Resource Management Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to speak to a couple of clauses in Part 1 of this bill that is, essentially, a tinkering piece of legislation designed primarily just to undo the changes that were made under the careful guidance and stewardship of the Hon Dr Nick Smith in the previous Parliament.

The area that I’m keen to have the Minister explain to the committee and to the public of New Zealand a little bit more about is why he feels the need to make changes to—I think, in clause 6, that amends section 11—the legislation that was passed in the last Parliament, that, effectively, meant that if a subdivision had been consented as being a subdivision, the presumption was that unless specifically restricted by a district plan, then a subdivision could occur. That seemed to make a lot of sense. It was widely proclaimed as being a useful provision that would help speed up the consenting and the Resource Management Act process around subdivision. For some reason the Minister has decided to take that out, and I’m keen to know quite what his motivation was for that.

Then, there’s the area that is similarly related, that, essentially, under the Dr Nick Smith provisions, if residential zoning had been granted under a plan, then there should be no need for further consenting if the objective was to build residential dwellings on that consented residential-zoned land. Again, it seems to me that that was a good, sensible, practical change that was made by the previous Government and is now being reversed. So if the Minister would like to maybe just give his response to those things, we will—I’m sure, Madam Chair, you’re going to take the same sort of process as previously with the committee; we don’t need to use the five minutes, so we’ll have a free-flowing backwards-and-forwards debate?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Yep, that’s correct.

Madam Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): He’s just checking on it. Have you got another question?

Is the Minister going to respond, or do you want to take another—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): He’s just checking on the answer. Do you want to take another question?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Along those same lines, I wanted to talk to the Minister in the chair, the Hon David Parker—actually, it’s not along the same lines; something a bit different. I wanted to talk to the Minister about the enforcement functions of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) because we had a number of submitters to the Environment Committee who were concerned about this. The concerns that were brought to us were around the EPA’s ability to now undertake enforcement actions and investigation. The concerns were around uncertainty and complexity that this would bring. The submitters were concerned that there wasn’t any certainty as to who would be undertaking the investigation and at what point the EPA could come in and take over an investigation.

Now, we understand very well that, in some cases, local authorities don’t have the ability to undertake an investigation, and that’s why the EPA would come in. But the problem that submitters had was there was no certainty as to what the factors were that would mean that they would have certainty that the EPA would be taking the investigation, rather than a local authority, and then that would, in turn, mean that a judicial review of the EPA’s decision to take on the case would be made more difficult. Then there’s, of course, all of the different machinations, I guess, when you’ve got a local authority who’s taking a case and then the EPA can come in halfway through, so you’re increasing the cost and uncertainty. That was some of their concerns.

There were also concerns around if a local authority finished an investigation and found that there wasn’t to be any action to be taken and the EPA can come in and do the job again, creating more costs and uncertainty and more delays. So I was hoping that the Minister could respond to that just to talk about or to allay some of the concerns of people like Trustpower. If I could just read out, in fact, Trustpower made a good comment. They said, “Consent holders and the public will not have any certainty about who the regulator is likely to be when an incident occurs.” and “A lack of certainty will result in unnecessary duplication.” So those are some of the concerns of the submitters and I’m just hoping that the Minister might be able to give us some clarity around that.

Responding first to the first point raised by Mr Simpson, we are reinstating the presumption that is actually reflected in most rules and most plans around the country, and the member is correct that we have reversed the changes late in the term of the last Government. It’s part of a suite of changes that are intended to return to the status quo before the amendment late in 2017, which we thought was wrong in principle. In essence, the effect of those changes was to remove rights of public participation and respective sub-divisional applications.

I sat on the Environment Committee with Mr Simpson, and he and I, I’m sure, both recall that one of the criticisms that was made of that rule by network operators like airports and people who operate quarries was that the effect of those rules was that reverse sensitivity effects of subdivisions adjacent to industrial activities that are, none the less, important to local economies couldn’t be taken into account—or wouldn’t necessarily be properly taken into account—because the owner of the quarry or the operator of the quarry or the airport wouldn’t necessarily have a right of submission in respect of the nearby subdivision application. So, over time, that could result in a quarry necessary for a large city being encircled by residential development that would, in the end, put pressure for the closure of the quarry, even though the quarry had been there first.

In respect of the question in respect of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) having rights of information gathering and the right to mount prosecutions, one of the problems that we have had in the system is that some councils, as the member said, have—partly because of the virtue of size and other factors—been unable to properly investigate breaches of their plans and breaches of the Resource Management Act (RMA). Sometimes they’ve been unable, sometimes they’ve been unwilling, and the Government believes that it’s appropriate that the EPA have that power. It actually hasn’t got a large budget to run away madly doing this all over the country, but on occasions it can help.

In terms of timeliness, the statutory time frame or the statutory period of limitation for prosecutions under the RMA until this passes is six months. Even after this bill passes, it’s still only 12 months—so all of this stuff has to be done within 12 months anyway. The most recent example of where this probably would have been useful was following the big rain event that we had in the Gisborne region which resulted in a lot of debris flooding across farms, destroying some buildings, and clogging up beaches, and it would have been useful for the EPA to have been able to directly help the Gisborne council in that event.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I thank the Minister for the answer, and we don’t disagree that having the expertise of the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) there to undertake those investigations and any enforcement actions is a good thing when the local authority isn’t able to do it. But the problem that the submitters brought up was that the lack of certainty and criteria, or factors, for when they definitely would be the body to investigate. So the submitters are saying, “We don’t know because there’s no criteria in there to show me which—is it going to be the local authority or is it going to be the EPA?” But, further to that, their problem is we could start an investigation under the local authority and then halfway through find that the EPA come in over the top and take over the investigation. That’s a problem, because, you can imagine, they’ve gone through cost and time and lawyers’ fees, and then to pretty much have to start the process all over again with the EPA, you might even find that they get all the way to the end of an investigation with a local authority and then have the EPA go through that all over again. So you can see the lack of certainty, and the cost for these guys, they’re worried about.

So, look, I understand what you’ve said, but you haven’t addressed the points that they bring up and that I’m raising in terms of the lack of certainty and the factors that could be laid out in the bill to actually state exactly when the EPA are going to undertake an investigation and to give more certainty around whether or not the EPA can come in over the top of a local authority and take over halfway through or, indeed, even at the end. I’m just hoping the Minister might be able to respond to those points.

Well, I suppose it would be theoretically possible to more codify the conditions on which that discretion could be exercised, but I would suggest that, one, that’s unnecessary and, two, it would add complexity and length to an already complex and lengthy Act, and I’m quite satisfied that the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) can make decisions, normally in consultation with the local authority, as to where and when they should intervene. I can envisage, in some situations, it will be done at the request of local authorities.

Now, the EPA’s not always going to accede to those requests from local authorities, because this primarily should remain a responsibility of local authorities; they should be attending to their own monitoring and enforcement regimes. But, on some occasions, they might come to central government and say, “Look, this is actually a very important test case. We think central government should be paying attention to it.” In those situations, it may well be that the EPA was willing to take it over.

Could the Minister then foresee a situation where a local authority starts an investigation and the Environmental Protection Authority then takes it over and then hands it back to the local authority?

I’ll just check with officials as to whether that’s possible under the legislation, but, if that is possible, I don’t think it would happen often.

Just while the Minister for the Environment is getting some advice on that, there’s another matter that I wanted to raise. The purpose of this piece of legislation states that the objectives of the bill are to reduce complexity, increase certainty, restore public participation opportunities, and improve Resource Manage Management Act 1991 processes. As the Minister’s just said, this is a long, complicated, and multi-faceted piece of legislation. The Resource Management Act itself, I think, when it was first passed 30-odd years ago, was something around 300 pages; it now runs close to 900 pages. This is the 19th, I think, significant amendment to it in its history. A piece of legislation that is already complicated, largely unintelligible to lay people, costly, time consuming, and expensive—surely, part of the process that should be being applied here is to try and reduce cost, and particularly if that can assist in reducing the cost of building homes.

Now, one of the changes that the Minister’s wanting to make in this amendment is a reversal, again, of a change that was made by the last National-led Government, under the guidance of the then Minister for the Environment the Hon Dr Nick Smith. It relates to the issue of financial contributions and development contributions. The original Resource Management Act provided for financial contributions, and also, separately, under the Local Government Act, there was a provision for development contributions. It was our view, and still is, that that is, effectively, allowing local government to, essentially, double dip, in that they are taking what’s really, simply, two bites at the development financial contribution cherry.

So that was under National’s legislation phased out, and, in short, it meant that the financial contributions were not available to councils. This piece of legislation reinstates those financial contributions and means that then, as well as the development contributions under the Local Government Act, combined you’ll have just extra cost and a layer of cost to building houses, making them more expensive. Surely that’s not the objective of the legislation.

So I’m keen to know what the Minister’s rationale and motivation is for, essentially, allowing local government to have two bites at the development financial contribution cherry.

Responding to the first point about the increasing length of the Resource Management Act (RMA), I agree that’s a valid criticism of the Act, and successive amendments to the RMA have just kept adding to its length. That’s one of the focuses of the review being led by the Hon Tony Randerson QC, which is due to report back in a matter of weeks.

In the meantime, this amendment bill goes some way to removing the different alternative process tracks for consents and plans which have grown like—well, they’ve just grown ever more varied and complex. One of the provisions of this bill is to remove the collaborative planning process. The last Government added many tens if not—I think it might’ve been close to—100 pages of text to the Act by codifying collaborative planning processes which were already permissible by councils on a non-codified basis. The codified process made it more rigid. In fact, the codified planning process has never been used, so one of the provisions of this bill, which removes complexity and decreases the length of the RMA, is to repeal those provisions.

In respect of development contributions and financial contributions, the advice that the Environment Committee got that I sat on with the Hon Scott Simpson was that there was no double-up, and that remains the advice. We received submissions both at that select committee and subsequently from some councils who have set up their long-term provision of infrastructure, and, from memory, I think this was in particular around the Tauranga area where their smart growth corridors have had long-term plans to recover some of the infrastructure that are put in by the council at the cost of ratepayers over the long term by developments through financial contributions. As a consequence, we were satisfied on the basis of the advice that we have that, one, there is absolutely no double dipping, and, two, financial contributions should be retained.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, for the engagement this afternoon. I do like this new format, where we can pose some questions and get good, clear, and succinct responses, and I appreciate you turning to your officials if there is any element of doubt.

A big part of Part 1 is the establishment of a Freshwater Commissioner and a panel, and I’m curious to ask some questions about that, and as I understand how it’s going to work, there’ll be, as we know, regional policy statements aligning with national policy statements—or they might be different. So the Government of the day may have national policy statements; as we do, 2014, for freshwater management. And then the regional council or unitary authority calls for submissions; they write a report. At that point, as I understand it, that goes to the Freshwater Commissioner, and then the commissioner or the panel will make a decision with, I think, limited appeal rights that follow that. I’m curious to know from the Minister this afternoon about the cost of that process. Who is indeed going to incur the cost?

I guess there’s another topical aspect of this that I wouldn’t mind having a discussion with the Minister this afternoon about. We know that there’s a proposed dam up in Northland—Ngāwhā; it’s been publicised recently. There’s another aspect that the Environment Committee are dealing with, submissions through another Resource Management Act fast-track bill on the back of COVID-19 that’s going to create jobs. How would it work, hypothetically, if that particular dam was to apply through the Northland Regional Council? It could well be, for a water consent or a water take. How would the Freshwater Commissioner and the panel be a part of that process?

I’m curious if the Minister, when he gets up next to speak, could talk a little bit about the practicalities of how the commissioner and the panel would work, and I’m also keen to hear from him about likely and indicative costs of this, and where those costs would lie. Would they fall back to the regional council? In which case, would they then get passed on to their whole ratepayer base—in terms of would there be an increase of rates as a result of having this panel set up? Or would, indeed, a specific application go straight to the panel—let’s say a private sector applicant that ends up there? Their application goes through to the commissioner and through to the panel. Would those costs therefore fall back on the individual or the entity that is indeed requesting a water take, or other examples?

Thank you for those questions. The problem that we’re trying to solve here is that for some decades now, we’ve had declining water quality in New Zealand and, although in some parts of the country it’s getting better, I think the latest data reported that twice as many monitored sites had declining water quality, as evidenced by the macroinvertebrate index as were improving. So it’s pretty clear on that probably most basic of indicators that if the little critters that live in the water are dying more often than they are improving, things are still going backwards. That data also has a number of degraded rivers that are in a stable but degraded state and are not improving. And some of that’s pretty serious in New Zealand.

There’s a stream called the Otapiri Stream in Southland that is a tributary of the—it begins with “O”; I’ll come back to what it’s a tributary of. But the Otapiri Stream has a data set that goes back some decades as a consequence of work that’s been done by scientists over the years. There was a report that was done by—I think it was the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and a scientist employed by the Southland Fish & Game Council, a peer-reviewed study that was recently in a journal which showed that in the Otapiri Stream, which goes through mid to low country in Southland, more than 90 percent of the macroinvertebrates are dead. This has been caused, essentially, by sediment and nutrients—I suspect mainly by sediment in those areas.

Now, in order to get these problems under control, successive Governments have been trying to provide more central direction to regional councils through national policy statements (NPS). At one level, you can say it should not have been necessary—that this has always been within the responsibility and control of regional councils—and, you know, some of the responsibility for that getting to the point that it has actually lies with regional councils. It can also be said that these are fiendishly complex issues where the changes in part are driven by the changing economics of new technologies, fertiliser trucks, changing price of dairy in the world, and, therefore, it’s not fair to blame regional councils—that there is a need for more central direction from central government.

The problem with the current system is that it takes so long to change the plans that give effect to those central directions that I think most people agree are necessary. By way of example, the last Government’s changes to the national policy statement, which for the first time introduced a periphyton control, which is actually very important to control the overgrowth of slime in rivers, which is, you know—we don’t want. The planned changes necessary to give effect to that national policy statement, we know, in a substantial number of regional councils were not going to be in place until 2030, 13 years after the NPS was in place. During that intervening period, because of the terms of the NPS, it was also possible for waterways to be allowed to degrade. So we thought—and I think New Zealanders and I think virtually everyone in this Parliament now agrees—that that’s just taking too long. So there are various steps in that chain in order to fix it.

You need to change the national direction. Sometimes the regional policy statement that sits above regional and district plans also needs to be changed. At the moment, until this bill passes, those regional policy statements cannot be sped up through direct referral to the Environment Court. This bill allows those to be sent to the Environment Court. More often than not, those things are sent directly to the Environment Court or to an Environment Protection Authority panel with the agreement of the councils who also think these things are taking too long.

The second thing that this bill does is, as the member the Hon Nathan Guy has said, it introduces a new planning process so that rather than these new water plans going first to a council and then, on appeal, to the Environment Court—and they are contentious, so they just about always go on appeal to the Environment Court—we’re going to have a fused process, which actually is based on a process that the prior National-led Government used to sort out the combined Auckland plan. So we created a body that has some standing members because, you know, the issues as to—virtually every regional council has got some dairy issues, they’ve got some sediment issues from the high country, they’ve got urban issues in respect to the urban streams. So rather than every regional council going about this separately with separate panels, the bill proposes that we have these freshwater panels that will be chaired by an Environment Court judge. There will be some commonality of panel members who will have expertise in these issues. They will also be panel members that are nominated by iwi and by the regional councils. These panels will review the draft plans that are prepared by the regional council. There will be some assistance going backwards and forwards to those councils from the panel and from the Ministry for the Environment. And these plans, I suspect, in the end, will be a little bit more uniform across the country, and they’ll certainly be faster than the current process so that we can get the next NPS, which is due before we rise for the election, actually implemented faster than the 13 year - plus delay that we’re experiencing under the current legislation.

In terms of costs, overall costs in the system, I predict, will be lower because it will be a one-stage process rather than a two-stage process. The majority of those costs will still fall on regional councils to prepare the plans, as was in the old system but there will only be one hearing process rather than two. And there are contributions coming from central government towards those costs as part of the sustainable land-use package that was in last year’s Budget.

Mr Chair, thank you. I just want to acknowledge the Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, for his very comprehensive overview of his thinking, which, I think, when he outlines it the way that he has done, sort of makes some logical sense. We know that this is incredibly technical, it involves lawyers, we know that there’s a big planning process around all of this, and he’s also talked about numerous examples of water quality where it is degrading.

I was waiting for him to talk about water quality in the cities, because that’s a hell of an issue. It’s not a rural issue on its own, but with cities. When I used to get around the traps, I would always have to defend farmers and things, and I’d say, “Well, actually, do you know where the most polluted water body in the country is? It’s not too far from downtown Auckland.” No doubt the Minister will try and dispute that, and I’d be interested to hear what his officials think as well.

But, importantly, one aspect that the Minister didn’t talk about was the costs, but he may well have been going to address that just before he sat down. I think the Minister was framing up that the costs, in his mind, are going to be less because the time frame for the bureaucracy part may indeed be truncated. So I’d be keen—not now but at some stage this afternoon—to hear from the Minister on the indicative costs of this process, and what he alluded to was that that’s likely to fall back on the regional council. But what I’m just keen to know is: can we get a sense that, these costs, are they going to be more than what regional councils may indeed have budgeted for policy statements to meet these bottom lines in terms of processes or not, and does the Minister have a view that these costs, if they are potentially going to be higher, could end up meaning that rates may increase as a result?

In respect of the point the member the Hon Nathan Guy made about urban streams, he’s quite correct. Some of our most polluted streams are in urban areas. Without diminishing the importance of that, the length of stream in those urban areas is probably less than 1 percent of the total waterways—so 1 percent would be urban; 99 percent would be in rural areas. That’s no excuse for urban waterways to be degraded, and the member is quite correct that some of the worst of those are actually in Auckland City, where their infrastructure has not kept up with urban intensification and the overflow of storm water into the sewerage system accordingly has worse outcomes because there’s more sewage in the sewerage system following urban intensification. So when you have a big rain event and it overflows into the sewerage system, there’s more sewage that gets washed into the streams and from the streams actually out on to the beaches.

The good news on that front is that the proposed national policy statement (NPS) applies the same standards to both urban and rural streams, because it was a legitimate complaint of rural people that they felt picked on and that the same standards should apply in urban areas. The time frames for bringing all waterways up to the standards that will be in that NPS is, essentially, within a generation. We haven’t defined that, but you could say roughly 25, 30 years—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Yeah, about 30, probably.

Probably about 30 years. But I think New Zealanders, once we get this on the right trajectory, will accept that. They just don’t like things getting worse in the meantime in either urban areas or rural areas.

Some other good news in Auckland is that Auckland City has brought forward—well, initially, it was over a billion dollars’ worth of expenditure for what’s called the Central Interceptor project, which is a great big tunnel that’s currently under construction, that runs, when it’s completed, from Western Springs all the way out to Māngere. It’s an enormous tunnel. It’s not much smaller than the Waterview Tunnel—well, it is actually smaller than the Waterview Tunnel, but it’s longer. In addition to that million dollars of expenditure, my understanding is that there’s at least $600 million of committed expenditure to have more tunnels that connect to that from different parts that were not going to be within the initial reach of the Central Interceptor project. So at the end of this very large piece of expenditure, the intrusions of sewage into the water system following rain events will be reduced by well over 90 percent. So that particular source of pollution in Auckland waterways will largely be remedied, which is an enormous project, and you’ll be left then with some of the more difficult issues to solve, like copper brake pad residues that are on roads and get washed into streams, which are even more difficult to fix.

In respect of the cost issues of the process, the cost of the freshwater planning process will be charged to the regional council for the panel, but the Government pays for the Chief Freshwater Commissioner because that person’s acting like a judge would in the Environment Court. Overall, the cost should be reduced because there won’t be appeals to the Environment Court. The only appeals remaining will be on matters of law, and both regional councils and submitters overall will face lower costs than would be the case in a two-step process.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just on that point, I just make a comment that the Central Interceptor is a big project for Auckland but certainly won’t solve all of its issues. The North Shore won’t see any of the effects of that. In fact, the cracking infrastructure—which, by the way, doesn’t go into the streams; it goes directly out on to the beach in many cases—that storm water will continue to degrade our beaches. But that’s just a point I’d like to make.

Without sounding like I keep banging on about the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), I would like the Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, to answer my question from earlier. I would just like to make that point again that there could well be a case where someone is investigated by a local authority, gets to the end of the process, the local authority don’t take any action, and then the EPA can come in and start that process all over again. So you can imagine the unfairness, uncertainty, of that. In our democratic society, when we break the law, we know exactly who’s going to be in charge of taking care of us should we go to court, but in this case there is that potential to be investigated twice—or, potentially, even three times, if it goes from the local authority to the EPA and back to the local authority again. I would like the Minister to answer that.

But I wanted to move on to another point. We’ve talked already about subdivision earlier, and I wanted to bring up a second point in relation to that. This bill undoes another one of the changes that the National Party made in 2017, where we took away the appeal right to the Environment Court for activities to subdivide. So that has been reintroduced in this bill. So what we foresee happening is, again, the increase in costs and uncertainty making it more difficult to build and more difficult to build cheaply but also putting off developers. When they think about the potential to subdivide, they may think twice because of that uncertainty and additional cost. I was hoping the Minister could talk to that.

Lastly, I wanted to bring up the Randerson report, which the Minister talked about earlier, which is a huge piece of work that is no doubt going to suggest some wholesale changes to the Resource Management Act which are necessary. We’ve made this point many times, and I’ll make it again: we’d like to know why these little piecemeal changes are being made in this bill when there is a report that I think was already due to be released but has been delayed. I think the Minister mentioned that it was now going to be, hopefully, before the election. Why are we seeing these little piecemeal changes which undo really good work of the National Party in the last Parliament to make housing affordability better and to encourage more houses to be built, when we’re waiting on this big report, which could well, actually, say that, potentially, the changes that were made under the last Government were good ones? Who knows—who knows what the Randerson report’s going to say? But the point is: wouldn’t the Minister have thought that it would be better to wait for that comprehensive report that will suggest, no doubt, wholesale changes and then to put those in place, rather than making very small—what we would describe as tinkering around the edges—piecemeal changes that on the face of it seem just pretty petty politicking, just undoing a whole lot of changes—good changes—that the National Party made in the last Parliament to make building more effective and for us to have the ability to build more houses.

So I would like the Minister to talk to all of those. The first one was the EPA issues; the second one was then about the reintroduction of the Environment Court appeals around subdivisions; and then, finally, the more broader question around why it is that we are doing this, under urgency, when we’re waiting on this comprehensive report that will, no doubt, give us a whole lot of wholesale suggestions for changes that’s due in the next few weeks. It just seems like here we are again with another bill to make more changes to the Resource Management Act, when we could be doing this all in one go once we’ve seen that comprehensive report from Tony Randerson.

Responding to Erica Stanford’s points, it is theoretically possible that an investigation could be started by a council, continued by the Environmental Protection Agency, and they might complete the investigation, give the material back to the council, and the council might choose to be the prosecuting authority—rare but theoretically possible. I don’t see a problem with that possibility. There’s still only one prosecution that could ever eventuate from an egregious breach of rules.

Prosecution’s actually not the most common route that follows breaches of the Resource Management Act. Indeed, councils are understandably reluctant to prosecute in respect of less serious infringements—none the less, infringements of the rule of law should be dealt with proportionately. In addition to that prosecution route through the courts, the infringement route is made more realistic, if you like, relative to the costs and seriousness of prosecutions. So I would point out to the member that side by side to this is an increase to the maximum level of infringement notice that can be issued by councils. Councils are calling for that, in part because an infringement route doesn’t leave the same stain on the record of the person who is held to account; it’s different from a criminal prosecution that is a matter of record, and it’s cheaper for both the council and for the accused, and less stressful, actually, for the accused as well. So that’s an important change in this legislation—increasing the infringement fees that can be charged.

In respect of the issue as to why this bill and why did we do what we’ve done in respect of subdivisions, and the member suggested that some of the changes we’re making were petty. Well, from our perspective we’re not, actually. Some of the changes that were made to make it easier for councils, in a less rule-bound manner, to deal with boundary effects of a building, for example, crossing through a recession plain that’s set out in a plan—we’ve left those things. We think those things were sensible. But in respect of the change that was made to remove rights of public participation in respect of sub-divisional applications and related repeal rights, we just thought that was wrong. I’ve already covered the example in respect of airports and quarries, but more broadly we believe, as a matter of principle, that generally in respect of consent activities, if your public or private interests are going to be substantially affected by a private activity, there should be a right of participation. There’s really no difference between a subdivision application and someone building a new factory that’s going to be noisy or produce pollution.

It may well be—and I’m not predicting what the Randerson report says in respect of this—that there are wholesale changes to both plan making and/or consent decision-making processes, but I wanted to get the law back to the point where we had some, in my opinion, rational approach to all classes of activity, which was a rational point to start.

The final point: why couldn’t we wait? Well, the Randerson report will come out now. It’s a very complex piece of work, as other members have already alluded to. Turning that into law will take a number of years. Whether we’re elected or the Opposition is elected at the next Government—and I hope, for the sake of New Zealand, it’s us—I think whichever Government’s elected, that work will be carried forward, but it will take some years to implement. In the meantime, we’ve had problems with declining water quality, and some of the provisions that are in this bill are necessary to stop that decline early, rather than waiting for that holistic piece of work.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to just pick up a little bit on what the Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, was just saying and also further some questions that my colleague the Hon Nathan Guy was asking about, as well.

But just a quick question: has the Minister seen a draft of the Randerson report? He seems to be reasonably au fait with what it might or might not have, and his comments just a moment or two ago follow on from comments that he made in select committee earlier today that would indicate that maybe a draft has been seen or, indeed, the full report has already been received by him. It was due to be received, I think, at the end of May, and knowing Judge Randerson, as many of us do, I would be surprised if it wasn’t a timely delivery of a report like that.

I’m happy to respond to that. It’s not strictly within the terms of this, but, yes, the end of May was the intended date; of course, COVID interrupted. The chair, as you say, is very efficient and determined to meet his time obligations, so he provided a draft but incomplete report a little while ago because he wanted to show he was very close to that original time frame. There are a couple of parts that were yet to be finished, and I’m expecting to receive them within weeks, and I’m expecting the whole report very promptly thereafter then to be provided to the public, after it’s gone to Cabinet.

Thank you, I appreciate the Minister the Hon David Parker making that clear. So I just want to come back to some of the questions about water, particularly the issue that sometimes is prevalent—and it may be more of a perception than a reality, but it’s certainly very real to many people, particularly in provincial and rural communities—that there is a kind of anti-farmer tone to much of the Government’s legislative programme and that the Resource Management Act changes have a “Let’s deal to farmers rather than deal with farmers” mind-set. Now, I’m happy to accept—and I’m sure the Minister will probably refute that, but that presence, that sense of perception, does exist.

One of the areas that, I guess, helps reinforce that perception are things like the increasing in this bill of fines for stock exclusion infringements. So the bill in Part 1 will see the fine for stock exclusion infringements going up to $2,000. Many farmers would see that that is pretty steep, pretty heavy—and I realise that the $2,000 is a maximum, but they would say, “Well, isn’t the impact of a city dweller dumping rubbish, fly tipping rubbish into an urban waterway in a calculated, deliberate fashion, potentially more harmful than the accidental breaching by cattle of a rural waterway that was not intended, that was not malicious, that was not premeditated?” Yet there doesn’t seem to be a similar balance in terms of the impact on people who degrade deliberately, and in a premeditated way, our urban waterways.

So I’m interested just to get a sense of what the Minister’s view is about the bigger picture of the urban-rural split, if you like, the perception that some people in our rural communities will have, and also how he thinks that this piece of legislation will actually focus on, albeit the physically shorter urban waterways, but the demonstrably dirtier urban waterways.

Well, responding to the first point, the Minister of Agriculture, the Hon Damien O’Connor, is always keen to prevent the perception that there is a rural-urban divide; so am I. In virtually every speech that I give about these issues, I give examples in both urban and rural areas. Some of the people who decry what they assert to be an urban-rural split actually cause it. I do, sadly, have to put on record that, at the time of the launch of the Essential Freshwater proposals for public submission, I, together with the Minister of Agriculture and the Prime Minister, were all in a meeting where agricultural lobby groups said that they would respond maturely and moderately through the submission process to what was to be launched the following Monday. The following Monday, representatives of Federated Farmers said that this was the end of pastoral farming as they knew it. Of course, that caused great alarm within the farming community, in part because those incendiary comments were picked up by rural newspapers and presented to all of the farming groups, who were, understandably, concerned that this was going to be the end of pastoral farming as they knew it.

💬 Andrew Falloon: How would you farm at a dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) level of 1 in mid-Canterbury?

Well, actually, in respect of that question, all of the gravel bottom rivers in Canterbury are already under a DIN of 1, so that’s how you do it.

💬 Andrew Falloon: How about Hinds?

Well, actually, those issues were very properly canvassed as a consequence of the meetings that were held, including the meeting in Washdyke just near Timaru, I think it was, that the Minister of Agriculture, myself, and the member was present at. So those issues had been worked through.

But the responsibility that we all have for waterways in both urban and rural areas is a joint responsibility that we all own as citizens in order to pass on to the next generation the same things that we inherited from our parents. And I don’t mean inherited in a property rights sense, but, you know, I am someone who still swims in rivers. I really love the fact that I can pop down to my local river in summer and pop my head under without the risk of getting crook. And I’ve got to say that although I still swim in a lot of rivers, there’s occasions when I think, “Oh, I’m not sure I should be putting my head under.” That’s rational because in some of the rivers that I used to swim in that are now no longer as clean as they were when I was younger, it probably would be wise for me not to put my head under. I want to get us back to a country, which I think is an ambition that’s shared by rural and urban folk alike, that we can pop down to our local river and put our head under without the risk of getting crook.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I wasn’t planning on taking a call on this bill this afternoon, but I couldn’t help myself, listening to the Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, in relation to this bill, because the process that he outlined in relation to the Essential Freshwater proposal that was put out last year is actually nothing like what the process was, because this was a Minister who put out a proposal for a dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) level of 1—of 1. Now, just to put that into context, in parts of mid-Canterbury, you’ve got farms that are next door to Department of Conservation land, you’ve got farms that are next door to Landcorp land, which have DIN levels of 3.2 coming on to their property. So you’re already dealing with farms that cannot reach that standard.

The Minister actually accepted that—the Minister accepted that—by then saying, well, actually, a DIN level of 1 isn’t possible, so let’s axe that and instead come up with a nitrogen toxicity level increase of 80 percent to 95 percent. The Ministers accept—in fact, Minister O’Connor across the Chamber has accepted that would be, I think, from memory, a DIN level of 2.4. So both Ministers have accepted that a DIN level of 1 is not actually possible. The Minister in the chair has accepted that, even though he isn’t particularly open to suggesting that this afternoon.

But what you have in Canterbury is that farmers across the board are saying that 1 and 2.4 are “equally unachievable”, because they’ve been working towards a standard of 6.9.

💬 Hon Member: Rubbish.

Well, the Minister heard it himself two weeks ago—

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: They’re not equally unachievable.

They are exactly saying that. In Hinds, Minister—

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: They’re not equal.

In Hinds, Minister—how do you think, Minister, a farmer can get to 2.4 in the Hinds catchment? Take a call and tell us, explain to us, how a farmer in the Hinds catchment is going to get to 2.4. Farmers across Canterbury have been working towards a DIN level of 6.9 under the ECan proposal, which they consider to be very ambitious, but they’ve been working towards it in good faith. The Government are now throwing that out, bringing in a DIN level of 2.4.

I do want to come back to the Minister’s other comment in relation to how he has treated everyone fairly, whether they be in urban areas or in rural areas. Well, Minister, in 2017, you were down in Ashburton and you were threatening farmers—you were threatening farmers. Mr Parker turned up to a public meeting in Ashburton, where he said if farmers keep pushing him over what the water tax will be, he will double it. Well, Minister, take a call and tell us when you’ve ever done that to an urban dweller, when you’ve ever told a person in a city—when you’ve ever threatened a person in a city to double their tax if they continue to push them.

None of those matters are in this bill.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 517 and 519 in the name of the Hon David Parker to Part 1 be agreed to.