regime that looks at the effects of a proposal and ensures that the founding principle of that consideration is the protection of the environment. It should have at its heart consideration of the rights of our citizens to have a say in what is happening in their communities, their cities, and their regions, and, indeed, in our country. So ensuring that we have environmental protection and the voice of our community is critical to the success of this process. This legislation weakens both of those provisions.

My colleague Su’a William Sio also mentioned two other important provisions. They are to support, rather than tie up, local authorities, and give them the respect and the recognition that they deserve to get on and do their mandated work as efficiently as possible. This legislation pushes aside our democratically elected councillors’ rights to carry out those functions. It is just another reduction in our respect for local authorities. It also fails to recognise, and, in fact, works in the opposite direction of, central government recognising the role in local development of a local authority. So there is no logical rationale to these pieces of legislation. They are some of the more ideological pieces of legislation that we have seen in this House for some time.

A strong advocate for the environment and, indeed, often a strong advocate for the National Party, Guy Salmon, said on national television that this process of reforming the Resource Management Act was the first time we had had a Minister for the Environment in New Zealand, since the very first Minister for the Environment, who moved away from protecting the standards for the environment, and reduced protection and standards for the environment. I do not think that Guy Salmon will be promoting, let alone voting for, National next year.

This is a sad time for this House. This is legislation that is not supported in the way that it should be and in the way that the Resource Management Act was originally developed for, across both National and Labour—it was before other parties were in Parliament. I regret that it looks like it will be progressed through this House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Greens will be opposing this legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. It is ironic that it is seeing its passage through the House at this time. It is ironic because it may have escaped the notice of some members’ attention, but we are in the throes of local government elections at the moment. Up in Auckland they will be electing councillors, local board members, and a mayor—probably the mayor whom the National Government does not want, again.

Why should we bother? Why should we bother with local government elections when we have got bills like these coming through the House and legislation like this? Why bother with the democratic rights of people to be involved in developments in their areas and their neighbourhoods? Why should we bother? Why bother when we have got a Government that will determine the make-up of the hearings panel that will hear the Auckland Unitary Plan? Why should we bother with local government at all? Why should we bother when the hearings panel can, if it likes, make recommendations around the Auckland Unitary Plan—the one plan for Auckland—that are completely outside the scope of what the submissions have been? Why should we bother with local government? Why should we bother when it is not being listened to by this Government and when we have a Government that actually insists that we do not include our communities in shaping the future of our cities? The example here is Auckland again, where the Auckland Spatial Plan, the 30-year plan, which communities across the city worked on, is not given the same legal weight, or any legal weight. It will simply be given a bit of regard when it comes to the unitary plan.

We have real concerns that this legislation undermines local participation, not just in these examples that I have just specified but also when it comes to the referral of medium-sized applications straight to the Environment Court. We note that in the legislation there is no clear definition of what a medium-sized development is, and there is no real definition of what the threshold is that has to be maintained before it gets fast tracked to the Environment Court. But we note that when that happens, communities are locked out of the process. We have already heard from other speakers about how the Resource Management Act is currently working, in terms of consents. We have heard about the numbers that are notified, and there are very few. We have also heard about the numbers that are actually granted, which are more than 90 percent.

This legislation is a solution looking for a problem, in most cases. I agree with some of the former speakers that this is about ideology. It is already possible under the current law, under the current Resource Management Act, to go directly to the Environment Court without a council hearing the submitters or hearing from the local community. We see this time and time again. In my local community, we have currently had our Auckland Council refer a consent for a marina right through to the Environment Court, without it being heard in the local area, despite the fact that it was originally notified, despite the fact that there were over 500 submissions, and despite the fact that it goes against all sorts of democracy to send it straight to the Environment Court when our local people want to have a say. The Resource Management Act is already working in favour of developers.

What about Māori in all this? Where do Māori sit when there is a direct referral? We know that under the existing Act Māori are entitled to be consulted on any type of consent that comes through. What we do not know with this legislation, because it is silent, is what happens to iwi in that consultation. What happens when a consent is fast tracked when the time has been restricted? We already know that some iwi frequently lack capacity to participate fully, and that the time constraints that are already placed on them by councils can be debilitating. This Government clearly does not care about that. I do note that it is consulting further on freshwater management with iwi, and that is the next round of legislation that will be coming through.

We will be opposing this legislation. We see that it does more harm than good. It does nothing to assist our damaged reputation.

It does grieve me to hear that the Greens are not supporting the legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. We have heard a lot of overblown rhetoric in this debate that this legislation is anti-regulations and anti-environment. This is a Government that has done plenty for the environment over the last 4 or 5 years—more than has been done in a very long time. We passed the exclusive economic zone bill. We have actually done something about that area, which is so important to the country. We are working hard on the Land and Water Forum, and we have much to be proud of. I do not have any time for Opposition members who represent very small parties and have contributed not much to this country over the last 15 years saying that this Government is not one that cares about the environment.

The Resource Management Act is not just about the environment; it is also a critical piece of planning legislation. It is important and it has a huge influence on the development and growth of the economy. Is it not obvious to the people on the other side of the House that countries with the best environment tend to be the wealthiest countries in the world? The best way to look after the environment is to do well as a country, and that is why it is so important that we get this Resource Management Act working well and effectively for businesses in this country.

Section 32 of the Act is about proper analysis of costs and benefits. Why on earth would we not want to do that? Why on earth would we not want to make sure, before we pass regulations, that they are going to be effective and cost-effective? We also talk about trees in this legislation. Let the sunshine in. We cannot have people living without ever seeing the sunlight in their houses every day. This piece of legislation is practical, sensible, and it strikes a decent balance. The people of Christchurch have not had blanketing legislation, and, as far as I am aware, that is quite a pretty city. There is no reason why we need to be living in the shade, and people should be able to make their own decisions.

Finally, this bill brings in a sensible way forward for the Auckland Unitary Plan. I do hope the Auckland Council comes up with a good unitary plan, but it is important that we have independent hearing commissioners, and this legislation ensures that that happens. On that basis, I commend it to the House. I am sure it will make a great difference to this country, building a brighter future. Thank you.