Resource Management Amendment Bill

Members, when we were last considering this bill, the Hon Scott Simpson had the call and he has seven minutes 10 seconds remaining if he should wish to do so.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call the Hon Scott Simpson. Just before he starts, I’ll start the clock at five minutes after you’ve done two minutes 10 seconds, just to let you know.

I trust your mathematics, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Ha, ha! Might be a bit longer.

Might I say at the outset that it’s a great pleasure to be speaking and finishing my presentation on this second reading at the relatively respectable hour of 9.30 in the evening, as opposed to a couple of minutes to midnight last Friday night when the House was in urgency discussing this very bill. For those people listening at home or watching on television, or indeed in the Chamber who were not up at a couple of minutes before midnight on Friday night listening intently to the discussions taking place in this Chamber, the National Party will be opposing the second reading of this tinkering piece of resource management amendment.

This is by my count the 19th substantive amendment to the Resource Management Act (RMA), and bizarrely the purpose—

💬 David Seymour: This one’ll work!

This one might just work, Mr Seymour, yeah; it might just work, this one! That’s what the Government thinks, but bizarrely, in the purpose clause of the bill and in the introductory comments, it says that the objectives of this bill are to reduce complexity, increase certainty, restore public participation opportunities, and improve Resource Management Act 1991 processes. The bill also supports the urgent need to improve freshwater management. Well, that’s, effectively, been the same prayer that has been the preface and the purpose of every one of the 18 amendment bills prior to this one.

Actually, what’s required in terms of resource management amendment is a complete start again. That is a very big piece of work. In fact, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with former Attorney-General, the Hon Chris Finlayson QC, a couple of years ago when he said, “Well, actually, the only real way to deal with the Resource Management Act is to start again.” But he was quick to point out that in his professional and political opinion, that would be a 15-year project. It may well be, but if that’s what it takes to actually get planning legislation and to get the primary environmental protection legislation of New Zealand into a shape that is finally a piece of legislation that can be respected, can be understood, can achieve results quickly, fairly, and equitably for New Zealanders, then maybe that’s what’s required, because this piece of tinkering legislation does not achieve any of the things that are set out in the purpose statement of the legislation.

One of the most troubling aspects of this piece of tinkering legislation is that it seems to have an element of vindictiveness about it. What I’m talking about is that the primary function of most of the changes in this legislation is simply to undo the work that was done in the last Parliament, led by my colleague the Hon Nick Smith. He made some very good changes, and this piece of legislation, effectively, just for the sake of pettiness, really, seems to want to just undo those. It’s a bit of political point-scoring. The fact that it’s taken the Government nearly its entire three years to get to it, I guess, tells the House and members of the public something about the Government’s real enthusiasm for this. It’s a rushed piece of legislation towards the end of their term of Government, and, as I say, there’s a level of vindictiveness to it that I find quite upsetting.

But really, at the core of it, the thing that is most concerning is that the Government themselves have set about in November of last year to appoint an expert panel led by no less a person than a retired appeal court judge, the honourable Tony Randerson, to actually produce sensible, considered, well-thought-out RMA reform proposals. Now, it was pre-COVID that that committee, that working group, chaired by the honourable Tony Randerson was due to report before the end of last month in May. Now, we’re told that the Minister in his speech the other night, at about 10 minutes to midnight, made it clear that he now expected that report to be, conveniently, another month or two away—conveniently because it’s going to be in mid-September that we’re going to have a general election. Isn’t that fortuitous—isn’t that fortuitous!

💬 Dan Bidois: Who would have thought!

“Who would have thought.”, says my colleague the member for Northcote. What we have is a situation where a piece of reform work is going to be presented to this Parliament, this Government, literally a few days, if not a matter of weeks, before the general election.

So why are we tinkering with this? Well, the questions remain unanswered. The select committee, as they went through their work, wasn’t really able to provide any sensible answers. But what was very apparent at select committee was that there is very clear consensus that both the Government Labour Party, for one—no one quite knows what New Zealand First thinks about it, and the Greens, of course, will go off on an ideological flight of fancy, but certainly the Labour Party of the coalition and National, we agree that the RMA in its current form is underperforming. It’s underperforming for our planning and built environment, and it’s certainly underperforming in terms of being the nation’s primary resource and piece of legislation to protect our natural environment.

There’s nothing in this bill, for instance, that’s going to address housing affordability; it’s going to make building houses more difficult. They’ve tried to bring in under the cover of COVID a quirky little thing where suddenly climate change is going to have to be considered as part of the consenting process. Now, an earlier amendment backed by a Labour Government in 2004 specifically excluded—specifically excluded—consideration of climate change matters in RMA consenting, and that was done for the very good reason that every single council will have a different interpretation; every regional council will have a different interpretation. But, no, for some reason, a Government policy halfway through the select committee process sought to introduce, suddenly, that climate change should be a factor considered by resource consenting process. We don’t think that that’s a good idea, we don’t think that’s appropriate; we think it’s just very messy and very ill-considered.

So we’re going to oppose this piece of legislation. It’s tinkering, it doesn’t add any value, and, actually, what’s really required is a start-again approach to resource management in New Zealand.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Look, I’m not even going to dwell on the retrograde do-nothing politics of the National Party when it comes to things as important as freshwater policy. But what I am going to do is I just want to touch on one thing and leave some of my colleagues to identify some of the other important improvements in this bill. What I want to talk about is, really, the shift in the way hearings will be conducted, particularly around fresh water. We know that the resource management process has got bogged down in appeals and in extensive hearings, and, really, it has been a costly process that, arguably, has been over lawyered and, in some ways, over engineered.

So in the Environment Committee we looked at that process, particularly freshwater panels, and we said: how can we make it accessible, how can we make it understandable, and how can we make it easier to get great outcomes so that we can actually make our rivers swimmable? What we thought was, really, that we wanted to be careful about the use of cross-examination—was one point. Cross-examination can, in fact, not be the best way to get to the heart of a matter. In fact, when you’ve got laypeople coming to the tribunal, when you’ve got expert witnesses, what we want is a much more investigative and inquisitorial process. If we look at new clause 47(2) of Schedule 1 in clause 72 of the bill, we’ll see that the freshwater hearings panel can “(a) permit a party to question a witness:” or/and “(b) prohibit cross examination:” or “(c) permit cross examination … but only if the panel is satisfied that it is in the interests of justice:” and “(d) regulate the conduct of … cross examination.” So those processes are very much saying we do not want some legalistic full-blown courtroom drama on our hands; we want to get to what’s best for our rivers.

Another innovation, and one that I think is really important, is the ability of the panel to appoint a friend of a submitter. We have a lot of concerned people who have genuine and real concerns but don’t know the law, don’t know the procedures, and they want to come and really be heard and help make our waters better and cleaner and fresher. Now the panel will be able to say this grouping has a legitimate voice, and we want to make sure it is effectively heard by appointing a friend of the submitter.

They’re just a couple of things which the select committee, in a collaborative way, looked at and said this is a better way to reach the end goal of having cleaner, swimmable fresh water in New Zealand—not a minor objective but one that this Government has stood on and is committed to achieving in the near future. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

This bill is a clear example of how this Government operates, which is to say it talks big and it delivers very little. Because here in the Resource Management Act (RMA), we have a piece of legislation that is acknowledged—now, on both sides of the House—to be a key impediment to the delivery of affordable housing in New Zealand, to good development, and to good environmental management. And such is the agreement on that argument that members opposite have agreed that there should be a specialist panel looking at how the Resource Management Act be reviewed and improved so that it can deliver better results for New Zealanders in the future.

So we have an expert panel; it’s been established to go about improving the RMA, and then what do we have here? You would think, if there was this expert panel going about looking at this issue in thoroughness and with due process, that perhaps we would be in this House awaiting the outcomes from that panel. But no; instead, what we have is this piecemeal piece of legislation which does a couple of bespoke amendments to the Resource Management Act without any reference to the wider reform that needs to occur. And we on this side of the House think that sort of thing is a distraction and will only create more cost, more delay, and more uncertainty for those who need to operate under this Act.

So we have a problem with the process. We also see very clearly that this is a step backwards. It’s a Back to the Future series of amendments, because what it largely does is reverse good improvements made to the Resource Management Act by National in 2017. Those changes in 2017 were made in order to accelerate house building, to improve environmental management, to ensure more national consistency, to simplify consenting, to make planning more responsive, and to align with other laws. But Labour didn’t like those changes at the time, for whatever reason, and so, in an act of, as our earlier speaker, Scott Simpson, said, vindictiveness, have gone through and reversed these changes. And it makes no rhyme or reason, because, as I said at the beginning of my speech, we on both sides of the House agree that, in New Zealand right now, we have a major challenge with a lack of housing supply. So you would think, in amending the Resource Management Act, members opposite would have a mind to “How can we improve this piece of legislation in such a way that more houses are built?” But, instead, let’s look at what this bill actually does.

So the first thing it does is it says, “Actually, the rules that National changed to allow for some more subdivision, we’ll turn over.” In 2017, National saw that we wanted more subdivisions to be able to occur so that we could have more housing brought on, and we made it that subdivisions could occur unless they were specifically restricted by a district plan, so that—on the margin—more subdivision would occur. And, of course, this is very significant because if we think about the housing challenge in New Zealand, well, yes, there’s probably a role for the Government in building houses. The members opposite haven’t been very successful in that, for sure—only 395 KiwiBuild houses have actually been built—but even if you were to take into account all of the State houses that have been built, around 1,400 have been built. The much bigger picture of housing supply in New Zealand is private development—the 37,000 or so residential new dwelling consents that are issued each year. That is where the bulk of new housing comes from in New Zealand.

So when we think about how to improve our housing supply over time, that private sector development is really important. So where does it happen? Well, of course, some of it happens in major, large developments on a huge scale, but actually a huge amount of it happens incrementally, subdivision by subdivision. So it is an absolute mystery to us on this side of the House as to why that Government, who says it cares about housing supply, would come in and change the Resource Management Act to mean that people can’t do subdivision unless specifically allowed to. That seems a step backwards.

But that’s not the only thing that this bill does to get in the way of housing supply. The second thing that it does is it re-introduces appeals to the Environment Court for activities to subdivide. So what we can foresee happening is an increase in delays and an increase in appeals—hundreds and hundreds of appeals—adding cost, adding complexity, putting developers off the potential to subdivide and increase housing supply in New Zealand. And, again, these were changes made in 2017 to this Act because National recognised some real impediments within our resource management laws stopping new housing coming on. And Labour, in what can only be seen as an act of spite, because there is no better public policy rationale, have overturned that change.

The bill then goes further and it reintroduces financial contributions. Of course, at the moment, local government can have contributions required as development contributions under the Local Government Act, and National takes no issue with that, but what we did do in 2017 was we streamlined the pieces of law so that you couldn’t require a financial contribution under the RMA as well as under the Local Government Act. Again, the Government comes in, overturns that, and we now have a situation where developers can be required to provide financial contributions under both pieces of legislation. But, mind, there is an exception here, a convenient little exception that the Government’s own entities, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Defence, are not required to make these financial contributions. Again these amendments do not make good sense. It is hard to see, in any way, that they align with the goal of bringing on more housing development.

So, taken as a whole, this bill is a corruption of process and it introduces bespoke amendments ahead of a wholesale review. It shows a rejection of what has actually become a bipartisan agreement that the Resource Management Act is failing New Zealanders and must be reformed. Instead of taking up that agreement with members opposite and working with us on sensible reforms, we’ve seen a petty act of spite overturning good amendments made in the past. And, finally, it steps us backwards in terms of some of the things—some of the small but meaningful changes—that have been made to reduce cost, uncertainty, and delay in our resource management laws.

So we in National oppose this bill. We do not hold out hope that the members opposite have it in them to provide the kind of wholesale Resource Management Act reform that is required to improve housing supply and improve environmental management in New Zealand. We can see that the delay in the panel until later this year is very symbolic of the approach of that side of the House, which is talk big, don’t deliver, don’t deal with the gritty issues, don’t get to the nub of the problem. And, if we are elected in this election in September, we will repeal this Act, we will improve this Act, and we will do so in a way that ensures the provision of more housing for New Zealanders and actually gets to the nub of problems that members opposite are only interested in window dressing about.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well it really is a curious thing—and I’ve said it before—if you stand still in this place for long enough, you get to hear the same people, who were once in Government, giving speeches that sound just like the Opposition gave when they were putting legislation through that the Opposition of the day objected to. And you have the ironic situation where the Opposition today, who was the Government then, ends up giving the same speeches that we gave when we were sitting over there, and they wouldn’t listen.

There’s this old saying, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” So I guess to not be brief might be said to be “wit-less”, which is probably what I would conclude from a man who—the Hon Scott Simpson, who I greatly respected as the chairman of the Environment Committee when I served on it while he was in Government. I say that because his speech was a lot of huff and puff—used up the whole 10 minutes and didn’t actually say anything of any worth, tragically.

I’m reminded of Denis O’Rourke—a member of Parliament, NZ First—who sat in those seats over there, and for I think 13 hours in committee stage tried desperately to get the National Government of the day to make some sensible, common-sense changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA). And I have to sit here now and listen to Mr Scott Simpson saying, “Well, what’s needed is to throw the whole RMA out and start again.” But of course in the next breath, “But it’ll take 15 years to get it done.”

Well, we haven’t got 15 years to dither and dawdle around, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve got a very short window of time to get some stuff done. I would simply say to the Opposition, the National Party’s resource amendment—

💬 Hon Member: Your time’s almost up!

Listen up, young fella, you might learn something. Listen up, both ears. Nanny used to say, “Mouth shut, ears open, learn a lot.” OK, so listen up. The resource management amendment bill that the John Key - led National Government put through took about 30-odd hours of Parliament time. It had people virtually camped in here under urgency. Not one of the amendments that New Zealand First offered up were accepted, and now people have got the audacity to preach back at us that we’re not listening. So get with the programme; we don’t have 15 years to amend it. We’ve got work to do. This is a first step in a couple of phases. If the Opposition want to get on board and help, if they truly want to remove the bureaucracy, if they truly want to get—remember, Mr Guy, the troubles with the Horizons One Plan. Remember that—your area, Horizons. Well, what did the Government of the day do about that? Nothing. One Plan choked a lot of dairy farmers in the Wairarapa and the Tararua and, I know, through the Manawatū—and kept on going. Wherever the One Plan spread its tentacles, farmers died. Their businesses were severely impacted.

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: They didn’t die.

Well, actually, be cautious, because we hear stories about people who actually did commit suicide. We hear stories about farms that went to the wall. We hear stories about equity that just evaporated overnight. And what was that all down to? It was down to the Resource Management Act and the way it was being implemented by Horizons. Some of us fought against those changes, but some sat there in Government and let it happen.

So some of us are sitting here trying to do something. My simple message is “Get on board. Help move this bill through. If one really does want to address the bureaucracy, if one really does want to get some common-sense changes, here’s the opportunity. We would welcome that help.”

It’s a pleasure to follow from the Hon Ron Mark and reminiscing about the One Plan. He was more or less indicating that the National Government should have been meddling in a court process. Yeah, that’s not the way that we operated in Government. I know that New Zealand First may well have wanted to do that.

I thought it’s ironic, Ron Mark banging on about the One Plan. Well, he’s sitting in Cabinet now, and the Wairarapa water storage project, which is really going to help the community where he resides—finally, he’s put some money in. Finally, he’s put some money into it.

💬 Hon Member: Thirty-five years they waited.

Yeah, and we, the National Government, put a lot of money in. I acknowledge the Minister for doing that, because Labour campaigned along with the Greens for no support for water storage projects. So it’s kind of interesting how politics works on the other side of the House, for those that are listening, and no doubt we’re going to hear more of that when we move into an election campaign—just a couple of months away. In fact, we can already start seeing that evolve with COVID-19.

You may well ask what this bill has got to do with COVID-19. Well, it actually has got a hell of a lot to do with COVID-19. When this response moves, as it is now, from a health response to an economic one, when the New Zealand economy is screaming out for infrastructure to stimulate it, to protect jobs, to grow opportunity, what is this bill going to do to help stimulate the New Zealand economy? It’s a fair question. Their heads are down over the other side. I’ll answer the question myself: very little.

This bill will do very little. If anything, it will be a couple of clicks on the handbrake. It will slow the New Zealand economy. Nicola Willis, our new housing spokesperson, gave a great contribution just a couple of moments ago to this bill, where she said it is going to be a step backwards. It is going to create more costs, more uncertainty, and more bureaucracy at a time when New Zealanders are thinking, “We need to really get started and build some infrastructure and build some houses to protect jobs and grow the New Zealand economy.”

I’m really disappointed in this bill. It promised so much, but it’s going to deliver so little. I’ve sat in this House and sat in the Cabinet table, listened to the Minister for the Environment Nick Smith, who had big bold plans to reform the Resource Management Act (RMA) and couldn’t get the numbers through the National coalition with United Future and, at times, the Māori Party. So the changes that National implemented in 2017 were never as good as we wanted them to be, but we did make changes.

Now, looking back is one fine thing, but looking forward is really important. If we look back just for a moment, the RMA has had 18 reforms since it came in about 30 years ago.

💬 Nicola Willis: It’s a beast.

“It is a beast.”, Nicola Willis rightly says. The volume size has grown by double. So there’s been tinkering and changes and amendments—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Bigger than this.

Way bigger than that bill. We just debated that, Barbara Kuriger, and I mention that it’s 720-odd pages long when you include the Supplementary Order Paper—that’s the emission trading scheme bill. This bill is about environment and planning, the RMA is, and trying to get the balance right. But this is not going to get the balance right at all. It is going to mean that the appeals when someone wants to subdivide—take a developer: it’s going to be so easy for people to appeal, and they’re going to be bogged down in the Environment Court. There will be hundreds and hundreds of appeals though the Environment Court, which is not what I thought the Government would want to see on the back of COVID-19, when they’re trying to open up the New Zealand economy and create jobs and kick-start our economy as well.

What is also interesting is the financial contributions. We get the fact that local government and councils should be able to strike a development charge on developers from time to time. We get that, because that’s important when you think about all of the major utilities that are involved in building a subdivision—the roading, the sewer, the lighting, the footpaths. It’s only fair that a developer makes contributions under the Local Government Act. But this means, now, that there’s another contribution that could be required under the Resource Management Act. So if that sounds like double-dipping to those listening or in the Chamber this evening, that indeed is what it actually is.

What is also a bit bizarre, and I’m going to get into this when we get into the committee of the whole House stage, is how submitters will be able to cross-examine other submitters. Do you think that sounds a little bit bizarre, that submitters are allowed to cross-examine other submitters? I can see heads sort of thinking, “That’s a pretty good question.” Even on our side of the House, we’re thinking, “How’s that going to work?” So I’m curious to get the Minister in the chair to try and understand how that specific point is actually going to work and streamline the Resource Management Act.

We had 385 submitters. We heard 59 of them. Some of those submitters had spent a lot of time and effort into making very, very good submissions. Others were there saying, “Yes, we just think that the RMA is so frustrating that any change has to be better than it currently is.”, but they obviously hadn’t read the bill, because this bill is going to drop the anchor out of the back of a progressive and growing New Zealand economy and slow down our growth at a time when we really want it to turbocharge and grow.

So the National Party has some grave concerns with this bill. We can’t support it. The other concluding comment is there’s a review under way. The Minister will have that on his office desk, done by a retired appeal court judge. It’ll be thorough, and the process should be a full re-write of the RMA, not more tinkering that’s going to slow down the New Zealand economy. Thank you.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.