COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill

I move, That the COVID19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 29 June 2020 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

The COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill is part of the Government’s response to support New Zealand’s recovery from the economic and social disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, so that we can create jobs and rebuild our economy. The Government has taken urgent action to support people and the economy against the effects of COVID-19; however, the unemployment rate is rising. Although I disagreed with Mr Falloon in his earlier contribution on a prior bill as to the prediction as to how high unemployment is going to go, which I think is now a bit out of date, it is true that over 45,000 people have newly accessed the jobseeker benefit during the COVID-19 lockdown and since. The Government is making significant investments in infrastructure to bring forward those investments so as to get the economy moving and people back into jobs, and this bill will ensure that the resource management system supports this investment by speeding up resource consenting and designation processes under the Resource Management Act (RMA) to get projects started as soon as possible.

The bill lists 11 projects that will progress first and have a high level of certainty of being approved. These include drinking-water storage, housing, cycleway and rail upgrade, and roading projects. Those named projects are located across the country, from Kaikohe to Queenstown. Of course, the select committee can recommend adding or subtracting from this list after it receives submissions, or potentially it may move projects to the second track. One example might be Te Pā Tāhuna housing project in Queenstown, which may be delayed due to the fall-off in tourism demand. If so, another Queenstown project, such as a bypass to address Queenstown’s gridlock, could be added to the list.

Fast-track legislation has been used before, after the Canterbury earthquake, and the Hurunui/Kaikōura Earthquakes Recovery Act 2016 was another that modified resource consent processes to help those communities recover from the devastation wrought by the earthquakes. While wider public participation and appeal rights provided for in the standard resource consent processes under the RMA are appropriate in normal circumstances, they don’t provide the speed urgently needed now. In our view, however, positive environmental outcomes don’t need to be sacrificed, so this bill modifies existing RMA provisions so as to process to significantly speed them up whilst retaining environmental safeguards. Part 2 of the RMA will still apply to fast-track projects under the legislation. Furthermore, when the panel makes their decision, they’ve got to continue to apply the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and Treaty settlement obligations will also be upheld.

The bill enables the establishment of expert consenting panels. These are convened by a sitting or retired Environment Court judge, who also appoints the chairperson for each panel and its members. These panels will consider the projects listed in the bill or those referred to them through an Order in Council. Panels will be responsible for considering and determining resource consents and designations for those projects. They will have similar powers to consenting authorities, which are normally councils, followed by Environment Courts, under appeal, under the RMA. Panels will be chaired normally by a sitting or retired Environment Court judge, but, on occasions, a senior RMA lawyer could be appointed in that person’s stead. The panel will have a minimum of three commissioners, and include nominees from the relevant local authorities and local iwi authorities. Each panel is expected to include resource management expertise as well as technical expertise in relation to the project and its effect, and each panel will include expertise in tikanga Māori and mātauranga Māori.

The new bill speeds up the time frames to consent applications and designations that would otherwise be publicly notified and for which service would be served on affected parties. It’s expected the panel will normally take up to 25 working days from the date it receives feedback from specified stakeholders. That time frame can be extended to 50 days for more complex or larger projects. The fast-track consenting process will then, therefore, be significantly faster than standard RMA processes for complex projects. The processing time for such applications is often many months—sometimes years, if a decision is appealed to the Environment Court.

There are three tracks for projects to be progressed. The first is the projects listed in the bill; I’ve already referred to them. On those, the panel’s function is largely limited to imposing conditions. The second track applies to other public or private projects. A person with an eligible project can apply to the Minister for the Environment. The Minister consults other Ministers, and if satisfied overall that the project meets the purpose of the bill and the eligibility criteria, the project can be referred to the fast-track process panel via an Order in Council. The bill is intended, in that case also, to speed up processes whilst providing environmental safeguards through the application of Part 2 of the RMA, including the recognition of matters of national importance. The Minister for the Environment will have a broad ability to decline applications to use track two, and those instances are laid out in the bill. Track three relates to permitted activities on existing infrastructure. This third track under the legislation enables some Government agencies, and perhaps, in the future, local government, to undertake smaller-scale works on existing infrastructure without a resource consent. Those agencies have a clear role in delivering public benefit. They’re subject to a high level of scrutiny in public-private organisations, and normally have governing legislation that requires environmental considerations and other safeguards.

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and KiwiRail holdings are being permitted to carry out repair, maintenance, and minor upgrade works to their existing infrastructure within the road and rail corridor. The bill sets out which activities can be undertaken and standards which must be met when carrying out those works. These provisions will enable NZTA and KiwiRail to start work on their existing assets quickly after the bill is enacted, reducing the lead-in time to get routine projects started and getting people across New Zealand working on this large number of smaller jobs. The bill also enables Government agencies Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, as well as local government, to access these track three provisions if confirmed through an Order in Council. Again, all actions under this legislation must be consistent with both the principles of the Treaty and Treaty settlements. This aligns with the Crown’s obligations under the Treaty. Applications for the fast-track processes must include information on the impact of the project on Māori and on Treaty settlements. Iwi authorities will have the ability to nominate a member to each expert consenting panel for projects within their areas of interest, and panels will be required to seek comments from iwi on all projects referred to them for consideration.

To support New Zealand’s recovery from the potential impacts, we do need to speed up resource consent processes, and this is necessary to get people employed. This justifies limiting normal rights of public participation and the normal appeal right to the Environment Court on the merits. This is, in effect, being replaced by a single-step process headed by, normally, an Environment Court judge. There will be targeted consultation. Panels will receive written submissions from nominated organisation peak bodies—from business and environmental groups, for example. There will be no requirement for the panel to hold a viva-voce hearing, but they will have the power to hold one if they consider it necessary. Given the importance of the objectives of this bill, I believe that these temporary limits to wider public participation are appropriate.

This bill is a necessary response to the social and economic effects of COVD-19. It’s a short-term intervention to support our recovery. It’s not the long-term response to the fundamental issues that need reform in the RMA—that’s being done through a process led by Tony Randerson QC, former Court of Appeal judge.

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: You’ve got the report, haven’t you?

No, I actually haven’t got the final report, but I’m expecting it within weeks and will release it soon thereafter.

This bill, I think, is worthy of the support of the House, and I commend it to other parties.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, the National Party will support this bill to select committee, and we do so for a number of reasons but not without some questions that we would like answered as we go through the process. Broadly, we think that the process adopted by the Minister is one that is not a bad one, but, as I say, we have got some questions. Essentially, this bill follows on from a similar process to ones that were used during the National Party - led Government, particularly in response to the Canterbury and Kaikōura earthquakes, but earlier a similar process was used for the speeding up of the creation and building of the Pukeahu national memorial and also the construction of the Arras Tunnel. So those processes are actually not completely unique and unusual to this House. I think members would agree that when legislation of this sort has been used in the past, it’s been used wisely and for good purpose.

But we do have some questions about this, and the Minister sort of touched on them towards the very end of his speech. That is really a much wider root-and-branch, fundamental relook at the whole resource management system, the legislative framework upon which it is based, and the future direction of it, and he’s indicated that he’s still waiting for the report from retired Court of Appeal Judge Tony Randerson. It seems unusual—notwithstanding the intervention of COVID—that someone of the standing of Tony Randerson QC would not have delivered his report in time and in full to the Minister, and it’s hard to believe that, actually, that work has not yet been completed. Why is there delay on that process, because, actually, that goes to the core of what this is all about? So we would say that if the Government and the Labour Party actually do support significant and substantial Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, then why not use this opportunity to deliver lasting change right now when it’s needed as it has never been needed before?

The Minister’s gone through quite a bit of the detail of the bill, and, of course, he’s had the opportunity to work through that bill over several months now, in detail which the Opposition has not been able to do. We received notice of this bill this afternoon. At 1.20 p.m. the Leader of the Opposition and myself received the email and a copy of the bill. The bill runs to some 80-odd pages. It’s a detailed piece of legislation, and I won’t kid the House: I have not read the full detail of this bill, as such, at this time. So when we get it to select committee we will want to investigate the levers and the measures that are put in place under the bill in some detail, and we are hopeful that the Minister will allocate sufficient time for the select committee to actually do its work in a thorough and diligent way.

Yesterday, when the 11 projects were announced, it became clear, actually, that the 11 projects are something of a compromise—in fact, quite a big compromise. That’s now clear to those of us who have been waiting and looking forward to this legislation, as I say, for some considerable time, because it was back in early May that the Minister wrote to my colleague Judith Collins, who was at that stage our party spokesperson on RMA reform and planning, and promised that a copy of the bill would be available as soon as it had been drafted, and yet we only received it at 1.20 p.m. this afternoon, which indicates that either there were enormous problems with the drafting, or there were incredible difficulties within the coalition negotiations of the Government parties. And the Minister probably needs to answer which one it is: was it a drafting issue or was it a coalition negotiation issue, because the sense that we get on this side of the House is that it’s been another example of the poor old Greens having to swallow a big fat dead rat—another big fat dead rat, and the issues—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: No, they’ve swallowed asphalt.

Well, they’re probably getting used to digesting them, because they’ve had to swallow so many. It seems that they’ve long since forgotten the party of principle that they used to be. Where’s Catherine Delahunty these days? Where’s Sue Bradford? Where are those people that used to stand on the Opposition benches and talk about their undisputed faith and commitment to principle? Actually, we find that as soon as they get into Government and even close to being in decision making, the principles go out the door.

So the 11 projects that the Minister has highlighted appear to be compromise projects. All of them have been previously announced. There’s not a single new project there. At a time when unemployment is at its highest level in recorded history in our nation, when something like 40,000 jobs were lost in the last month, it seems strange that a piece of legislation designed like this piece of legislation is to create jobs, to create momentum, to help with a post-COVID recovery is only going to, on the face of it, produce 1,200-odd jobs, and even then, we’re not sure how long that will take to get ready. The term “shovel ready” is often used, but we heard in question time today that shovel ready actually probably means not a single spade in the ground even remotely close to before we go to the polls in September of this year. So we’ve got some really big questions to ask about this. What about the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission that the Government went to such an extraordinary length to set up, to create, to establish, and has completely bypassed in this process? Surely it seems sensible to have engaged with the Infrastructure Commission as part of this process.

Another area that concerns us—and if the Government was really keen on achieving cross-party support for this exercise, it would maybe invite the Leader of the Opposition to be part of that process—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I apologise for interrupting the member—it’s kai time. I will resume the chair at 7.30.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. And yes, I was talking before the dinner break about the potential role for the Leader of the Opposition for selecting projects that are going to be part of this amended RMA quick process—the fast-track process. The Minister in his first reading speech made it clear that he was hoping that there would be cross-party support for this bill across the Parliament, and we have indicated that we are prepared to support the bill at its first reading, through to select committee, and that we want to have an opportunity to scrutinise it. It’s a bill of some 80-several pages that was received by the Opposition as late as 1.20 p.m. this afternoon—

💬 Hon Member: What time?

At 1.20 p.m. this afternoon, and not actually presented on the Table of the Parliament until after the urgency motion had been prepared. So there’s been almost no opportunity for the Opposition to scrutinise it. Of course, the Government member introducing the bill, David Parker, has had an opportunity to spend a lot of time looking at it because he’s had to negotiate his way through the very delicate machinations of New Zealand First and Green Party politics. What we do know is that this bill, in terms of the 11 projects indicated so far, has been an utter compromise, and these are very cold, stale projects. Every single one of the 11 has been previously announced. What we do know is that they have probably been scrutinised to the point where the Green Party has had to eat another big, fat, dead rat in order to provide support for this bill.

We are going to support it, but we have got some questions. We want to know why the Infrastructure Commission wasn’t involved in this process, and why wouldn’t the Government want to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the Infrastructure Commission that they have set up, that they created only a few months ago? Wouldn’t this be the logical sort of bill for them to be involved with? We also are keenly awaiting the Tony Randerson report—the review of the RMA process. We can’t understand why the Minister is delaying the release of that report. He indicated that it would be another month or two before that report is made public. We think that’s terribly convenient as we run into the election on 19 September.

I just want to conclude my comments on this bill by referencing a press release that Alan McDonald from the Employers and Manufacturers Association has released after yesterday’s announcement of the 11 significant infrastructure projects. He says, “However, this is yet another workaround for the problematic Resource Management Act, highlighting once again that the Act is now no longer fit for purpose and needs to be replaced to create new, fit for purpose legislation that enables growth and protects the environment.” He says the current Act fails on both of these tests. Our suggestion to the Minister is if this bill is a good bill—and we think that it has some merit, at least; we’d like to scrutinise it further—then why not make it permanent? Why not make it easier for all projects to be consented in a way that is going to fast track every single RMA consent?

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I am gratified and heartened by the fact that Mr Scott Simpson and his party are going to support this bill to select committee, because I think there’ll be some really good work there.

You only have to look at the purpose section of this bill to see that its purpose, its function, is actually of critical importance at this time, and I know that the Environment Committee will work very, very hard to get this bill improved, to listen carefully to stakeholders, and to make sure that it’s workable, because this is actually about the current crisis. This isn’t about the need to review the Resource Management Act, which we all accept—and, in fact, which this Government has started on—it’s about ensuring that projects which are ready to go can be undertaken. It’s about employment growth and economic growth, but the good thing about it, really, is set out in clause 19, which is about not necessarily the listed projects, which have already been examined, but the projects which may be referred to this special procedure.

It’s really important to recognise that it’s not a free-for-all; it’s a careful process where the Minister will have to consider a number of matters, not just economic benefits but—let’s be honest, in the current situation economic benefits, employment, and the economic knock-on effects are very important—also the social and cultural wellbeing of the communities, and also the environmental impacts, including climate change. In terms of these referral projects—the projects which people are, essentially, invited to put before the Minister for this fast-tracked process—there’s a real encouragement that they are projects which have much wider benefits, including, for example, managing natural hazards and including the impact of climate change.

So, look, I’m really looking forward to sitting on the select committee and working cooperatively with the National Party and, of course, the coalition partners, but working through to make this bill ready to get to work before Parliament rises so that these projects can, in fact, start and the impediments can be swept to one side. We can not only create employment but also improve our infrastructure, improve our environment, and, really, improve the lives of many New Zealanders. An excellent bill by David Parker—I commend it to the House.

How would the member who’s resumed his seat, Duncan Webb, know it’s an excellent bill? I’m sure he didn’t see it until this afternoon as well. He certainly is in a situation—as we all are over this side—of not having had the opportunity to see this bill until 1.20 p.m. this afternoon?

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: That’s correct.

So it was 1.20 p.m. when a copy was sent through to my colleague, Hon Scott Simpson, and our leader of the National Party—Leader of the Opposition, Todd Muller—to have a look at.

On 5 May this year—what’s that, about five weeks ago?—I wrote to David Parker and I asked him if he could please forward us a copy of the bill as soon as possible, because he’d certainly been speaking about it in the media. I also asked about the select committee process and how long the select committee would have to review this, because media reports had said that there was actually going to be a one-week process, which is absolutely disrespectful to all of those groups who have a good contribution to make in this.

What has happened in the last five weeks? Well, everything that we hear is that there has been a dysfunction within the Government around trying to get the Greens and New Zealand First and Labour all on the same page for this bill. When I wrote to David Parker, I indicated that the Opposition would like to be able to agree with the bill, but we would need to see it. I also made some suggestions around the time that the select committee would take. But I also made some suggestions about whether or not, given the financial and supply chain effects, that could occur over many years following the starting of some of these projects, that it would be useful to have the Leader of the Opposition actually be in the room when these decisions are made about which of these projects are going to take the resources, the person power, the actual supply chain issues, but also the money that would be spent.

I’ve looked at the 11—mere 11—projects that are listed as going to be the projects that this bill is going to affect, a mere 11. Eleven out of the 1,924 projects directed to the Infrastructure Commission, which the Government set up to advise them on infrastructure—11 only. When I look at these, several of these are ones that I know quite a lot about, actually. One is the Papakura to Pukekohe rail electrification, and as MP for Papakura, I of course am very happy to see that there. What I also know, because I was there, is that three years ago this was announced by the then National Government, where it was announced as a project which would be started and completed within this term of Government, if we were elected. So what we’ve seen, though, is that all these projects were put on hold by the Minister of Transport, Phil Twyford. So they didn’t even get started. So it’s a bit rich to come and say, “Well, we need to get them all consented.” There’s been plenty of opportunity to get them started, and nothing’s happened.

Then we have the other Papakura to Drury State Highway 1 improvements. Well, the only improvements that have gone on in that State highway, anywhere near Papakura, have been under the National-led Government, which took a long time for this to happen because it covered 22 bridges that had to be rebuilt on the Southern Motorway while the Southern Motorway is operating. It also had the extension for a lane each way on both sides of the motorway, plus a cycleway and, really, these were safety improvements as well that were needed. That took around $280 million to get that done. It took time because it was operating, but there is nothing to stop this Government from starting the consenting processes for the extension from Papakura through to Drury. They could have done that, but again, all on hold.

Then there’s another one here that I know something about: the Unitec residential development. That’s the big KiwiBuild one that Phil Twyford—oh why is it always Phil Twyford?

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: He got promoted!

Phil Twyford, who has today been promoted to number four in the Labour Government—Labour-led Government, number four. It’s amazing. It’s amazing, the opportunities available at number four.

💬 Hon Member: Meritocracy.

Meritocracy. Clearly, it’s because he obviously represents a group underrepresented in the Labour caucus. Anyway, it must be people who understand about transport and housing. Well, Phil Twyford announced 5,000 KiwiBuild homes in the Unitec residential development. That was a hiss and a roar announcement all announced three years ago. And what has happened? Or nothing much? Nothing much at all. In fact, what we said at the time was, “Well this is going to be interesting because the whole of the waterways in that area, that part of the Unitec development in the Point Chevalier area, or Western Springs area, has this issue with storm water and sewage not being separated.” So that all has to happen; that’s about a billion dollars. I don’t see that in here as being in here—

💬 Lawrence Yule: It wouldn’t be; it’s not thought through.

—in the projects that need to be done.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Conveniently.

I don’t think that’s going to be happening, Mr Yule or Mr Simpson.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Conveniently omitted.

Conveniently omitted.

Well, that actually has to happen because you’ve got—what he’s proposing—5,000 households. Well, that’s more than 5,000 people, all adding to the issue that is in that area of Auckland of no separation between sewage and storm water. What happens when it rains in Auckland—and it often does, as we all know—is that the sewage goes right through on to the Meola Reef on Point Chevalier and it pollutes the water, and I would have thought that the Green Party would still have some sort of semblance of respect for that, but apparently not. So I would like to see what would happen there. Catherine Delahunty is actually sorely missed in the Green Party at the moment, and I have no idea what she would be thinking about that.

There are all the other things that we could be talking about: the Britomart East upgrade, the Wellington metro upgrade programme—all of these things, all of which, by the way, have already been announced. This has become the Government of announcements: making an announcement one day, waiting for another year, making another announcement, and then, just before the election, making another announcement.

Having had a look at this bill, we are going to support it to select committee, and my view is that the Minister has lost an opportunity. He could have sent this earlier to us under a draft or embargo where we could have looked at it more thoroughly and possibly improved—well, we would have definitely improved it. But he chose not to. He had an invitation from us to do that, to involve us, and he chose not to. He chose to ignore every opportunity to work cross-party on this, and then today he turns up saying, “I think we would like the Opposition’s support.” Well, this is the same Minister’s office who told media, and who, of course, told me, that the National Party had to support it. Well—a bit difficult to support something you haven’t seen, a bit difficult to understand it. This Minister’s view is—and he stated it in select committee—that it’s no different than the Kaikōura legislation that National brought through.

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Which Minister was saying that?

That was Mr Parker, actually. He said—so he’s, basically, copied the Kaikōura legislation. It’s sort of his words—very close to that.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Cut and paste.

Cut and paste the Kaikōura legislation and then added into this. But he’s missed the opportunity.

So with the review of the Resource Management Act (RMA), that has been going on for a whole year and that was supposed to have come back to him with its report—oh, it was about three weeks ago. We still haven’t seen that. Now we’re told it’s not available or he hasn’t seen it either. I wonder how much he hasn’t seen. But when I think about that, wouldn’t it be the opportunity now, if he had any—any—conviction at all that this new piece of legislation that he needs to bring would actually do the job, why wouldn’t he wait and put it all in the one? And the answer must be he doesn’t think it’s going to do what it needs to do.

So the National Party is going to support this to select committee. We will be asking the questions. I know that my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson and the rest of the team from the National Party on that select committee will be asking difficult questions, hard questions, and actually the right questions, because this is something that should have been done years ago. If a Government can’t get their developments through, what hope for private developers? What hope indeed?

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: None, zero.

No hope. And that is an admission of massive failure by a Government that did everything it could to stop a National-led Government from ever changing the RMA in the way it needed to be changed.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to rise. Why do we need this bill? Quite simply, we’re in extraordinary times and we need to rebuild our economy. What are we not going to do? We’re not going to sacrifice the environment in order to get these projects completed. I therefore commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. National will support this COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill at first reading to select committee. I note that it was shortly before question time before copies of this bill were made available to the Leader of the Opposition and our environment spokesperson, Scott Simpson, which has left very little time for members of this side of the House to have a good look at the bill. Such a short speech by the Government member, which is surprising, because you would think they are so proud of this bill, but maybe they haven’t had a chance to read it either. I was doing a little bit of research as I was waiting for the full 10-minute call of the member opposite, but that was not to be. Thirty seconds went by, and here I am on my feet, but I’m very ready and willing to make a contribution.

We do support this bill. It is eerily similar to the legislation that so effectively allowed infrastructure after the Canterbury earthquake and Kaikōura earthquake—to allow the infrastructure to take place. I think particularly about the Kaikōura earthquake because it was an effectively singular event, with a number of aftershocks, of course, causing just catastrophic damage to the roading network in particular. I’ve always been full of admiration, in the few times I have gone up and down State Highway 1 through the works, as to how very quickly the sweeping, descending bridge was constructed. It started with a good consenting process, and I think, having seen the response, particularly along that coastal road, which needed to be brought back up and running, that forms the basis for our support.

However, I do have, as do my colleagues, just a few questions around this COVID recovery bill—well, apart from the fact that we really haven’t had an opportunity, having been occupied by debating the climate change bill, to look at it, which I don’t think is great process. I’m looking forward to a very good select committee process, because I would expect that the Environment Committee will open for submissions, will hear what people have to say. This is exactly the kind of bill, which deals with large amounts of Crown funding, which is going to need the opportunity for a range of people to have a view, and I fully expect that the select committee process will allow for that. Well, I would’ve expected that, but I’m not entirely convinced that the passage of this bill is going to be any better than some of the other COVID response bills and other pieces of legislation like the forests trading bill, which have proceeded through the House with unseemly haste. So I do hope that won’t be the case here.

I’m going immediately to Schedule 2 of this bill, where there are 16 listed projects. Those are projects that, effectively, have gotten over the line. There is a variety of projects in there, a number relating to projects in Auckland, and Judith Collins has outlined some of the detail around that. There is a papakāinga development in the Chatham Islands, there is a Picton ferry terminal redevelopment—all good projects, but it just makes me wonder a little bit about: why are there only 16 projects in Schedule 2? It just seems that while the Opposition might’ve had only a very few hours—let’s see, eight hours, maybe, from the time I’m on my feet—to have a look at the bill, the Minister for the Environment has been developing this bill, I’m assuming, for quite some time. So I’m very curious as to why there are only 16 listed projects in this bill.

A question was raised which I think is worth just examining a little more closely, and that is: why is it that the Government, with the full support of Treasury, established the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission in 2018, a couple of years ago? I was having a look at the website and got a bit into it, but what I can see so far: the Infrastructure Commission is there to—what every Government says—provide good infrastructure. All of that’s all good stuff, because we know that infrastructure is very important, and we have an opportunity now post-COVID to build some really robust, good infrastructure. The Infrastructure Commission itself doesn’t build the infrastructure, but it provides a framework and criteria against which various projects can be evaluated. So it’s a planning function, from what I can see. There needs to be a long time frame for a planning function, and it looks like the Infrastructure Commission has a 10-year planning time frame and a 30-year planning time frame. That’s very acceptable, because that’s what local government is required to do as well.

But what puzzles me is: where is that rigour and that planning and that vision in this bill? I can’t see it, and that is why I’m so very interested in the select committee process. That’s why I think we need a good select committee process, so that those submitters—and there were many who submitted to the establishment of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission—have, then, the opportunity to come along to the Environment Committee and make, effectively, if you like, a cross-submission on this COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill. I think that their input will be valuable in terms of—they had a look at the Infrastructure Commission in terms of planning, what was required, what are the resources, how does it fit in to the country’s agenda and the Government’s agenda versus 16 already-announced listed projects which are already embedded into Schedule 2 of this bill.

Given that there are a vast number of infrastructure—I could think of a number of infrastructure projects that I would like to see progressed in New Zealand. Given that there are, I guess, over a thousand of those projects, why did these lucky, fortunate 16 win the lottery and find themselves in Schedule 2—

💬 Matt Doocey: Eleven.

Eleven? Well, yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Well, see, there’s another confusion: my colleague is saying 11, but I’ve got Schedule 2 here in the bill. Schedule 2 sets out 16 listed projects with the name of the project, the entity authorised to undertake, etc., etc. So there we go. There is another question where we will need some time in the select committee to clarify, because I too have heard 11 and I’m reading 16. So—what is it?—“marry in haste, repent at leisure.”

I do hope this bill, through this process, is not going to fall victim to that, because National does support, in the first reading, this bill, but as I do say, we have quite a few questions to ask, and I very much look forward to a robust and very satisfactory select committee process, because if the Government does not provide for that, then it is absolutely failing in its duty to craft good legislation. I’d argue, and I’m sure my colleagues would argue, that tinkering around with the Resource Management Act (RMA), as David Parker has already done once this term, is not effectively going to give us good planning legislation. I acknowledge this is a post-COVID measure and we support it on that basis, but I very much think that the Minister should be giving the bulk of his time to doing what he undertook to do, which is a review of the RMA as a whole.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. The Green Party is supporting the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill to select committee, and speakers from the Opposition have queried the role that the different parties in Government have played. That seems to be ignoring the way in which MMP operates, and the benefit for New Zealand of having three parties in the Government bringing different perspectives and making changes to a bill before it goes into Parliament to actually improve that bill. So I’m very proud of the work that the Green Party has done and acknowledge Minister Parker in being able to engage in that dialogue to actually strengthen the bill.

This bill is needed because of the huge social and economic disruption which COVID has caused, and this Government—in terms of ensuring that the team of 5 million moves into that recovery phase—is investing in infrastructure and it’s investing in nature-based jobs. I was up at the Craigieburn Range just last week, talking there to some folk who’d been guides down at Franz Josef, were made redundant by their guiding company, and were now working to control wilding conifers; $1.1 billion in the COVID recovery package in the Budget is going into nature-based projects.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: That’s not in the bill.

No, it’s not in the bill, Dr Smith, but why I’m talking about it is because this Government has an integrated response to economic recovery and to the disruption caused by the pandemic. So the Green Party recognises that this bill, which will have a two-year life, which will self-repeal after two years, is necessary to ensure that some of those infrastructure projects which have a public benefit can get going more quickly than they would if they went through under the Resource Management Act (RMA). So, yes, it does fast track development, but, as previous speakers have noted, there are some infrastructure projects which are listed in the bill, and some of these, like the SkyPath, which will enable cyclists and walkers to get to and from the North Shore in Auckland, are projects that the Green Party has strongly supported—similarly, with the Britomart station project, which will enable the City Rail Link to work much more efficiently when it starts operating its services. That’s another one of the projects that is listed to go through the fast-track process, and it will provide at least 40 jobs just through that Britomart project.

Some members of the Opposition have queried why there’s just a shorter list in the bill. The bill provides for the ability for the Minister for the Environment to recommend an Order in Council to accept applications for other projects to go on the fast track to be considered by an expert consenting panel and to have decisions made within about 50 days for some of the larger projects.

So the Green Party here was concerned about the safeguards for that decision to recommend an infrastructure project to go on the fast track, and so this bill is very different from some of the proposals we saw under the previous Government for fast tracking, which would have allowed the Hon Dr Nick Smith to make the recommendations himself. With this bill, before the Minister for the Environment can make that recommendation for an Order in Council, the Minister must have considered the application under a number of criteria, which I think are in clause 19—whether there are economic benefits for communities or industries affected by COVID, the social and cultural wellbeing of current and future generations, whether the project would be likely to progress significantly faster by using the fast-track process, whether the project is going to have a significant public benefit, like generating employment, increasing housing supply, contributing to a well-functioning urban environment, and providing infrastructure to improve economic employment and environmental outcomes and to increase productivity.

One of the other criteria is that it could promote the protection of historic heritage or could strengthen our environmental, economic, and social resilience, including to natural hazards and including to the impact of climate change. So there are some safeguards built into the decision by the Minister to recommend an Order in Council that a further infrastructure project, beyond those that are listed in the bill, could go on that fast-track process.

And the Green Party will be very interested in submissions by the public to the Environment Committee, ably chaired by Dr Duncan Webb, as to whether those criteria and other safeguards are adequate, because we do have a fundamental concern that this bill, in order to ensure that decisions are made more quickly, does not enable individuals to make submissions in the same way that they are able to on any resource consent which is publicly notified by a council. But there is an ability for the Minister for the Environment, when he or she is making recommendations for an Order in Council, to nominate organisations and specific individuals whom the expert consenting panel should invite to make submissions. It’s recognised that national organisations—environmental NGOs, for example, like the Environmental Defence Society or Forest & Bird—may well be amongst those organisations which are invited to make submissions on behalf of a wider group of stakeholders.

So, again, it’s safeguards like this, safeguards like the fact that the expert consenting panel—which stands instead of a council in making a decision on an application—must take into account and consider matters under Part 2 of the RMA. That’s all of the issues of national importance in section 6, other matters in section 7, and the Treaty provisions in section 8, and everyone exercising any decision-making power under the bill must ensure that they act in a way that is consistent with the Treaty of Waitangi and with Treaty settlements. So that means that the panel must have decisions on these projects which are consistent with Te Tiriti. So that’s an important safeguard, as are the other provisions around consultation with iwi authorities. So here the Greens will be very interested in public submissions to the select committee on whether iwi and hapū think those Treaty provisions are adequate, and whether the references to Part 2 are also adequate. The bill does make some changes to information which needs to be provided in an effects assessment in the schedule to the current RMA, but, again, a lot of the issues that those effects assessments cover are set out in the bill. But is that an adequate safeguard?

So we do have some concerns, particularly over public participation and the restrictions on that, but we recognise that, for some of these really important infrastructure projects to get under way, where they have significant public benefits and where they can create more jobs to assist our team of 5 million in getting on that recovery track to ensure that those who have been made redundant are able to find new jobs, there is a value in having projects being considered more quickly, subject to adequate safeguards.

So the other change here, compared to the RMA, is that there’s no access to the Environment Court, but there are still appeals on points of law against the panel’s decision, which can be made to the High Court and the Court of Appeal. So it is a truncated period for submissions, but we’ll be very interested in the recommendations of the select committee. Thank you.

I have rarely witnessed such a complete surrender of the Green Party as I’ve heard from that Minister’s speech right now. If a National Government had introduced this bill, the Green Party right now would be going apoplectic, and if I’ve heard an apology from the Green Party for a Resource Management Act (RMA) reform bill, that certainly was it. Let’s cut to the chase: this bill radically reduces the information that’s required for a resource consent, it radically cuts the amount of public consultation, it radically reduces the appeals, and if the Minister who has just spoken had reread her speeches over the many years of RMA changes, she would realise the degree to which the Green Party has chucked its principles under the bus with this bill.

This bill represents the level of muddle and chaos within the Government around critical resource policy. Here’s the most extraordinary part: right now, we have got a 240-page RMA reform bill that’s been through nearly nine months of process that puts in more public consultation and that undoes the very reforms that would enable us to be able to build infrastructure. It undermines the capacity for us to get houses built and, at the very time this Government is slowing down and making more complicated the RMA, suddenly, it introduces this massive bill under extraordinary circumstances.

Now, let’s be clear: this bill was only provided to the Parliament at 1.30 this afternoon. The Government is proposing a select committee process—remember, the normal select committee process is six months. I remember moving a motion in this House—in fact, I’ve got parts of the Hansard on an RMA reform bill associated with the Canterbury earthquakes where I reduced the select committee process to four months, and the Green Party said it was a constitutional outrage. So I say to the Minister of Conservation that if it’s a constitutional outrage to reduce it from six months to four months, what is it when you reduce it from six months to 14 days—to two weeks?

I’d love that Minister in the Green Party to give an explanation as to why we’ve had this extraordinary change of approach and change of spots. Let’s just put the Greens’ principles very simply: if it is a Labour-Green Government that is wanting to bypass the RMA processes, that’s a good thing, but if it is a National Government, then they are opposed. That is as shallow as their principles are.

But there are problems with this bill. Why would we say in the law that if the private sector wants to get on and build some houses, they’ve got to go through all these steps and processes, but if the Government wants to build the houses, oh, they should be able to bypass them? Can some member somewhere in the House tell me what the logic of that is? Members on this side of the House say that we want to make it easier for everybody to be able to get on and build the houses that New Zealand builds and not just the State housing department.

I’d love the member Eugenie Sage to read her speeches on the special housing Act legislation. [Interruption] Yes, actually. There are over 14,000 houses that have been built in those special housing areas. It’s one of the reasons that so many homes have been built over the last five years. But why was it—

💬 Hon Eugenie Sage: Oh, rubbish—rubbish!

Well, I’d be happy to take it to my own electorate, where we have had to open a new school because we have got thousands of homes.

In fact, here’s what the Mayor of Auckland said. The Mayor of Auckland said that half the new houses built in 2019 in Auckland were in special housing areas—that’s 4,500. But what did Eugenie Sage say when we wanted to shorten the RMA processes to be able to build more houses? Eugenie Sage and the Green Party fought that bill at every stage.

Then, let’s go back to the first of the RMA reform bills that provided for specifically fast-tracking infrastructure. We set up a board of inquiry process. We put it in the law that those decisions had to be made in nine months. How do members think Transmission Gully got consented in nine months? How do people think that that wonderful Waterview Tunnel got built in nine months? So where were members opposite like Shane Jones and like Damien O’Connor when the previous National Government wanted RMA reforms to enable those sorts of projects to proceed? They all trotted off to the Noes lobby and vigorously opposed it. So I say to the Shane Joneses who previously voted against such changes and I’d say to the Damien O’Connors: what has changed?

So we on this side of the House do think there is a case for reform, but we do say this: why should it just be the projects that this particular Government chooses to be able to get the reduction in RMA processes? Why should others not be able to benefit from it? Why shouldn’t the Waitaha hydro scheme on the West Coast? Why shouldn’t the southern link road in my own community? Why shouldn’t the project that’s been championed by Matt Doocey for the motorway north of Christchurch, the Woodend bypass—why should that not be part of it? We on this side of the House say that they should not be picking and choosing. These reforms and the accelerated process should not be a matter of playing favourites, but should provide a streamlined and fast-tracked process for all projects and not just the favoured few.

The last point I would want to make on this bill is in respect of the poor process: 80 pages of law, 200 clauses, and being tabled today after 1 o’clock. Everybody knows caucuses meet at 10. The Government did not even have the courtesy to provide this bill before caucuses such as ours and others were able to discuss it, and when we look at the 264 clauses in this bill, how many members of this Parliament really believe we are going to be able to give adequate scrutiny to that in the two-week select committee process? This is going to end up like another dog’s breakfast, like that tax bill we discussed about three weeks ago. That was the one where Minister Nash told us it did one thing, and we found out afterwards that it did something very, very different—something that was extraordinarily incompetent and something I’ve never seen in 30 years within this Parliament.

The truth of this fast-tracked consenting bill is it just shows how vacant the Government is more generally in terms of its approach to resource management. They’ve now been in office for two years and nine months. All they have done in those two years and nine months is make it harder for people to get resource consents to build the infrastructure, the houses, and the other things that will enable our economy to grow. You can’t for two years and nine months slow the boat down, pass reforms that make it more difficult, and then suddenly, three months out from an election, change your tune.

The part that has been absolutely consistent about the National Party is that we have championed reforms of the RMA to get the infrastructure built that New Zealand needs. We cannot go on with this chaotic, muddled approach of swimming one direction one day and a different way the next. That is why National is to choose to support this reform bill, but we do challenge the Government and say that we should not be playing favourites.

We need a robust process. Getting projects properly and efficiently consented is not just important in times of the COVID emergency—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Yeah, I agree.

—but is actually important all the time, and that’s why I say to Shane Jones, who’s suddenly agreeing, why is it then that his party voted against every RMA reform bill in the previous National Government? The truth is that for Shane Jones, for the Green Party, and for the Labour Party, they have one set of rules in Opposition and a different position in Government, and I’m proud to be part of a National Party that has consistently argued for these sorts of reforms. They should just be provided fairly.

This is a split call. I call the Hon Damien O’Connor—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I’m not going to take too long to speak in support of this bill. I’d just like to clarify a few things and I guess the confusion that might be in the minds of some people who may have agonisingly listened to that previous speech. The reality is that the National Government has talked and talked and talked about this Resource Management Act (RMA) all its time in nine years of Government, and it did nothing. And what I will say is that my colleague the Hon David Parker has been committed to improve the RMA. This bill is doing that. We walk the talk and National talked the talk, and that’s about all they will do. The difference between that party and why we couldn’t support it is that we cannot trust the National Party with anything, even the facts—even the facts. And I would trust David Parker with my life; in fact I have. And I know—[Interruption] I have. In fact, I know he will shepherd this bill through to get the right outcomes for New Zealand in a time of need.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m happy to contribute to the first reading of this COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill. This is a bill that, as previous members have already mentioned, we’re going to support to select committee because, in general terms, it’s not a bad bill. Frankly, potentially, we would have done something similar in a similar situation—potentially, we would have gone further but, potentially, we would have done something similar.

Indeed, we were in a very similar situation to this in 2009, with the global financial crisis. We found ourselves with a huge amount of unemployment and the need to stimulate the economy, and we fast tracked infrastructure. We can now look back on some of that visionary work that we did in the roads of national significance—incredible, visionary, legacy projects that created thousands of jobs.

Now, we don’t have a problem with the concept per se; as I said, we did a similar thing. But the problem is not about the concept so much as it is about the projects. These guys have got a $20 billion slush fund and huge borrowing capacity, and they’re facing, potentially, by the end of the year, 140,000 people out of work. So, in a way, they’ve done the right thing to fast track some projects, like we did after the Kaikōura earthquake and with the global financial crisis, so you’d expect some really good, grunty projects that create thousands of jobs. We’d expect vision. What have we got? Well, we’ve got 11 projects—and while they’re not, in themselves, necessarily, bad projects, they’re not going to create the employment and the appreciable benefits that we need in these extremely difficult times.

Let’s just compare and contrast, for a minute, National’s roads of significance, fast tracked under legislation, to what we have in front of us today. Roads of national significance: the Tauranga Eastern Corridor, a massive legacy project; a project in this bill: the Pētone cycle and walkway—now, I’m sure that that’s a great project, but in terms of great legacy, visionary projects and the number of jobs that that’s going to create, these two things are just worlds apart. Roads of national significance: the Auckland Victoria Park bottleneck, the State Highway 1 complete game-changer project; in this bill: the Papakura to Pukekohe rail electrification, which, you know, we did the rest of the Auckland network and this was announced that we would do the rest of this project. Look, it’s a nice-to-have and it’s a good thing, but if you compare and contrast the two, they’re completely different in terms of their scale and their vision.

And then, of course, there’s the Unitec residential development, the project that began under the National Government and then reannounced by Phil Twyford in 2018 and now rehashed, re-baked, reannounced under this bill as if it’s something brand new—so this whole “Hey, here’s something I prepared earlier.” This isn’t a project that’s going to create more jobs; these are jobs that had already been announced. There’s no contractors sitting at home going, “Great. A whole big, new project for me.” This had already been announced.

The rest of the projects are a disparate list of upgrades and road widenings. These are not projects that will create the thousands of jobs that we need. The number of jobs that it’s said to create is—what?—1,265; Air New Zealand laid off 4,000 jobs alone. We’re talking 40,000 jobs that have been lost already, and these 11 projects are nothing compared to what we need. But there’s more than that. These projects aren’t game-changers. I mean, they’re not terrible, but they’re not visionary or legacy. We don’t just have to consider whether or not these projects will create jobs—and, sure, some jobs will be created by these 11 projects that I’ve already talked about; there won’t be that many—but they’re projects that need to deliver wholescale appreciable gains for a lot of people.

If you take my community, for example—I’m the MP for the East Coast Bays. Tens of thousands of people from my electorate and surrounding electorates drive in hours and hours of traffic, both ways, every day, and the big game-changer for my community is a second harbour crossing. But what do we get? We get a cycle and walking path under the harbour bridge. Now, look, it’s something we supported, it’s not a bad idea, but it’s hardly visionary, game-changing, legacy stuff that’s going to create thousands of jobs that we can look back on in years to come and say, “We did that.” and “Look what we did.” I mean, it’s a nice-to-have, and we support it and it’s great but it’s not visionary and it’s not legacy. If this Government was serious about delivering wholescale, game-changing, legacy infrastructure, and fast tracking that, then we would be looking at a second harbour crossing and some really big legacy projects, not a SkyPath.

As I said earlier—I’ve only got a few seconds left—we will support the bill through to first reading. We’ve got serious problems with the two weeks that I’m going to have in my select committee to go over this bill compared to the normal six months we would get. But given that—

Order! The member’s time has expired. This is a split call. David Seymour—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill. Resource Management Act (RMA) reform is one of the most important policy issues facing New Zealand. And yet, this bill amounts to a surrender and abdication by the Government, saying it’s too hard to fix so we’re just going to let a few favoured projects through before the election.

People need to get a sense of the scale of this bill. The Government’s press release says it will create 1,185 jobs. Well, we heard from Eugenie Sage that there’s actually still going to be extensive consultation, and I wouldn’t mind having a wager. I’m going to take a bet with Eugenie Sage from the Greens on the one hand and the Labour Party on the other about whether there’ll be more jobs created building these projects or involved in the consultation. The Green Party want to tell you there’ll be more people involved in consulting 11 projects than the jobs created from building them. That’s the reality, and we need to reform the RMA more substantially for a number of reasons. Here’s one: the price of a median section in Auckland in the period we’ve had the RMA has gone up 900 percent. That’s compared with inflation of 60 percent over the same period. That’s the legacy of the RMA.

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Such a cynic.

And the member here says it’s so cynical. I agree with Stuart Nash: it is cynical, and he should be ashamed because he’s one of the few people in the Labour Party with some character. But what has he done to improve this legislation? Nothing. What a shame.

That’s why the ACT Party is opposed to this bill, because New Zealand deserves better. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I call Kieran McAnulty, five minutes.

I think we all know that the reason the ACT Party is opposing the bill is because they want to have a two in front of their name when they get to election night. That is a task that’s going to be tough, because that will involve the total of doubling their support. I think it is a shame that political parties are using this as a platform on which to try to score cheap political points. The other side of the House have said that they’ll support it, and then spend nine and a half minutes telling us why they don’t like it. Well, why don’t they like this Government? The fact is this bill is necessary. This bill will bring projects forward that will benefit the economy—exactly what the Opposition are calling for this Government to do. Frankly, this bill will directly benefit Wairarapa, so I’ve absolutely no reason to oppose it. I commend this bill to the House.

This is an extraordinary bill at an extraordinary time, done in an extraordinary way. This House and this side of the House never saw the bill until 1.20 this afternoon, have had no time to scrutinise it. We’re now in urgency for the first reading. The Government parties themselves are taking one-minute calls at best on a significant change that really is to try and win votes at this election. Now, National will support the bill to the first reading. We’ve made that clear. But let’s be really clear about all this does. All it does is allow some enabling legislation for a few pet projects that the Government has to get over the line.

It’s important that we understand the process that’s being followed as the post-COVID response put up by the Government. Nearly 2,000 projects were put before the Government that were meant to be shovel-ready—that is, you can put the shovel in the ground—hopefully, before the election. My understanding is that 40 percent of those projects were rejected by the Government as being shovel-ready and about 60 percent are going through the second phase—60 percent. Then we heard today, under questioning from Todd Muller to the Prime Minister, “Would any of those actually have a shovel in the ground by the election?”, that the answer was clearly no. Even the Prime Minister couldn’t bring herself to say no. But the answer was clearly no, because she just moved completely around answering it both times. If she had a project, she could have said what it was, but there isn’t one. And the reality of this is that 2,000 projects, hundreds of billions of dollars in requests, the Government can’t deliver anything like that and certainly can’t deliver anything in the time frame. So what it’s doing today under urgency is bringing in some legislation that fast tracks some—11. Well, 16, depending on where you look.

But I want to bring the House’s attention to the scale of some of these projects, or should I say the lack of them. Project LP09 says “Construction of 14 affordable … homes in Auckland.” Project LP10 says “Integrated papakāinga development of 6 homes”—six! This is one of Labour’s and the coalition Government’s, and the Prime Minister’s Government’s key strategies, and two of those projects, between them, build 20 houses. So, in the schedule, 20 houses. We don’t know and have never seen—and the Hon Shane Jones probably does know, but we have never seen what is in those 2,000 projects—what is in those 2,000 projects that have been submitted. If we’re passing legislation with a schedule which includes two projects to build 20 houses, then we are seriously underestimating and missing an opportunity as to what we could do.

I want to acknowledge what David Seymour’s just said, because what he really hit on was the opportunity that New Zealand has and how we’re being held back by the Resource Management Act (RMA). I heard the Hon David Parker say, “Just wait. We’re bringing changes to the RMA.” This side of the House, through the Hon Nick Smith and others, have tried to reform the RMA over the past decade, and it hasn’t gone too well, because we couldn’t find support from that side of the House. And now, tonight, when they’re in power, they’re rushing something through that deals with 11 projects—11 projects—of which two of them build 20 houses. It’s revolutionary, this stuff—20 houses, included in the schedule.

You see, the problem is that while we support it, we don’t think it goes far enough in terms of the scale of the projects. And then the Minister says, “It’s OK. We’ll just put an Order in Council through and you can apply for new projects.”, or there’s a process where you can apply for new projects. OK. Now, in theory, that’s OK, but if that’s the case, I would argue, why put any projects in here at all? Just allow a system that says a list will be drawn up. But in this we have the Minister saying these are Government-led projects. And I come back to what David Seymour said, quite rightly, that there are thousands of private sector projects out there that are not even thought about. These are just the Government pet projects.

The National Party and some speakers, including the Hon Scott Simpson, have said that if this Parliament seriously wants a fast-tracking provision—and it’s limited to two years at the moment, but one can make an argument, it could be for longer or the Greens might have to come back to their philosophical differences. But if it was to be longer, then the Parliament should have some right to decide which of those projects are supported, not just the Minister.

So in terms of our side of the House supporting this, we do. But if we’re going to do this properly, there could be some projects in the future which demand the support of all the political parties in this House, or the majority, rather than just the Minister of the Government at the time. And if that was the case, some of this could carry on.

This Government has been in power for two years and nine months. I want to come back to what the Hon Dr Nick Smith said. The special housing areas that he ushered in, in the last Government, were fundamentally important. Why were they fundamentally important? Because they actually worked around the traditional RMA thinking and they focused areas, councils, communities, developers on building houses. And they did. Private sector developers built thousands of houses because of special housing areas. That in itself showed up that the RMA had big problems, and today it’s no different.

The Hon David Parker said he’s coming back to the RMA reforms. It is the view of this side of the House that the RMA is one of the biggest handbrakes on the development of New Zealand, the ability to build anything, and the structures—

💬 Hon David Parker: Why didn’t National fix it in Opposition?

National did try. You know that, Mr Parker. National did try, but it didn’t get the support of the Parliament, and you people—the Opposition at the time—opposed it.

I also want to finish in the last couple of minutes by talking about where this could go if the Parliament properly thought about it. I listened to the Greens and the Hon Eugenie Sage talking about this being a short-term thing and we’re only doing it to create some jobs. We need to be really careful in terms of when we pass legislation like this, for projects like this, that we are creating the maximum number of jobs, and I’m not at all convinced in this schedule that we are. We’re passing legislation to allow a streamlining of the RMA, but ultimately I haven’t seen any measure of the maximum number of jobs they’ve created.

The Green Party on the other side, also under its climate change bill—and we just passed that through its third reading; emissions stuff this afternoon. How do you expect New Zealanders are going to build extra hydro stations, extra wind farms, extra solar farms with the current RMA legislation? As I’ve previously said, and as the Hon Shane Jones will know, I don’t know what’s in those lists, but in those lists that’ve been provided across New Zealand, there will be hundreds of projects that are way more inspirational than are listed on this schedule. If the idea is to be shovel-ready, let’s be shovel-ready, but also let’s be inspirational.

In my last minute, I also understand that in this list, the 2,000-odd projects that were submitted, there were hundreds of projects—hundreds of millions of dollars on the waters and other things—which have largely been bypassed at the moment. Most of those things don’t actually require RMA changes. They just need the cash and the approval to make it happen.

So, in closing, we will support this bill. We think in times of need, you need to make some changes. But I do reflect on what the Hon Dr Nick Smith said. In the previous Canterbury earthquake legislation, he reduced the select committee period from six months to four. In this case, the select committee is two weeks and I don’t think that’s acceptable. I know there’s an election coming. I know the Government wants shovel-ready projects. But, as I conclude, I doubt that any single project will be started by the election. All we’re doing is rushing something through this House and through the Parliament, and I think the chances of making mistakes are high. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā tātou katoa. Before I start this speech, I want to clear the air. I want to acknowledge today that a remark I made within question time has caused considerable disquiet amongst some of my colleagues in the House that in some way I was trivialising or demonising those folk who may from time to time suffer mental hardship. So I apologise. At no point did I ever imagine that I was deliberately attacking the member who sits in Nelson. I largely see him as one of the more—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! I’m just going to make this ruling first, and hopefully I’ve taken care of that. The correct way of addressing such issues, Mr Jones, is to seek leave to make a statement to the House. You do not use your contribution to this. It is bound to create disorder, and by implication of what you have said, I don’t blame the Hon Dr Nick Smith for wanting to take a point of order. I’ll hear his point of order.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I find it grossly offensive that a man would make any such accusations in this Parliament without a skerrick of evidence. It reflects very poorly on the Minister and on the Government.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I agree, and the member should stand, withdraw, and apologise.

I withdraw and apologise. I shall now move on to my speech, but my remarks will be recorded.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, no, no. Once you’ve withdrawn and apologised, that’s it. You do not comment on the ruling or what has happened. You go on to your speech.

Thank you, David Parker, for correcting the long record of failure by Nick Smith. Thank you, David Parker, for bringing forward a piece of legislation that has been attacked by Nick Smith in infamy as he rests under the shadow of failure for nine to 12 years. Thank you, David Parker, for bringing a set of reforms that were thwarted under the last Government by the Māori Party and the belief of Nick Smith that he could treat Māoris like lackeys and they would vote for his version of a resource management reform process that diminished the role, the status, of his coalition fellow travellers.

The reason that the Resource Management Act failed in the time of Nick Smith is because he had a very diminished, impoverished, and prejudiced view about his fellow travellers. He sought to bully them. He sought to monster them.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Not five minutes ago, this member had to apologise for offensive remarks. He has subsequently accused me of treating Māori New Zealanders in a way that I find offensive. He’s gone on to accuse me of being a bully and other comments that I think are not appropriate in the context of the debate.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t need any help. I came in as that was happening. What I would say to the member is we are speaking to the first reading of a particular bill, and I would ask the member to focus on the bill, and not on individual members of Parliament.

This piece of legislation has been brought forward by one of the greatest parliamentarians of my time, in contrast to other Ministers for the Environment, including the member who has taken offence to the most modest—most modest—of critical remarks. The last nine years shows a littered trail of failure, of dashed expectations, and, quite frankly, betrayal to the business and the economic estate. It has taken David Parker to bring forward a mix of a remedy which shows how hopeless and useless the old Minister for the Environment, Mr Nick Smith, used to be—the man who went on RNZ National trying to justify how much cow dung was in the water and that human beings, perhaps very closely related to him, could drink it. That was his contribution.

Now, this bill is actually an overdue development and will fast track a host of infrastructure developments. I am happy that Nick Smith with his colleagues have found it within themselves to vote for this bill. This bill, no doubt, will go through a challenging process before it is finally passed, but what it acknowledges in the post-COVID environment is that this side of the House is able to cobble and sustain a coalition of support, unlike that side of the House. That side of the House promoted suggestions and amendments, but could not command a majority in this House.

The Minister for the Environment of that time, drinking too much water riddled with cow dung, as reflected in most of his comments to this House, could not cobble together a sustainable majority to pass. The only thing he was able to pass were the honohono agreements. The honohono agreements is close to the word—actually, I won’t say it in Māori for fear of being set down, but it means to procreate. The only coalition he could get together was to worsen the brown tape in the Resource Management Act. The honohono agreements hand over powers of gatekeeping to unelected, irresponsible small cabals from the iwi community.

Now, we love Māori participation on our side of the House, but we want it to be responsible to drive the development of our nation. We do not want the separatism agreed to by the former Minister for the Environment as he sought to seduce the sadly but gladly extinct Māori Party. Now, I accept that he thought the best way to make improvements was to sell out the soul of the Resource Management Act to buy six months more of power. That is a tawdry—that is a—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! The Standing Orders are very explicit that you cannot imply in your speech that anyone is under the influence from outside.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. When the former Government was in the unholy alliance with the Māori Party, Mr Dunne, and Ken from Epsom—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is there a point of order here?

The point I’m making is that it cannot be suggested that I am asserting anything untoward when coalition parties—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is arguing with my ruling. That is not a point of order.

💬 David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. As you well know, it’s unparliamentary to refer to a member by anything other than their title or name, as that member just did to me. But I also say, I may represent Epsom, but originally I’m a Northlander, and as the member’s going to find out, we Northlanders don’t like oafish dickheads.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, that is not particularly helpful in all of this, so if I could just continue with—the original point of order that the member took isn’t a point of order; it is a debating point. I just ask the member to focus on the bill that’s before the House and try and keep within the Standing Orders.

I apologise for referring to the political doll of Epsom as Ken. However, let me now come back to the essence of the bill. It enables overdue projects to be consented via (1) the passage of the bill and (2) a process where the Minister may, through Order in Council, refer projects to an august body led by a jurist comprised of people including an iwi representative. So the suggestion that my speech is not touching on the elements that comprise the heart of this bill is unfortunate. However, in going forward, it’s important that the Māori dimensions of this bill be not allowed to spread as they did in the time of the former Minister for the Environment to thwart and overwhelm the actual thrust of simplifying resource management statutory consents to drive economic activity whilst still recognising the importance of the environment. In fact, I look forward, as this bill works its way through the House, to inviting that small group of unelected Māori relations of mine to come and see the various projects in Aotearoa that may or may not find their way through this bill.

This bill is a tremendous response to the COVID—post-COVID, should I say—environment. It has been carefully considered. It has been developed by obviously the best environment Minister since Geoffrey Palmer, although the bar in the last regime is not very high to pass. So our party will support this bill. Our party wants to see both grey and green infrastructure proceed. Our party believes that it is very important that we address the overarching issues pertaining to water, water storage, water resilience in provincial New Zealand. We accept that these are matters of considerable sensitivity to various members of Parliament and elements and stakeholders in our community.

But this is a day of celebration. After nine years of earlier attempts to change the Resource Management Act, this bill delivers a profound set of changes. No broken promises, no exaggerated rhetoric—such a thing would be quite foreign to myself. This is going to deliver, obviously, infrastructure projects, but who knows what projects will find their way to the Minister for the Environment? Who knows what projects will be passed in this expeditious manner? This shows that this Government is cutting red tape. This Government is not bowing down to the privileged over-preening interests that thwarted the last Government. The Minister for the Environment of the former regime will pass as the worst Minister for the Environment that the history of New Zealand has ever seen.

I move, That the COVID19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill be reported to the House by 29 June 2020 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

The reasons for this, I think—or the need for Parliament to use the powers that Parliament has to shorten the select committee period—have been traversed by others in the debate already. The powers of Parliament to order a shorter select committee period are there because, on occasions, it is appropriate to have shorter than the normal six-month period, and I suggest to the House that this is one of those occasions. Although the Opposition are incorrect or out of date in their assertion that unemployment is going to go up by about 160,000 people, relying upon estimates that were prepared at a time before we got COVID-19 under control in the relatively short period of time that we did, relative to other countries, it remains true that unemployment has risen sharply as a consequence of COVID-19. And we’ve seen major parts of the economy shut down, particularly in international tourism, which has resulted in a rise in unemployment, and the number of people on the jobseeker benefit has so far increased by around 45,000 people.

It is an imperative, in the view of the Government, that we bring forward infrastructure projects, most of which, but not all of which, will be funded by central government or central government agencies, and if we can bring forward the start date for those projects, that money will be spent into the economy, and a large part of it is spent on the wages of the people who are employed on those projects.

💬 David Seymour: What else?

“What else?” the member for the ACT Party asks. Well, the other things that money is spent on include subcontractors, engineering services, allied services. The money is also spent into the economy. Of course, there’s a multiplier effect because—

💬 David Seymour: Contractors aren’t wages. Keep trying.

Actually, this shows the ignorance of the ACT Party in basic economics, when they deny those basic propositions. And, for a party that pretends to be economically literate, that somewhat must sadden the predecessors of his who formed the ACT Party.

In terms of precedents for a shorter select committee period, the Kaikōura earthquakes resulted in a need for a cut through of the Resource Management Act processes in respect of the services that needed to be reconnected, namely State Highway 1 and the main trunk railway line, plus associated works, that were so damaged in the Kaikōura earthquake. The Government of the time did that through cut-through legislation, and that legislation was bespoke, as this is. It was similar to this legislation, and it had a very short select committee period. I recall that because I was on that select committee. I can’t recall the exact period, but it was a week or so. If we didn’t put this to a shortened select committee period, this would not come out of the select committee period until Parliament rose for the election. The effect of that would be to cause a delay of some months, because, of course, once Parliament rises, we have an election period of some six weeks. Then there’s the return of the writ before Parliament can then—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: A formality. A formality.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not sure that that is helpful to the speaker.

—sit again. As a consequence, there would be a delay of some months before this legislation could be reconsidered by Parliament. We think that that would be undesirable in the circumstances because it is important that we employ as many people as we can in alternative employment given that they have lost employment through no fault of their own as a consequence of the COVID-19 virus. For those reasons, I support the motion that I’ve already read out, which allows, essentially, two weeks less one day for the select committee to report back to the House on 29 June.

So the Minister has moved that Parliament be given only 13 days—that is that this bill be reported back Monday week. Now, we’re not talking about a simple bill; we’re talking about a bill that spans out to 249 clauses, 79 pages, and when did Parliament get to have a look at this bill? After 1 o’clock today. And the Minister justifies this incredibly concentrated process on the basis of COVID-19. But here’s my question: didn’t COVID-19 arrive three months ago? What’s happened in the last three months? Why is it that inside the Government, the squabble between the Labour Party, the Greens, and New Zealand First was allowed to have three months to work out what their policy position is, but the Parliament is given less than two weeks?

Here’s my problem: across the House I have revenue Minister Stuart Nash. He introduced one of these COVID bills. He told us what was in the bill, except it was wrong—it was completely different. Parliament faced the enormity of passing a bill completely different to what the entire Parliament thought was in it.

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: No it wasn’t.

Yes it was. The Minister says it’s not. What actually happened was a bill that provided for an IRD loan scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the Minister across the House—doing a similar matter of urgency—did not even know or read what was in his bill. This is a far more complicated and bigger bill. Now, members on this side of the House are sympathetic to ensure that it is passed through the House prior to the election. We want to see these projects advanced. We want to see, actually, many more able to enjoy a fast-track process of consenting under the Resource Management Act. But what we find offensive and wrong is that, I’m sorry, 13 days of scrutiny of such a complicated piece of law is a joke. The idea that the public is going to be able to have any realistic input into a bill that only came into the public arena this afternoon, that by Monday week the select committee’s going to have to call submissions, hear submissions, hear officials, and report back to the House in 13 or 12 days is just not credible. I’ll make a bet: there’ll be mistakes in it; it’ll be a hash—

💬 David Seymour: No—no!

It’ll be like the tax law. Well, I have to tell you—I say to Mr Seymour: if there is any area of law that is complicated, it’s the RMA. When you’ve got 70 pages of it—

💬 Hon Member: Too complicated.

Too complicated, and I agree with the member—too complicated. But the idea that we can pass 130 clauses and get all the detail right is asking for trouble, and is going to result in mistakes, and mistakes around major infrastructure projects involving millions of dollars of cost for taxpayers’ money.

So I just ask the next Labour speaker to explain why Parliament’s being given 12 days when the Government’s had 100 days. This issue’s been around for a very long time. The nature of the COVID emergency didn’t just come up yesterday, it didn’t come up last week; it’s been an issue grappling our country since March. It is disrespectful to the parliamentary process to allow such a short period. It is perfectly possible to have this bill passed prior to the general election without the nonsense of select committee process that’s being recommended with this motion.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in opposition to this motion to shorten the select committee process for a bill that is, well, let’s see, some 83 pages, 160 clauses, to be consulted on with the public in a couple of weeks. I want to put an argument that I think members on the Government side of the House might actually have some sympathy with, and it’s this: a shorter consultation period actually favours the rich. It favours the well-resourced. It disadvantages the people who are not rich and don’t have good resources, and let me tell you how that happens. You see, this committee is going to be given a—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: I thought ACT was going to abolish the RMA.

We’re hearing from the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins of Remutaka, that it’s somehow relevant that ACT wants to abolish the Resource Management Act. And he’s correct: ACT would like to replace the Resource Management Act with much better legislation. But that’s not the point I’m making, and if Chris Hipkins from Remutaka would listen a bit more and talk a bit less, he might get an education in spite of himself.

As I was saying, this rushed process disadvantages poorer New Zealanders with less resources, and it advantages the rich, well connected, and well resourced. And how does that happen? Well, there’s only 14 days for the select committee to report back. That means if they’re going to hear from any actual New Zealanders from outside of this Parliament and outside of the civil service and the bureaucracy, then they’re going to have to call for them to make their submissions, let’s say, in the next five or six days, so that the select committee has time to actually hear them, then think about what they’ve said, and report back to this House in 13 days.

So let’s ask ourselves who is going to be best prepared to make a submission within the next five or six days. Well, it’s not going to be “Main Street”, it’s not going to be the average New Zealander, because the people that know about this bill and already have opinions—you only have to search the internet. Google this bill, and what do you find first? Russell McVeagh. Russell McVeagh have opinions on this legislation. They’ve read the Cabinet paper. They presumably are reading the legislation right now, since it was released so late, only a few hours ago, earlier today. Their clients will have an opportunity to have an influence on this bill. And who else is out there with commentary? Well, Bell Gully. In fact, all of the “big four” law firms have already started work on this bill.

So what this rushed process is doing—and I think members in the Government benches should really think about this—by legislating at such a rapid rate is they are creating a system where people who retain the best lawyers and the best lobbyists and the best consultants have a chance of influencing the outcome. The average person, who’s proud to be a New Zealander, who’s grateful we live in a democracy, who is grateful to live in a country where we each get to send our representative to this House, where each of us is asked and has the opportunity to comment on legislation it makes—they’re not going to have a show. They’re not prepared. They haven’t read the Cabinet papers. They haven’t read the legislation. Most people didn’t know this was happening, and why should they, with their busy lives? But the highly paid lawyers and lobbyists retained by the rich did.

This is an extraordinary proposition for a Labour Government to foist on New Zealand. I think they should seriously consider if they want to keep legislating in this way. It’s part of a wider malaise that has occurred throughout this COVID-19 crisis. The sequence that applies to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill, and to this bill, and to other legislation that’s been rushed through under urgency, goes like this: the crisis occurs, and the Government is behind the eight ball when it comes to doing the policy work. They haven’t done the analysis. They don’t know what the answers are. And then, even if some of them figure it out, they can’t agree across their coalition partners. We saw that on the issue of rates regulation for commercial leases. And then, if they’ve finally all managed to agree and stop squabbling amongst themselves, they’ve got to get the legislation drafted, and then they’ve got to do their PR on it. Then they finally bring it to this House, where the people sent by the public of New Zealand—who actually pay the bills—get to scrutinise it, and that’s the last thing on their list. Because they have been so slow in developing the COVID response, and so insipid in the responses that they give, those people who actually want democracy find that their part of the process gets compressed. There’s no opportunity for anybody, other than those highly engaged lawyers and lobbyists retained by the wealthy whom I mentioned earlier, to seriously understand what this bill means and to then consider how such changes might affect their community or their business. We’re, basically, for all intents and purposes, suspending the participative democracy that we’re all so proud of and grateful to have in New Zealand.

Once the legislation actually gets to select committee, once the call is made for select committee considerations, people have only a few days to do all of it. Overwhelmingly, they’re not going to do it. But even if people, with busy lives, who have jobs and maybe kids and all sorts of things going on, managed to get a submission in on this 83 pages of legislation, well, then, they find themselves in a position where they’ve got to struggle to be heard. The poor members on the Environment Committee, if they’re lucky, are going to have a couple of days sitting in urgency hearing one submission after another, trying to compute what people are saying, work out how it is relevant to the bill and what sort of changes they might make to change the bill to improve it, and, of course, they are simply not going to have the time to do it. Why? Because they won’t have had time to get advice from their officials at the Ministry for the Environment—because they’re part of the process, too. They won’t be able to loop those guys in.

So the prospects of positive changes from this bill coming out of the select committee process are almost nil. I’d put it to this Labour-led Government that it would be more honest to have just said, “We aren’t going to do a public consultation.” What they could have said is, “Look, there’s no meaningful opportunity for people to participate, and the opportunities to participate in such a rapid process are inherently inequitable because it’s only those who can afford to retain specialists, lawyers, and lobbyists, who are highly networked, who are actually connected enough to do this at the speed it’s happening.” The Labour Party should say, “We don’t like consultations that aren’t meaningful; we think that erodes trust in the democratic institution of Parliament. And we certainly don’t like processes that are inequitable. The whole foundation and point of our party was to stand up for the working people.”—who are much less likely to have any opportunity to be represented in this process the Labour Party’s created. They should have said all that, and said, “We’re just going to be honest, we don’t really care about public consultation or participatory democracy. We’re just going to rush it straight through under urgency, all three stages, wham, bam, thank you, Madam Speaker.” That would have been more honest from the Government. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I don’t think you should bring the Speaker into that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In fact it’s not 12 days or 13 days, if you count today, by which this bill has to be returned to the House. In fact, it’s eight working days, and the bill is returned on the ninth day. That is unacceptable. That is an unacceptable proposal to bring to this Parliament by a Government that has got very, very fond of this truncated process for legislation, which has far-reaching consequences for New Zealand.

I echo my colleagues who question that a bill which was notified to this side of the Chamber at about 20 past 1 this afternoon only, we question how we can possibly, as parliamentarians, undertake a good process. I see Duncan Webb on the other side of the Chamber—

💬 Hon Member: Doctor.

—the unfortunate chair—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, that’s unkind.

Which bit, the doctor or the unfortunate? It may be both. He is the unfortunate chair of the Environment Committee, who somehow has to—how inconvenient it must be to fit in with those processes of the select committee scrutiny. I’m imagining that Dr Webb will call for submissions on the 17th, tomorrow, that is if the committee is going to call for submissions, because there has been one example of legislation which has been to this House in the last six weeks where there was no submission period.

So we have eight days for the bill to be returned on the ninth. In that time, we must call for submissions. How long do we give the public of New Zealand to have a say on this bill? I raised in my first reading speech the uncertainty, the potential doubling up, and the potential conflict between the responsibilities of the Infrastructure Commission and the truncated process, as proposed in this COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill. In that, the Infrastructure Commission, which was established in 2018, has a very strong role in providing the planning framework for infrastructure projects in New Zealand. Indeed, it has—and I googled it—a number of projects that are in various stages through their consenting, scoping, business case, and all of those processes that large and not so large infrastructure projects must go through. So the question that I want to ask throughout the committee process, I want to ask the officials, is how many of the fortunate, 11 projects or 16 projects, depending on who you talk to, in Schedule 2, how many of those are under active consideration by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission? That’s a valid question.

I might not be the only one to want to know the answer to that question. There could well be a submitter who has concerns, who has an interest in watching what is happening. Will they get an opportunity to not only ask the question—so it’s one thing to appear before the committee. It’s one thing to appear before a Zoom session of the committee, but it is quite another to expect the officials who are receiving their submission, no matter how hurriedly thrown together it will be—and it will be because we’ve seen it before in the previous months. But what kind of a response are these submitters expecting to get from the officials who will be working—as we now know from previous experience in the Environment Committee—long into the evening and, indeed, over the weekend, one supposes, to fulfil the needs of their political masters?

So we’ve got eight days and I’m assuming that Dr Webb will be calling for submissions tomorrow. And I do invite him to stand up and take a call. And I would expect that the chair of the Environment Committee would get up to make a call to clarify just how he proposes to run this eight-day process. Because not only does he have to call for submissions, hear the submissions, then we have to—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: If you yield I’ll do it now. If you yield I’ll do it now.

All in good time, my friend. All in good time. Not quite finished.

Then we have to hear from our officials who have to be given the opportunity to provide robust analysis. Surely that is a critical part of the process, or does this Government not care about that? Are they so secure and arrogant that these niceties of democracy are far beyond them, because that’s the way it’s beginning to look from this side of the Chamber.

So then we have parliamentary counsel, who will be sitting nervously by as we speak just anticipating that they will again be trying to draft legislation within this ridiculous—ridiculous—eight-day time frame so that we can then present the bill to the House.

What kind of a bill are we going to end up with? Will it mean Supplementary Order Papers in later stages? No, it won’t. If I think that through, it won’t, because there will not be time for the officials to have another look at the bill and determine whether or not they have got it right. No, what will happen is that further down the line this Government will have to come back to the House with its tail between its legs with an amendment bill to tidy up and fix it, that’s what’s going to happen, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. This is for a bill from a Minister who has had at least three months to contemplate what post - COVID-19 would look like, and yet at the eleventh hour has produced a bill, brought it to the House, and then provided the most truncated of processes for the select committee.

So please, please, Mr Duncan Webb, let’s hear you take a call and tell us what a wonderful process we are going to get out of this.