Resource Legislation Amendment Bill

I move, That the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill is a critical part of the Government’s programme to increase the supply and affordability of housing, to grow the economy with more jobs and higher incomes, and also to improve New Zealand’s environmental management. The bill is a second phase of our reform programme that began with a major bill in our first term, but for which we were unable to get progress in our second term because we were unable to secure a parliamentary majority. It is a significant milestone that today we will pass this 250-page bill involving 40 substantial changes and over 700 specific provisions, after multiple rounds of technical advisory groups, public consultation, and negotiations with other parties in this Parliament.

Parties opposing this bill are doing New Zealand a disservice. In the Committee stage they quibbled at the edges, they tried to manufacture myths, but they have been unable to mount any credible argument against the substantive reforms in this bill—in fact, they barely mentioned them.

This bill introduces national planning standards, so as to simplify the 80,000 pages of resource management rules and policies, more than 1,000 pages per council, which make the RMA a nightmare for New Zealanders to navigate. A country of 4.7 million people cannot justify that level of bureaucracy. It makes common sense that we have standard zonings, standard ways of measuring things like the height of a building, standard definitions, and a standard format for our plans.

The bill radically changes the way plans are written by introducing a new streamlined and collaborative process. This matters because it takes on average 7 years currently for a council to complete a new plan, and that is just too slow to address the sorts of water and housing issues that our communities face. We know that this new streamlined process works because our Government has used it in writing new plans for the major cities of Auckland and Christchurch through special legislation. The overwhelming message is that the process was robust, the plans were better, and the results were achieved in a fraction of the time.

I am equally appalled that members opposite are opposing the addition of natural hazards to the matters of national importance. Earthquakes, floods, cyclones, tsunamis, and landslides are not things to play politics with. The recent quakes in Christchurch and Kaikōura, the floods in Auckland and Northland earlier this year, and the flooding of Edgecumbe today are reminders of the significant natural hazard risks our country faces. This change was recommended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Building Failure Caused by the Canterbury Earthquakes, because planners had been so diverted by the more politically correct requirements of the current Act—the Resource Management Act (RMA)—that those hazards were overlooked. Every responsible member of this House genuinely concerned with the well-being of our country should be backing the inclusion of this important requirement into the most central part of the RMA—its purposes and principles.

One of the biggest issues facing our country right now is the supply and affordability of housing. I am gobsmacked at members opposite who demand that this be addressed and then come down to this House and oppose the very measures that will make a real difference. Report after independent report—be it the Productivity Commission, be it Treasury, be it the OECD, be it The New Zealand Initiative, or be it the Property Council—make plain that it is the supply of land that is at the core of the issue. The numbers speak for themselves: the cost of building an average 170 square metre house in Auckland has increased from $120,000 25 years ago to $360,000 today—a threefold increase. But the cost of the average section has, in the same period, gone from $53,000 to $530,000—a tenfold increase. You cannot pretend to be serious about improving the availability of housing unless you are prepared to address the price of new sections and the reform of the very Act—the RMA—that governs their creation.

This bill introduces a new specific requirement on councils to free up land supply. It removes appeals on resource consents for residential development. It reverses the presumption in favour of subdivision. It removes the double-charging system of development and financial contributions to a single, tighter regime. This will help bring the cost of sections down.

This bill is also a help in getting the roading, the rail, the water, the telecommunications, and the electricity infrastructure built to support our strongly growing economy. It will speed up the process for designations and consents. The changes to the Public Works Act—giving more generous compensation to affected landowners, but also including a financial incentive to be able to do so earlier—will help get the infrastructure that our country needs more quickly.

Another important issue that this bill progresses is that of water quality—in enabling national regulations requiring stock to be fenced out of waterways. Only three of our 16 regional councils have any rules on this. National rules are a sensible way forward, backed up by the instant fines in this bill. Members opposite cannot cry foul in any credible way over the state of our waterways when they then come down to the House and vote against these practical measures.

There are also environmental gains in the new provisions that will require offshore platforms to have decommissioning plans. There have been expensive experiences overseas where petroleum companies have exhausted the oil and gas and have then left the huge cost of decommissioning to the taxpayer. This bill addresses that problem.

The bill also tackles the problems of those thousands of unnecessary consents that cause so much frustration and cost for constituents. I have got an example right now in Nelson of the Rutherford Street Kindergarten moving just 100 metres up the road to new premises, and the parents in the kindy committee having to fundraise for over $50,000 of resource consent and related costs. I could bore this Parliament for hours with examples of minor projects like decks and carports actually costing more to get a resource consent than they actually cost to build. These issues are addressed in this bill with the power for a council to be able to waive the need for the consent, the new 10-day fast-track process for minor issues, and the ability to resolve boundary infringement rules—issues that can only be resolved with the consent of the immediate neighbour.

The iwi participation arrangements in this bill are about making existing provisions in the RMA—in sections 6, 7, and 8—more workable. It will enable councils to work out practical ways for iwi to participate in the process and help the system to work better by getting early involvement. The law is plain that decisions on plans and consents remain with the councils and that councils cannot be forced into agreements. There are many councils that already have such arrangements and they are proving to work well for both iwi and resource consent applicants as a consequence of greater clarity about who to consult and what issues are of importance to iwi.

There are dozens of practical provisions in this bill that will reduce bureaucracy and red tape. It tackles the problem of the RMA being used by councils to duplicate the issues that are already regulated in other statutes, like building insulation standards, telecommunications regulations, fishing rules, workplace safety requirements, or hazardous substances rules. We need a regulatory system that leaves no gaps but which also avoids double-ups. The changes to the Reserves Act and the Conservation Act align notification periods and enable joint hearings so that we will not have the two separate processes debating the same project.

I need to conclude by acknowledging the mountain of work that has gone into this bill over many years. I particularly want to acknowledge Amy Adams, the former Minister for the Environment, who during the last term of Parliament put huge work into its provisions; Scott Simpson, who worked tirelessly in chairing the Local Government and Environment Committee; Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox and their team in the Māori Party, who have worked so hard to find compromises; and to Tim Bennetts and George Riddell in my Beehive office; as well as the teams from PCO and the Ministry for the Environment.

The passage of this Resource Legislation Amendment Bill is a significant milestone for this Government. It delivers on reforms planned and promised over many years. It will make houses easier to build and more affordable. It will reduce unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy for Kiwi homeowners, for farms, and for businesses. It will help our country build the infrastructure to support a growing economy. It will ensure our country is safer by better managing those natural hazards. This bill is a litmus test for MPs as to whether their intent is playing politics or doing what is right for our country. I urge this Parliament to pass this complex but very necessary reform.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In 2011 the Standing Orders Committee made some determinations and recommendations to the House around the reading of speeches. One of those was that the Speaker is the sole determinant of whether someone should be allowed to read a speech. But the other was that a Minister should be given greater latitude to read a speech where they are dealing with matters of a technical nature. I have not interrupted the Minister, because I recognise that the sole right to determine whether someone can or cannot read a speech is yours, but if a Minister is going to use their right to read a speech in order to read out a litany of abuse against other members, then that is going to bring the principles that the Standing Orders Committee discussed and—

I thank the member for his points. I am the sole determinant, as you identified, as to the reading of speeches. The Minister, in clarifying the position that the Minister has been involved in under his name, has some latitude to read from his notes, and that has always been an accepted practice in this House. I look very closely at the reading of speeches, and I am now going to call the—

💬 Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Is this a new point of order?

💬 Chris Hipkins: It is a new point of order.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Chris Hipkins—a new point of order.

Can you clarify the basis on which Ministers are allowed to use prepared—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No, no, I am the sole determinant—

—speeches to insult other members.

Well, if there has been some insult to a member, I did not actually pick that up. [Interruption] This is a debating chamber, and there has been a robust debate over the last couple of days in the Committee stage. There have been no points of order brought up about insults against other members. I have looked very closely, and I have presided over much of the Committee stage, and I listen very carefully to the debate. That is my ruling.

We heard it again from Minister Nick Smith, and I think it has got to be said that the reduction of the many dimensions of the housing crisis to the vilification of planning in the Resource Management Act (RMA) is just politically dishonest. Blaming the RMA and planners for the tax biases and the inequality that has driven homeownership in New Zealand to the lowest level since the 1950s—for over 60 years—is just wrong. Blaming the RMA and planners for the pressure caused by having amongst the highest rate of economic migration into a city is just wrong. Planners cannot be held to account for the shortage of motorway space in Auckland.

The truth is the RMA has been in force since 1992. In 2004, when the RMA was enforced, there were 34,000 consents for new houses in New Zealand. In 2016 that went down to 30,000. In Auckland the drop was more extreme. It went down from 12,000 in 2004 to 9,000 in 2016. That was a decrease of 25 percent, disregarding population growth, which had gone up by about 20 percent. So the per-capita drop in housebuilding over that period, under the RMA, was more than 30 percent. Over that same period housing cost increases—not land costs; building costs—increased by 96 percent, and the average house size increased by 21 percent. The RMA did not cause those problems, and has not caused those problems. I think it is true that those facts dismantle the severity of the blame that is attached to the RMA for the housing crisis. So this means that this appalling RMA amendment bill, which is now being pushed through, cannot be justified by the housing crisis.

That does not mean that there have not been silly RMA rules under plans that have constrained the supply of land. It has been the Labour Party policy for more than 5 years to fix that through a national policy statement under the RMA. That was always open to the Government. That is still open to the Government, and it has never properly pursued it. There are other things that are needed—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: We did it in November.

What was that?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: The urban development.

Oh, your ineffective attempt in November, after 8 years in power—the Minister has just proved the fallacy of his own logic. He said: “We’ve done it in November.”—under the existing RMA. He does not need this amendment to do it.

I heard the tripe that we got served up in respect of freshwater quality. Of course we need national guidance in respect of freshwater quality that is better than the polluted sludge that we have been dealt with by the current Government. Of course we need rules about fencing. That can also be done through national guidance under the existing RMA. If there was a problem with the detail of that, why did the Minister not fix that in the last 8 years? And if that was all this bill was doing, we would have no objection to it.

But there are so many other terrible parts to this bill, which is why if this bill passes through—with two votes from the Māori Party pushing it over the line by one vote—then it will be because this is just such an appalling piece of legislation, following a terrible process where the select committee process has been abused and where the normal rules of Parliament have been taken advantage of. Pushing this bill through without a decent Committee debate was one part, and now the Government is trying to get it through tonight so that the political embarrassment to the National Party and the Māori Party is minimised.

I want to deal with one of the issues relating to the Māori Party. The Māori Party said that it opposed the National Government having the right to knock out anti-GM rules and plans. The current law in New Zealand is that the release decision for a GMO is taken by the Environmental Protection Authority, and that is the safety decision. We say the clinical decision for medical uses of GMOs should be for clinicians, not councils, but the existing law does allow, and should continue to allow, economic decisions to be taken by local councils, such as the council in the Hawke’s Bay, which says that for economic reasons—which can be challenged by anyone in its planning processes, including through appeals to the Environment Court—it does not want GM plants in its area for the next 10 years. That is legal at the moment.

Minister Smith hates this. He is not brave enough to come to this House and pass an amendment to make the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act—the empowering legislation—a code. He wants to give himself a ministerial override power that knocks those rules out by regulation, which is one of the many Draconian regulation-making powers that take power off local democracy and giving it to the Minister.

The Māori Party is supporting that. It came along and said it had fixed it with a provision that said that that regulation-making power to knock out rules and plans could not be used in respect of GM crops. Well, what does that mean? The word “crops” is not defined in the legislation, so, as the Minister quite rightly said in the Committee of the whole House stage, “crops” will be given its natural or literal or ordinary meaning. That meaning, as the Minister read out, in the dictionary is that crops are the produce of plants such as cereals, fruit, and vegetables—not pasture, not grass. So the Māori Party members are now running around trying to tell everyone “Well, it includes grass. It includes trees.”, and then they show the fallacy of their own logic by saying “Look at the Forest Rights Registration Act. Crops include trees.” Well, in that Act there is a definition that says that for the purpose of that Act a crop includes a tree. It actually goes the opposite way. The fact that there is no such definition here goes to the point that in this legislation “crop” just means crops—as the dictionaries say, the produce of plants like cereals, fruit, and vegetables—and not trees and not grasses. This will be visited upon the Māori Party, and it has been shown to be hapless in respect of this issue.

There are some other problems with this. You know, you can go too far with this. The issue of property rights and the balance between that and controls and plans is a very valid one. The Productivity Commission report that came out last week backs, essentially, what the Labour Party and, actually, the ACT Party are saying in respect of urban development issues—that you need urban development agencies, you need a decent national policy statement, you need to get rid of the urban boundary and replace it with decent rules around infrastructure and financing, that is very close to what the Greens are saying too, because we are all logical in our economics and the New Zealand First Party—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Well, we are. It is the Luddites in the National Party who have got this completely wrong.

Anyway, the Productivity Commission is not actually saying that what is being done here is necessary. It is not saying that we should do away with the rights of people to have a say in respect of a subdivisional application. You know, the opponents to that included not just people who thought that they should have a say if they are close to a subdivision, it included the airports and the quarries who say that if they do not have a say in a subdivision close to them, then there will be reverse sensitivity concerns into the future, and in 10 years’ time someone will say: “Oh, we’ve got a house here now. We shouldn’t have an airport. It’s too noisy or dusty to have a quarry. Please shut down.” Those sort of nonsensical outcomes and future costs from the planning system are caused by this.

They also say that not having appeal rights—and these are developers saying this—in respect of a subdivisional application is nonsense, because you are encouraging councils to impose excessive or stupid conditions and not letting anyone have a remedy. So is that going to drive down the cost of housing or is it going to increase the complexity of council conditions? Use your common sense, Hon Nick Smith, because we know the answer is that it is going to make things worse.

There are lots of other problems. The problems in respect of the Reserves Act, I do not have time to go through. There are some good provisions in here in respect of the Public Works Act—even some of the provisions around national guidance. I do not quite like the way the Government has done them, but we could have gone along with them if it was not for the glaring problems that there are in other parts of this.

This does include various routes for Draconian ministerial powers to override local democracy. We all agree there should be standard templates and definitions, but when you draft those powers so widely that they go to the substance of conditions, you are going too far, and that is what the Government has done here. It is what National often does; it actually does not believe in local democracy. It always thinks it is right and everyone else is wrong. You cannot delegate these things to councils and then give these powers to the Minister. It is just wrong.

The many other faults in this bill have been touched on only superficially in the Committee stage debate because of the way in which that was run. There is a need to change Standing Orders so that bills return to multi-parts if they are complex and are dealing with lots of things, because otherwise these issues do not get properly debated, and there are—

I am sorry. The member’s time has expired.

It is a real pleasure to stand in this third reading debate on the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, because it has been a long, slow road to get to the point where we have been able to achieve, under this bill, the 40-something most significant changes to the Resource Management Act since its inception in 1991. Back then, in 1991, the new Resource Management Act of that year brought together more than 50 pieces of planning and resource management legislation to provide the Act that we have today. It has been much amended along the way through, so this phase two reform of the legislation, which was promised by the National Party at the last election, is important and I am very pleased that we are going to achieve that today.

It has been a huge piece of work for the Local Government and Environment Committee, and I want to thank members of the committee for their diligent and hard work. I want to thank the committee staff and officials, our ministerial advisers, and, not least of all, I want to thank the submitters—the over 700 submitters who took the time and effort to give us the benefit of their views and opinions on it. I particularly want to thank the 137 submitters whom we heard orally during the submissions on the bill.

There has been lots of talk and posturing—political posturing—by members of the Opposition on this bill. They have been highlighting what they see as difficulties and complications. But the simple matter is this: the very reasons that those members opposite oppose this legislation are the reasons that this Government and our support partners want to advance it and have it passed. It is because these are the issues that are important to ensuring that we get job growth; that we get more housing; and that we have a smoother, faster, more efficient resource management system, and these changes in this bill achieve that in a way that has not previously been the case. There will be a reduction in fees and costs, a speeding up of process, and, overall, New Zealand’s planning and environmental management is going to be improved. This is a very significant piece of legislation. It is a good bill and I support it and commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. I am happy to take a call, and I just want to thank our chairperson, who has just resumed his seat, for taking about 3 minutes on a very comprehensive bill.

💬 Hon Member: Two.

Oh, 2; was I being too generous?

💬 Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you give some guidance? This is a very contentious bill and the Government is clearly under pressure, we know, but my question to you is this: is it acceptable in this House for the person who chaired the entire process to take only 3 minutes of a 10—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The member will sit. That is not a point of order. Members can take as much time as they wish. That is a tradition of this House. I am calling Meka Whaitiri.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): The clock is ticking and it has not stopped, so I am calling Iain Lees-Galloway.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: That is my point of order—a member from New Zealand First interrupted our member and she should not be penalised for that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No; well, I am listening very closely, but on these points of order that have got nothing to do with the process of the House, then the clock continues, and I am the sole judge of that. I call Meka Whaitiri.

💬 Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think if—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I will not be penalising Meka Whaitiri.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Thank you. Right. That was my—

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to respond to the chairman of our select committee, Scott Simpson, in following his acknowledgment of the submitters. I want to say that, of the very broad range of submitters who came in front of the Local Government and Environment many of them were opposing, including Local Government New Zealand and a great many regional and district councils. We had major land developers, including Fulton Hogan; we had major corporates, including Fonterra; we had infrastructure owners including airport and quarry owners; we had all environmental non-governmental organisations; and we had the New Zealand Law Society, and numerous others. Even among those who purported to support the bill, some were guarded in their words. They used words like “We support the intent of the bill.”, before criticising much of its detail.

I also listened to the Minister’s opening address in this third reading of this important piece of legislation, and I follow on from the point around streamlining planning processes through national templates, and definitely around standardising terminology. I listened intently to the Minister’s reasoning for why this has been brought in this bill, but then he stopped. I was hoping the Minister would explain standardising templates and terminology and then extend himself into the content and the planned provisions themselves. That was the bit that I was hoping the Minister could explain: why he feels the need to take those decision-making powers from democratically elected councils. That was what I was hoping that I would hear, but he never gave that.

So what is the upshot? The upshot is that local and regional plans are now out. Instead, a National Government’s plans—propped up by the Māori Party—are in. So every council around this country should fear the communities and the environmental groups that it represents. Even the National Party members’ children and grandchildren should have real concerns around the protection of our environment, which is what the Resource Management Act (RMA) is doing. My colleague David Parker spoke about new section 360D and the overarching broad-based powers, and for me and for many listeners, I do not think we got a justifiable reason for them from the Minister. This is a fundamental issue with this bill as I read it. I never heard from the Minister why he requires that amount of power in this bill. That sends a clear signal to councils: “We don’t trust you to do it yourself. We don’t trust you to actually set these boundaries.” Of course we want clean water—and, actually, the Government can start by actually raising the standard of water quality from wadeable to swimmable. We could do that—we do not need this. You could do this tomorrow—but, no, you do not. We have given the Minister the powers to override local plans. It is a sad day in this country when we do that.

The Minister also made some statements during the debate in this House that this bill helps to not only streamline planning provisions but take out the confusion. In an article in New Zealand Farmers Weekly today Gerard Hutching stated that, actually, the debate for this particular legislation is so important to New Zealanders that it is even watched overseas. He made the point that the law that we are passing will create a mess. They are his words: “a mess”. His article says: “It creates a lot of uncertainty which will have to be cleaned up.”—that quote was made by the Federated Farmers president, William Rolleston. That is what he said when he watched the debate on this bill while he was over in Rome.

So there are actually National Party supporters who have real deep concerns with this bill. It is not going to lead to clarification and clarity for people out there in New Zealand; it is actually going to lead to a lot of confusion. Mark my words: I believe it is going to lead to litigation and, when it goes to court, as the Minister well knows, they are actually going to take the debates from this House when proving their case. I want to just take the House to that point, because when we were asking the Minister or the Māori Party what was meant by the definition of “crops” we actually got two different answers. We got that it was restricted to cereals, fruit, and vegetables.

💬 Marama Fox: That’s not what he said. Stop lying to the public.

That is what we got from the Minister. The Māori Party came back and said: “Actually, no, it includes grasses and forests.”

💬 Marama Fox: You are lying. Clarify.

So when those parties—yes—

💬 Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise to my colleague Meta Whaitiri but Marama Fox’s repeated interjection that she was lying is outside of the Standing Orders—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: She just said: “Not true.”

💬 Grant Robertson: There are many, many Speakers’ rulings on that, and I ask it to be withdrawn.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I deal with that matter, I am going to ask Nick Smith to stand, withdraw, and apologise for interjecting during the point of order.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I withdraw and apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Marama Fox, did you use those words?

💬 Marama Fox: Yes, I did. I withdraw and apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): A bit of, you know, seriousness might have helped. Before Meka Whaitiri starts again—I was going to interrupt her at the 2-minute bell, but just to indicate that the clock is running about a minute behind time. On the advice of my predecessor in the chair, there were what he regarded as frivolous interjections earlier, and 1 minute will be added to her time at the end of her speech. So she actually now has almost 4 minutes to go.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. As I was saying, I heard in this House two definitions when asking members to define the exclusion clause that the Māori Party presented in the House. I heard two different versions, which is not going to help those parties whose only recourse to challenge the Minister’s overarching plans is to seek remedies in the court. That is where debates in the House are going to be clear. The point I am making is that there is some confusion, and it will not lead to clarity, as the Minister purports.

That then leads me to the Māori Party, which will have to stand and be accountable to the many kaitiaki around this country. In fact, one just returned back to the Napier port, having sailed out on the Te Matau-a-Māui to protest the seismic ship. The Māori Party is going to have to stand and defend its position of supporting a piece of legislation that will allow the Minister to override regional and local plans. That is it—I cannot say it any more simply. It is going to have to defend that position.

But when I listened for the reason why the Māori Party, in its secret deals with the National Government, is supporting this bill, we got told it was for iwi participation plans. That was the gain. Again, in this House I heard from the member from the Māori Party that it included not just planning but also consenting and monitoring—and I thank the Minister, Nick Smith, for getting up and clarifying that iwi participation only involves planning, at the front end. It does not involve monitoring and it does not involve consenting, because, he said, it remains with the council. [Bell rung] Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker—2 minutes.

This is the humbug that we are getting from the Māori Party for its support of this plan: iwi participation plans, which were already in the RMA. Over 124 hapū and iwi already have some arrangement with local councils. In fact, 83 percent of all councils throughout New Zealand have some sort of arrangement with local hapū and iwi, be it through a memorandum of understanding or joint planning committees. So when you pull back the argument and the justification for what deal has been done here, it is not obvious. There has been no gain for iwi Māori, because many of them have them already. That was a point made here earlier. There is confusion around how much input iwi are going to have through this clause. The Minister has clarified it: all you are getting is what you already have. How is that a gain? How is what you already have—what was already there, but you are getting it now—a gain? That is where the Māori Party is going to be held accountable.

I do want to acknowledge the work of the Local Government and Environment Committee. I want to also acknowledge the officials who supported the select committee. The committee had screeds and screeds of submissions—700 submissions—and over 130 submitters appeared before the committee. It was a very complex bill that we had to endure, so I do want to acknowledge the work of the officials in supporting us. But there is a real concern I have when we are doing any contentious definitions and terms in legislation, as to whether it is the role of our Parliamentary Counsel Office to make that determination or whether it should be done at the select committee. I believe it should be done at the select committee level. In too many instances in this bill that did not occur, and that is unfortunate.

But this is a bill that Labour is definitely not supporting, because the Minister has not outlined the support, and I—thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. Minister Nick Smith, when he said that housing affordability is a major problem, was absolutely correct, and the Minister’s diagnosis of that problem—that it is primarily caused by the price of land—is absolutely correct. We have become a country that is 0.80 percent urbanised by area and yet—and yet—has a chronic shortage of land on which Kiwis are allowed to build, and, as a result, chronically expensive sections that are changing—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to ask the member to sit down. I will let him start again. I should have indicated to the House—because it is on a note in front of me—that this is a split call and only a 5-minute call, although there might have been some other arrangement. But just to make it clear, of the time the member does not use, the rest of the 10 minutes is available to a National Party member.

Just to clarify, would you like me to start again?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, yes, if the member wants to. I mean, it is easier to do it that way. I will just—if the member will resume his seat. Actually, when it is a split call, it is an unusual arrangement. That is, the member can speak for as long as he wants to for up to 10 minutes, and then the next speaker gets the balance of the time. But it has been indicated to me that there is an expectation on part of the National whips that the member will take only 5 minutes.

OK. Right, well, on that basis, Mr Assistant Speaker, I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. The Minister, when he stood up and identified housing affordability as a major challenge facing this country, was absolutely right. Not only that, his diagnosis of the problem was absolutely correct: we have a crisis of a lack of land on which Kiwis are allowed to build. We are a country that is 0.80 percent populated by area and yet has found itself with a shortage of land on which Kiwis are able to build. As a result, there are sky-high section prices, which is the main driver of housing unaffordability, which is tearing apart not only the social fabric of New Zealand but is creating major economic liabilities as well.

That is the point at which we agree, but after that we depart, because this 18th amendment of the Resource Management Act (RMA) in 26 years will not do nothing for housing affordability, it will not do nothing for the supply of land and the building of new dwellings, but it will be so close to nothing that the Minister will have wasted 2½ years of his ministerial time and much of this House’s time in bringing a bill that is two steps backward for each one step forward.

The fundamental problem with the Resource Management Act is that it is a long list of requirements that councils must consider when they take a role under the Act, which means that they end up producing ever more complex plans and ever more complex requirements, which stifles New Zealanders from using their property. The fundamental problem with the Act is that it does not assume that people can do what they want with their property so long as they are not harming others. It assumes that people can do with their property only what they are allowed to by the Act and by the bureaucrats who act under it. That is why we have a fundamentally underperforming property market. That is why we have a difficulty with housing affordability in New Zealand. But this Act will not address any of that. It will not change any of the underlying principles. All it will do is tinker, just like the last 17 amendments to the Resource Management Act.

Telling councils that they have to do it faster, and that they have to use national planning templates is not going to remove the fundamental problem that they are forced to consider so many ephemeral concerns when they decide what you can do on your own property. Worse than that, the introduction of Mana Whakahono ā Rohe is actually going to make the RMA worse.

I was talking about this on Newstalk ZB last night, and I got a phone call just afterwards, saying “Kia ora, David. I’d like to talk to you about your comments on Newstalk ZB.”, and I said “Oh, OK.” He said: “You’re absolutely correct. These requirements do not only affect Pākehā, they affect Māori too.” He said to me: “I don’t want to have to go, cap in hand, to my cousin, the elite from down the road, who has an agreement with the council that puts his rights ahead of mine.” Make no mistake: not only does this bill privilege some people over others by birth, it introduces an additional layer of bureaucracy to all New Zealanders who wish to use their property.

We have reformed our planning laws four times in this country—in 1926 with the Town-planning Act; in 1953 with the Town and Country Planning Act; again in 1977 with the Town and Country Planning Act mark 2; and in 1991 with the Resource Management Act. You will notice that the frequency of updating our planning laws is about every 25 years, and if the next Government in New Zealand is serious about allowing people to exercise their property rights, use their land, and build housing for the next generation, then it will not have Nick Smith tinkering on the 18th amendment in a 26-year-old bill. What it will do is introduce, as the Productivity Commission has said, a brand new, total replacement bill that will replace the RMA, which has become completely unworkable. That is why the ACT Party proudly opposes this useless amendment. Thank you.

I would just say to the member that that last sentence had far too many commas in it.

I am not going to continue discussion around this bill. I have heard my colleague Nick Smith here. I think this bill delivers a lot of very good stuff—12 key amendments—and on that basis I do support it. [Interruption]

Order! Order! On my left, please—

💬 Kris Faafoi: He’s lost his mojo.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Kris Faafoi!

When I first did my training as an urban planner, I actually thought that there were huge opportunities across the political spectrum. I really thought that, because what most people want in New Zealand, I think, is the same thing. They want towns and cities that have affordable, decent housing, that have parks and amenities, that are easy to get around, and that have access to shops and jobs and all the things that people need to live a good life. They want to do that in a way that protects our natural environment and enhances it because that is what is really important to people. That is all entirely possible to achieve, because some of the problems our towns and cities are facing right now are actually the result of bad planning rules.

So, on the one hand, you have the people who are maybe on the more green, left side of the spectrum, who want to see better public transport for people, more walking and cycling, protection of the environment, and ensuring people have affordable housing—they want those outcomes. Then you have the people on the right side of the spectrum, who claim to want to get rid of bad regulations and make it easier for developers to build what they want to build and easier for people to do business.

The reality is that the solution is the same for both of these. There are a number of really bad planning rules that contain onerous regulations, inhibit development, cause unaffordable housing, and also create terrible car-dependent environments, or, you know, areas where you just have swathes of houses that are nowhere near the jobs that people need to get to, which causes terrible traffic congestion. That means people are reliant on cars to get around; they suffer from all sorts of health problems as a result of that, and we have climate change as a result of that.

Here we are with this opportunity. Across the House we could probably have found a lot of common ground to make positive changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that would genuinely benefit New Zealanders and create the types of towns and cities that we want to live in and protect the environment. Sadly, the National Government has squandered its opportunity to lead that sort of cross-party inquiry into how we could fix the Act. Rather than having a royal commission of inquiry, as was recommended by one of the Act’s original architects, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Minister Nick Smith declined because he thought that would hold up the process too long. Well, that was 2½ years ago. We are only going to have the bill passing today, but the bill does not make any real improvements to the Act; if anything, it makes it far more complicated.

The Resource Management Act is already 806 pages. This bill is 215 pages long. So we are going to have an Act of Parliament that is close to 1,000 pages when the two are consolidated—when this amendment bill passes. Nick Smith’s legacy is a bill that makes the RMA incoherent and inaccessible—even more so than it already is. It is legislation that means that people are going to have to pay planners and lawyers to just even try to begin to understand, and it is going to be very difficult for people to participate in the process. That, I think, is the fundamental problem with the bill as it is right now. It does not achieve our fundamental goal of protecting the environment, and it also makes it hard for people to do things that they want to do in our towns and cities. We could actually get wins across the board and improve it in both of those ways, but that is not what the Government has decided to do.

When I was out campaigning in Mt Albert during the by-election, housing affordability and transport were, very clearly, the two largest issues on people’s minds. While everybody acknowledged that housing affordability is an issue because lots of people want to live in the inner suburbs, Nick Smith and David Seymour will have us believe that the answer to the problem of expensive sections in the centre of the city is to enable more far-flung development hours away from where the jobs are. That is not going to solve people’s transport problems. That is not really going to solve their housing affordability problems, because if you have an affordable house that is nowhere near jobs and you have to spend 2 hours a day commuting and spend lots of money and every person in your family has to own their car—well, you have completely undone the benefit of having a cheaper house, because you are spending so much money on petrol and you are spending so much time in traffic.

The issue is that in places like Mt Albert land values are very, very high and lots of people want to be there. We need to find opportunities for there to be more intensive developments there, but that does not mean high-rise. I am not talking about towers; you do not need that. They are just three-or four-storey—the kind of beautiful art deco developments we had before the Town and Country Planning Act. In the 1930s we actually built really beautiful apartments in Auckland that make nice homes, and we could do it again, but we have to change some of those underlining planning rules.

The way that the Green Party proposes to do that is a national policy statement or environmental standard on urban design that would ensure that people are allowed to build townhouses and apartments in those parts of the city where more people want to live, and that is going to solve our housing affordability problem. But people living in those areas need to participate in that process and feel like they are on board with it. That is what I heard, out doorknocking in Mt Albert—that people are happy with more development happening in their neighbourhood if it means that their kids can afford a place to live near them, but they do think that the community needs to have some say and have a proper participatory process that should be led by the Government. That is something that we would like to see.

Nick Smith’s ultimate straw man argument against anything the Opposition has said about this bill is that we are opposed to housing affordability because this is the only way to get housing affordability. Well, I say to you, Minister, that there are four factors affecting housing affordability in Auckland. Your Government could have addressed pretty much all of them, and this bill does nothing to address any of them.

The No. 1 factor is the tax advantages that are given to property investors. Investors made up 44 percent of house sales in Auckland in the last year. So almost half of the sales are going to property investors, not first-home buyers. That is because we do not have a capital gains tax. So it makes sense. If you already own property, why would you not just put more of your money in more property? That is not good for our economy in the long run, and it is not fair. Why should somebody who has held on to a property for a couple of years be able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit they have made and pay no tax on that when people going to work every day and earning a pay cheque pay tax on their income? It is just not fair.

If the National Government had instituted a capital gains tax, not only would we have seen less house-price inflation—because New Zealand has had the worst house-price inflation of any OECD country, probably because we do not have capital gains tax, and everybody else does—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to ask the member to resume her seat and interrupt her and ask her to now come back to focusing on the bill. I think she has been running on capital gains for a couple of minutes now, and it is not part of this bill.

OK—fair enough, but there is no question that the lack of a capital gains tax is a key factor in the lack of housing affordability.

The second factor is foreign capital, which is driving up house prices. Places like Vancouver, which have instituted a foreign-buyers tax, have seen a 16 percent drop in prices. Vancouver is a very similar situation to New Zealand. Simply by saying that the problem is about supply completely ignores some of the major factors driving house-price inflation in Auckland and in the rest of New Zealand. That has to be dealt with, because otherwise we are not going to solve our housing affordability problem.

The third problem is, of course, that we have practically zero legislation protecting renters’ rights. We do not have a warrant of fitness on rental properties. So the people getting away with tax-free capital gains also do not have to invest in their properties or look after their renters.

Finally, of course, the Government should directly be increasing the supply of houses. What we would like to see is an approach to resource management that solves this intractable problem that we seem to have. It is entirely possible to do that. We could simplify the Act, we could make better legislation that protects the environment and enables better public participation, and we could have the Government leading master planning of neighbourhoods that enable more homes—but not just homes, because it is not just homes that we need. We need homes in neighbourhoods that have access to jobs and shops and schools and parks. People do not want to live in a subdivision full of McMansions where they have to commute for hours. The market is failing to provide what we need, in part because of bad regulation and in part because of a lack of central government leadership.

I really believe that if the Minister and the National Government had been serious about solving the problems with the Resource Management Act, they would have taken a more cross-party approach and they would have got the experts in through a royal commission of inquiry, and then we would not see this bad legislation being passed by only one or two votes. There would be a broad base of support, and that would provide more security to those developers and those people doing business, but, most importantly, to the citizens of this country who care about the natural environment and who care about housing affordability and who care about the future design of their towns and cities and want to have input into it.

We can do it once, we can do it right, and we can invest in the infrastructure we need to support housing affordability and fantastic green neighbourhoods that are good for people, good for the planet, and, of course, good for business. That is what people can vote for this September—vote for a change of Government, because this Government is not going to deliver on anything. It has proved that in the last 9 years.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not wish to disagree with your ruling, but I want to raise a point of order under Speaker’s ruling 136/4, which is a ruling of Speaker Algie from 1961 that states: “Members must confine themselves to the general principles of the bill as it emerged from the committee.”, and also Speaker’s ruling 137/4, which is a ruling from Acting Speaker Harrison that states: “The third reading is an occasion for drawing attention in passing to amendments that were defeated but not for a lengthy discussion on matters …”.

I think it is important to raise those two matters now, partly because I intend to do it in my speech and I want to get a clear ruling from you. Julie Anne Genter raised questions around housing affordability in Auckland and did go through those points in some detail. The Minister for the Environment, in introducing the bill and throughout the debate, spoke about the reason for the bill being the housing issue that New Zealand is facing. I would have thought that that is actually within the general principles of the bill.

All right, the member can resume his seat. I understand that there are matters of interpretation in this, and I was not, unfortunately, in the Chamber for the Minister’s speech. That is a factor in how people can reply, but I think 2 minutes on the capital gains tax was too much.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and, in particular, my colleague Denis O’Rourke, who saw most of this bill through the Local Government and Environment Committee process, and I trust that I will do him justice by taking his slot.

I want to start by making it very, very clear to the House that New Zealand First is not going to go through this election talking about bottom lines, except for on this matter. We wish to make it very, very clear as a party that if any party in this House today debating this bill, and voting for it in particular, wishes to be in Government with us post—23 September, they will have to accept that we will repeal this bill. I am saying it again: New Zealand First is making it very, very clear that if this bill passes in this third reading, those parties that vote for it—if they wish to be in Government with New Zealand First post—September 2017—had better accept that this bill will be repealed.

When New Zealand First first spoke to the Government, we said we were willing to cooperate on any amendment, any change to the resource legislation, so long as it was aimed at simplification, so long as it was aimed at reducing delays, so long as it was aimed at reducing costs, so long as it was user friendly, and so long as it did adequately provide land for housing, but without compromising the Act. We said that those things would be subject to a number of things, such as our belief and our adherence to the principle of there being one law for all, regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity.

💬 Marama Fox: That’d be nice. When will that happen?

We said that we would preserve sections 5—I will get to Marama Fox soon. We said that we would preserve sections 5, 6, and 7, but with climate change as a matter of national imperative, subject to preserving district, city, and regional council democracy, and not undermining that in the same way that this Government did in 2013 with the local government amendment bill. We said we would support the bill so long as it ensured adequate land for housing without compromising the Act, and with no excessive resorting to crude, executive ministerial powers of the like that this bill now entrenches, especially when it comes to overriding local democracy and the people’s view of how the resources within their territories should be used, should be managed, and how development should occur.

Those were the fundamentals of the ground that we laid out in an offer to assist this Government, should it choose to engage with the Rt Hon Winston Peters. But it did not. Where are we now? We are in a situation now where we are watching—oh, and one of the other things that we made very clear in this debate along the way is that we are going to get rid of the Māori Party through the election process, because people will see, through this legislation, exactly what they have got. They have got a Government that is now in an outrageous situation where this House is, by the thinnest skin of majority, going to pass legislation because the tail is wagging the mongrel Government dog like a lamb—like a lamb.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, no, the member will resume his seat. I just want to warn the member that though this is a sensitive debate—it is a debate where there are strongly held views on both sides, but, and I say this as a loving owner of dogs, it is not appropriate to describe a Government in that way.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for your guidance. It is interesting that the Assistant Speaker should raise the issue—

💬 Hon David Bennett: Why don’t we hear Shane Jones give us the real oil?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! David Bennett, can you please just try to control yourself, especially using words like that.

Thank you. I am going to take the cue about this being a sensitive debate, and I am going to make the observation of how bizarre we are. New Zealand First often refers in this House to “Pepsi-Coke governance” and “Pepsi-Coke legislation”, and we have another one of these Pepsi-Coke moments, where Labour is championing against something that it, we would say, did in the past. I go back to 2003 and I can go back to 2004 when this very same Government railed against Labour for doing the very same sorts of things.

Let me just, for the benefit of the Māori Party, which is so in love with its new friends over that side, read out a quote: “I turn now to some of the loopy provisions that provide for the protection of ancestral landscapes. We—New Zealand First, ACT, and National—ask members opposite to tell us what an ancestral landscape is.” It goes on to say: “I ask members to look at the fiasco at Ngawha Prison and the conduct of Ngāpuhi. What will this bill do to remove the ‘brownmail’ that is going on in New Zealand, whereby Māori organisations object, as of right—right through [the process]? I am happy to table the documents that confirm that is going on. This bill will make it worse, and that is bad for race relations, bad for the environment, and bad for the economy—and this bill does absolutely nought in that regard. I come now to the dirty tricks part of the bill.” That was the Hon Nick Smith on 6 May 2003, speaking against the Labour Government, which was ramming through Resource Management Act amendments.

But wait, there is more—on 14 December 2004: “Then we come to some of the detailed issues. Why is it that members opposite are going to amend the Resource Management Act to make Māori iwi authorities into public bodies? That is a revolutionary constitutional change. I am sure Clayton Cosgrove has not been telling his constituents in Waimakariri that he is off to Parliament saying that Ngāi Tahu is no longer a private body but a public body that will have regulatory powers normally restricted to publicly elected bodies—and that is a step”—get this—“that is a step backwards that takes us further down the road to having two standards of citizenship in this country.” Who said that? Nick Smith. The Hon Nick Smith—

💬 Chris Hipkins: That’s because he’s a hypocrite.

—in his Pepsi-Coke moment of attacking Labour, which was passing similar—in fact, we would say in New Zealand First, the exact same—measures into legislation.

💬 Chris Hipkins: A hypocrite, Nick.

But he was not finished there.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat. Chris Hipkins will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

💬 Chris Hipkins: I withdraw and apologise.

There is more. But wait, there is more: “Nor do we see anything in this bill that will enable us to address the huge and growing problem of iwi holding communities to ransom and effectively asking for”—wait for it—‘brownmail’ in order for the projects to proceed.” Not brown male—m-a-l-e; this is “brownmail”—m-a-i-l.

This is precisely what New Zealand First has been trying to tell the Hon Mr Nick Smith, the Minister who has brought this debacle to the House. This Minister should stand up and withdraw the bill and apologise to the nation, because this Minister campaigned on those words of “brownmail”, on Māori entities being—look at me, Mr Smith; I am trying to help you—made into public bodies, usurping the democratic rights of the citizens, the districts, and the regions of New Zealand.

Mr Smith, there is a word that nobody is allowed to use in this House, but it is ringing in my ears right now as we sit here in the third reading waiting for the votes to be passed. The irony of all of this is that this bill will only get through because the Māori Party is supporting the man who knows that it is going to “brownmail” the rest of Aotearoa. In every development, in every consent, in every opportunity where someone is trying to free up land to build a house, in will come the iwi with a non-mandated—well, now with a statutory power, assisted by the Minister, with his new overriding powers to override the objections of Federated Farmers, of the chambers of commerce. He will put his weight behind those Māori entities that he is cementing into law.

There is one line that rings in my ear. New Zealand First stands for equality. New Zealand First stands for one nation, for one people, for one law for all, and it is our belief in this Parliament that the fundamental principle of democracy is that we are all created equal in God’s eyes and nothing in legislation will ever change that, no matter how many flip-flops Mr Nick Smith makes.

I am going to Marama Fox, but I just want to make it clear that this is a call that has been substituted from the National Party and is, therefore, a 10-minute call, not a 5-minute call.

I find that last contribution quite ironic from the man who was the chief Treaty negotiator for Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa—quite ironic. I will leave it there, because he is my cousin.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Have you figured out what a crop is yet?

Yeah, I have. In fact, we said it yesterday, and you voted for it under my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP).

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): And the member will—she does know not to talk to—

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker. My apologies. The Labour Party supported and voted for my SOP, which stipulated that there was a carve-out for crops. The Māori Party supports the amendments within its SOP on the understanding that, as negotiated with the Government, they preserve the regions’ ability under local plans to regulate all types of GM crops in their territories, including forestry and grasses and any activities involving the growing of GM crops, whether for commercial or other purposes.

In fact, if you look up the Forestry Rights Registration Act 1983, there is a definition of “crop”—supplied by the member, the lovely Steffan Browning. A crop is “a single crop … of 1 or more species:”, or multiple crops, inside the definition in the Forestry Rights Registration Act. We have the agreement of the Minister to include grasses and forestry. In terms of crops, we would have preferred to align the wording with the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HASNO) Act but it was under the guidance of the GM movement itself that the word “crop” be used. This is not the place to debate whether GM this and that—

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Yes, it is.

No, because that is the HASNO Act, and, under the Environment Protection Authority, if you want to bring any GM anything into this country, that is the place you go to have that determined. This SOP is to determine whether or not a region can declare itself GE-free, and that is exactly what it does. The Opposition members can cry to their heart’s content, but that is what it does. So I would like to commend this bill to the House, and I do so on behalf of the party. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Look, I do not think it would be a surprise to the people of New Zealand that when National is putting a bill about the environmental protections of New Zealand, it would be a bill that is anti-environment. I do not think it would surprise anyone in New Zealand that a bill the National Government was putting on the Resource Management Act (RMA) would avoid and take away local people’s right to have a say about what happens in their towns and communities. I do not think anyone would be surprised by that. I am definitely not surprised by the anti-environmental positions coming from the pro-pollution party.

If you sum up very, very briefly what this legislation does, it does nothing to help greenhouse gases. In fact, climate change still cannot be considered under the RMA, because National voted against Eugenie Sage’s amendment. This bill gives the Minister for the Environment—Nick Smith currently; who knows how long he is going to last, though—the power to reach into communities to fast track consents, to override local decision-making. This bill limits citizens’ rights to know what is happening in their communities and what councils are deciding on their behalf.

This bill does absolutely nothing to deal with the real issues facing our housing crisis in New Zealand. That is an absolute smokescreen, a straw man argument used by the Government. This bill does not address the important issues facing our country when it comes to the dire, dire housing crisis.

The thing I want to focus on, though, is how this bill affects a small part of, and amends, the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act. You see, this bill, in its 200 pages, changes quite a few different pieces of legislation, but this has flown relatively under the radar, and it is deeply troubling. It is deeply disturbing. I think it paints quite a strong picture of or gives insight into the current National Government.

What this amendment bill does is it takes the ability, currently held by the Environmental Protection Authority, to set a decision-making body to hear consents for things that happen in our waters, and—guess where it goes, that power to appoint those decision makers. It goes to Nick Smith. The Minister is grabbing the control, and I will tell you why. The reason it is happening is that Nick Smith and National did not get their way. It was a law they passed. This is a relatively recent law, only 4 or 5 years old. They thought they would smooth the way for their friends in the seabed mining industry, and for the New Zealand Transport Agency to build those gargantuan Basin Reserve flyovers, but, because they did not get their way, they are changing the law. They are going to change the way these panels are formed, because National did not like it when independent experts came up with a different outcome from what it wanted.

I think this is a salutary lesson for the country. What happened when Trans-Tasman Resources wanted to mine 50,000 tonnes of the seabed and did not get its way—National is going to change the law. When Chatham Rock Phosphate wanted to mine in our most productive fishery—and the fishing industry was opposed and presented compelling evidence as to why to an independent decision-making committee—it ran to the Government, and National is changing the law. When the family carers fought the Government for 10 years through the courts, what did this Government do? It went and changed the law so that they could not have their day in court. When the Basin flyover was rejected by independent experts, what happened? National is changing the law to make it easier. When Anadarko was upset with protesters in boats, who might wave banners in front of their offshore oil installations, National changed the law, under urgency, to make it not happen.

So here, you see, is a pattern. When its friends in some particular industries do not get their way, National changes the law. It is not just that. When other industries’ law changes are not in their interests, National will dole out public money. When Tīwai had National over a barrel, it called up John Key, and John Key gave it $30 million to keep the Tīwai smelter going. So when it did not get its way, it got taxpayer money. We saw the same with Skycity—taxpayer largesse once again.

What you see summed up in this legislation—with the powers taken from an independent decision-making committee and given to the Minister to decide who those people are—is a pattern of crony capitalism, a Government that is governing in a crony capitalist fashion. Look, there are a lot of reasons why you can object to this bill—here is just another.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I want to pick up on one of the points made by the green member—the member from the Green Party, sorry—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

—you can take offence—and other members across the House, and that is one of a failed democracy, a failed democratic process. The member Gareth Hughes just talked about how the Minister for the Environment is now taking control. He is trying to expedite processes to meet their own ends.

When I think about that democratic process—this particular bill does have one other stage. It has one more stage, once it passes its third reading here in this House: it will go on to the Governor-General for the Royal assent. I hope that in that process, she has some common sense. Some of the questions being asked in this House today are not being answered by this Government, and I question whether or not any common sense exists—whether on that side of that House or, indeed, in the final process of this bill when it goes to the Governor-General.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I regret interrupting my colleague, but I think that what he just said, which I do not really want to repeat, was a breach of Standing Order 118. I think it is an important point of principle that we, as members of the House, do not do what the member just did. I ask that you—he probably needs to withdraw and apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, the member is absolutely wrong. It was a quite proper reference.

Thank you very much. Look, the democratic process is all-important to our people. The people outside these four walls are looking upon this institution to make sure that we get it right, and, in this instance, I argue that we have not.

I am disappointed that the Māori Party members are not in this House defending their position. They talk about GM foods—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No—sorry, the member will resume his seat. He must not draw attention to the absence of members, especially when it is—it is also inaccurate, now.

I am reminded of the hard work done by a group of people on what is known as Wai 262. It was a claim made to the Waitangi Tribunal on which a very good report was given. The recommendations from that report are very clear about genetic modification. They give a Māori perspective on the GM matter, which is a very serious one for this country. Sadly, the Māori Party did not consult with those experts, nor did it even look at Wai 262 when it considered its position on the GM matter with this bill. They have gone and supported it, and now what they have done, sadly, for the rest of the country and for Māoridom in particular, is they have thrown a dummy to the people. They have actually, with two concessions, agreed to support this particular bill through the House, without looking at the entirety of the actual bill.

There are other things in the bill that, I am sure, our people would be concerned about. One of those is Part 4. I take the Green Party’s point, made last night during the Committee stage of the House, about Part 4 of the bill, which actually gives far too much power to the Minister for the Environment for those who are looking to apply for a licence or to renew a licence for mining in this country. I daresay that those people who are now out protesting, out on the ocean, the seismic testing that is going on out there, as mentioned by my colleague Meka Whaitiri—I bet you those people will not be very happy with the support of this bill and to see it go through. Part 4 has not even been mentioned by the support parties of this Government, and it is of huge concern to me.

I also want to talk about housing. It was mentioned by the Minister at the beginning that in order for us to meet the housing demands and the housing pressures of this country we must make significant reforms like this, and, in part, I do agree with that. I do. However, it must go through a robust debate—with consideration from right across the House, but, more importantly, with a bipartisan approach across this House, to make sure that it has the full support of this House. Why? Because we represent electorates across the country—mine, in particular, in Tāmaki Makaurau where the housing crisis is felt at the moment, and has been felt for a number of years now. We are screaming out for more homes. However, we do not think that we should be conceding proper process and robust legislation just in order to meet that demand.

In conclusion, we cannot support this bill.

I stand to commend the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill to the House.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Chicken.

💬 Grant Robertson: Mr Assistant Speaker.

No—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Which one?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, probably both of you, but actually Carmel Sepuloni, I think. [Interruption] Sorry—was it Carmel Sepuloni who used a poultry term?

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Yes.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Yes, right. The member will withdraw and apologise.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: I withdraw and apologise.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): And a warning for Mr Faafoi for bringing me into the debate, especially in reference to poultry.

In the late 1980s and the early 1990s in New Zealand, the National and Labour parties both put together the Resource Management Act (RMA). Sir Geoffrey Palmer, on the Labour side, and a person who is about to become a significant player again in the environmental landscape in New Zealand, Simon Upton, were the two architects and authors of an Act that is the greatest balancing act of any piece of legislation that has been before this Parliament. It has balanced together the rights of local communities and local people to be represented on the most important decisions about them and their community, with the importance of sustainable development and management of the environment. It was, and is, a remarkable piece of law. Of course it is flawed. Of course it has got problems. Of course it has needed amendment over the years. But in its principle, it is a piece of law that has done something that is very difficult to do around the world.

Tonight, by the barest majority, the National Government is going to tear up what that law is about. I would go so far as to say—and it was called crony capitalism by Gareth Hughes earlier on today—that this is borderline corruption. In fact, it is corruption. The National Government is bringing a morally bankrupt, corrupt bill before the House. What this bill does is draw the Minister back to being the person who is now responsible for things that were in the National Development Act in the 1970s. It has put Nick Smith, the Minister for the Environment, in a position of taking power away from those at the local level and centralising that back with him—be it about plans, be it about national policy statements, or be it about this brand new tool, this national planning statement. If there is a definition of “corruption”—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): OK, I am now going to interrupt the member and draw his attention to a set of Speakers’ rulings, on page 55, in relation to the word that he is using, and indicate to him that he should not continue to use that word, except in the most proper motion.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the course of you undertaking that ruling—which, of course, I respect—around about 20 seconds of my time has been deleted. I would request that that be returned to the clock.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am not proposing to do that. Members do not get extra time for time taken to correct them for things that they do. Otherwise, of course, debates could be never-ending.

The National Government is bringing forward today a piece of legislation—let us make this absolutely clear—that takes away from local communities and regional councils the rights that they have had to determine their own future, and centralises that power back into the hands of a single Minister. In other countries, when the central government goes in and takes rights and power away from local government, we call it a banana republic. That is what it is.

I am sorry to say to this House that the actions of this Government are corrupt, because it has not taken this process through proper parliamentary scrutiny. It got a bill that it could not get passed, so it did a deal with the Māori Party. We faffed around in the House with the bill being reported back and then coming back out for its second reading. We still did not debate it properly. The Māori Party and the National Government got together and did a deal, and there was a 400-page departmental report that no member of the public got to comment on. No member of the public got to comment on a 400-page document that fundamentally changed their rights. It changed their rights in terms of what goes in a plan that a regional council creates—their rights to submit on that. They did that—the National Government, aided and abetted by the Māori Party, did that, and did not go back to New Zealanders. They did not give New Zealanders a chance to actually comment on it. How is that not corruption? How is that not a corruption of the process of this House?

This is a disgrace. The National Government will get this bill through, and Nick Smith will be able to tick it off at some point in the future and say: “I did it. I passed the resource management amendment bill.” Well, it is a disgraceful bill, the bill that is in front of us today. It is a disgraceful bill, and Nick Smith—I will give him this. He can sure bring people together. He has managed to bring Fonterra and Fish & Game together. We have been trying to do that for years, on this side of the House. Nick Smith did it. He has brought together Local Government New Zealand and iwi, who are scrapping away all over the country on different rules, because they all think this is a terrible piece of legislation.

It will create confusion. It will create difficulty. It will be amended again and again. It is unclear, it is muddled, it is confused. Like owners and their pets, it is the Minister and his bill starting to show the same characteristics. This is an incredibly poor piece of legislation.

I do not believe that the members of the National Government, who have sat meekly through this bill, really support it at all. They do not really support it at all. They have been inundated with emails. Alastair Scott, fresh out of Kelburn, has been inundated with emails from people—

💬 Alastair Scott: That’s me.

💬 Jono Naylor: Over here.

Oh, the wrong one—I get them confused. It is easy to do, because neither of them have offered anything of any value in this particular debate.

They have been inundated with emails from members of the public who are telling them not to pass the bill. Those emails might happen to be ones that I do not agree with—they might happen to be ones on a topic that I do not agree with. But their constituents are telling them, and they are worried—they are genuinely worried. Alastair Scott, fresh from Kelburn, on his way to Wairarapa—Jono Naylor, well, he is saying goodbye, so it does not matter—he should be worried, because right through the Wairarapa, from the Fish & Game people to the Forest and Bird people to the farmers of Fonterra to the people who have been emailing him with their concerns about issues within the bill, they are all marking this day. They are marking this day as a tragic one for New Zealand.

In the remaining couple of minutes available to me, I want to pay tribute to a few people. I want to pay tribute to the staff of the Ministry for the Environment, who have had to put up with this nonsense from their Minister. Their Minister has put them in a terrible position. The people who work in that department actually care about the environment, they actually want to do something positive, and they have been forced to work on this. I feel sorry for them. The other people I want to pay tribute to are the hundreds of New Zealanders who submitted on this bill, who care about the environment, who care about getting the balance between how we involve people in decision making and how we have sustainable management.

I want to credit my own colleagues on this side of the House—and I include in that the Greens and New Zealand First as well—who have worked hard over many, many months to try to find a way to talk some sense into the National Government members. They have consistently offered to actually come up with legislation that will make the improvements that are needed to the RMA, that will help actually address the housing crisis, and at no point have the National Government members been interested in taking up those offers. Over those many, many months people like David Parker have led the charge from this side of the House, and then over recent days my colleagues who are here tonight, and others who have worked hard.

The National Government, with the Māori Party—through a deal that actually will not serve Māori well at all—will pass this bill, but this is an incredibly sad day for New Zealand, a corruption of process, and a bill that makes very little positive difference to the way in which New Zealand’s environment will be managed. I am incredibly sad that the National Government thinks that this is some triumphant moment for it. It is not. It is actually about taking something that National and Labour worked on together over many years, and trashing it—and trashing it in the name of an incompetent Minister, who has completely failed New Zealanders and now leaves many of his colleagues exposed in the election in September. This bill is an absolute disgrace.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Under Standing Order 41, I move, That strangers be ordered to withdraw. This is so that in the event that this debate reaches the vote, the vote may be taken without any risk of undue influence over the members voting.

I commend this bill to the House.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I could be wrong about this, but just looking at Standing Order 40 on page 28—

Yes, the member is wrong. He will resume his seat. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

💬 Darroch Ball: A point of order, sir.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Sorry?

💬 Darroch Ball: A point of order.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well, I have looked at Standing Order 40. There is only one thing there. It is a question of a Minister being present. There are two.