Resource Management Amendment Bill

I move, That the Resource Management Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill.

The Resource Management Act (RMA) is, in the view of the Government, underperforming, and needs fixing. The resource management system, in general, is not performing as well as originally intended. Air quality is going pretty well, but other indicators are poor. Water and biodiversity indicators are in decline. Soil loss has increased. Urban development planning has not responded fast enough to the housing crisis. Over 25 years of amendments have made the situation worse, and the RMA is now nearly twice its original length. Using the RMA takes too long, costs too much, and hasn’t properly protected the environment.

The Government’s committed to addressing this. We’re, first, using existing tools to make improvements in the current system, including a new national direction for versatile soils, urban development, and fresh water. In July this year, we launched a comprehensive overhaul of the resource management system. This is being undertaken by a review panel led by retired Court of Appeal judge the Hon Tony Randerson QC, and we look forward to receiving reform recommendations from the panel in mid-2020. However, in the meantime, there are a number of targeted improvements to the current RMA that can’t wait, including reversing some of the objectionable changes made by the prior Government in 2017 that were widely criticised at the time.

Changes are also necessary to support the delivery of the Essential Freshwater action plan, which is currently out for consultation. The Government’s committed to improving New Zealand’s freshwater quality by stopping further degradation and loss, and reversing past damage. Key to achieving this will be a new National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management under the RMA. We’re consulting on its detail now, and its final form, which won’t be known for some months yet, will come into force in mid-2020, replacing the currently inadequate 2017 version.

However, we already know that the majority of councils will not be fully implementing even the 2017 national policy statement (NPS) until 2030 or later. That 13-year delay makes it clear that the standard RMA planning process is too slow to implement the new freshwater NPS. So to ensure that necessary plan changes are made by 2025, after which time the NPS will have prospective effect, the bill introduces a new specialised planning process for freshwater plans, broadly based upon the process that was used for the Auckland Unitary Plan. A central pool of expert freshwater hearing commissioners will be appointed. They’ll be specialists, and they’ll be chaired by a Chief Freshwater Commissioner, who’ll be a current or retired Environment Court judge. Hearing panels will be set up for each regional freshwater plan change, generally with five members, but with a minimum of three for some of the simpler or narrower plans. The panels will include regional council members or their nominees, and a tangata whenua nominee. Hearing panels will fully test proposed plans in light of submitters’ feedback, and recommend a plan with any revisions to the relevant council for adoption.

At the same time, the bill will repeal the 22-page collaborative planning process. This process, which was introduced in 2017, was widely criticised at the time as being overly prescriptive, and an unnecessary, complicated codification of what can, and does, voluntarily occur. No council has used the statutory process to date, and none is likely to. It is redundant, and it will be repealed, shortening the length of the RMA. As I said also, the bill will repeal some other objectionable changes made by the previous Government. Draconian regulation-making powers that enabled the Minister for the Environment to override council rules will be repealed. The presumption that subdivisions require a resource consent, unless they’re expressly permitted by a rule in a plan, will be reinstated. This will save district councils unnecessary costs in reviewing their plan provisions.

Preclusions on notifications, and appeals, in respect of subdivision applications, will restore appropriate opportunities for participation. This will enable existing businesses, such as quarries, airports, and horticulturalists, to participate on the basis of legitimate concerns about reverse sensitivity impacts that new subdivisions can have on their existing operations. It also removes a perverse incentive for developers to intentionally make their applications non-compliant, so as to preserve their appeal rights against unreasonable conditions that might be imposed by a council.

The ability of a submitter or an applicant to appeal matters outside the scope of the person’s original submission but which arose during the hearing will also be reinstated. The bill will reverse the current phase out of financial contributions which can be a useful tool to address development impacts. The phase out was based on an incorrect assertion of double charging with development contributions under the Local Government Act. This, in fact, is not permitted by law already. Meanwhile, the bill clarifies that financial contributions cannot be imposed on designations for State schools or defence facilities. For schools, this is consistent with a 100-year-old deal that central government funds a school but councils don’t charge levies on schools.

The bill also introduces a number of sensible amendments to existing processes. Applicants for non-notified consents will now be able to suspend their applications for up to 20 working days. Council will be able to stop the processing clock until outstanding consent application fees fixed in advance are paid. The current 20-day time limit to lodge retrospective consent applications for emergency works necessary during a state of emergency will be extended to 60 working days. That arises out of the experience that we’ve had following earthquakes and allows more time for emergency services to focus their efforts on immediate needs during these events and reduces the need for special legislation, as has occurred in recent years.

The bill makes explicit that conditions of multiple existing consents can be reviewed concurrently to allow councils to manage cumulative pressures on the environment; for example, at a catchment level. On compliance and enforcement, maximum infringement fees will be increased and the current six-month statutory limitation for taking prosecutions will be extended to 12 months. The Environmental Protection Authority will be provided with powers under the RMA to assist councils with the investigation of incidents and to take over the lead investigative role from councils if and when necessary.

The bill makes some minor changes to the operation of the Environment Court by enabling acting District Court judges, acting Māori Land Court judges, and retired Environment Court judges to be appointed as alternate Environment Court judges. Special advisers will be protected against legal proceedings regarding their advice, and the head of the Environment Court will be renamed to clarify the status of that position.

It has been suggested that the bill also address current provisions regarding urban tree projection and climate change mitigation. Both of these matters are complex. Auckland City Council previously used blanket rules that required resource consents to prune trees. This caused significant frustration and undermined the reputation of the RMA. There were also mixed views about whether climate change mitigation, or particularly how climate change mitigation, should be considered in RMA decisions. If we don’t consider this carefully, we could see ad hoc opposition to the likes of an individual petrol station, which could be problematic. These are important matters and they are fully within the wider, comprehensive RMA review that we’ve got under way.

This bill makes marked improvements to the RMA system in advance of more comprehensive changes that will follow the review panel’s recommendations next year. I believe it is a good start and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party are not supporting the Resource Management Amendment Bill, and certainly not at this stage. We’d like to see if there are any improvements through the select committee process, but certainly it seems very obvious from the member who’s just resumed his seat, David Parker, from his speech, and certainly from the content of the bill, that it’s primarily about preventing housing getting built quickly, and it’s more about trying to stop things getting done that need to be done.

The bill largely reverses the changes made to the Resource Management Act (RMA) by the National Party’s Resource Legislation Amendment Act 2017, which was all about reducing bureaucracy that gets in the way of creating jobs, building houses, good environmental management, and National’s legislation provided for a greater national consistency, more responsive planning, simplified consenting, and better aligning the RMA with other laws. There’s nothing in this bill that’s going to address housing affordability. In fact, it will make building houses more difficult. It’s very odd that the Government is introducing this bill, in relation to the freshwater proposals in it, when it’s apparently, as a Government, still consulting on freshwater proposals. It makes an entire mockery of the consultation process around fresh water, and it also overrides all of the consultation happening with local government about their obligations. It is, actually, a very arrogant piece of work from the Minister.

It’s also very interesting that it’s being introduced now, when there is yet another working group or—what are they called now?—expert panels, supposedly looking at and reviewing the entire RMA and how it fits in with other legislation. It seems remarkably remiss of the Government to be putting this bill forward when there is, apparently, this enormous amount of work going on.

It seems that the only thing that this Government can agree between the three parties of Government on the RMA is that they don’t like anything that National did. That seems to be the only thing that they can agree on, which is why—two years into the term and after all the talk and, obviously, the moment of coming to the right view by the Hon Phil Twyford that the RMA stops, at the moment, houses being built in a more efficient and effective manner, more cheaply and more affordably for people—they have now come to the conclusion that they need to do something on the RMA, but, very cynically, have left the major work to be reported on just before the next election. So there is no time at all to implement it and they don’t have to try and get agreement between the Greens, Labour, and New Zealand First. It is a cynical, cynical ploy, as is this bill.

Another issue around the fresh water and the intrusion of stock into waterways: farmers do not like having their stock go into waterways; they do not want to be part of that. We’ve had 98 percent of waterways fenced by dairy farmers that they have any access to. We have had a tremendous response over the years from farmers to keeping water free of stock manure. One of the things that is concerning here is there is a doubling in the fee of the fine to $2,000 dollars for any intrusion of stock into waterways. And that would be OK if it wasn’t just about farmers, because there is no doubling—no doubling at all—of the fine for people who throw rubbish into waterways. There is no doubling whatsoever of any fines for people who discharge waste from factories into waterways; there is no doubling at all. The only people being targeted by this anti-farmer Government are farmers—the only people; nobody else.

So Tamati Coffey over there—MP from the Labour Party—he laughs at that. Well, I actually don’t think that’s very funny. I don’t think it’s funny for people who throw rubbish into waterways to be treated to half the extent of a fine as a farmer whose stock might break down a fence, as they do occasionally, and end up in a waterway and causing problems, obviously. And that is something which I think is remiss. It is, in fact, something that could have been addressed.

Those of us who now live in the urban areas will know that our urban waterways are by far the worst in terms of cleanliness of any of our waterways. Certainly, always picking on farmers may be very easy for the photo op, but, actually, it’s really unfair.

We have farmers in this country, now, feeling that they are so subjected to judgment on the basis that they are farmers—and that judgment is so invariably unpleasant and negative. Those of us who grew up on dairy farms remember the time when farmers were respected in this country, and we now have a Government that has gone out of its way to make farmers feel that they are involved in an activity that is bad for New Zealand, despite the fact that they are, of course, the people who bring us in the export dollars that pay for the cancer drugs, that pay for the schools, that pay for just about everything that we import into this country. And I really am concerned that we now have very severe cases of depression and mental health issues in the farming community that are significantly worse than they ever used to be.

And when I hear young farmers—well, actually, many farmers now are young compared to me—saying to me, in their 30s, “Look, I’m just a dairy farmer.”, I feel so sad—so sad. And the people like that over there are the people who make that happen. The people who think it’s so funny—and they laugh at this. They laugh at it because they think it’s so funny that farmers, who live to do a brilliant job—no better farmers in the world than New Zealand farmers—are brought to suicide and to mental health issues, and that party over there laughs. I despise those people for what they do.

And Mr Peters—what a nonsense—tells them he’s the farmer’s friend. He supports this bill, happy for them to be fined double than the urban dwellers—happy for that—happy for them to be able to do that; never lets an opportunity go by to go and do them over, just to stay in power.

I have to say that this is another hit job on the developers who are building the houses—that actually build the houses, unlike the KiwiBuild nonsense that we’ve had from this Government—it’s another hit job on farmers, and it’s another hit job on the economy. If the Resource Management Act needs reforming, as we know it does, and so do the other side, then why don’t they wait for their working group to come back? The answer is that they can’t find anything to agree on, except they want to all disagree on whatever Nick Smith did or the National Party did, because they are driven by a vendetta, because they hate the fact that National was and is the party not only of business and Government but, actually, for the whole of New Zealand—people who care about New Zealand and who are happy to do what we can to help this country thrive.

This bill does not help this country to thrive. This bill does not help to get houses built faster. This bill will be yet another brake on houses being built. It’s all very well to think “Let’s all attack the farmers.”, but, actually, they’re the people who pay the bills for this country. And the moment we forget that, we might as well just pack up, and we won’t worry about the cancer drugs for kids, because there won’t be the money for it. It’s all very well sitting there smugly thinking about “It’s a great time to get back the farmers to voting David Parker out in Otago.” But I tell you what: by goodness, they were right, weren’t they?

Thank you. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that we’re not getting any support from the other side of the House for this excellent bill that will tidy up right away what we can before we make the real overhaul that’s needed to fix up the mess that’s been left by the National Government.

The National Party accepts—we heard it just then—that this work needs to be done. They accept that the Resource Management Act isn’t working. They accept that it’s 500-odd pages of utterly complex and laden with legalese that really no normal person can work through. And yet what do they say? “Do nothing.” They were a do-nothing lot in Government and they’re a do-nothing Opposition now. You know, it’s the usual story: “Oh fresh water’s fine.” They deny the problem—“No, no, fresh water’s fine. We don’t need to worry about fencing our streams any further. We don’t need another freshwater plan. No problem at all.”—whilst our indigenous species are dying in the streams; whilst they’re full of algae. You know, they deny the problem.

And then—what do they do then? Deflect. Usual story, usual technique: “Oh no, don’t look over here; look over there. Why are you harassing the farmers?” The Minister did not mention, did not harass, did not attack farmers once in his speech—very careful to recognise that this is a problem for all of New Zealand. They say, “Look at the urbanites. Look at their rivers. Look over there. Don’t look at where the problem is.” And then what do they say: “Delay. Please don’t do this now. Let’s do it a bit later on.”

💬 Tamati Coffey: Hold off.

“Hold off. Let’s just put it on pause and have a hui, have a working group.” No, well, you know what? We’re going to do what needs to be done and what can be done now, right now, and we’ve got a piece of legislation in front of us from a hard-working Minister who’s right over this detail and we’re going to get that through.

The Act as it stands is simply not fit for purpose—and we only have to look around us. You’re quite right that we’ve got a problem with housing in New Zealand and this Government is attacking it. We heard it in question time: we’re building houses, but we also want to have an Act which can address those issues. And we’ve got a national policy statement on urban development under way right now to clear those blockages to get that work under way.

And in respect of these changes, let’s look for a moment at the subdivision rule—the idea that you can subdivide land without any consent. That was a silly rule from the start and, in fact, Fulton Hogan, one of our biggest contractors and developers, opposed it from the get-go. And there’s very good reason for them. It is not simply because a subdivision is a large development that really should have a consent or should be presumed to require a consent in the normal course of things; but also because you had the perverse incentives we heard of—that, in fact, developers want consent rules so that onerous conditions aren’t put on them by planners and local councils. So they actually want—good developers, good operators want a robust process so that they can get to the right result through an effective process.

And, of course, then there’s the other operators—the people who are engaging in other businesses. Whether it be quarrying or operating an airport or a shopping mall down the road, they want to be sure that they’re not going to have their activities curtailed by suburbs springing up around them, through reverse sensitivity issues, saying, “Well, we’ve arrived in the neighbourhood. So now you’ve got to stop quarrying your gravel, or operating your aircraft at 11 o’clock at night, or whatever it might be.” So it was a silly rule. Business knew it was silly, and we’re going to change it.

And look can I just say—and I say it again—I’m not surprised but really disappointed that the other side of the House is not supporting this, because as I was looking through the commentary on this, the support across the board for these reforms is really quite astounding. From Kirk Hope of Business New Zealand: “This is a great chance to move towards improved environmental, economic and social wellbeing outcomes.”, he said. Well, you know, it’s great to see that support. And then we’ve got Fish & Game, again saying, “Great, let’s get on with it.”, and they agree it’s time to discuss moving on with the Resource Management Act. Local Government New Zealand—right on board, and then we have the outliers again. Even, I see, Mr Seymour supports us working on this. And yet the National Party’s opposing this, it appears, at first reading and standing back whilst we get on and help sort out our environmental issues.

You know what? For this Government—for this Government—the environment is absolutely at the heart of everything we do. I think sometimes that’s been forgotten—that other priorities were, first and foremost, for the last Government and our environment has slipped behind, woefully slipped behind. We can see that this isn’t fit for purpose by the state of our waterways. The fact is that our waterways, as has been documented, have been falling behind year in, year out. Even though we had lip-service towards making our rivers perhaps wadeable—the shifting standard of swimmability and wadeability—the fact is that when you look at the science, when you look at the quality of the water, when you look at what’s actually happening in that microenvironment, it’s been slipping behind, and we absolutely need freshwater plans that are plans for now; not plans for 2027 or 2035, but plans for now. And that’s what this is going to do and it’s going to enable it. It’s going to bring science to bear by having an expert panel to put those plans in place, so that’s great work.

So really we’ve got to remember that this is absolutely about putting front and centre the quality of our environment. And can I just say that this isn’t about singling out rural and urban. We’re going to have freshwater plans and urban plans which will be universal. So the freshwater rules will apply as much to the Avon River, as it should, and the Heathcote River, and the Styx River—all of which are in my electorate—and I must say, absolutely, we need to clean up those rivers. Now, how we clean them up is going to be different, but the standards that apply, the policies that apply, will be the same and absolutely need to be the same.

When you look at it, this piece of legislation, this amendment bill, by getting rid of some of the fatuous and useless changes made by the last Government will reduce the length of the Act. But also, what’s more, it gets rid of some of the entirely unnecessary rules like the regulation-making power that enabled the Minister to override councils’ decisions. That’s not consultation, that’s not leaving communities to decide what’s best for themselves.

And, of course, there is making sure that compliance works. Absolutely don’t apologise for increasing penalties. Those penalties are really important because we need to send the right incentives. Look, if you discharge pollutants into a stream, the size of the fines which may come down upon you are enormous. They can be crippling in some circumstances. A trivial fine for letting livestock wander through water doesn’t send the right incentive. We’ve got to absolutely—and even at its increased level, I must say it’s relatively modest, and we know that in terms of enforcement that what we want—we don’t want to fine people; we want people to obey the law, so in terms of enforcement, education’s always the first step, and a bit of encouragement, and actually imposing these fines and prosecuting through the courts is a very much a last resort.

So look, this is a fantastic piece of legislation, and we know, of course, that it’s a first step towards making the Resource Management Act what it should be, which is a workable piece of legislation that enables development in a sustainable and appropriate manner and that contributes to our wellbeing whilst protecting our environment. This is a first step. There is much work to do, but, unlike the last Government, we’re not sitting on our hands, this Minister isn’t sitting on his hands, and I commend this bill to the House.

Well, it was kind of sad, really, to listen to the member for Christchurch Central trying to fill up 10 minutes—and he ran out of material at about minute two—talking about this bill. There was, if ever there was, the real problem with this Labour-led Government in terms of its approach to issues of this sort relating to the Resource Management Act (RMA). It was the voice and the face of urban, academic elites who actually are disconnected from the reality of what it is that is really at the heart of the issues relating to the Resource Management Act and its amendments.

Now, I listened carefully to the Minister for the Environment during his introductory speech and, frankly, it was incomprehensible. It was just a series of eco-babble statements that actually didn’t say much, and that really goes to the central foundations of what the problem is with this piece of legislation that’s been introduced today.

It’s a piece of legislation that is just further, more complicated tinkering with an RMA that has been tinkered with for nearly 30 years—in fact, over 30 years now. We now have an Act that is about 800 pages long—incomprehensible to laypeople, practically incomprehensible to those that practise in the area of the law relating to RMA matters, and this bill does nothing but add further complication and confusion to an already complicated area.

So, on this side of the House, we made some great changes in the last Parliament. Every single one of them—for the nine years that the Labour Party were in Opposition, every single attempt to work on sensible reform to the RMA was opposed by that party, and now what they want to do is actually just unravel some of the really good, hard-fought-for changes that were made. What we know is that on this side of the House—in fact, it’s conceded by the Minister himself, who, in Opposition, thought he had all the answers, thought he had all the solutions and has been able to, after two years in Government, produce nothing other than a tinkering piece of legislation that all it does is unravel not all but just some of the matters that he didn’t like when he was in Opposition.

Then what of his major substantive reform? Well, actually, nothing—actually nothing, because the coalition cannot get agreement, cannot get a sense of cohesive direction about what should happen in terms of resource planning legislation, and they can’t get it. So what happened? They’ve kicked it to a committee. The Environment Committee is going to report back just before the election next year at a time when there won’t need to be a consensus around the coalition, because they know they can’t get it. So after two years in Government, nine years in Opposition—no real answers, other than to have a go at some of the very sensible changes that we made.

I want to just focus on a couple of pieces of change that will occur in this bill if it progresses through the House to eventually become law. One of them was that we changed the RMA—in our piece of legislation back in 2017—to provide for a situation where if a council had, through its district plan, through its own formal processes, designated land to be zoned for residential development, then there should be no further appeals on the principle of whether that land should be available for residential development or not. Now, that seems to me to be a pretty simple, obvious sort of thing, but this piece of legislation undoes that and it takes it back to a situation where district plans where land has been zoned for residential development will now be able to be appealed and contested. That will only add cost and incredible time delays to prevent and slow down the further building of much-needed residential development around the countryside. I can’t understand where the logic of that is, but it seems to me that this is a bill that is designed not on principle, or trying to improve quality of decision making, but, actually, in terms of trying to score petty political points.

Another area is in the area of water. This is a Government that has yet to learn that it needs to deal with farmers, rather than deal to farmers. That’s what they’ve been doing, not just in this legislation but in lots of pieces of legislation. So let’s just cite one example: they’re going to double the infringement fines for stock wandering through waterways, and they’re going to double it from the current $1,000 fine to $2,000. But there is no comparative fine for people who dump rubbish, for instance, litter, into urban waterways. Now, it was only a few months ago that this same Government voted down my very good member’s bill that would have sought to increase the infringement fines for littering to $1,000. They said that was disproportionately high. They said that $1,000 for littering was disproportionately high, but, oh no, it’s quite all right to fine farmers $2,000 for allowing a cattle beast to wander through a piece of waterway.

So we oppose this legislation and we’ll be looking forward to picking it to pieces at select committee.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on this bill. I only want to make a couple observations. It’s interesting hearing the Opposition party debating against these changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA); it’s interesting because when I look at some of the key targets, the key objectives, or the key concerns, they’ve been around freshwater quality. Of course, every party in this House on the hustings during the last election—every party in this House—stated their concern. In fact, I remember sitting on select committees and the Local Government and Environment Committee and noting the determination of the then Minister, the Hon Nick Smith, to really attack the freshwater problem. I’m wondering, in some way, what has changed in his thinking? Maybe it’s time out on the Opposition benches, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a change in goals, targets, objectives, expectations, but it’s interesting to hear the comment. I don’t think there was one party in the House that opposed the view that we need to do something about our waterways.

I do take on board, and so does New Zealand First—and I know the Rt Hon Winston Peters has been at pains to make it clear—that this current debate that’s been inflamed, pitching urban against rural, is unhelpful. I, as a rural person who lives in the Wairarapa—born and raised there—worked on many farms owned by other people; got up as a child, went to work on my horse to milk Mr Knox’s cows down Konini way, rode my horse back home after that was over. I’m very aware of the old farming practices as opposed to the new, which we see so well demonstrated and lauded at the Ballance Farm Environment Awards that we see every year. There’s some outstanding farmers out there who have implemented environmental plans on their farms that just absolutely astonish me. And, yes, there’s a new generation of farmers who fully understand that they cannot go on farming in the old way, that they have responsibilities as kaitiaki, that if they are intergenerational farmers—I’m thinking right now of a good friend of mine, who’s currently the mayor of Carterton, John Booth. Eight generations on that land—the eighth generation is growing up there now. They fully understand, as a farming family, their intergenerational responsibilities. They have implemented an environmental plan that factors in that need to preserve and protect the land, so that it might continue to sustain their families long into the future, as long as those families wish to continue to farm.

I look at the Young Māori Farmer of the Year, the Ahuwhenua cup. Every winner of the Ahuwhenua cup has been judged and measured against their delivery, in terms of how they are reacting, how they are working as responsible kaitiaki of the land to preserve and protect their land. Many of them have retired off vast tracts of land, fenced them off, and no longer farm those lands, allowing the natural vegetation to regenerate itself and, thereby, provide a buffer zone and protection to the rivers. Why? Because they want to improve the quality of the water which is drawn to feed their stock and which they know their children and wider whanaunga will actually wish, at some time, to bathe, fish, and swim in.

I guess the debate will always be made political, and New Zealander will be pitched against New Zealander, if there’s some political advantage in doing that. That’s just going to happen, isn’t it? I do, I have, and I will continue, as a rural resident, to serve to remind urban people that rather than focusing on the odd farmer who may not be complying with the code of conduct, the behaviour that Fonterra has signed up to—rather than focusing on that one in 100, they should, as good New Zealanders, also go and look at their own rivers and streams and lakes and tributaries around their own cities.

What I see when I go to Auckland, quite honestly, disgusts me. I look at the wheelie bins overflowing. Me and my partner, Christine, we’re the couple that has one rubbish bag every five months—one rubbish bag every five months. We don’t own a wheelie bin; we never will. We recycle. We employ every method that we can to ensure that what we consume, what we buy into the house, is able to be recycled, or we don’t buy it. I still get really frustrated with cosmetic products, and I get very frustrated with pharmaceutical products because they seem to be packaged to hell and back, and they are full of rubbish that should never even come into the country. We fight our own little battle. We have one rubbish bag per month. We’re lifestylers. We have a small block of land. We do everything we can to protect our waterways, because we don’t want to live in a polluted environment ourselves, and we do not want to bequeath that to our grandchildren. I’ve got 14 grandchildren.

To have some people inflaming the urban-rural battle for political gain I just find a little distasteful, actually. There are some incredibly good farmers out there who are leading the way. It might be a good thing if Federated Farmers got a whole bunch of urban people to come and see some of that magnificent work and understand it better.

This Government has a responsibility to do things with the RMA. We sat here in the last term and listened to, I think, 20 hours of debate on National’s “fix it all” for the RMA, and we opposed it. I think so too did Labour. I’m not sure—I can’t recall—but I think the Greens may have as well. Some bits we could’ve gone with, but overall the bill as a whole was a dog. Denis O’Rourke fought that bill valiantly, and no one listened. If the last Government had adopted Denis O’Rourke’s Supplementary Order Papers, on behalf of New Zealand First, it might’ve had a different result. We might’ve had a more workable piece of legislation. But the fact is this Government wants to deal with freshwater quality. There’s a discussion document out there, and we do not have a tin ear. Let me assure the rural communities that New Zealand First does not have a tin ear. We are listening because we understand this.

I grew up in Pahīatua and Mangamuru. This is the home of Keith Jacka Holyoake. We understand that what was said then by Keith Jacka Holyoake is true today. The rural community is the backbone of this country’s economy. Make no doubts about it, the prosperity and wellbeing of this nation lies in the hands of our farming community. People should respect that. But we have some very real obligations and some very big challenges going forward, and I know that the overwhelming majority of the farming community agrees that we need to deal with these things. Climate change adaption is an issue. Meeting people’s needs with affordable housing is an issue.

I’d just like the Opposition to put their hand up once and accept some responsibility. For nine years, they brought in over 50,000 immigrants a year—nine years bringing in a city the size of, what, Blenheim every year and expecting this country just to absorb that, not comprehending, understanding, or willing to have a debate around the infrastructural stress and strain and, dare I say it, the environmental pressures that would come by increasing the population in this country with 50,000 each year—each year; just by the numbers that were coming through the gate. So it’d be nice to hear some people put their hands up.

I want to highlight, in the closing moments, a point of significance. Page two of the bill, the exemptions for the Minister of Education and Minister of Defence: “In order to avoid a risk that unreasonable delays and costs are imposed on the development of Crown assets (including new State schools and defence facilities), the Bill restricts the ability to recommend or impose financial contribution conditions on any notices of requirement lodged by the Minister of Education or the Minister of Defence”—myself—“as a requiring authority.”

It’s worth mentioning the reason why that is, and it’s important that we have a $2.1 billion State regeneration plan. There was a first-principles footprint review—real estate review—of the defence asset, which is under way now. Defence have a need to have greater certainty about long-term planning in the interests of national security, and there are some wider issues that I expect to come out of that first-principles review when it’s completed in around September next year, which will also, I anticipate, potentially have RMA implications. This is a first step—a first step in a journey. It’s a practical step and a pragmatic step. I look forward to hearing the opposing views at select committee and thoroughly recommend the passage of this bill through its first reading, onward to select committee, on behalf of New Zealand First.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. National opposes the Resource Management Amendment Bill—opposes this bill—vehemently, and the first comment I would make on this bill is that, in terms of good public policy, this bill fails at the very first hurdle, which is: does this bill in any way achieve the objectives stated for the bill? Clearly, it doesn’t.

When the Minister David Parker announced his action plan for healthy waterways, which is the context for this Resource Management Act (RMA) bill, he made some pretty bold statements, and, with the House’s agreement, I will just quote a few. “Our rivers, lakes, and wetlands are under serious threat after years of neglect.” If that isn’t a divisive comment pitching town against country, then I really don’t know what is. My colleague Scott Simpson pointed to the fact that within this amendment bill for the RMA, the penalties for having stock in waterways are increased by 100 percent, but there is no penalty regime showing any amount of increase for other forms of nutrients going into waterways—for example, people putting rubbish into waterways. So that is a fail at the very first hurdle.

Our action plan for healthy waterways aims to stop the degradation of our rivers and lakes, achieve a noticeable improvement in five years, and restore our waterways within a generation. Nothing the Minister has said in any of the commentary has indicated or acknowledged the years of hard-working stewardship over water-quality issues and land use, of course, by our farming community. I’m not standing here as an apologist for the farming community, even though I do represent a large tract of land in Otago, South Canterbury, and North Otago, which is subject to some pretty intensive farming operation and, of course, the application of irrigation over the past decade or so, which has led to that intensification.

The responsibility for improving water quality we understand, we accept, and we know belongs to all New Zealanders—not just the farmers, not just the towns, not just the cities, but all New Zealanders. I want to turn to some of the planning processes which are contained and outlined in the bill, which merely—far from being a step forward in resource management planning which will give rise to magical improvements in water quality—will, in fact, impose pressures and costs which will fall on every New Zealander. Because a number of the costs which surround the implementation of this RMA bill will fall on ratepayers, because ratepayers are the ones who are going to be funding the development of new plans.

This bill requires that councils notify changes to their regional policy statements and regional plans, and that is to implement the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, no later than 31 December 2023. So that’s little over three years away. The plans have to have been through their final decision-making process by the end of 2025. So that’s only five years.

If one were to contemplate the work that particularly regional councils are already involved in around plan changes—which happen almost on a constant basis. Think about the work that Environment Canterbury, for example, are doing at the moment, at a cost of something like $12 million, paid for by their ratepayers—that’s you and me, those of us who live in Canterbury. That work that is ongoing now, particularly around plan change 7, which means little to people outside the Environment Canterbury area but means a lot to those people involved in that plan change process—what will happen to that under this new requirement, under this RMA bill, for new plans to be notified in three years’ time? Is that work to be put aside? Will that work be subsumed? Will that work be superseded? Well, simply, we don’t know. But what we do know is that the Minister is making an unashamed grab for control over regional councils by putting a provision in his bill that the commissioners that will be in place, appointed to conduct these plan change processes, will not be appointed by the regional councils but by the Minister himself.

💬 Hon Eugenie Sage: Not true.

Well, the Green member says “not true”. Well, I will pass this paper to the Green member when I have finished my bill, which is imminent.

So I just wanted in this first reading to make that very first point among many, many interventions and points that the National Party will be making on this flawed piece of legislation.

Tēnā koe. Thank you. It’s interesting—the National Party speakers have failed to take any responsibility for the increased complexity of the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill (RLAB) that the Hon Nick Smith introduced, and failed to recognise the major opposition to that bill and just the huge number of hours that this House and select committee spent considering the bill, and the widespread opposition from submitters. So one of the key things that this bill does in the first stage of this Government’s reforms of the Resource Management Act (RMA) is to repeal some of the worst changes that the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill made, because the RMA is a cornerstone of natural resource management in New Zealand. It’s critical that it works well, because otherwise we get poor outcomes in terms of urban planning, we get poor outcomes in terms of the way we manage land and fresh water, and this Government is committed to sustainable land and water management and to improving the rate at which we build houses.

So this is the first stage of a two-stage process, and unlike the National Party, which just rammed through the RLAB, totally ignoring the submissions from the public from both environmental organisations and major businesses, from airport authorities to quarry owners, this is part of a considered process. It’s interesting, too, the fact that the National Party again failed to recognise that the RLAB significantly increased the complexity of the RMA. The Act is now over 800 pages in length. What this bill does is strip out some of those changes to reduce its complexity. One example there is the removal of the provisions around collaborative planning processes, because they were widely criticised by submitters at the time for being overly prescriptive, overly complex, and they took about 22 pages of law.

One of the really important things that this bill does is recognise that the RMA, when it was introduced, and prior to the RLAB, was all about ensuring that neighbours could have a say on what happened in their neighbourhoods and that people concerned with land and water could participate in resource consent applications and have a say about resources in places that they cared about. So the Hon Nick Smith, when he was Minister, in very Draconian changes to the RMA, because National didn’t believe in public participation, moved to shut the public out and prevent notification of resource consent applications if they were for controlled activities, if they were for residential activities, if they were for boundary adjustments, or for subdivision. Seventy-four percent of submitters on those changes to the RMA opposed those restrictions on notification and the shutting out of the public.

What this bill does is repeal those provisions so that once again the public will be able to submit, and once again access to justice in terms of the Environment Court and the full scope of appeal rights will also be restored. Those provisions, which were an attempt by the Hon Dr Nick Smith to streamline housing development, to change the RMA, to continue the HASHAA legislation—and it was a hash, the Housing Accord and Special Housing Areas Act, which has directly resulted in the mess that we have in terms of Ihumātao, because those special housing areas shut people out from their ability to make submissions.

When you change the presumption, as the former Minister did, around subdivision so you make subdivision a much more permitted activity—rather than the constraint that was originally in the RMA, which allowed subdivision only if a provision and a plan or resource consent allowed it—that meant that development was occurring in areas that are potentially at risk from changing climates, from coastal hazards. We need residential development to be well planned. We need to ensure that it’s well connected to transport links so that we get compact cities. We need to ensure that it’s in areas that aren’t at risk of flooding or coastal erosion. So this bill goes back and reinstates that original provision around subdivision—that it’s not permitted unless it’s explicitly provided for by a district plan or a resource consent.

Again, with the changes around appeals, that means that when applicants are concerned about the conditions that the council may have put on a consent, it can appeal those in relation to subdivision and residential activities. The appeal process is a very real check and balance on the power of councils, and stripping it out, as the former Government did with RLAB, reduced access to justice and led to some poor decisions.

One of the best things that this bill does, in my view, is it removes the excessive ministerial powers which the Hon Dr Nick Smith put in in section 360D. That was an ability for the Minister to override rules in district and regional plans in determining what activities could be notified or not. It was an effort by the former Government to fast-track decision making so that effects weren’t properly considered, and that goes right against the heart of the RMA, which is all about our sustainable management. So those inappropriate regulation-making powers in section 360D are coming out under this bill.

One of the other key changes that is a major improvement in the bill is the provisions around fresh water, because as the Minister, the Hon David Parker, noted, the 2017 National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management—there is no hope of implementing the provisions in that by 2030, let alone implementing the provisions in the stronger national policy statement (NPS) on fresh water which will go into force next year.

So this bill is providing for a new process, not excluding nominees of regional councils, as the Hon Jacqui Dean suggested, but having a panel, similar to the Auckland Unitary Plan process, where up to five members on that panel will consider changes to plans around fresh water. Two of those members will be recommended by councils—they can either be councillors or external commissioners; two of them will be appointed by central government, and another one will have expertise in mātauranga Māori and tikanga Māori. So that will be a panel of expert commissioners that will ensure that plan changes to implement the NPS in relation to fresh water can be considered in an expeditious way, making our planning process much more nimble, because we have a major challenge to ensure that we can swim in all of the waterways that farmers, rural communities, and everyone wants to swim in. We want streams and rivers that are safe for swimming, not the half of the sites which are currently monitored which are unsafe for swimming. So that’s making this new process of considering changes to plans in relation to fresh water much more agile.

It is about safeguarding farmers, because it is safeguarding brand New Zealand. It is safeguarding the environmental credentials that we go to the world as a basis for marketing our food and fibre products. We’re investing in sustainable management, and there’s a major package in Budget 2019 of over $200 million to support sustainable land and water management. So this is part of an integrated approach by Government to significantly lifting fresh water management and improving how we do that.

One issue where the Greens have a different position is around climate change. The urgency of the climate crisis—the school strikes that will be occurring tomorrow, where our young leaders highlight the urgent need for action. Yes, we’re acting with the zero carbon bill. Yes, there will be changes to the emissions trading scheme, but we can improve the RMA by requiring decision makers to take into account the effects of greenhouse gas emissions for applications that are coming before them.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Who took it out?

At the moment it is excluded under the RMA. And, yes—the Hon Nick Smith is saying “Who took it out?”—it did come out. It needs to go back in, because the seriousness of the climate crisis is much more recognised and at the moment the Act explicitly prohibits any consideration of emissions and their contribution to climate change unless it’s in relation to renewable energy. So the Green Party will be very interested in the submissions from the public on that part of the Act and whether there should be change there.

The other major area is in relation to enforcement. I fully support the changes which will allow the Environmental Protection Authority to work alongside regional councils and, potentially, take over some enforcement action. Those enforcement provisions, as a big Environmental Defence Society report highlighted, have not been properly implemented. They need to be. If we’re making rules, they need to be enforced. The Green Party supports this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to just take a short call on the Resource Management Amendment Bill at first reading. I will focus my contribution on housing. But before I do so, I would like to address the comments by Dr Duncan Webb earlier this afternoon where he described this bill as a precursor to the real work. I would like to remind this House, and everyone watching, that we are two-thirds of the way through this Government’s first term in their year of delivery, after they’ve spent nine years in Opposition thinking about this stuff, and we get this tiny tinkering around the edges bill.

He then went on to say that the National Party did nothing for fresh water in their nine years. I would like to remind him that the first ever national policy statement on fresh water was done under the National Party: $400 million into cleaning up our waterways; the Land and Water Forum; and the Land, Air, Water Aotearoa report that says our waterways are improving. What did the Labour Government prior to the National Government do? Nothing; $30 million—a pittance and no national policy statement. But Dr Webb comes to the House today to call this bill somewhat revolutionary—this tiny tinkering bill.

We worked with farmers over our nine years to get 95 percent of our waterways fenced. We worked with farmers and regional councils to put in place plans to reduce nitrates in our waterways. And this Government comes with this bill today to the House that works against farmers and not with them. It’s already been mentioned, but one of the things in the bill that highlights that so well is the increased fine for stock wandering into waterways, which is a $2,000 fine. As it was pointed out earlier by Mr Scott Simpson, it’s so funny that earlier this year we had a litter bill that would have increased the fines for people all around this country littering to a thousand dollars, but that was voted down by this Government. That was voted down. But here we are again, this Government dumping on farmers at every possible opportunity, because here it’s fine to increase the fines but not earlier in the year.

The objectives of this bill are to reduce complexity, increase certainty, restore public participation opportunities, and improve Resource Management Act processes. This is code. I’ll tell you what it’s code for. It’s code for not addressing housing affordability, making it harder to build houses, and slowing down the house building process. And for a Government apparently dedicated to solving the housing crisis in their year of delivery, this bill is a bitter disappointment. Rather than helping to get houses built, it will, in fact, do the exact opposite.

I suppose, though, that this is at least in line with Labour’s overall achievement in office so far, which is not to build houses, because KiwiBuild clearly didn’t achieve that. Now they’re making it under this bill so much harder for the private sector to build houses—the only sector so far that is actually building any houses and now they will find it much more difficult as well.

As I’ve already said, this bill is a tiny tinkering around the edges bill, which mostly undoes the good work of the last National Government. They’ve kicked any major reform down the road, because they can’t get agreement between the different parties. So we oppose this bill.

This is a split call. I call Dr Liz Craig—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill will be incredibly, incredibly beneficial to Southland, where many of our waterways are under incredible pressure. And what I want to just briefly talk about is the New River Estuary, because I think it highlights some of the challenges we face. I think when you go out on the estuary you realise that out by where the sea comes in, the bottom is actually gravelly sand. But the closer you go up to where the rivers come in, you end up getting deeper and deeper into thick oozy mud. The problem we’ve got is we’ve got macro algae. There’s overgrowth because of nutrients, but in some places that macro algae is even struggling to survive and it’s dying and we’re ending up with sulphur embedded in the muck. It’s incredibly, incredibly sad to see what was a once beautiful estuary.

But I also want to talk about the work that we’ve been doing in rural communities where farmers and urban people are coming together and taking joint responsibility and ownership of that. I think where this bill comes in is because it’s going to give us that broader strategic planning framework. Having that consistency of an approach is going to make a huge difference in terms of what’s happening on the ground. What this bill is is it’s a first step in a comprehensive review of our resource management system. We’ve launched that in July this year, but some of those findings won’t be available into mid-2020. But we can’t wait till then, particularly for our freshwater management. We need to get on and do some really important things.

This is where this bill comes in, because what it does is it provides some of that basic infrastructure so we can start to implement our Essential Freshwater action plan. Essential and central to that is the new National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. What this will do is replace the old national policy statement (NPS), the 2017 version, which really was inadequate, looking at some of the things that we’re seeing down south. That will bring it in 2020.

But the problem we’ve got is that we’ve got incredible variability in terms of regional councils even implementing the old NPS 2017. So what we need to do is put in place a new infrastructure and framework so that we can get on and make those plan changes by 2025. What this bill introduces is a specialised planning process for councils. What they’ve got to do is make the changes to their regional freshwater plans to implement the NPS for freshwater management no later than 31 December 2023. That’s to actually notify those changes, and then make the final decisions on them by 31 December 2025 to have those plans finalised by then.

What this does is it just creates a framework for consistency around that. So within six months of notifying those plans, what the regional councils need to do is provide all the necessary documentation that’s outlined in this bill, under new Part 4 in clause 72, to the Chief Freshwater Commissioner. So 20 working days prior to doing this, they must also notify the commissioner about their nominees for their regional council commissioners and their local tangata whenua nominations for appointment to the freshwater hearing panels.

Once that information is received, what the Chief Freshwater Commissioner then has to do is to convene a freshwater hearing panel and that will be to hear those public submissions and to engage in that, listen to that public debate on the adequacy of those plans and where they might need to be improved. So, generally, what we’re expecting here is that we’ll have five commissioners that are on those hearing panels. Two of those will be hearing commissioners appointed by the Minister, two of them will be appointed by regional council, and one of them nominated by tangata whenua. So the sense is that they will be convening and listening to the public submissions.

But the ability to have specialist expertise with those appointed commissioners, appointed by the Minister, and also having that local expertise and tangata whenua representation means that we’ve got that right mix of expertise across a whole range of areas that can then come and make informed decisions in terms of recommendations on what those submissions are.

So what will happen then is that the recommendations from that panel will then go back to council and council has 20 working days to respond to those recommendations, to decide whether they’ll accept them or not accept them. Then the bill also provides a framework where you can appeal to the Environment Court and also the High Court in some aspects. So this creates that overarching framework within which we can get those plans in place by 2025 and to start moving forward to improve our water quality. It’s an incredibly, incredibly important bill and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much. It’s great to be able to make a contribution this afternoon in this debate. The title of this bill should really read “Repeal National’s Pragmatic Changes to the Resource Management Act.”

I’m disappointed by this bill. With all the hype around it, it promised so much, but in the detail, really, all it is doing is repealing fundamental things that positively made a difference for residents in New Zealand who were going about their daily business, trying to get a consent—it is now going to be repealed. If we look at the fast-track process for land-use consents that we set up, 10 working days is now going to move to a standard 20 working days. For someone who just wants to extend their deck, why on earth would the Government be proposing extending that time frame out to about one month, when you take into account all of the weekends as well?

It’s interesting, also, when we look at other aspects of this bill, because I can’t see how this bill is going to help housing affordability in New Zealand, which is a really topical issue. When I look at the detail of this bill—and I’m going to look forward to interrogating it at the Environment Committee I now sit on—this bill is going to create more bureaucracy and more time delays. And if we look in particular at the appeal rights, the appeal rights are going to be extended, and that’s what I mean: there’s a classic example of where there’s going to be more red tape, bureaucracy, and poor timeliness around this bill.

If we think about the nine years of the National Government, when we had the Hon Dr Nick Smith making changes to this as environmental Minister, making good, pragmatic changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA), all of my constituents in the Ōtaki electorate benefit from those changes, because Nick Smith brought about changes to the RMA to ensure that projects of national significance could be called in in a nine-month time frame. That means that the Kāpiti Expressway went through a nine-month consenting process. Now we are enjoying driving on it. That means that Transmission Gully, which is going to be open, hopefully, next year, went through the same call and board of inquiry process. I take my hat off to Nick Smith. Also the Hon Amy Adams made good, pragmatic changes to the RMA. And now we’re in this House debating this bill, which is all about repealing the good work that the National Government did. We’re going to hear this afternoon from Todd Muller. He’ll be focusing in, as our agriculture spokesperson, on talking about fresh water and also the cost of compliance on farmers with stock exclusion.

The one that concerns me also in this bill, and it hasn’t been mentioned in speeches this afternoon, is that this sets up a Chief Freshwater Commissioner. Who might that person be? Well, we might hear from the Green Party that they want Mike Joy—someone like that as the Chief Freshwater Commissioner—wide-ranging powers.

💬 Todd Muller: Or Russel Norman.

Oh, yes! There’s another one—Russel Norman.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: God help us!

Heavens above, the whole country would grind to a halt if you had one of those two gentlemen as the Chief Freshwater Commissioner. We want to know what the Government expects around this person.

Finally, I just want to say this point: the changes—and we made three changes over nine years in the National Government—have all been successful. They’ve made a difference for consumers and residents and motorists and the like, getting big infrastructure projects up and built. This bill this afternoon is a sham. It’s going to do nothing, and we wait until we can interrogate it and kick it around in the Environment Committee. That’s why we oppose this bill.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I’m really pleased to stand today and take a call on the Resource Management Amendment Bill. It is really a great pleasure. The Resource Management Act (RMA) has been around since 1991, and I remember at law school in 1993 when we first started learning about it. At that point, it was about 400 pages of text. We’ve now got about 800 pages, and the bill is, essentially, a mismatch of many, many years—many, many years—of working very piecemeal across the system to create bits and pieces and changes for the Act. We know, across the community, that everyone in the community finds that this Act is very difficult to use. It is complex. It is a weighty piece of legislation. And that’s why I’m really delighted to be standing alongside the Government when we bring the first tranche—the first changes—of the Resource Management Amendment Bill to this House. Of course, we will be working in the future, in the next short while, to bring the second, more substantive changes to this House.

So I’d like to thank the Minister, the Hon David Parker, for bringing this legislation. I know that, due to the sheer complexity of the RMA that we have now, the officials have worked extremely hard, and this has been a huge task even just to get to this point. So I’d like to congratulate the Minister and his officials for that. I too am a select committee member, and I’m looking forward to hearing from the individuals from the community, from our local government, and from our businesses, and I welcome those submissions so that we can get the best legislation possible.

I just want to address the Hon Nathan Guy’s comment about the Chief Freshwater Commissioner’s powers and who that person might be. Having read the bill as it sits, I would just like to direct the Hon Nathan Guy to Subpart 3 in Part 4 of Schedule 1, “Freshwater hearing panels”. Section 57 clearly explains the powers and what that freshwater commissioner will do. I recommend that the member read the bill.

We have this complex piece of legislation, and it has been groundbreaking, and lots of Ministers have had the opportunity to comment on this bill and to make changes to it, but what we can say is that New Zealanders care deeply about our environment, and we care deeply—it underpins our lifestyles, our livelihoods, and our very wellbeing. So this bill as it stands, with its four changes, is a great start on fixing the intractable issues that sit within the bill.

We’ve got some areas that are absolutely underperforming, and so, yes, we are looking at rolling back some of those conditions that were put in place in 2017. We’re taking the 22 pages of that process out of the Act so that there will be a faster process—one that, by the way, people have naturally used. We do not need 22 pages of regulations to tell us, as a community, how we should communicate. So we’re looking at four major parts to this bill.

Freshwater quality—we all know 92 percent of Kiwis tell us they want us to move quickly on fresh water. They want to be able to swim in their local rivers or seas. They want to have certainty of where it’s safe to swim. And they do not want wadeable rivers and streams. They want us to act, and we are clearly doing so.

This bill creates a new National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, and it establishes a freshwater planning process and it creates a Chief Freshwater Commissioner. I wanted to pick up on the member Dr Liz Craig’s comments in regards to the five-commissioners process just by acknowledging and recognising in this House the tangata whenua representation as a commissioner. So I just wanted to read—it is clause 58 of new Part 4 of Schedule 1, “Composition of freshwater hearings panel”, and I’m moving down through subclause (1) down to paragraph (c): “1 freshwater hearings commissioner with an understanding of tikanga Māori and mātauranga Māori who—(i) is nominated by local tangata whenua; or (ii) if no nomination is made, is appointed by the Chief Freshwater Commissioner.”

I think it’s very important that I mention that because, as we know, the relationship of land—whenua—and Māori is so important, and fresh water is part of that. We know from many years of participation under the Resource Management Act process that this is an often long process for Māori to constantly have to participate, and so by tying this in and building in a particular role with a particular skill base, it will, hopefully, in fact, make it a much clearer process for community participants.

Just to continue back to the bill—I’ve got off-track. I see I’ve only got three minutes to go. The other aspect that I particularly like—the other part that I particularly like—is the climate change adaptation. We’re going to hear from the member Todd Muller, I hear, so he will know that our community of Tauranga has a huge complexity of issues around climate change. We’re a coastal city. How do we manage those changes coming at us? Are they going to impact on our very way of life?

For us, we’re not just looking at election cycles; we’re looking at a 30-plus - year plan—an ongoing process—so this is the first tranche to start this process. We’re looking, of course, at addressing affordable housing and thriving urban communities—things that had been done particularly poorly by the National Government, I must say, for a long, long time, the nine years, of homelessness that we had in this country.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: And it’s got worse under Labour.

It has not got worse under Labour. People are now not so afraid to come out.

We need to create a system that better enables growth within economic limits—sorry, environmental limits. It is so important—[Interruption] The boys are laughing at me. We need a system that aligns the economy with the environment, not the other way around—not the other way around.

We need to ensure, as a country, that this bill is very clear that there will be consistent changes put in place to better support the other legislative programmes that we are doing across the Government—for example, the alignment of Kāinga Ora with the RMA, and the interface between. We don’t just look at the silos and we don’t just look at one part of the building programme; we look across the entire environment. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

I rise to speak against this legislation. There is an affliction that political commentators believe occurs with Governments that have been around for a long, long time, which is that they start developing a tin ear and they mix hubris with arrogance, and they put forward legislation that doesn’t in any way reflect what the community would expect.

This piece of legislation fits that hubris and arrogance, because one of the core elements of the legislation that we’re discussing here this afternoon is a requirement for regional councils to notify the changes that this Government proposes through their freshwater reforms by 2023 and to have them operative by 2025. Right now, across the country, those freshwater proposals, including that suggestion, are out for consultation, initially for six weeks, but after rural New Zealand reacted with understandable disdain, given a two-week extension. The very issue of the role of regional councils and the time frame that they would need to stand up to these proposals are in that document, and this Government is standing and saying, “We want your feedback.” No, they don’t. They have already decided what they want, and this is what’s in this legislation.

This is a ridiculous consultation process. It’s a fraud. It’s a farce. There are people out there who are hugely engaged in trying to work out what this means for their businesses, and this Government has already put the key components of its expectation of regional councils in this legislation.

Three days ago, the leaders of regional councils and local government met in this city to reflect on the proposals that the Government have put forward in their freshwater plans, including the obligation on them to notify by 2023 and to have them operative at 2025, and they are hugely concerned at what is proposed. They are participating in a good-faith process, where the Government has said, “This is a proposal. Give us your feedback.”, and while they’re asking that question with one hand, they’re legislating the answer with the other. It is disgraceful.

This Government has lost its way. It is full of hubris and arrogance. They are putting in this legislation its expectations around what it expects of regional councils whilst at the same time running a pretence of a consultation process, and they wonder why in rural New Zealand they’ve all had a gutsful. They’ve had a gutsful because that type of arrogance is now endemic.

So why has it been rushed through? Well, one of the reasons it’s being rushed through is that David Parker is determined to finish what he started in 2005. He has a fundamental belief that rural New Zealand’s activities need to be constrained, because he stood shoulder to shoulder with Prime Minister Clark when she stood up at the Knowledge Wave conference and said, “Rural New Zealand provincial businesses—sunset industries. Their best days are behind them.” Well, this party rejects that fundamentally. David Parker doesn’t, and we are in a fight for who will win on behalf of the farmers.

I look directly across to New Zealand First. There’s another reason why this has been put here. It is because your leader has made it clear that he wants all this sort of stuff dealt with this year to try and get a bit of clear air for next year. Well, let me tell you, pushing through a process which is a complete sham of a consultation, including legislating for what you’ve already decided on whilst, at the same time, asking regional councils for their feedback—

💬 Mark Patterson: Nothing’s decided.

—that is outrageous. It’s legislated—it’s in here. It’s in here. Why do you do a consultation if you’re already putting the legislation forward? It’s because you’ve already made the decision and you want to progress it. I tell you, rural New Zealand will not forget this. They will not forget it.

The last comment I’d like to make, just quickly, is that there has been a lot of talk, particularly by the Government side, around the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and the fact that it needs to be amended. Those same regional councils have made it very clear that they have run a process on the back of Nick Smith’s national policy statement for fresh water—new regulations promulgated just simply two years ago. They’re running a process that is consultative, that is collaborative, and that is community by community, looking at rivers and streams, and making sure that over time they improve to the communities’ expectations. All that collaborative process is lost if you run—as this legislation assumes—a process which needs to be notified by 2023 and operative in 2025.

To all those listening, this reflects a Government that is lost in hubris and arrogance. It consults on the one hand and has already made up its mind on the other, and I tell you that New Zealanders won’t forget.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to take the last call on this debate and, really, to take issue with many of the statements that have been made by the Opposition and, in fact, to set things right in terms of what people might understand about what this bill does. I have listened carefully to the speakers from the Opposition and really tried to understand what they were saying—I’m sorry, with the exception of Mr Nathan Guy. I just tuned out when he was speaking, unfortunately, which perhaps says something about the quality of what he was saying. But let me go and talk about what each of the other speakers have said.

I want to start with the Hon Judith Collins, who in her speech said of our New Zealand farmers that there are “no better farmers in the world”—no better farmers in the world. We agree. New Zealand farmers as a whole are excellent. New Zealand farmers really do try hard. New Zealand farmers actually produce the lowest-carbon meat in the world. They’re actually really efficient producers in many, many ways, but there are some farmers who let the others down. There are some farmers who do not do as well as others.

When I went and sat on some of the hearings for the zero carbon bill, I was struck by some feedback we got from DairyNZ, I think it was, or one of the entities that represents farmers. What they said was that they were finding there was a generational divide amongst farmers: that many younger farmers were keen to get going on improving environmental standards; that many younger farmers had a great understanding of what needed to be done, as did many older farmers; that many younger farmers wanted the help and the support to change for the better, and many younger farmers were doing this already. There are brilliant and fantastic farmers who are doing their utmost to support waterways, who have engaged in riparian planting, who have limited their stock numbers, and who have worked really hard to understand what happens with the nutrient flows from their land. Some farmers are doing it. We want to make it possible for all farmers to do it.

So in terms of the farmers, I say to the farming community: do not believe the doom and gloom that is coming from some farming groups. Do not believe the doom and gloom that says that farming in this country is at an end—it is not. It is not. What we seek to do is ensure that the practices of the many excellent farmers are shared amongst all farmers. We have heard that membership numbers from some farming groups are falling because they no longer represent the views of all farmers, and that the progressive farmers want to get on with it. So, yes, to the Hon Judith Collins, there are no better farmers in the world than our farmers, and this Government supports them.

The Hon Scott Simpson said that the Resource Management Act (RMA) is complex and tough. Indeed it is. Mr Speaker, as you know, I know a fair amount about tax law, and people say that the Income Tax Act is complicated. I say to you as a specialist who does understand the structure of that Act that the RMA is unwieldy, it is complex, I think it is more difficult even than our income tax law, and it definitely needs reform. This is the start of that reform. So I agree with Mr Scott Simpson. What this bill does is it starts that work of tidying up the RMA.

Then Mr Simpson said that there was no major substantive reform in this particular set of legislation, yet the most recent speaker, Mr Todd Muller, spent a lot of time telling us that there was a lot of reform to water. That is the major reform in this piece of legislation. The other stuff is tidy-up stuff, but it’s tidy-up work that needs to be done.

Then I want to sort of focus on something that Jacqui Dean said—and other speakers have referred to it—and that is the issue of the costs that will fall on ratepayers for developing new plans. New water plans will need to be developed by 2023. They will need to be in place by 2025. Why? Because we actually need to get going on this. New Zealanders have signalled loud and clear that they want swimmable waterways, and, yes, those costs will fall on all of us through our rates. That’s the nature of government. We actually do need to pay for good government; it doesn’t come for free. So that’s a shame, but we will do our best to make sure that we get good processes in place.

Erica Stanford was concerned that, in fact, the start of the bill was code for not addressing the housing crisis. There are many ways to address the housing crisis, and this Government has taken many actions in respect of that. We have banned foreign speculators. We have shut down tax breaks. We have built an extraordinary number of social housing places. We have passed the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill. We have put the Kāinga Ora bill into place, and that bill will have extraordinary consequences for getting housing reform under way. The RMA is one part of that. It is one part of that, and no single bill contains a magic solution.

Then we had speakers complaining that this bill doubled—it doubled—the infringement fees for some offences. So if we look in the draft bill itself, you’ll see that this is in clause 70 of the bill. It amends section 360 of the Act, and in section 360 of the Act as it stands it says that there is a $2,000 fine for each infringement offence. Now, in the amendment that’s proposed, that $2,000 maximum fine stays in place for natural persons. The only variation there is that for persons other than natural persons—so that’ll be the corporate farmers—that fine goes up to $4,000. That’s a maximum fine, and it’s based on the number of stock units that are infringing. So for each stock unit that’s infringing, there is a fine of $100, up to a maximum of $2,000. In the amended bill, for natural persons it’s as it was in the old Act—so it stays the same for natural persons—and in the case of corporate farmers, greater responsibility is asked for. The maximum fine goes up to $4,000, set at $100 per stock unit. So for all the complaining that it was a massive doubling of the fine, when you look at the bill, you see that.

Then, if we talk about something that was said by the most recent speaker, Mr Todd Muller—and Mr Todd Muller had a complaint. He said that on the one hand, this Government was out consulting about water, but on the other, in this bill, it had its plans already in place. It was, he said, a sham consultation: we were engaging in just sort of a window-dressing exercise by getting out there. But if I look at the consultation that is out there at the moment for action on healthy waterways, what is the Government doing? It is getting out there and it is consulting on the draft National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. It is consulting on the proposed national environmental standards for fresh water. It is out there consulting on the draft stock exclusion section regulations. They are all up for consultation; nothing is set in stone.

There are proposals there. So the consultation doesn’t start from a blank slate; it starts from some proposals, and those proposals are about the national policy statement for fresh water, which will be put in place by this bill. But it is a draft national policy statement. It is a proposed national environmental standard. It is a draft stock exclusion. All are up for discussion, all are up for people to be fully consulted on, and that is exactly the point of the consultation. It is no sham; it is a real consultation that our Ministers and the officials are deeply engaged in to make sure that we get it right.

This is an excellent bill. It puts in place some much-needed low-level reform that’s needed for the RMA. It sets the ground for the extensive reform of the RMA, which will come in the second tranche of reform, and it gets in place the reforms that are needed for freshwater management that New Zealanders—ordinary, everyday New Zealanders—told us were so important and told us matter to them. I commend this bill to the House.