Resource Legislation Amendment Bill

I move, That the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. The Government’s intention is that this bill, which makes over 40 changes to six different Acts, be subject to wide public submissions and a full select committee process to ensure that we get the details right. This bill is about reducing the bureaucracy that gets in the way of creating jobs, of building homes, and of good environmental management. It provides for greater national consistency, more responsive planning, and simplified consenting, and it better aligns the Resource Management Act with other laws.

I wish to give this bill some context. The Resource Management Act is New Zealand’s most important environmental and planning law, and it matters a great deal to both our economy and our environment that it works well. There are only a few diehard greens who will not acknowledge that this Act needs reform. The OECD in its report last year highlighted the problems with its very high administrative costs compared with other countries. Through the report of Local Government New Zealand earlier this year, councils noted that of all of the areas of their work this is the area where there is the greatest public dissatisfaction. The Productivity Commission’s substantive report on housing affordability identified it as the root cause of our housing problems. Business New Zealand has identified it as its No. 1 priority for reform in terms of job creation. Most recently the Rules Reduction Taskforce identified it as the No. 1 concern of homeowner complaints.

I have been around resource and environmental lawmaking long enough to know that there are no silver bullets. There is always going to be some degree of tension between people being able to get on and use their own property and the wider public interest in ensuring that environmental issues are properly managed. However, I am also of the view that we can make substantial improvements.

National set out on a two-phase reform programme when we were first elected in 2008. Our first reform bill set up the Environmental Protection Authority and a far better process for dealing with big infrastructure projects. We would not have the Waterview Connection motorway and tunnel in Auckland, which is half finished now. We would not have the consents for the 600 megawatt geothermal power station in Taupō. There would not now be work beginning on Transmission Gully. There would not be the new Christchurch motorway being constructed if it were not for those changes that our Government made in 2009.

The first phase reform was also successful in stopping trade competition objections and appeals that gave the Resource Management Act a bad name. We have, thankfully, consigned the supermarket circus to this country’s history books. We introduced provisions that penalised councils when consents were processed late, and we have seen those numbers drop from 14,000 in 2008 to fewer than 1,000 last year. The second phase reform was always going to be more complex, and I want to acknowledge the work of the three technical advisory groups that helped pull together the proposals. I want to put on record my thanks for the hard yards that were done by present justice Minister, Amy Adams.

The first big change in this bill is the introduction of national planning templates. I highlighted at the beginning of this year the 10-metre high stack of Resource Management Act plans, amounting to over 80,000 pages of objectives, policies, and rules. We have each of our 86 councils reinventing the wheel, and that is just not efficient for a country of 4½ million people. We have over 50 definitions of how to measure the height of a building. There are dozens of different descriptions of what you are allowed to do in a commercial area. The answer is standard planning templates, as proposed in this bill.

The second big change is reforming how councils write plans. The current process is too cumbersome, too rigid, and too slow. This Parliament keeps having to pass special legislation to get around this problem, such as in respect of the previous Government’s challenges over the Waitaki River or our own challenges around Auckland housing. The average time it takes, under the current Resource Management Act, to make a plan change is 6 years, and this is just not responsive enough to deal with the environmental and resource challenges that we regularly face. This bill speeds up the plan-making process and makes it more flexible. It introduces collaborative planning where there are conflicting interests that are incentivised to work together on a way forward—a proposal that was sensibly developed by the Land and Water Forum. It also introduces an alternative streamlined planning process that can be adapted to the specifics of a local issue.

The third batch of changes in this bill is around making consenting less bureaucratic. It gives councils the discretion to waive the need for consents on minor issues. It introduces a new fast-track consent for simple issues, which is required to be done in 10 days. Councils will be required to have fixed fees for standard consents. Consents will not be required where an activity has already been approved under another Act. This bill will reduce the number of consents required each year by thousands.

This is a blue-green bill that will deliver environmental as well as economic gains. It enables us to pass national regulations to ensure stock like dairy cows are fenced out of rivers, lakes, and wetlands. It requires decommissioning plans to be required for offshore oil and gas rigs. It introduces into section 6 a requirement to manage natural hazards—a recommendation that came from the royal commission on the earthquakes in Christchurch. It would also help ensure we properly address the issue of sea level rise from climate change.

This bill is an important part of the solution to the long-term problems over housing supply and affordability. The new bill requires councils to properly manage for population growth. It reverses the presumption of subdivision. It limits appeals on consents for housing infrastructure. It removes the double up of charging regimes between development contributions under the Local Government Act and financial contributions under the Resource Management Act.

There are also important changes in the bill to the Conservation Act, the Public Works Act, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act, the Environmental Protection Authority Act, and the Reserves Act that will also help achieve our goal of less bureaucracy and better economic and environmental outcomes. The bill also contains significant cost-saving measures from the use of new web technology. This will reduce those boring long ads that you read all the time in the paper about the Resource Management Act by having a crisper description and having the information available on the web. It allows for the electronic serving of documents. It also contains improvements to the Environment Court that encourage early dispute resolution.

I want to acknowledge the support of the Māori Party and their advocacy around iwi participation arrangements. The arrangements were included in the proposals put forward in 2011 and have been refined. They will work better for iwi by focusing in on the issues that are important to them, but also preventing the bureaucracy of them being involved in a huge number of consents, which just adds time and costs. Can I also welcome the support of Labour members opposite. I look forward to a genuine process of engagement and dialogue, so we can ensure that this reform delivers a Resource Management Act that works better for New Zealand. I commend the first reading of the bill to the House.

There are lots of areas of policy that show that National is increasingly out of touch with the values of New Zealanders. I think that National’s now failed attempt to undermine the fundamental principles of Part 2 of the Resource Management Act is another of them. National has once again been on the side of a small minority that would have personally profited by doing what they wanted to do, at the expense of decent environmental baselines, with disregard to what are appropriate environmental safeguards, at the cost of other New Zealanders who would bear those economic consequences.

At a time when New Zealand has declining freshwater quality National’s answer was, for years, to lower the environmental tests in Part 2 of the Resource Management Act. It has been pushed off that. For 10 years National has said that New Zealand’s economic performance has been substantially—not just in a little way, but substantially—undermined by the fundamental principles of the Resource Management Act that it has wanted to change.

Yet National has failed to convince New Zealanders that that was right, and after 7 years of its excuses it has been forced to concede—because the weight of public opinion and parliamentary opinion has been against it—that that was never true. The Resource Management Act has not been the substantial cause of New Zealand’s economic performance in the last 7 years. The fact that on a per person basis the size of the New Zealand economy is shrinking is not the fault of the Resource Management Act. Economic negative growth per capita has not been caused by the Resource Management Act; it has been caused by National’s lacklustre economic performance. The Resource Management Act has been used as a whipping boy by National and ACT for years.

💬 David Seymour: By the OECD and the Productivity Commission.

At the time of the last election, I said that if we were elected, we would give Remuera and the Epsom electorate a Resource Management Act - free zone. We would give them a carve-out of the provisions of the Resource Management Act. Watch them come to us when we put all the prisons, all the tanneries, all the multi-storey buildings between the residents of the ACT electorate and their superyachts in the harbour and see them complain and call for the restoration of the Resource Management Act.

Nowhere is National’s rhetoric made more clear than in respect of housing. The housing crisis in Auckland is severe; not enough homes are being built. The demand side factors and the supply side factors are complex, and they do include land supply, as the Labour Party has long said, but land supply alone will not fix the housing problems in Auckland, and blaming the Resource Management Act unduly for the problems there is wrong. It is not just Labour that is saying this; it is actually the fact that National has not been able to get a parliamentary majority. I want to thank every member of this Parliament who has stopped National gutting the Resource Management Act.

I want to thank the Māori Party. The two recent things that the Māori Party has managed to knock out of this bill include the over-interpretation of property rights, which was proposed and the Māori Party managed to knock it out. The other ridiculous thing that was, until recently, still being proposed was private consenting authorities, notwithstanding the absolute debacle of National’s pushing upon the country private building consent authorities, which was one of the causes of the leaky building crisis and the injustices of people who could not get a remedy after those building consent authorities that were private went bung and disappeared. National was going to do the same thing in respect of resource consenting. The Māori Party’s advocacy got rid of that—thank you to the Māori Party.

Peter Dunne has been very principled in all of this. He knows the importance of Part 2 of the Act. He was one of those who was in Parliament when the Resource Management Act was introduced, and I want to pay credit to him. The Greens and New Zealand First have also been opposing these changes. The truth of this is that on a voting basis National has got 61 votes against them in a House of 120: 32 votes of those are Labour, 14 of them are the Greens, 12 of them are New Zealand First, two of them are the Māori Party, and one is United Future. This Parliament is arrayed against National, and despite its having the advantages of power and the pressure that it can bring upon parties, it has not succeeded in bringing the fatally flawed bill that it wanted to bring to this House.

The New Zealand Herald in the weekend said this: “Dashed RMA reforms show NZ’s priority”. I will read some quotes from this. “This Government’s longest and most ambitious legislative battle ended this week in defeat.” And yet we had Nick Smith just claiming victory. “The saga ended on Thursday when Environment Minister Nick Smith introduced a bill that will make very little difference to the operation of the act.”—victory, Dr Smith. “But the bill’s real significance is that it represents a landmark victory for the environment over the economy.” There is an environmental baseline that ought not to be breached. I agree with that World Bank economist Herman Daly. At one level the economy is a subset of the environment. You have to protect the environment in order to protect the long-term viability of your economy and have a nice place to live.

There are some aspects of this bill that we welcome. That is why we are voting for it. We have long called for standardisation of some provisions. I agree that a standard format for plans will make them all easier to follow because we will all know how they are all set out and there is no problem with that being standard. They can have different rules even if they are set out in a standard way, and that is just sensible. I agree that some definitions ought to be standardised. We might have different rules as to what is the maximum height above ground level in different plans, but we should all be able to agree that we measure ground level in the same way. Things like that should be standard. We do need more national policy statements.

You know, it has been clear for a long time that we have got a problem with affordable housing. How do you fix that? One of the ways is through a national policy statement on affordable housing. The Labour Party has been advocating that for 3 years. We have been offering to the Government that we will cooperate with it in that regard, but it will not take up that offer. These do work. Look at what happened when we had a national policy statement on renewable energy, which I had a hand in. Since then, we have had more than enough renewables consented. We have actually met society’s need to bring forward more renewables. We have. Renewables had dropped to 57 percent; they are now up to 80 percent. One of the blocks to that being achieved was that it was too hard to consent renewable electricity projects, so we made it easier through using a national policy statement under the Resource Management Act to bring forward renewables.

There are some aspects that I will be wanting to debate very carefully at the select committee, and I look forward to this—I hope—intelligent debate that we have across parties, because the Government cannot do this on its own. It actually needs cross-party collaboration. I want to name some of them. Some of the changes that have been made so far in the name of speed have actually had the opposite effect. The Environmental Protection Authority has been a hopelessly expensive cause of more complexity and delay. We have even had complaints to the Regulations Review Committee because the authority’s hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bills to applicants have been so high that people have ended up before it. It has not caused speed, and it has actually just created multi-track alternatives that have added complexity to the Act. I think we should look at that. The Government might not be willing to change it.

In terms of the exclusive economic zone part of this, the Government’s major mistake here is that it should have just applied the Resource Management Act to the exclusive economic zone area. It needed a different consent authority, but the same rules would have done. In terms of collaborative processes, I want to give members one final anecdote. I ran collaborative processes leading to emissions trading scheme for emissions pricing. I excluded the worst critics. I left out Don Elder from Solid Energy, and the then head of Genesis Energy, an Australian who was rather unhelpful as well. I stacked that body. I actually got to an outcome through that stacked body that led to emissions pricing, which was a good thing for New Zealand.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, you didn’t.

I actually did.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, you didn’t.

I am sorry, Dr Smith; you do not realise, but we actually legislated for an emissions trading scheme that—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: You didn’t implement it.

We did so—you negated some of it. Look, I am not going to have that puerile debate. I stacked that board in a collaborative process just as any Minister can stack a board going the other way. Collaborative processes without appeal rights can be abused by Governments—

I am sorry, but the member’s time has expired. A 5-minute call, Hon Te Ururoa Flavell.

Ka nui te mihi ki a koe, otirā, ki a tātou katoa. He tīmatanga kōrero māku me pēnei rawa te kōrero: “Ko Rangi, ko Papa ka puta, ko Rongo, ko Tāne Mahuta, ko Tangaroa, ko Tūmatauenga, ko Haumia-Tiketike, ko Tawhirimātea. I tokona te Rangi ki runga, ko Papatūānuku ki raro, ka puta te ira tangata ki te whai ao, ki te ao mārama. Ko ia rā e Rongo whakairia ki runga, tūturu whiti whakamaua kia tīna, tīna, hui e, tāiki e!”

[I appreciate you greatly, Mr Deputy Speaker, and all of us at the same time. Let me begin my address in this manner: “Rangi and Papa consorted with each other and Rongo, Tangaroa, Tūmatauenga, Haumia-Tiketike, and Tawhirimātea were born. When Rangi was separated to remain above and Papa below, the human element emerged into the world of light and understanding. Therefore suspend it in the heavens above, Rongo, so that it remains fixed there permanently; oh yes, securely!”]

I recited a very brief karakia—some might say a whakapapa, and some might say just an ordinary kōrero, but I think that kōrero actually sets out the relationship that Māori have with our environment. You would understand too, being a member who has been here for a long time, that kaitiakitanga is a kaupapa, one of the founding kaupapa, of the Māori Party—protecting the environment and giving legislative effect to the important cultural and spiritual relationship that our people have with the environment. It has been one of the key focus areas that we have worked on in Parliament since I have been here and indeed since the Māori Party has been here. In giving effect to kaitiakitanga we promote sustainable development of the natural resource with the protection and restoration and enhancement of our environment.

When the National Government announced its intention to fundamentally rewrite the Resource Management Act in favour of economic development in 2013 our position was pretty clear. The Māori Party, along with United Future, would not support such a fundamental change that would weaken the core environmental principles and purposes of the Act. Sections 6 and 7 in Part 2 of the Act affirm the national importance of preserving our natural environment, including: “the relationship of Māori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga.” So on that basis the Government’s proposed Resource Management Act reforms were effectively stalled for 2 years.

Earlier this year the National Party released a broad outline of its proposed Resource Management Act reforms and signalled its desire to achieve a broad political consensus. We signalled that we would be happy to support procedural changes that reduce unnecessary bureaucracy. We share the general concerns of most New Zealanders, which is to increase the supply of affordable houses for all whānau. We also recognise that some of the proposed changes around streamlining the consent process and creating national templates will save time and money for homeowners.

So for the last 9 months we have had discussions with the National Party in good faith to reach a compromise position. We have sought advice from independent practitioners and the iwi leaders technical advisory group, and I would like to acknowledge the immense value of working with the iwi leaders group and independent practitioners at the pre-bill stage. Their input has been critical to securing our political support. The working groups have worked their way carefully through the 180 pages of the resource management legislation, and the almost 700 pages of the current Resource Management Act. They have identified some key areas for change, and others are for further negotiation.

All this background leads the Māori Party to support the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. Our major aim has been achieved, and that is to retain sections 6 and 7 with some small amendments. Can I acknowledge the Hon Dr Nick Smith for working with us to achieve a positive outcome to this point in time. But it is not all over yet. We have contributed new provisions to the Resource Management Act including a requirement for all local councils around the country to better engage with iwi. As mana whenua and kaitiaki of natural resources in their rohe, iwi and hapū have a vital role to play in keeping the balance between the protection and development of the local environment. We realise that some councils are well advanced in their relationship with mana whenua, but there are many others that are not. The new provisions proposed in the Act will not override existing mechanisms for iwi participation outlined in Treaty settlements or override iwi management plans. The new provisions will have iwi involved at the front end of local council planning rather than responding at the end.

To be clear, we do not support every single provision of the bill as it stands. However, we are satisfied with the point that we have reached with our negotiations with the National Party and, indeed, with the Hon Nick Smith, and the commitment made by the National Party to address these concerns as we work through the select committee process. We will be supporting the bill that far, and we look forward, as Mr Parker mentioned, to having good debate where all parties can contribute and look forward to seeing how it goes into the future for this bill. My colleague Marama Fox will, I think, outline further the things that the Māori Party has contributed in framing up this piece of legislation. Ka nui te mihi.

David Seymour—a 5-minute call.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill, but I start by commending the honourable Minister, Nick Smith, for bringing a Resource Management Act reform bill to the House. Resource Management Act reform is, in my view, the No. 1 regulatory priority for this country, and do not just take my word for it. As the Minister said, it is also the view of the OECD, the Productivity Commission, Business New Zealand, The New Zealand Initiative, Federated Farmers, and so the list of stakeholders who have observed this issue goes on.

Resource Management Act reform is important to New Zealanders, and one reason is housing. In the 1960s and 1970s New Zealand built eight to 13 residences per 1,000 head of population. This century, the period of the Resource Management Act, that number is 5.3 residences per 1,000 of population. That housing shortage has been directly sheeted home to the land-use planning environment—not just in New Zealand, but around the world; that is what the international evidence tells us. The shortage of housing has led to a price bubble that now imperils not only equality and equity for New Zealanders, but also the stability of our financial system. And if you doubt that, do not ask me, ask the Reserve Bank Governor.

Sadly, this bill is completely disproportionate to the challenge facing New Zealand and the level of Resource Management Act reform that is actually required to get the outcomes that the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders want. It is not reform; it is tinkering. It fails to stop the culture where councils produce, as the Minister mentioned, 10-metre high stacks of rules and plans for our communities. The fundamental problem, and the reason that we get those high piles, is not because we lack a template or we lack enough electronic processing—although, of course, any Government should be doing those things. The fundamental problem is the principles section: the underlying assumptions of the Resource Management Act, which say that there have to be 18 different principles—such as the intrinsic value of ecosystems, which nobody can properly define—considered in every single plan.

And if you cannot define what you want to have in the plan, then it does not matter whether it is the central government setting the template or local councils writing the plan—you still have a planning ethos that puts more value in the ideology of the planning profession and third-party objectors than in the actual owner of the property. Among those principles, property rights do not appear once. That is something that the Hon Amy Adams wanted to put in Resource Management Act reform and, sadly, it has not been able to be included in this bill. Even the idea of competitive consenting, which would have been an enormous incentive to improve the quality and speed of consenting, could not be included in this bill, although that would be a very good improvement. I hope to come back for future readings and be able to vote for some of those characteristics in this bill.

But not only does the bill at present not solve the fundamental problems, it adds new ones. An ambiguous requirement to accommodate natural hazards will add yet another layer of complexity in the plans and the consenting processes that property owners and businesses in New Zealand face when they try to do things with their own property. The new requirement to universally consult with iwi adds another third party that must be consulted when developing one’s own property. This, again, is not progress towards people being able to use their property efficiently; it is actually another step backwards. And yet we always say this is a trade-off between the economy and the environment. It is not. Most of the red tape, most of the principles, and most of the conditions that I resent and would like to reform in this Act are not actually environmental. Most of them are about nebulous principles that have nothing to do with the science of the air, water, and soil purity; of biodiversity; and of the noise and disturbance to people by their neighbours.

We want a country in which our productivity growth puts us in the 10 wealthiest countries in the OECD. We want a country where housing is affordable for all New Zealanders, rather than a major threat to our financial stability. If an outside observer was to look at this country, they would say: “They must do better at land-use planning.” In particular, for some of the poorest people in this country who are Māori and who also have the least access to housing—and is it not a shame to see how the Māori Party has held up this legislation? It is very clear to the people of New Zealand who want substantial Resource Management Act reform in the next Government who they have to vote for. On behalf of the ACT Party, I oppose this bill in the hope that in future we will have something better and more substantial to vote for, for all New Zealanders. Thank you.

I am going to look back, I think, fondly on the career of the Hon Nick Smith in a couple of years’ time when he is languishing as an Opposition backbencher, fondly remembering the halcyon days when he was the building and construction Minister. The image that I will have in my mind when I think back on Nick Smith’s career is him giving a press conference with a 10-metre high pile of council planning documents teetering, and about to collapse on his head. That image, that photo stunt, which is so characteristic of the Hon Nick Smith and his political career, is the high-water mark of the National Party’s grand ambitions to reform the Resource Management Act.

This bill is a ministerial white flag. This bill is an abject surrender after a decade of blaming the Resource Management Act for every economic ill, every setback, and every disappointment. Nick Smith has been blaming the Resource Management Act for the Auckland housing crisis. That is what Nick Smith has been doing: for the last 10 years, Nick Smith has been blaming expensive housing on the Resource Management Act.

As David Parker said, we are going to vote for this bill. We are going to vote for it because, like so many of the bills that the National Government brings to this House, particularly in the housing area, it is a small, incremental measure that may bring some positive change. It is basically a 180-page collection of fairly incremental process improvements, and we will talk some more in this debate and in subsequent debates about the detail of those improvements. But it is important for people to understand the backstory to this bill.

My colleague David Parker quoted the New Zealand Herald editorial that outlined the great political journey that the National Party has been on for the last decade around trying to weaken and gut the critical environmental principles in section 6 and 7 of the Resource Management Act and how it has been singularly unable to get the support of the country or this Parliament for ripping the guts out of the environmental protections of the Resource Management Act.

What National has done with this bill is bring something that does not—and this is the good news—weaken the fundamental environmental protections in the Act, but what it also does not do is it does not tackle the important Resource Management Act and planning rule blockages to urban development and affordable housing in this country that desperately need to be addressed. So it does not achieve the National Party’s cherished goal of weakening the environmental principles, but it also does not do anything to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis, and I want to talk more about that. It may be worthwhile, and it may be a positive thing to improve the speed and efficiency of consenting, but it is not a root cause of the Auckland housing crisis. If it was, Nick Smith’s policy of the special housing areas might have been hoped to have had some effect, because they are nothing but small, little, mini fast-track consenting zones. But as we have discussed many times in this House, the special housing areas are not making a blind bit of difference to the housing crisis, and have resulted in only 500 houses being built in 2 whole years. So it is clear to everybody that the speed of consenting has nothing to do with the housing crisis.

We are voting for the bill because it might be a good thing. No one is going to complain if consenting is more efficient and if it is cheaper. That will be a good thing, and we will test that out. We will test out in select committee whether the provisions in this bill will actually achieve that stated goal. But let us talk about what has actually been going on here. The National Party has been blaming the Resource Management Act for the housing crisis, trying to use Resource Management Act reform as some kind of Trojan Horse: a cover for weakening the fundamental environmental protections in the bill. Meanwhile, over 7 years in Government, National has done nothing to address the aspects of planning rules and local government’s regulation of urban development that are among the root causes of the housing crisis.

If the Government was serious about reform in this area it would, instead of the kind of tinkering that David Seymour used to characterise this bill—and I would say it is tinkering on an industrial scale—

💬 Hon David Parker: Oh!

Ha! Yes. What the Government would be doing right now is actually tackling the planning rules that are a root cause of the housing crisis. I want to talk about those too, because they are what is missing here. They are what should be in this bill.

I think that most sensible people will acknowledge that one of the root causes of the housing crisis in Auckland has been the planning rules that both stop the city growing out and stop the city growing up. It is very clear that the urban growth boundary in Auckland has had the effect of creating an artificial scarcity of land that sees section prices being 10 times the value inside the urban boundary as land on the outside of the urban boundary. That has driven section prices up, it has set off a chain reaction creating massive business opportunities for land bankers and speculators, and it is the reason that the high cost of land in Auckland today is one of the main reasons that builders will not build affordable houses—not in Dr Smith’s special housing areas, and, in fact, nowhere in Auckland, because the land is too expensive.

We cannot ignore also the plethora of planning restrictions that stop builders and developers building up. The restrictions on height and density—[Interruption] That is right. It stops people building affordable housing, and the kinds of housing that people want in places where they want to live, and that is in the city, and in suburban and town centres. The combination of those two planning rules has created a pressure cooker in Auckland. The only outlet for that pressure cooker has been the exponential increases in house prices that saw the average house price in Auckland City reach $918,000 only a couple of weeks ago.

💬 Hon David Parker: Further fuelled by speculators.

Absolutely. It is a magnet for property speculators and land bankers—something this Government refuses to do anything about. Those are the planning rules that are at the root of the housing crisis in Auckland. This bill does nothing about tackling them. It is an exercise in avoidance.

I want to read a quote from Jason Krupp of the New Zealand Initiative, who wrote a very good post the other day on the website interest.co.nz. Dr Smith, this is really good. You should listen to this because I think you will find it very informative. Jason Krupp wrote: “The last 7 years have been characterised by weak piecemeal workarounds, special housing areas, for example, while meaningful reform of urban development policy has been trapped in the Minister’s quixotic quest to reform sections 6 and 7 of the Resource Management Act. In the time it has taken to draft and shelve two versions of the RMA, a workable urban national policy statement could have been drawn up and implemented immediately”—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: You had 9 years—9 years.

There is more Dr Smith: “If Minister Smith is not willing to consider new ideas, at least there are others in the political process”—I think he is talking about the Labour spokesperson—“who recognise that if the tools you have at hand have not solved your problem by now, it is time to consider new tools.”

A national policy statement under the Resource Management Act that the Labour Party has been advocating for for the last 3½ years would fix these problems.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: You did none. You had 9 years.

That Minister has done nothing in 7 years to tackle the root causes of the housing crisis. Two years ago he came to this House and said: “You cannot do a national policy statement on urban development without changing sections 5 and 6.” How he has been proved to be wrong, because now he has scuttled away to his officials to get them to start drafting an urban policy statement. He has wasted 7 years blaming the Resource Management Act for the housing crisis. He brings this bill of modest process improvements to the House, and still he does nothing to address the root causes of the housing crisis.

It is a pleasure, as chairman of the Local Government and Environment Committee, to stand and speak in this first reading debate of this Resource Legislation Amendment Bill in the name of the environment Minister, Dr Nick Smith. But I cannot let it pass without comment, by way of introductory comments, having listened to Phil Twyford in his speech spend most of his 10 minutes railing against the Resource Management Act in its existing form as not being the root cause of many of the ailments that prevent housing growth and efficient and cost-effective development in New Zealand, when only last week—only last week—in a press release dated 26 November he said: “The way Councils regulate housing and urban development under the RMA is a root cause of New Zealand’s expensive housing.” He has forgotten that in less than a week—forgotten that in less than a week.

Back in 1991 when the principal resource management legislation was passed, it was groundbreaking legislation—it was creative, it was imaginative, and it was world leading. But in the years that have ensued since, it has become complicated, it has become frustrating, it has become expensive, and it has become a real weight around the neck of so many New Zealanders who want to grow their businesses, build houses, and develop opportunities for themselves and their families. So it is no wonder that reports from organisations as worthy as the OECD, Local Government New Zealand, and, indeed, the Productivity Commission itself all highlight that the cumbersome planning process of the existing legislation is causing us an enormous amount of frustration and slowing us down as a nation.

I want to compliment and congratulate Minister Nick Smith on bringing in this piece of reform legislation. It is the part that is phase two of this National Government’s Resource Management Act reform legislation, and I want to congratulate him on bringing it to the House. I want to acknowledge the support of the Māori Party, and its wisdom in joining us in supporting it to its first reading, and also that of the Labour Party.

People around the country are frustrated by the existing legislation. This bill is a substantial, moderate, and sensible piece of reform legislation. It is a bill that New Zealanders have been waiting for for a long time. The overarching purpose of the bill is to create a resource management system that achieves sustainable natural resource management but at the same time manages physical resources in an efficient and an equitable way. Those are laudable principles that this bill seeks to achieve. The bill will almost certainly go a long way to reducing the existing heavyweight bureaucracy and red tape that surrounds the consenting process, and core to these reforms is a focus on a much stronger nationwide planning direction: better plan-making, simpler consenting, improved processes, better engagement with iwi, and improved alignment with other legislation.

I want to focus just for a second on the consenting process. This bill will make it easier and simpler to apply the consenting process. It will reduce costs and it will benefit those who are seeking to create sensible and worthwhile developments. This bill will achieve nationwide consistency and direction, and that is important for all New Zealanders and for our economy and our country as we go forward. Currently the variation between different council plans around the country can be confusing, costly, and frustrating.

This is a good bill. As chairman of the select committee that will be considering it, I want to give members an assurance that there will be plenty of time to hear from submitters and plenty of time to receive submissions. I am very much looking forward to having it at the select committee, and I commend it to the House.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. It is interesting that the Minister said he was looking forward to a genuine process of engagement and dialogue. I would have been very pleased to have been standing in the House to support this bill if there had been that genuine process, and if there had been an exposure draft, as at one stage, with the great conflict around the changes to Part 2—the Prime Minister, I think, suggested that there be a draft that go out to the public. But, instead, we have had it dropped in the House for a week for the Opposition to actually review it.

We have had one law firm this week describe the bill as one of the most fundamental changes to the Resource Management Act since it was passed in 1991, and that is because it is not just changing the Resource Management Act; it is also changing the exclusive economic zone legislation, the Conservation Act, and the Reserves Act.

The Green Party could have supported it if it had been about reform to improve our environmental management, and there are certainly aspects in the bill that we do support. One of those is adding the management of natural hazards to the list of matters of importance in section 6 in order to elevate this, but I do note that there has long been a power to issue national policy statements and the Government has declined to provide that clear national guidance in relation to one of the biggest natural hazards that we are facing—sea level rise—as a result of climate change. The Government has objected to providing that direction, even though there have been calls from Local Government New Zealand, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and others to provide guidance to local authorities on how they deal with sea level rise—how they make the hard decisions around planning and managing that issue.

The Greens support the provisions for national planning templates, but we would point out that this is a quarter of a century too late. It would have been much better to have had those templates when the Act was introduced and passed in 1991 in terms of providing that consistency.

The Greens support things like the better engagement processes for iwi authorities and the online filing provisions—bringing those filing processes into the 21st century—but we are opposing the bill because there are a number of provisions in it that undermine the public’s ability to engage in how decision making about the environment in their area should occur, and because a number of provisions actually weaken environmental safeguards and compromise the ability of councils to regulate. We are opposing the bill because a lot of the changes appear to be driven by ideology rather than robust analysis and evidence. As Treasury’s regulatory impact assessment team says, there has been no consultation on some of the most significant components of the reform package and, if I could quote: “This means there is little evidence as to how stakeholders are likely to respond to new incentives and opportunities. It is therefore unclear how far the reform package is likely to deliver its objective of robust and durable resource management decisions.”

That departmental disclosure statement several times notes the absence of empirical evidence to justify the proposals in the bill. It notes that the benefits and the costs of each option are not systematically weighed and, therefore, it is difficult to determine whether the most suitable changes have been proposed. So when you have not got that evidence—when the changes seem to be driven by ideology—we are suspicious.

We believe that the bill is much more than tinkering and that it is making some quite significant changes, which will continue to centralise power with the Minister and significantly increase his power at the expense of local authorities and their ability to represent and consult their communities on how they, as councils, develop the planning framework for their regions and districts and how they develop the policies and the rules that determine how air, coasts, land, rivers, and groundwater are managed, what sort of environmental effects are acceptable when use and development happens, and what sort of effects are unacceptable. That is because this bill significantly increases the regulation-making powers of the Minister and centralises environmental management. That has been a hallmark of this Government: giving more power to Ministers at the expense of local councils. It is giving the Minister the power to make regulations to permit certain land-use activities. What will those activities be? How arbitrary will those decisions be? It gives the Minister and the executive the power to impose plan changes where councils have maybe imposed unnecessary restrictions on residential development.

Those sorts of powers are quite arbitrary, and they will cut across the ability of councils to consult and represent their communities. They are also going to be potentially ad hoc, which cuts across the stated desire of more national consistency, because the regulation-making powers may apply only to certain districts or regions. They do not have to apply across the country.

The Greens are opposing the bill because it restricts the ability for the public to get involved in key resource management decisions. Not only does the bill narrow the scope for submissions on resource consents but it also reduces the ability of the public to have input on plan changes, which change the policy provisions that govern environmental management. Councils can limit the ability to make submissions to affected parties. Those affected parties are generally considered to be landholders. That means it undermines the ability of community organisations and environmental organisations to have standing in front of councils to make submissions and promote the community interest and the changes that they seek.

We oppose the bill because we think there will be much less accountability in the way in which councils develop and make decisions on district and regional plans through this new “streamlined” plan-making process that the bill provides for. In this process there is no ability for submitters to front up to a hearing panel to present further evidence to the hearing panel and to see who is actually making the decisions on the plan. That whole hearing process does not exist in the fast-track plan-making process. Potentially, it also means that there is the opportunity there for the Minister and the council to agree on this fast-track process, if there is a sort of convenient mutual interest there, and to shut out the public from being involved in hearings. In Christchurch, where we have had the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority developing plans without a hearing process, we have had faceless decision makers making critical decisions behind closed doors.

The bill provides for collaborative planning processes. That is something that the Green Party has supported, but there increasingly are problems with collaborative processes. In Canterbury, with the Canterbury Water Management Strategy and the 10 zone committees, environmental organisations have walked away from that, because they see the zone committees as increasingly dominated by agribusiness and irrigation interests. The Mackenzie Shared Vision Forum, the collaborative process that was supposed to decide the future of the high country, has virtually collapsed. Fish and Game has recently left the national Land and Water Forum. So those collaborative processes, which showed so much promise, do not seem to be delivering on that.

We oppose the legislation because of the politicisation of decision making in the exclusive economic zone. There the Government has caved in to lobbying by the petroleum industry and seabed miners, and it is having the Minister appoint the decision-making panels for applications for marine consents in the exclusive economic zone, when officials advised that it should be the Environmental Protection Authority that continues to do that and that the Resource Management Act should be made consistent with the process the Environmental Protection Authority uses in the exclusive economic zone. So that is politicising decision making in the exclusive economic zone. It is giving the Minister too much power, and it is very pertinent that the only people whom the Ministry for the Environment consulted with were PEPANZ, the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand, and mining interests. It did not consult with community organisations to make that change. Once again, it shows that this Government is captured by corporate interests. It is not passing these changes to benefit all of New Zealanders, to ensure that we have protection that safeguards the places that Kiwis love; it is making changes to our environmental law to benefit special interests that are interested in exploitation rather than protection. So there has been absolutely no public consultation on that change, and it is being shunted through in an ad hoc way because the exclusive economic zone legislation has been in force only since 2013.

Others have seen the fact that this bill does not make those changes that were initially proposed to Part 2, pancaking the matters of national importance to becoming a grab bag of matters and stripping out things like recognition of amenity values, intrinsic values, and the quality of the environment, as a major victory. It is certainly a victory, and we thank the Māori Party and the Hon Peter Dunne for their advocacy there. But we should not have even been having that debate about stripping out those environmental safeguards. It shows how much of an attack this Government has wanted to make on the Resource Management Act.

The environmental safeguards in the bill should be strengthened. The Government has missed the opportunity in terms of improving the prospects for our indigenous biodiversity by strengthening private property rights in this bill, which risks having a chilling effect on councils and their ability to regulate, by allowing the Environment Court, potentially, to require councils—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but her time has expired.

This is a bill of 180 pages and 40 changes in 235 clauses and 8 schedules. It was introduced on Tuesday, and here we are on Thursday asked to support it without any prior consultation whatsoever. This is a bill that will take time to study and assess, so New Zealand First will neither support it nor oppose it until we have done that properly. We will have no choice but to abstain at this stage, and we will decide later whether we will vote Yes or No.

I note that the Māori Party has said that it will support the bill conditionally at this stage. It got what it referred to as “pre-bill consultation”, yet it says it still wants more demands—unspecified demands—yet to be discussed. We will not know what those are until we hear them a lot later, but we know that the Māori Party is always looking for some sort of advantage for Māori over other New Zealanders. We do not think that is clever. We think those are separatist attitudes. They smack of division and of favouritism, and New Zealand First will never support any of that. But we will support Māori for fair and equal treatment in all things, just as we do for all other New Zealanders. We think it is deplorable that important legislation of this kind has been subjected to some kind of tit-for-tat negotiation behind closed doors between the Government and the Māori Party—and I will have some more to say about that later.

Yet it is New Zealand First that has actually been the main playmaker here, because the truth is that if Winston Peters had not won the Northland by-election, National would have had the votes to pass this legislation as it was originally intended. This is a hugely watered-down version of it. The truth is that there would have been a full attack on the Resource Management Act’s main provisions, set out in sections 5, 6, and 7, on the pretext that compromising the Resource Management Act in that way was justified and necessary to ensure economic development and the provision of adequate housing. What poppycock that was.

The truth is that the Resource Management Act’s principal sections were never a roadblock to appropriate economic development and housing provision. They were never a roadblock to that. The attack was nothing more than a barely disguised assault on a tried and tested and highly respected resource management regime, putting profit and commercial interests, effectively, ahead of fundamental environmental protection. National had, in fact, already begun to argue that it wanted those things to be equal in the Act, but, in practice, it would have been impossible to do so, and commercial interests would have prevailed and the environment would have come off second-best. Anyone with half a brain knows that that would have been the result. Credit for stopping that happening goes to Winston Peters and, of course, to the extremely intelligent voters of Northland.

While those excesses have been avoided, New Zealand First does want a bill that delivers speedier and cost-effective consent processes, but without compromising the fundamental provisions of the Resource Management Act. It must deliver a sensible, balanced, and fair regime for Resource Management Act processes that avoids unnecessary costs and unnecessary delays. I myself, in my previous life, have had involvement with a number of major consent processes. As a result of that I have certainly learned that there were often excessive delays caused by submissions processes that were repetitive and delivered very little additional useful information. They were often submissions purely based on personal rather than environmental or public good interests, as well. They were often eye-wateringly expensive, with very little to show for that expense.

But that does not mean that the submitters should be shut out, because a lot can be done to simply streamline the Resource Management Act’s processes without losing that value. We also think that ways to make expert evidence more objective and more useful would also be worthwhile. Overall, the Resource Management Act’s processes have caused too much cost and have caused too much delay, with no real benefit arising from it. New Zealand First does solidly support—and I want to make this absolutely clear—improvements in processes to the Resource Management Act to make those processes more useful and therefore the outcomes better, both for development and for the environment.

However, New Zealand First will not commit to support this bill at this stage, because we have identified already some major areas of concern. There are at least three of those. Section 6 of the principal Act, for example, requires that functionaries shall recognise and provide for specified matters of national importance; included is: “(e) the relationship of Māori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga.” Another is: “(g) the protection of protected customary rights.” We in New Zealand First want to know what all that really means—whether it means, for example, access to water rights, which would not be available to other New Zealanders. If so, we would be voting against the bill.

Clause 11 amending section 30 will also need careful scrutiny, because it introduces a new function relating to what is called “development capacity”, requiring councils to ensure development capacity for residential and business land. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with that, but the issue here is whether that new provision will result in an appropriate balance between environment and development objectives—or will it really just ensure that the Resource Management Act becomes development-oriented and dominated? We would like to explore that.

We are also concerned about the scope of the iwi participation agreements. There is very little in the bill that tells us what those will really be about and how far they will go. We are especially concerned as to what participation and planning processes will mean in practice. It may be appropriate, but it may not be, and we want to know a whole lot more about that before we are prepared to commit our support. In closing, New Zealand First will look forward to studying the detail of the bill to see just what it really does mean, because I agree with what Eugenie Sage means: these are not really tinkering provisions; they are, in some places at least, quite important changes that will require careful scrutiny.

We simply do not trust this Government. We do not trust the provisions that it is putting in this bill without adequately explaining why it is doing so. We particularly do not trust it because of the backroom deals it appears to have been doing with some other parties. We are going to take a good hard look at it before we are prepared to commit our vote in the future. We want to keep faith with the people who do want to achieve appropriate development, but also with those people who want to make sure that that is balanced with very good environmental security. That is where we are coming from, and we will tell the House whether we are ultimately satisfied with this bill or not as the further stages of it proceed.

When the original Resource Management Act came before this House in the late 1980s I was the Associate Minister for the Environment. When the bill passed into law in 1991 I was the Opposition spokesperson on the environment, and worked closely with the then Minister to get a bill that could be adopted unanimously by this House, because of its significance. I contrast that with the situation we now face, which is the reason I will be voting against this bill.

The process that has led to the introduction of this bill today could, at best, most charitably, be described as quixotic. First of all, you had the announcement by the National Party at its conference of September 2013 in Nelson about its reforms, but it had not bothered to check with its support partners whether it had support to even introduce them. It was all, then, about promoting affordable housing. Over the intervening couple of years the debate has waxed and waned, and when I see this bill it is not entirely clear now what its purpose is going to be.

In January of this year I had a telephone conversation with the Minister for the Environment where he indicated that he wanted to consult with support parties about the nature of the bill. But he made a slightly ominous comment at the end of the conversation that he was not going to waste his time talking to support parties unless he was sure he had their support. I wryly observed that that was what you talked about, and waited for what was to happen next.

In May I received from his office 39 headline proposals for changes to the Resource Management Act, mainly around process. Having had a look at them, I wrote to him indicating that some of them seemed to be unobjectionable, some I had real reservations about, and some I wanted further information about. And I did not actually get—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: But you couldn’t tell me which.

I was not going to reveal my hand at that point, Dr Smith. We were in a negotiating process, for goodness’ sake. I waited for some response. None came. I then raised the matter at the end of June with the Prime Minister and said that in the letter to Dr Smith I had said I thought the way forward was to issue an exposure draft. I raised that matter with the Prime Minister. He said: “Well, it makes sense to me. We can hardly expect you to vote for something you haven’t seen.” The Minister for Economic Development was quoted a few days later in the National Business Review as saying an exposure draft would be released. I patiently waited to receive the document that I had indicated in June that I was interested in seeing. Nothing happened.

On 5 November, during a rather testy text exchange with the Minister, I said to him “Well, the ball’s in your court. Give us an exposure draft.”, or words to that effect. He came back and said: “I never promised you an exposure draft.” Yet, at that point, I knew that discussions were under way with my colleagues to my right, the Māori Party and that they had seen drafting that was clearly available. I then advised the Prime Minister that on the basis of that there had clearly been a conclusion reached—for reasons that I do not understand, but I do not contest—that my support was unexpected and therefore that it would not be forthcoming.

When I look at the bill that has been produced to the House, I think it actually raises more questions than it answers, because there are provisions in here—I mean, I find it ironic, for instance, that we are going to see, by the time this process is completed, the Resource Management Act being 300-odd pages longer than it was when it started, all in the aid of simplification. But there are measures proposed in this bill that I think have quite sinister potential impacts. For example, there is a provision in the bill, under the new proposed section 360(d), that would allow the Minister, effectively, to make regulations that would prohibit a local authority from making specified rules or types of rules, or, effectively, overriding or prohibiting specified types of rules, etc. What that would mean, in effect, is that something like the Manawatū council’s Horizons One Plan, which was the subject of a great deal of debate in recent years, could in effect be overridden by a ministerial directive, by regulation. Having gone through a process of widespread local consultation and development, regulation could be passed to override that if it did not meet the Minister’s requirements. Similarly, if you take a contemporary situation, proposals by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to make that region GE-free could be overridden by the Minister under these provisions. They are not just process changes; they are very significant potential changes to the way in which the whole decision-making framework that the Resource Management Act sought to introduce will be carried out in future.

I think that they would have benefited from a substantial period of public consultation through an exposure draft, as indicated and promised, before the bill came before this Parliament. The question that therefore needs to be asked is: why this bill at this time? I think there is a very simple answer. The word “frustration” comes to mind. I think that the Government got to a position where, having negotiated with partners, or having attempted to negotiate, it felt it was not making sufficient progress and simply decided to proceed with something that on the face of it looks a little incoherent and disjointed so that at least it can say: “We have done something.” I think it was getting pressure from people who heard—and I understand this—the argument advanced in September 2013 that how come over 2 years later nothing had eventuated, and I think this is the opportunity.

Be that as it may, the bill will go to a select committee. The select committee will have to take a considerable amount of time, in my view, to work its way through all of the issues that are contained in this, because, at the end of the day, we cannot afford to have certainly a weakened Act. I think the decision not to amend sections 6 and 7 is a positive step in that direction. We have got to have an Act that is coherent and workable.

The argument that the Minister raises with his rather dramatic pile of regulations—the 80,000 pages or whatever—is a consequence of the current Act. It is a consequence of 20-something years of case law that has built up under that Act. We cannot afford to, effectively, destroy that and then be forced to start from scratch all over again in a climate of uncertainty, expecting lawyers and planners and everyone else—and the member opposite referred to the fact that these things always have astronomical, eye-watering costs associated with them. We cannot afford to go back to a situation where we encourage more of that to try to interpret what the latest set of amendments mean.

I think that this bill will go down as a lost opportunity. I understand the political dynamics that drive it; I appreciate and I respect those. But they are not sufficient as a reason for good quality decision-making. If I go back to 1991, where there was a lot of debate about the Resource Management Bill, as it then was, because it was new, it was unproven, it was untried. I remember the rhetoric that we were abolishing 54 separate pieces of statute and bringing them into one. It was bold. There was a real determination to steadily work through all the issues to make sure we got it right. I do not think that has been evident in this case, and I think that is a great pity.

With considerable heavy heartedness and reluctance, I will vote against this measure today, not because there are not some provisions in here that are worthwhile but more because the whole process by which the legislation has been brought together this year has been extraordinarily unsatisfactory. On something as important as resource management legislation, where we are setting a fundamental environmental benchmark, we cannot afford that sort of cavalier approach. I hope that the select committee takes its proper time to consider all the issues carefully, and, if need be, comes back to the Government and says that we cannot proceed with this legislation in this form and that it needs to be rewritten more consistently and thoroughly. At the end of the day it will not be just this Parliament that wears the consequence; it is the people of New Zealand, it is the people who do care about our environment, the people who do seek to achieve a reasonable balance between development and sustainability, and the people whom in the interests of greater accessibility to affordable housing this legislation says it is trying to help. They will not thank this Parliament, and certainly not this Minister, if the House gets it wrong.

The next call is a split call. Jan Logie—5 minutes.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I rise as the Green Party spokesperson for local government to take a short call on this, the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. I do need, I think, to comment on the previous speaker, the Hon Peter Dunne, and acknowledge and echo his sentiments expressing the importance of this piece of legislation.

The principal Act is our primary environmental protection legislation. Without our environment, we have no economy. Without our environment, we have no well-being. This legislation is absolutely essential to us as a country. Increasingly, I feel as if I am standing up in this House talking to legislation and of concerns about a sense of the legislation being rushed and ill-thought-through, with many provisions that seem inconsistent and arguing against each other, and with some things that might be good and some things that are fundamentally deeply concerning. This is another piece of legislation exactly like that. Although our select committees are certainly not bowing under the load of work and this Government does not seem to be producing much legislation, increasingly what is coming to the House is of a very worrying level of quality.

My colleague Eugenie Sage has already spoken and outlined a lot of our concerns around the environmental conservation impacts of this bill, so I would like to focus my contribution on the democratic aspects of the bill. Of course, we will be very interested to hear from local and regional councils during the submissions stage of this bill and to examine the many provisions that will impact and potentially erode their decision-making power. I want to acknowledge up front too that the bill will require local authorities to consult iwi authorities on the appointment of commissioners with an understanding of tikanga Māori. It will require councils to invite iwi to form an iwi participation group early in the plan-making process. This sounds good to us in principle. For this to succeed, however, it obviously needs to be sufficiently resourced so that iwi can properly and professionally engage, rather than relying on overstretched volunteers, as the Crown and council so often seem to expect, sadly. But we definitely support these aspects of the bill as it is clear that we need different structures to ensure the constitutional rights of mana whenua and mātāwaka to participate in our local government. We would support legislation with these provisions that did not erode environmental and other democratic rights.

So for me, as local government spokesperson, the heart of opposition to this bill is that it is giving extraordinary powers to the executive, to the Minister, to be able to override local decision-making and to interfere in what seems like quite an ad hoc way, where we are not even being given details of the philosophy behind when a Minister might intervene. Democracy and care for our environment go hand in hand, as democracy and community-building go hand in hand. There is a connection between democracy and sustainability. That has never been clearer than in what happened with Environment Canterbury. The elected councillors were removed from Environment Canterbury because the people of Canterbury started to vote for councillors who wanted to restrict the dairy sector. It is as simple as that. That was stated pretty publicly by the agriculture Minister at the time. So this Government acted to override the concerns of the community—the environment—with its own agenda and the agenda of profit over people and environment.

So some of the specifics of this bill are of concern. They may not seem so big on the face of it, but they are of concern. Smaller changes to improve the plan making may be worthwhile but simple consents are defined as likely to have reduced council scrutiny. There are many aspects of this that are deeply worrying. I hope they will have scrutiny—proper scrutiny—through the select committee process.

I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Firstly, I want to talk about the irrational fear that comes from having greater Māori participation in bills such as this. I have heard the cries that Māori are going to be “brown-mailing” the Government—“brown-mailing”; seriously. That is the opinion that was held over the foreshore and seabed; that, oh my goodness, if you give Māori the rights, you cannot go to the beach any more. I will not be able to wear my bikini and sunbathe—and, frankly, that might a good thing. But I want to allay those fears.

Many people think that RMA simply means Resource Management Act. But I want to try something else. Does RMA now mean “Realising Māori Acumen”? Because there is no fear here—Māori have been doing this for a very long time now. There was a lot of conversation when the bill first came in, many years ago, about whether Māori would be holding things up because of the taniwha in the creek. Māori have been working, in a voluntary capacity, to come up with solutions. We know the art of compromise in order to achieve real outcomes and real benefits for all people. Iwi participation agreements should not be feared; they should be embraced. Having Māori tikanga support the development of this country is value added to this country, and not something to be feared. Continuing to protect clauses 6 and 7 of this bill ensures that kaitiakitanga, the principles of tikanga, and Māori aspirations can be upheld. There is no fear there. In fact, environmentalists across the country say: “Thank you very much. You are our last-stop hope to protect that river, this river.”

I want to reflect on that freshwater argument at the moment, since it has been brought up recently in the House. In 1957, when the allocation of water happened, Māori lived beside awa, in its pristine state, and for 60 years we have simply been observers to the allocation of water for the corporate benefit of people who gain from that allocation. While we have been observers to that, we have seen the degradation of our rivers. This is a place where we can realise and have true Māori acumen come to the fore to aid and value New Zealand and the benefit of this Act. That is what we have been fighting for throughout the negotiations to date.

We are not happy with all parts of this bill. I want to applaud the Minister for the Environment. The Minister has, in good faith, been negotiating with us. Some of the things we were able to get out right at the beginning were bottom lines—“We cannot move on this unless these things are in place.” Others we will continue to have negotiation over because we do recognise the value of this. Actually, I want to thank the Minister for understanding our place as Māori in this country to have that conversation, to realise the value of doing this together.

And so we come to the first reading. Many people did not think we would get to this point. But we are happy to support the bill to the select committee because the whole of New Zealand now needs to have their say. It is a complex, technical bill and it will benefit from the submissions that will come from all of local government and the other community organisations and peoples who have an interest in protecting the resource. This is not the silver bullet for all housing issues, but it may help if we get the balance right. So I want to assure the public of New Zealand that the Māori Party’s getting it to this stage has been through good-faith negotiations, and we will continue to push for that going forward, beyond and through the select committee. If those things are supported and strengthened, then we could see the bill supported—but only if and when. Thank you.

I rise to take a short call in support of the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, which is being discussed this afternoon. It is a practical bill supporting business growth, housing development, and effective environmental management. And, boy, is this needed. As we have heard already this afternoon, under our current regime we have a very inconsistent and expensive planning regime. We have had a number of organisations—the OECD, Local Government New Zealand, and the Rules Reduction Taskforce—all arguing for and advocating for significant change for many, many years. But the need for these changes, in my view, has been most powerfully voiced by New Zealanders who want to renovate or build a home, start a business, expand their activity, and employ more people. That is why I stand with great pride to support this first reading.

Of course, we had hoped we could achieve more in terms of what we could introduce today, and that has already been well canvassed. We certainly would have liked greater weight to be put around clauses 6 and 7, in respect of economic development and opportunities. But we have got a significant piece of reform on the table for discussion over the next few months.

Of course, we have just had a very interesting contribution from the Māori Party’s Marama Fox. I want to echo some of the points she has made, particularly in respect of ensuring, through this bill, that Māori have the opportunity to contribute to collaborative processes that are going to be required to be held, as either collaborative or streamlined processes, as required in this bill, in the discussion of natural resource use into the future. Quite frankly, that is needed and required in this country. For too long, as Marama Fox has already touched on, in respect of large tracts of this country that is Māori land, they have not had the opportunity to have their voice effectively heard as resource-use issues have been debated. Under the old “first come, first served” model, often their voices were not heard, so it is appropriate to have the obligation put in this legislation for them to be assured of the opportunity to be participating, as other stakeholders do in this country, around natural resources and the use of water. It reflects New Zealand of 2015 and will unlock significant economic opportunity for this country as we do it.

This is a significant piece of legislation. I would love to be able to talk further about the benefits that it will deliver, particularly in terms of housing development, because it will be significant. Where I come from in Tauranga we already have significant embracing of these principles. We have smart growth, we have a very planned approach in terms of how we develop new housing and settlement development, but too many places and areas in this country are not like that. We absolutely need this legislation and we need it now, and I look forward to a very considered discussion and debate over the next few months. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēna tātau katoa. [Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and greetings to us all, at the same time.]

💬 Marama Fox: Tēnā koe.

Tēnā koe! It is a custom long held by the Māori people, that when mum gives birth you take the placenta and you bury the placenta in the ground. So, as a linguist of Te Reo Māori, I say that the word “whenua” actually means placenta. What we are talking about here is the land and environment. So the long-held association Māori have with the land, with our whenua, is important, and it is important that we protect that moving forward. I want to acknowledge too the beginning of Mr Flavell’s contribution to the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, because he also set out what out what I would describe as a whakapapa or a genealogy, of Māori and their association with the environment and the land. I just wanted to make that point here: whenua—land; whenua—placenta. We are for ever locked into the land.

I also want to raise two other expressions: “toitū te whenua” and “toitū te tangata” [land is permanent and so is mankind]. I want to relate it to the economics as well as the environment. This is, I think, central in the theme of this particular bill. I actually took quite great joy sitting here listening to Mr Dunne’s contribution on this bill. I thought it was well considered. I remember as a young person hearing about the Resource Management Act. I would have been about 10, I think it was, when Mr Dunne set out on this bold piece of legislation, but even at that age I remember hearing about the Resource Management Act, and I enjoyed his journey that he took us on to bring us to this point.

It reminds me of the campaign of the National Party in 2014, where it had this waka all rowing in one direction. Well, what is clear in the contributions on this bill to date is that it appears that one of the rowers has jumped out of the boat and one of the other rowers has actually been thrown out of the boat. I think Mr Dunne’s contribution really highlighted the flaw in the process that we have come to right now at this point in time with regard to this bill.

In May 1991 the Resource Management Act was a bold piece of legislation, and now here we are, after the Labour Party putting out the olive branch all year to the Minister and to the Government to work together—to work together not only with regard to the Resource Management Act but on opportunities and ways perhaps we could solve the housing crisis, because there is still a housing crisis, and I suspect that even as this bill passes through there will still be a housing crisis. I have said it may times in this House that the biggest job my staff have in Tāmaki Makaurau is housing issues. It is not just about State housing; it is about the working poor. It is about our families who cannot even get into the housing market, and that is a significant issue. As this bill progresses forward I suspect that we will still have a housing crisis.

I want to, at this point in time, acknowledge the hard work by the member for Te Atatū, Phil Twyford. He has kept his foot on the throat of this Government with regard to the housing crisis. It includes the Resource Management Act, it includes economics, it includes the Auckland Council, and it includes all of those in New Zealand who are keen to see housing affordability for our people—people who are keen to enter into the housing market. I am talking about housing. Why? Because this particular bill is offered up to the people of New Zealand to solve housing, to provide better economic opportunities, and thus more jobs for our people. As I flick through briefly the many, many pages that have been presented in such a short time, as described by Mr O’Rourke, I cannot see how that is going to happen. It is not clear and it is not obvious to everybody.

I want to pick up the point by the member Marama Fox, when she talked about the Resource Management Act. I would like to think it is real Māori advocacy, because although I commend that and say that it will encourage and it will enable and empower iwi to be involved at the forefront of the planning—and that is what this offers to our people—we will be diligently and with a microscope making sure that that is actually what happens. I think everybody in the House will look really hard at this to make sure that tangata whenua, as I described at the beginning of my contribution, still have an important part to play—and that must be protected. I am a big advocate of that.

One concern, however, that I do have is that this Government in its, let us say, bulldozer-type manner in settling Treaty claims and Treaty issues, particularly in Tāmaki-makau-rau, in its rush to do that, I think it has redefined what “iwi” means. You will find, perhaps, in Tāmaki-makau-rau that some, as a result of the settlements, have actually had their rights taken away. I wonder how that is going to play out as this particular bill moves forward. I will be there advocating for those people to make sure that their voice is heard.

The bill will go through to the select committee process and I can guarantee you that we will be looking really hard at this particular bill. We have talked about it for a long time. We have offered to assist the Minister and this Government in developing the Resource Management Act, and we have done so for a long time. And now, as described by Mr O’Rourke, we have come to this very short process where we are actually able to pore through the detail. In the absence of that opportunity we will almost certainly be scrutinising the progression of this bill, wherever it may go. The hope is that if it does go through to the select committee, we will be encouraging submissions from right across the board. We will be encouraging submissions from whānau, from iwi, from hapū, and from concerned citizens, because there are many. There are many concerned citizens when it comes to the approach of this Government and this particular bill. So we will be encouraging that if the bill gets to the select committee.

We will also be making sure that our voices are heard, to keep this Government accountable and to make sure that the things that are offered in the speeches and contributions that have already been given in the House actually do happen—that there are more houses, that there are more jobs, that the economy does do better, that housing affordability is there for our people, and also that the process is streamlined and made a lot more efficient. I think we will all agree with that. If you can make the consent process a bit more efficient, I think everybody would agree that that is a good thing. But we have to make sure that we do not cut corners. We have to make sure that everybody is heard and everybody has a say on such an important issue. We have to make sure that that is what happens, and we will be keeping a keen eye on it.

I want to finish by once again congratulating Phil Twyford on his staunch advocacy for this particular issue around housing and on the hard work he has done. I also thank members on this side of the House who, I am sure, will be keeping a keen eye on this bill. Kia ora.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the first reading of the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. I must start off by acknowledging the very pragmatic response and support of the Labour Party for this bill. I can understand, at least, the Green Party caring about the planet but not wanting to live on it, but I am very bemused with New Zealand First not voting for but not voting against. I say to Mr O’Rourke that they should get off the fence. Get off the fence. Are you for or are you against? They call themselves New Zealand First but they are not putting New Zealand First. They are putting their own interests first.

It is this side of the House that is sticking up for hard-working New Zealanders. It is this reform bill that is supporting hard-working New Zealanders. If you look at three key outcomes this year, whether it be the highest workforce participation rate ever, the positive GDP growth, or the return to surplus, it is all about backing hard-working New Zealanders. It is hard-working New Zealanders who deliver those outcomes, and this Resource Management Act reform bill will support hard-working New Zealanders. So get off the fence, New Zealand First.

When we look at the Canterbury earthquake response, we see that there are a lot of lessons that run parallel to this bill. We know that we lost about 18,000 houses and in response we had the Land Use Recovery Plan, which freed up land and increased supply, which equalled demand. There were real lessons in that. If you look at average annual house price inflation, it is a bit over 10 percent nationally, Canterbury is at about 5.5 percent, but Waimakariri specifically has only 3.5 percent annual house price inflation. When you look at Waimakariri you will see that it is the third fastest - growing electorate by population. We have just taken over from Invercargill as the third-biggest district in the South Island by population, and yet it has only 3.5 percent annual house price inflation with all that urban growth. What we did was free up land, which increased supply, which equalled demand. And under this bill, local councils will be more economic, efficient, and effective in matching residential growth to land use. So I wholeheartedly support this bill, and I am looking forward to hard-working New Zealanders having their say in the select committee process. Thank you.