Natural and Built Environment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Natural and Built Environment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Natural and Built Environment Bill be now read a second time.

This reform is delivering on the Government’s commitment to repeal and replace the Resource Management Act (RMA). Others have said it was necessary; we’ve done it. I want to start by thanking the Environment Committee for its substantial work on the bill, along with the approximately 3,000 people who took the time and effort to make submissions on it. The Government has accepted the improvements the committee has made to the bill.

This is fundamental systemic reform. As such, it is complex and we rely on the input of system users. We’ve heard it and we’ve listened. We didn’t embark on the reform lightly. We’ve done it because the existing system under the Resource Management Act is failing: costs too much, takes too long, and has neither adequately protected the environment nor enabled development. It’s been a fail on the environment and a fail on development.

Consenting costs have ballooned and urban land prices soared. Overly restrictive planning rules have hindered much-needed housing and other development. No one is enforcing intensification, but plans have prevented people doing what they wanted and the country needs. Costs have spiralled in the five years to 2019, council consenting fees increased by between 66 percent and 124 percent, and processing times by up to 50 percent. Consenting for mid-sized infrastructure in New Zealand represents 5.5 percent of total project costs, compared with a range of 0.1 to 5 percent of project cost in European countries. New Zealand is outside of the extreme end of the European range. This legislation fixes that, reducing the waste of time and money.

The new system will deliver significant cost-saving benefits to system users. In effect, it means that people building infrastructure, subdividing land to build a home will, on average, be able to do so more quickly and for less cost. Economic advice commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment indicates that for every dollar spent, the new system will deliver from $2.60 to $4.90 in benefits. Indeed, the $4.90 is the mid-range; it could be more.

System users get the biggest benefits through a 20 to 40 percent reduction in consents. Total efficiency benefits for system users are estimated to be between $210 million and $430 million per annum. The new system will contribute to more affordable housing; it will enable infrastructure, more efficient development, and more efficient land use. On top of that, the environment will be better protected as we move from an effects-based regime to one that focuses on biophysical outcomes. Until now, too much weight has been given to nimbyism based on subjective matters of taste, and not enough attention has been given to biophysical environmental outcomes or environmental limits.

Over the years, the RMA has been subject to repeated criticism and tinkering by successive Governments. Everyone knows that it’s time to act; to get on with it. It seems, however, that some of our political opponents have now fallen back in love with the RMA, and they’re now proposing to ignore the hard work from the councils, from development interests, environmentalists, civil society across the Government—who, over the last five years, have worked to get this reform right. They’d rather sweep it all aside, start again, and condemn the country to more years of inertia all for the sake of a few votes.

Our opponents should know that this reform is needed. They don’t need to take my word for it; they only need to look at the reports by the Productivity Commission, the Environmental Defence Society, the Property Council, Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern), Infrastructure New Zealand, Local Government New Zealand, Waitangi Tribunal, and, of course, the Randerson panel. The RMA has been a fail on housing and a fail on infrastructure and a fail on environmental protection.

Today’s an opportunity to comment on how the bill has been changed at select committee. This new bill, together with the Spatial Planning Bill, will be the cornerstone environmental and development legislation of the country.

The committee clarified the purpose clause—te Oranga o te Taiao, is a defined term which emphasises the importance of protecting the health of our natural environment while enabling appropriate use and development of resources. The Treaty clause in the bill is a “give effect to the principles of the Treaty” clause similar to the Conservation Act. In response to a submission from the Chief Justice, the committee has made it clear the Environment Court itself is not constituted pursuant to that Treaty clause. That Treaty clause is, of course, applied by the courts when they make decisions under the new Act.

The Natural and Built Environment Act shifts the focus of the current resource management system from managing adverse effects to promoting positive outcomes. Clarifying the role and purpose of system outcomes was a focus of submitters. The committee added outcomes for sustainable use of the coastal marine area for public recreation, and for the habitat of trout and salmon.

Not all outcomes can always be achieved across all places. What should be prioritised where and resolving tensions between outcomes is achieved through a hierarchy of instruments, preserving the King Salmon logic helpfully provided by the Supreme Court. Principles set out in the Act help guide decision makers. The Natural and Built Environment Act (NBEA), working in concert with the Spatial Planning Act, will reduce resource consent numbers—there will be more permitted activities.

The bill includes the “polluter pays” principle in Part 1. This ensures appropriate consideration is given to minimising or avoiding environmental damage, and reinforces the concept of environmental responsibility. Reducing reliance on the resource consent process is a key goal, and in Part 5, we’ve taken steps to make consent notification better.

The central record of local iwi and hapū maintained by Te Puni Kōkiri becomes a code at the time it is assessed. This means councils and applicants will now, for the first time, have certainty that they have notified all who should be notified. The current uncertainty, which is a cause of a lot of litigation and delay, is resolved. Of course, the central record can be updated, but it can be relied upon as a code when it was used.

We’ve put measures in place to ensure conditions set by regional councils and territorial authorities don’t duplicate or contradict each other—over 100 plans reduced to 16. This means they’ve got to be made regionally. Enabling local voice is important. Can I thank the local government sector for these submissions on this important point and the steering group who we worked closely with throughout.

It’s crucial that people can have their say. We’re not putting in place 50:50 co-governance. That was a request of Māoridom, and it is an effect of some provisions like the Waikato River Authority or the Hawke’s Bay Regional Planning Committee that the prior ACT-National Government put in place, but we’re not carrying forward that for everyone into the new system; we’re just carrying forward the status quo. There will be two Māori representatives on each regional planning committee, or a greater number if the local councils and people locally wanted it.

Statements of community outcomes and regional council statements of environmental outcomes will have strengthened weight. The regional planning committee must have particular regard to them, and there is a new step being created through Schedule 8 for councils to assess how the regional planning committees have done so, and committees will also be required to state how they’ve done it. All plans, once notified are, of course, heard by an independent hearings panel.

Over 1,000 submissions on urban trees. We’ve added a new function for territorial authorities to protect tree canopy. This does not mean blanket protection. There will be more national direction on that in the planning framework.

On fast-track consenting—established in 2020 as a response to COVID—we’ve, on average, reduced consenting time by 18 months. That process has now expired. It’s reintroduced for infrastructure and regionally significant housing developments. Goes live when the bill passes.

The bill knocks over “first-in, first-served”, which, allied with a bias in favour of renewal, has prevented the rational and economically efficient allocation of water in New Zealand that has had both unjust and economically inefficient results. For this to be meaningful, renewals for consumptive water uses need to be shorter than 35 years. The current average might surprise members—it’s only 12 or 13 years—but the theoretical maximum is 35 years. During the transitions, renewals will be for 10 years, but they’ll be easy to get.

We provided exemptions for renewals for hydroelectric facilities. They don’t consume water, but they can still get 35 renewals. And the bill had been amended at select committee to enable regulations for further exemptions for significant infrastructure projects like, perhaps, new water storage projects. There are many provisions in the Act to improve infrastructure. I’m not going to have time to go through them all.

On implementation, the poor implementation of the RMA almost guaranteed its failure. We’re not going to do that this time. If you try to do the whole country at once, you get poor-quality outcomes, the system gums up, and everything’s delayed. So we’re going to turn the system on region by region. Central government will give extra help to those who go first; high-quality precedents will help those who follow. Existing RMA authorisations like resource consents are preserved and acknowledged in the new system. We avoid the duality of plans that we had under the Town and Country Planning Act and the Resource Management Act.

Let’s stop wasting money as a country on excessive amounts of long-winded, ineffective processes. Let’s better protect the environment, and within those environmental limits, enable development. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Well, here we are, coming to the fag end of this Government’s time in office. Six years in, and we have the “RMA 2.0” that’s been produced. We were told it would make life easier, it would be shorter, it would make it easier to navigate, and this is how big it is. It’s so big it’s had to have two massive, spiral-bound pieces of collateral to pull it together. There are 450 pages in this bad boy—that’s Part 1. Then—let me count this up properly—1,011 pages in total. Look, even if you are slightly generous and you take out the commentary and the minority views issued by the National Party and the ACT Party and, interestingly, the Green Party—so it’s very clear that Labour will be putting this bill through on their own account. So even if you take out the commentary and a bit of the various different aspects of it, you’re still looking—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Oh, and the tracked changes.

What’s that?

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: And the tracked changes.

Oh OK, and the tracked changes. Well, there’s not that many of them. But even if you put through the tracked changes, you’re still looking at a 900-page monster—an absolute “mozza”. So the idea that this is going to make it easier for people to navigate, I think, is wrong-headed.

Now, that’s a slightly trite point, in fairness, to start my speech on, but I think it does illustrate neatly that the idea that this is going to be simpler and make it easier for people to do things is just misguided. It’s just wrong-headed.

Do the National Party support reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA)? Yes, of course we do. We have spent the better part of 15 years trying to reform the RMA. We tried—

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: And got nowhere.

Yeah, exactly—we never got the numbers to get it through. We never got the numbers to get it through, and now you do have the numbers and you’re making things worse than what we have now. That’s the irony of the whole situation. Gifted an absolute majority by the good people of New Zealand post-COVID, the Government could have done something substantive with their time in office and actually sorted out the RMA, and instead what we’ve got is this dog’s breakfast of two bills that will actually make it harder.

So we do support substantive reform of the RMA, but here’s the test—here’s the test: we are not going to sign up to any old thing just for the sake of it. There’s a real sense from some people, mainly in the Labour Party, that because we’ve spent five years and thousands of pages have been produced and Justice Randerson went out and wrote this longwinded report, and all the rest of it, and the Associate Minister for the Environment sat on the panel—because all this time and energy has gone into it, we should just roll over and go, “Oh yeah, well, that’s enough work. Let’s just pass it.”

💬 Chris Penk: Sunk cost.

Well, actually, that’s not the way we make law in this country. As Chris Penk says—in fact, that was going to be my next point; great minds think alike, Mr Penk—it’s sunk cost fallacy. Just because we’ve spent millions of dollars and wasted time and money and energy, and a whole bunch of bureaucrats at the Ministry for the Environment—I shouldn’t say bureaucrats—the officials at the Ministry for the Environment have spent a lot of time and energy on it, we should just kind of roll over and go, “Oh yeah, that’s good enough.” I’m sorry, but we expect better, and after 5½ or nearly six years of this Government, many people are sitting there, saying, “Is that it? Is that what we’ve got to show for six years of work?”, because the bill will not make it easier to do things.

It will not increase certainty, it will not increase investment intention, it will not provide certainty as to what people who want to use the environment and invest in this country need, and I want to go through the exact reason why. Let me start with clause 3 of the new bill—I call it the “RMA 2.0”. This is the “Purpose of this Act”. Now, I didn’t think this was possible, but this is what happened: the Environment Committee has actually made it worse. The starting point in clause 3 of the bill at first reading was bad, but clause 3 is now worse. Clause 3(1): “The purpose of this Act is to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao.” That’s the purpose—that is stated baldly, in black and white. That is the purpose. Now, the reason why this is important—and a member over there is nodding as if this is like a good thing. This is a disaster. The purpose clause is the operative clause that suffuses itself through everything under the RMA. So every regional plan, every spatial plan, every natural and built environment plan, everything—every decision will have this suffused through it.

Now, “te Oranga o te Taiao” is a term unknown to New Zealand law. It’s completely unknown. It’s not been used before in New Zealand law. Now, Parliament makes new laws all the time—that’s fine—but I’ll tell you what’s going to happen with this one. It is that we are going to spend and the country is going to spend the next 10 years or more litigating what that means through the courts, the High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court. We’ve already had a submission from the Chief Justice to the select committee saying that the courts expect—and this is a quote—“extensive litigation” following the passage of this bill, and bills—plural. Now, New Zealand is not a wealthy enough country, frankly, to spend the next 10 to 15 years litigating through the various court bodies exactly what “te Oranga o te Taiao” means.

Then we get to subclause (2) of clause 3: “The purpose must be achieved in a way that—(a) protects the health of the natural environment; and [only] subject to paragraph (a),”—the protection of the health of the natural environment—“enables the use and development of the environment in a way that promotes the well-being of both present and future generations.” So, in other words, use and development of the environment are subject to protecting the health of the natural environment.

Now, the word “protect” is important because the courts have defined the word “protect” in a very deliberate way. There’s a very high threshold, or very strict interpretation, as to what “protect” means. It means that the bar to do things is very high. So I know that some members might think, “Oh well, protect the environment—that’s of course natural.”, but the word “protect” has a particular meaning through Resource Management Act jurisprudence. The importation of that through into the new “RMA 2.0” has a particular meaning that will make it harder for people to do things, and that’s before you even get into the legal uncertainty created by this phrase “te Oranga o te Taiao”.

I challenge anyone to read clause 3 of the bill and look at subclause (3), which is about what “te Oranga o te Taiao” means. It means: “the health of the environment; … the relationship between the health of the … environment and its capacity to sustain life; … the relationship … and the health and well-being of people and communities; … the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment;”—and then this is the kicker—“the relationship between iwi and hapū and te Taiao that is based on whakapapa.” Well, leaving aside the fact that that is a circular definition in and of itself, the idea that anyone could look at clause 3 and go, “Yep, it’s going to be easier to build a wind farm or easier to build a solar farm or easier to build”—God forbid—“a new factory or easier to actually develop housing in this country.”, I’m sorry, but there is no show.

This bill locks in a completely one-sided view of development and it will make it nearly impossible for this country to achieve the economic growth aspirations that we need to actually grow our economy and provide prosperity and all of the things that New Zealand needs. We are not a wealthy enough country to start saying no to the opportunities that we have, and this bill makes it nearly impossible to take advantage of those opportunities.

So clause 3 has been made worse by the select committee, and it locks in a very one-sided view about our economic opportunities. It overly protects the environment at the expense of development. Actually, if you read clause 3 of the bill, that is actually the purpose of the bill, and in our view, that is wrong-headed.

There are so many places to go when it comes to criticising these bills—this bill and the Spatial Planning Bill, as well. We are up for resource management reform, but it has to be reform that will work. It has to be substantive reform that will actually improve the status quo. Our obligation as legislators is to look at things diligently and rigorously, and if it doesn’t do that, then we are duty-bound to oppose it.

I haven’t commented on the poor process, but other members may want to comment on this. The idea that—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: That’s because you weren’t there most of the time.

What are you saying? Oh, it was good process, was it?

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: No, because you weren’t there most of the time.

Oh yeah, well, I’m very busy. Some of us have got jobs to do in addition to resource management reform. I sat through many of the submissions, and the idea that this was a good process is a misguided one. It was dropped on the House before Christmas 2022 and submitters didn’t have enough time. We’ve come back in the new year and it’s being rammed through before the election. National will repeal these bills by Christmas if the Government passes them.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity—a very exciting opportunity, I have to say—to speak on the second reading of the Natural and Built Environment Bill. It has been a long and thorough process. Now, of course, the problem definition is well known. The Resource Management Act (RMA) hasn’t been working for, really, either side of the argument, whether you want to protect the environment or enable development.

We’ve seen that, in particular, with housing; it wasn’t even mentioned in the RMA until changes made by this Government. It’s baked in the status quo. So how is that to change? That is what the Randerson review looked at, and then that came up with the suggestions that went into the Labour Party manifesto. Then the process included an exposure draft in this Parliament that the Environment Committee looked at a couple of years ago now. Then after that, the bills—and they are substantial, and you can’t get away from that, because they’re trying to do a lot. This is always going to be a litigious area, and so these bills, they’ve got to do a lot.

The select committee was very busy, and I note that a lot of submitters, they did spend their summer breaks making submissions, and that was very much appreciated, and the period for submissions was extended out. Then the select committee did meet throughout February and, I think, beyond as well, to hear the different submissions. A lot of the members of the select committee, we’ve gone to different conferences and tried to talk about the bill very carefully, because it was at the select committee at this stage, and really tried to thank submitters during those different meetings for their really thoughtful contributions. I know the select committee engaged very carefully with the range of submitters, and hopefully those submitters can see that it was worth their time, because there are numerous changes in this bill as reported back by the select committee.

I want to start by thanking all of the permanent select committee members who did so much work on this bill—and they’re outlined in the report; obviously, I was part of that up until the start of May—and also to thank the officials, both the officials of this place, the clerks, and also, of course, from the Ministry for the Environment and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. They have been very busy.

So some of those changes that the bill makes overall—and then I’ll comment on the select committee’s changes to those—are to have these clear environmental bottom lines, and this purpose that the previous speaker, Chris Bishop, has just spoken about. He just went to clause 3, the purpose of the Act, which is to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao. That is now defined in subsection (3) of clause 3.

I think another useful change that the select committee has made is the new clause 3A, which sets out the different steps for achieving the purpose of that Act. I’d also note, before going on too far, that the select committee commentary is very useful in explaining the changes, and anybody who is listening to this debate or reading Hansard in the future: go and have a look at the select committee report.

Now, the bill—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: It’s only 200 pages.

—is also—I’m hearing that it’s only 200 pages, but it’s a very good 200 pages. The bill as well tries to move all the GDP in the system at the moment that comes up at the resource consenting stage, and people have to get involved in bespoke processes around that all the time and really move things into the plans—and we’ve heard from the Minister that those are at the regional scale—and also to have more in the national planning framework, so that is the national consistency throughout the country, and, rather than being focused on environmental effects all the time, to really look at positive outcomes and enabling outcomes. These are set out in clause 5, the system outcomes. The select committee heard a lot of submissions on these, and, I think, really did some good work in strengthening the natural hazards outcome, and also a new one that I certainly remember hearing a lot of submissions about was to include “Public recreational use and enjoyment of the natural environment is maintained and enhanced.”

One of the other changes is to make the system simpler for users, and most users do not spend lots of time within the Act itself. They spend time with the plans, and, as the Minister said, there are over 100 plans at the moment. Instead, there’ll be one plan per region, and that will make it simpler for users.

Another change, of course, is that the role of iwi and hapū is enhanced. The bill has a different Treaty clause from the RMA, but also sets out that involvement of iwi and hapū being on the regional planning committees, having enhancement of Whakahono ā Rohe provisions, and also setting up the national Māori entity to really do some audit work of the different components of the resource management system.

Other changes to the bill are that it’s really trying to enable activities that will decrease climate change emissions, and, as I mentioned before, the stronger hazards wording. Part of that national consistency is with the national planning framework. I also note that the select committee made some changes here at clause 58. The national planning framework has to deal with the outcomes and give priority to those where possible. Also it’s got these other things that it can consider at clause 58, and so that now includes urban trees and also enabling the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, which I think are really important.

Then another major change that the select committee made was for the length of renewal consents for hydro schemes, that this has been increased and that there’s now a regulation-making power for the Minister to make further exemptions if there are good environmental reasons for doing that. So it is a large bill. It’s got a lot of administrative processes in it that are much clearer than they are in the RMA, and it will be of great benefit to users of the system. I commend it to the House.

Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. As my colleague Chris Bishop said: well, here we are at the fag end of Government’s time in office and we are going to see this piece of legislation rammed through while the Government is still in a position to use its absolute majority to do so. That of itself is sufficiently poor process, but I want to spend a bit of time talking about the select committee process, which is usual at a second reading debate.

This bill was one of two pieces of legislation introduced just before Christmas last year, and then submissions were opened over the Christmas summer break period. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the country was on holiday and those parts of the country that weren’t on holiday were, like mine in the Coromandel, under water with roads closed—still, the Environment Committee received more than 3,000 submissions on this piece of legislation.

It’s a piece of legislation that is part one of a three-piece set of legislation—three bills that will ultimately, in this Government’s view, replace our existing Resource Management Act (RMA). We’ve had the benefit of seeing the first two bills, but we haven’t seen the third one, the adaptation piece. And so any discussion of the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill, which we’ll debating soon, is actually very difficult if you haven’t got the third piece of the jigsaw puzzle. In fact, it’s a bit like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with your eyes blindfolded. What the select committee faced, as did submitters, was a Herculean task of trying to digest, interpret, and understand the complexities of the proposals that had been put before us.

Now, this legislation is based loosely—and I say “loosely”, because initially it was supposed to be based closely on what has become known as the Randerson report or what my colleague Chris Bishop refers to as the RMA mark II report. Essentially, if we go back in time and think about when the Resource Management Act was passed in 1991, some of those players are the ones who are still trying to exert change on their failed system 30 years on. Randerson was part of that initial process, as was David Parker back in the day. And so I understand that for the Hon David Parker this is a legacy legislation for him and he wants to see it through. But a process that has been so appalling and so rushed at select committee is simply unacceptable on what should be and what is, to all intents and purposes, the country’s primary environmental statute and also the country’s primary planning statute. To rush it through in the way that it was done, I think, is simply unacceptable.

Sitting on the desk here in front of me is 1,642 pages of departmental report—1,642 pages of departmental report—complicated, convoluted, and confusing for select committee members, let alone submitters, let alone the public officials that were having to work their way through it, but absolutely confusing for laypeople who will have to engage with this legislation should it ever come to pass.

I want to acknowledge the work of my colleagues on the select committee, and I particularly want to acknowledge the role of the select committee chair, Eugenie Sage, who did, in my view, an exceptionally good job. Now, I don’t always agree with her political views or those of her party, but I have to say that she did a thoroughly professional job as select committee chair, a very daunting prospect, and she was across the mammoth detail of this legislation, and so I take my hat off to her. But for the rest of us who were trying to grapple with this legislation, it was a veritable minefield. And I challenge anybody in this House to have given it the due attention that it deserved because it is important legislation—and I don’t think it has been given appropriate attention in such a short time. The select committee had to seek and receive two extensions in report-back time. So now we find ourselves going into the last few weeks of this Parliament, and this legislation is going to be rushed through.

I don’t think it’s going to serve New Zealand or our people or our environment or our built environment at all well. It’s just not going to do what it says it should do. We in the National Party have agreed with, I think, every party in the Parliament for some time that resource management legislation does need updating, it does need reforming, but I didn’t ever in my wildest dreams think that the alternative that would be presented by this Government could be worse than what we already have now—worse than what we already have now! It’s more complicated, more costly, and more confusing. It provides no certainty for environmentalists or, indeed, certainty for people who want to get things done.

At the first reading, I remember saying that the National Party’s simple test for this legislation would be: will it make it easier to get things done? And the answer, after the long, protracted but condensed select committee process is absolutely not. It’s not going to make it easier to get things done. It’s going to be a blight upon our statute book and a blight upon the country, because it’s not going to achieve what I think the Minister and his officials intended, in terms of protecting the environment, and it’s certainly not going to deliver in terms of our built environment.

There are a number of new terms, words, phrases, definitions that are included in this proposed legislation. Now, we had none other than the Chief Justice come to the select committee and make a submission saying—and it’s unusual for the Chief Justice to actually come and have a select committee submission. But the Chief Justice did come and she warned the committee that there were potentially decades—decades—of costly, time-consuming litigation ahead for people who were wanting to try and engage with this piece of legislation. This is a piece of legislation that, if it ever sees the light of day in fulfilment, is going to be years and years in the legal interpretation. It’s going to be years and years in the application in terms of local government. It’s going to be years and years in terms of the application in planning. And it’s going to be years and years before any of the perceived, real, or imagined benefits to our natural environment can hope to be achieved.

So here we are with a process that was condensed in time frame, that was the subject of submissions that had to be rushed through a summer holiday break—and those submissions, nearly every single one of the 3,000 or more that we received had criticism of the legislation. It was universally being criticised from all sides of the argument and the debate. There were environmentalists who criticised it for not doing nearly enough for the natural environment. They wanted it to go a lot further. Iwi groups, hapū groups came to select committee and said “We can’t agree on the terminology that is being used. We can’t see how the decision making will be made. We don’t know who’s going to make the appointments, how they’re going to be made, who’s going to do it, how are they going to be accountable.” We had local government people coming in saying that they were confused and could not see a way forward. We saw developers and builders and people who wanted to get on with creating the kind of environment for a thriving economy say that it would add cost and time delays that would be even worse than we currently have under the existing RMA.

So we got to a point in the National Party where we decided, after careful deliberation, having heard the submissions, having participated in what we always said would be a constructive way at the select committee—we came to the view that this is going to be worse than we currently have now. And that’s actually saying something, because we know what we have now is pretty awful. We know that what we have now isn’t doing the job that we want it to do.

And so if my colleagues and I in the National Party have the opportunity and the privilege of forming a Government at the end of October or in October, this legislation, even if it is forced through by the current Government, will be repealed before this coming Christmas and it will be replaced. We cannot and will not support legislation that makes it harder to get things done, that is more costly, more confusing, and more underperforming for our natural and built environment than this legislation. We do not support it and will not support it.

I too would like to acknowledge the fine work of the Hon Eugenie Sage, who chaired the Environment Committee as it scrutinised and debated and went through, clause by clause, the Natural and Built Environment Bill. I think the Hon Eugenie Sage did really professional, high-quality work leading the committee on this massive, massive reform exercise.

I also want to acknowledge the Hon Rachel Brooking, who was the senior Labour member on the committee for most of the time that it was doing this work, and, also, for her expertise and dedication to the task.

The old Resource Management Act (RMA) spawned an entire industry of lawyers and consultants and people who fed off that legislation. At the same time, the legislation, the old RMA spawned a huge industry of rhetoric from the National Party over those years, which liked to blame the RMA for every possible social and economic ill.

But it was—finally—the Hon David Parker, who, in this term of Government, has led this massive and hugely important reform process—something that National could never find it in themselves to do for the nine years that they were in office where they blamed the RMA every day of the week. They never ever were able to deliver the reform themselves. Now, as they desperately try to etch out any kind of political advantage in the lead up to the election, they can’t find it in themselves to support this high-quality piece of reform and legislative work that’s been done, led by David Parker. It’s a shame to see them throwing away what’s in the long-term interests of this country, the very people they purport to represent—even the developers who will find it easier to do their business under this law, National and ACT cannot find it in themselves to acknowledge what a fine piece of work this is.

This bill will shift the onus away from the consenting process towards democratic plan-making—a much more deliberative process so that as communities and as a country, we choose the development outcomes we want, we choose how to protect the environment. At the moment, vast amounts of our natural wealth get ploughed into individual consenting decisions. It’s a mad, mad system, and this law is going to change it. The economic modelling shows that there will be a 20 to 40 percent reduction in consents, efficiency benefits for system users between $210 million and $430 million.

This legislation will strengthen the protection of the environment. It will allow us to do more, to build more. It is a good thing. I commend this bill to the House.

ACT opposes this bill. We believe the Government is putting in place a regulatory regime that will empower the forces that currently frustrate development and restrict progress. Given a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the laws that cover environmental management and land use planning, this Government has squandered that opportunity. This bill—this enormous bill—is sweeping in its scope. It covers everything from geo heritage—I’m a big fan of that, by the way; I studied geology at uni—supply of land, greenhouse gas emissions that are already covered by the emissions trading scheme, coastal areas, and cultural heritage. In short, just about every aspect that affects people’s lives is covered by a rule or provision in this bill.

At its highest level, this bill proposes to uphold “te Oranga o te Taiao”. Well, it gives that term some vague definitions, but it fails to create any kind of hierarchy for decision makers, while throwing in vague and puzzling terms like “te Oranga o te Taiao”. How courts will interpret such statements is unknown. This piece of legislation is a recipe for a decade or more of judicial mayhem, Minister. The bill will centralise planning and direction-setting powers under the Minister through a national planning framework with few, if any, checks and balances. This bill is creating an apparatus of sweeping State power. It fails to balance the legitimate concerns that people have about the natural environment with the rights of individuals to use their property as they see fit. This bill has a list of different targets, limits, outcomes, and principles that the national planning framework will have to make sense of. It’s likely that courts will just end up in a logjam as a result of this bad law.

Now, the unworkable environmental limits that this reform introduces, and the rules that will result, will lead to more prohibitions and endless bureaucratic consenting processes rather than more freedom for the range of urban and rural activities essential to New Zealanders’ economic and social wellbeing—social wellbeing. Federated Farmers told the committee that the Natural and Built Environment Bill would strip away local decision-making in favour of centralisation and that a bill filled with amorphous terms and principles would make it impossible for the courts to define what this legislation really means. Projects will be held up for years in hearings, appeals, consultants’ reports, and, of course, iwi consultations. As a result, the Government is squandering an opportunity to create meaningful change that could improve the lives of New Zealanders and restore the ideal of a property-owning democracy and respect for self-determination and property rights.

ACT engaged with the select committee in the hope—the forlorn hope, it turns out—that this bill could be beaten into shape and that the feedback from submitters would result in a workable piece of legislation. But the regional planning aspects and the devolving of planning to unelected, undemocratic entities, with of course the inevitable co-government aspect—the iwi appointees, unelected like the others—to make decisions about where and how you can apply for consents and where you’ll never be allowed to risks sterilising resources, sterilising development opportunities, sterilising the most efficient use of land, which should always be up to the landowner, not an unelected, undemocratic, co-governed planning bureau, which is what this bill puts in place.

The proposed reforms will deliver less certainty, less accountability—even less than the Resource Management Act (RMA) does today—and that’s at a time when more localised, more adaptive, and agile means are needed so that we can build our cities up, as well as out, and accommodate, for example, where I live in Auckland, a projected half a million to a million new people between now and 2050. Unless we liberalise land use planning rules, we won’t be able to fit them in, they won’t be able to find affordable homes, and we certainly won’t be able to deliver the infrastructure that we need to so that people can get around cities at a decent clip. Instead of progressing this approach, this over 1,000-page approach, ACT has a far simpler solution. Minister, this is ACT’s solution for building New Zealand and conserving nature. We’ve developed this not over five years but over 18 months of consultation and engagement with the same people who came to the Environment Committee and submitted on the Minister’s bill. But, instead of pretending to listen, instead of ignoring their urging to develop far more streamlined legislation, ACT has listened.

We propose, instead of continuing with this integrated approach of land use planning and environmental management, we separate them into environmental management, under a separate Environmental Protection Act, from urban development, under an Urban Development Act. Separating them is critical to recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach will never work. Clearly, it will never work; it’s far too complicated. A shift in principle on resource management to a property rights basis, where people can do anything that doesn’t harm others’ enjoyment of property, is fundamental to ACT’s policy for resource management and land use. ACT would dramatically reduce the number of people who have an interest in someone else’s use of their property and who could object, such as all of those who turn up at hearings now claiming they have a cultural interest or proprietary interest in somebody’s land or their business and how they choose to operate it.

A new Environmental Protection Authority would allow people to do what they like on their land unless specifically prohibited under the Act. Discharges to common property, like water bodies, would be forbidden unless specifically allowed under the Act, and such discharges would be managed under one of two regimes: freshwater or other discharges—noting the special importance of freshwater. And the freshwater regime would involve local councils deciding on acceptable environmental limits, in consultation with their community, not handed down from the Ministry for the Environment or central government officials. This decision making would be based on clearly demarcated, scientifically measurable parameters. We would eliminate the metaphysical—those concepts under the current RMA—which will be enshrined in this new document: like Te Mana o te Wai, concepts of Māori and spiritual matters, which should have absolutely no bearing on decision making about how people use their land and private property. Urban development would be managed, under ACT, under a separate Urban Development Act which sets out processes for streets and neighbourhoods to upvote their density in an organic way, so that neighbourhoods—citizens—can decide if they want to build up and, if so, come to an agreement with their neighbours and not have to ask councils for permission.

If we want to get cheaper goods to market and more houses built in an affordable way for the next generation, we need to reduce Government interference in our lives and in the way we use our land. We need to allow Kiwis to maintain their property rights—their tino rangatiratanga over their land. That’s the only way we will realise our collective economic potential as a nation. All parties agree resource management reform is necessary, but this bill, Minister, is not it. It’s not the reform we need. We do not believe, in the ACT Party, that it improves the status quo. We do not support the further progress of this bill. We set out our alternative here: ACT’s solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Pleased to take a call on the Natural and Built Environment Bill. It’s certainly been a busy seven months since the bill had its first reading last November, and the Green Party will be supporting the bill. The fact that we put in a differing view was to highlight aspects of the bill that we think can be improved. I am puzzled by the contributions of both National and ACT in terms of the 5½ years of consideration of reform, the detailed thinking that has gone in, the consultation—what is National going to do if not proceed with this bill? We haven’t heard from any of the National speakers, any of the detail of what they would replace the Resource Management Act (RMA) with.

I’m certainly not an acolyte of saying that there will be a brave new world for people and planet as a result of this bill and its companion, the Spatial Planning Bill, but it has been a substantial effort in developing the bill and taking it through select committee—and thank you for the kind comments of members. It’s been a huge amount of work by Ministry for the Environment officials, select committee staff, MPs, submitters, and the parliamentary counsel. But seven months, including the Christmas break, has been a very compressed time frame for the select committee submitters and officials to deal with a bill this important. Because the committee received submissions from nearly 3,000 interested groups and individuals, we heard from 365 submitters over 28 meetings, and we did release all of our background papers just before Christmas in an effort to enable the public to better understand the policy thinking and the context for the bill. I’m not sure whether those hundreds of pages of additional information helped or hindered the submission process, but I do believe that as a result of the select committee work, which was based on very careful analysis of those submissions and the many suggestions for improvements by professional bodies like the New Zealand Planning Institute, businesses, individuals, environmental organisations, councils, iwi, and hāpu, the bill has been substantially improved. I really acknowledge and thank submitters for the huge amount of mahi that people put in, the many who had a foreshortened Christmas summer holiday break in order to provide those submissions and appear before the select committee.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer has described our legislative process as, “the fastest law in the West.” While the gestation process for this bill has been long, the legislative process has felt somewhat compressed, and I think it would have benefited from more time to consider the departmental recommendations, to look at some alternatives, to commission additional independent advice, and to refine the drafting. I really acknowledge the work of parliamentary counsel in restructuring the bill, doing a lot of drafting in response to the committee and the department’s recommendations to try and make the provisions clearer, and to include some signposts in terms of the way the different provisions fit together and should work.

So the bill is intended to enable development within environmental limits, to shorten the consenting process, to reduce the huge energy and substantial waste of time and resources by councils around the country reinventing the wheel with each of their plans, taking 100 plans down to 16. It’s intended to streamline the decision-making process and lead to more affordable housing, and more effective development of new infrastructure. It has interested me that apart from a few press releases and a bit of legal commentary, there’s largely been radio silence in the three weeks since the select committee reported the bill back. There’s certainly none of the controversy that has attended the three waters reforms. So I would take from it that a lot of the infrastructure providers, electricity generators, environmental organisations, and others, may be not satisfied but are comfortable with the bill as amended.

That’s why I think National, in its opposition to the bill without a clear or coherent plan as to how they would replace it, is simply political grandstanding. It’s tub-thumping in the absence of major calls for change to the bill as reported back. It’s a lot of bluster making sweeping criticism, but I think it’s the example that Todd McClay gave of issuing a press statement the day after the select committee reported back claiming that National would repeal the bill to remove the attack on trout fishing—totally failed to recognise that the select committee had fixed that and that the bill now includes recognition and protection of the habitat of trout and salmon, in order to provide a substantial hook for the valuable advocacy that Fish & Game does, and to carry on the protection that the RMA has provided.

Mr Bishop’s claims that the bill is now weighted heavily in favour of environmental protection, fails to recognise that we need a healthy environment in order to sustain our economy and society. It also ignores the many provisions in the bill which the Green Party sees as undermining—cutting across the purpose of te Oranga o te Taiao, the fact that there are generous exceptions for infrastructure from the provisions around places of national importance, the fact that we still have a fast-track consenting process that comes into effect when the bill comes into effect, the Ministerial powers, which allow the Minister to pass further regulations, making further exemptions for nationally and regionally significant infrastructure and water storage. So there are a number of ways in which that purpose clause and environmental protection is, we would believe in the Greens, weakened. Also, I just note Rod Oram’s comment that in Aotearoa New Zealand, “We are perpetuating one of the fastest, deepest degradations of natural capital of any nation.” Our regular state of the environment reports give us evidence of that.

So the concept of environmental limits and targets in the bill of significant areas, places of national importance, and highly vulnerable biodiversity areas are important because they provide the constraints around development to ensure that nature thrives. Those environmental limits are intended to identify a safe space for human activity and avoid ecological tipping points that lead to irreversible environmental harm and damage. The targets are intended to drive improvements in environmental health. One of the major changes that the select committee made was to ensure that we didn’t lock in degradation in terms of current state and that the targets were used to drive improvement. But the first National Planning Framework, which will provide that national direction which has been so lacking under the RMA until recently, will come into play eight months after the bill is enacted. But it won’t necessarily include new environmental targets, it will carry across the ones that are in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. But we think there needs to be provision in the bill that sets a timeline around when targets will be included in the framework.

There’s been a lot of work done around the 18 outcomes which are at the heart of the bill and mark that shift away from managing the adverse effects of activities on the environment. They are intended to drive a much more strategic focus to enhance both the quality of the natural environment and the built environment, and to support the wellbeing of current and future generations. As the Minister noted, the RMA has failed to do that by its focus on effects management.

It is these outcomes that will drive the National Planning Framework, drive the natural and built environment plans, and provide that strategic direction and guidance. We haven’t, in select committee, provided any prioritisation across the outcomes as some submitters recommended. Working of the outcomes across each other and providing coherence will come through the national planning framework. I’m really pleased that there are new outcomes such as a recognition that public recreational use and enjoyment of the natural environment is maintained and enhanced—very pleased that we’ve done away with the problematic provisions on urban trees, but we want to see a real commitment that the national planning framework will deliver on that. We still have a number of concerns with the bill, particularly in relation to outstanding natural landscapes and features, and the lack of recognition that landscapes and natural features can be important at the regional and local scale. But the Green Party will be supporting this bill because it is a genuine attempt to improve our environmental legislation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an actual delight to be standing and speaking on this bill—not because I spent the last seven months of my life in very long select committee days listening to fascinating submissions but also because I do believe that this bill will make a significant change.

We all know that the Resource Management Act hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked for us doing infrastructure and building, and it hasn’t worked for our environment. Imagine a young person, such as myself, discovering—very, very long time ago—that, actually, how much pollution we put into the ocean or into waterways was a permitted activity. I couldn’t understand it, and I haven’t been able to understand how we’ve been able to treat the environment like a salami, cutting off pieces here and there. This bill will actually create something that goes across the entire environment. We are no longer looking at parts of the environment individually; we are no longer looking at an individual property right. We are looking at what is appropriate for the environment.

I have to just acknowledge, as others have, the Hon Eugenie Sage, and also my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking. Their extraordinary contribution to this bill, alongside our Minister, have been utterly—utterly—professional, and I want to acknowledge that. I want also to say to all of those submitters—we had 2,945 submitters and 365 submitters that spoke to us in Wellington, Christchurch, Tauranga, and Auckland. And I also want to acknowledge Barbara Kuriger for her attendance and her very thoughtful suggestions into the process. I have enjoyed, very much, working with you. This bill changes things tremendously, and I commend it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call. I call on Barbara Kuriger for five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, when I became the conservation spokesperson, in January, I didn’t think I’d spend the next seven months of my life actually working through lots of pages of documents, and, in the beginning, had very limited understanding of, and, even now not proclaiming to be an expert on it. But I do want to say, as others have suggested, that the select committee process was a very open one and was very ably chaired. I found that the people on the committee were all willing to get in and work together.

I think the things that I found mostly confusing, I guess—and if I talk about the select committee—for the submitters was that we have this bill and we have the Spatial Planning Bill, and then we have the climate adaptation bill, which somehow has to fit in, and we don’t know the details of that particular piece of legislation yet. Meanwhile, the local government reforms are going on and we’ve got water entities bills. So we’ve got a lot of things that actually fit together in the regional, local government space. I suppose that was one of the things that submitters were a little bit confused on. Minister, if, at some point, we could align those things, it would actually help the public get a much better understanding of how it fits together.

Now, certainly, in that time in the committee, there were a number of “what ifs”, and the purpose has been discussed today—the purpose of the legislation: “te Oranga o te Taiao”. We had lots of discussion about that. Of course, the health and wellbeing of our environment does lead to the health and wellbeing of our people, and that actually came into many discussions throughout the committee. I guess, the question around that still is—and we hear a lot of comments and commentary around legal interpretation and legal challenge around that—and it would be really good to get some assurances from the Minister, as we work through this and go through the committee stages, that some of that is watertight and is able to withstand the challenges in a law court so that we don’t end up with some of the, I guess, long, long processes that we currently sit with. That has been a concern of a number of submitters.

The second really major one on top of that was around local voice. Whether it be the local council, the local community—as was mentioned before, there were hunting and fishing groups and various others, there were also whānau and hapū that came in and talked about the things that happen in their local community being particularly important to them. So it’s really important for our communities to know how this fits together with this Natural and Built Environment Bill with the Spatial Planning Bill in terms of as the regional focus takes a whole, how that local voice is going to get through in their area at place—we heard “at place” a lot of the time.

The third thing—and I’ve had feedback over this from a number of people since we came out of select committee, and even again today had discussions on it—is the 10-year consenting. I know, Minister, I’ve heard you talking about processes taking 12½ years on average. But there are a lot of people concerned that, with that 10-year consenting, the banks won’t lend money to the process and that it’s too short a term to keep our infrastructure and our building, and all of those things, going on what we need as a country. So perhaps some discussion on that at the committee of the whole House stage would be really, really useful, because I know there are some organisations that are quite concerned about that—some of them are the small electricity providers, and I know we all want to get to renewable electricity as fast as we possibly can and every little bit counts. So I think that 10-year consenting—because, at the end of the day, whatever we consent in this world, if you can’t graze it, grow it, dig it, or extract it, it really doesn’t exist. So we need to put some quite big thought into how we do that to create our resilience as a country in the future.

So I would just like to say, in closing, in this contribution that, yeah, it’s been a steep learning curve for me. I’ve still got some questions that need to be answered, and I intend to ask those through the committee of the whole House stage. But those are my thoughts on how the select committee went. Thanks to everyone involved. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I acknowledge the Minister on this for bringing this to the House; the chair of the committee, ably chaired by the Hon Eugenie Sage; the members of the committee, I think we’ve shared a lot of time over the last seven months, both in sitting weeks and on recess weeks on Zoom as well; but mostly to the many submitters that came before us, the many submitters who emailed us—both solicited and unsolicited—because they wanted to see really good resource management laws made here in New Zealand.

Can I say that we are in an interesting time in New Zealand’s history between central government and local government; they’ve pretty much set the rules when it comes to resource management in New Zealand. And we’re at a time now where many iwi have settled with the Government—not all, but many have. Part of that means that they have special relationships, special recognition of their waterways, their rivers, their lakes—where I come from—and land. For that, they have an absolute expectation that they get a say in what any kind of resource management law looks like. That’s why I’m proud to stand here today and back this piece of legislation. Is it a silver bullet? No, it’s not. Is it going to be perfect? No, it’s not going to be perfect, either. But it’s a heck of a lot better than what we’re having to fuddle through since 1991 and the many iterations since the start of the Resource Management Act back then.

This has been the bread and butter of the committee’s work, but I have especially paid attention to the submitters that have come in, Māori submitters from iwi, hapū, Māori land trusts, and organisations saying that they expect that they can have a say in what the future looks like for their area, whether it be the impact on their waterways, on their biodiversity, on building new housing or infrastructure. This has been really, really important, because it’s a new day, it’s a new dawn. These iwi that have settled have new expectations, and I believe that this bill absolutely does this, making sure that we recognise and uphold te Oranga o te Taiao is huge.

It is new to our House, and, obviously, we will need to grapple with what that looks like. But just as we’ve come off our Matariki celebrations, we’ve managed to come off that too. That’s something that we’ve embraced as a nation, and we’ll embrace this too. Making sure that we’re giving effect to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi; providing greater recognition of Te Ao Māori; having a greater recognition of mātauranga Māori is also really important in this too, making sure that we’ve got Māori around the decision-making tables, the regional planning committees, a minimum of two alongside the councils.

In Māori, we say, “Rae ki te rae”, which is “meeting forehead-to-forehead” or “chief-to-chief”. That kind of representation around those decision-making tables is incredibly important, and it’s for that reason that I believe that Māori around the country will be supporting this bill. I hope that they do; obviously, we’ve still got the committee stage to go and the third reading, but to this point, it’s a heck of a lot better than we’ve had to date, and, for that reason, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise for the Natural and Built Environment Bill second reading, and again, I want to comment on many of my colleagues who have already said to thank the Minister, the Environment Committee chair, and the members that sit there. I’ve had the pleasure to sub in at times, and when I’ve come in, the committee is going into detailed discussions that sometimes go over my head! But it’s always good to hear and learn about this space, because I know—and I can speak of my electorate of Takanini: we have many areas that are getting developed and many of the property developers comment on making sure that things of the old system, this current 30-year-old RMA, gets reformed and improved on.

My population is increasing 5 percent annually in Takanini: we’ve got to make sure that we’re providing good housing, but also making sure that the environment is well protected, and this legislation does so. We talk about poorly written district plans that happen across the country; we have delays in consenting as well, high consenting costs, and I believe that—in the discussions I’ve come in during the select committee stages, and then now—that this legislation will do the job. So I commend it to the House. Fa‘afetai.

Ngā mihi o te wā o Puanga me Matariki e hau nei ki runga i a tātou.

[Greetings of the times, of Puanga, and Matariki as they set upon us.]

It gives me great pleasure to speak to this Natural and Built Environment Bill on the second reading. I want to acknowledge, also, the mercurial Hon David Parker and the erudite Hon Eugenie Sage for leading this extraordinary effort to compose and bring this not insignificant companion bill to the House. It’s been very entertaining, actually, listening to the link between Puanga and Matariki, and the nationwide embracing of that, to say that the nation will now embrace this bill, which has a far more significant impact on our communities than a public holiday.

National supports reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA), but respectfully opposes this bill. I would commence with some minor insights from my short but entertaining legal training and practice which I undertook over various years and various institutions and law firms. I say this because what I don’t want to see, if this bill passes, is an abyss of six-minute units around how to present and argue and lobby for various parts of this bill and to get decisions made.

But where do I start? Back to basics. Our Westminster system is based on a number of foundational principles: separation of powers, judicial independence, parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch as the head of State, protocols like privilege and collective responsibility at Cabinet, and a distinct electoral system—which I hope one day may change to enable elections to take part in the warmer months of the year.

The rule of law is a fundamental pillar of our legal system, and it stands as a pou tokomanawa—or centre pillar—supporting the rich pou of this fine House. That rule of law is something that we have to consider and measure ourselves every day against, particularly with the passing of quite complex and, in our view, uncertain legislation. This rule of law implores legal certainty. It does so in the common law jurisdictions; it does so in the civil law jurisdictions. It states that laws and decisions must be definite and clear. Once we start shaking that pillar, we threaten the stability of this House, its constitutional foundations, and the social arrangements of our great country, New Zealand.

In my humble opinion, practice, and training as a lawyer, this bill, if proposed, passed as law will shake the pillar of legal certainty required for such an important piece of legislation. It will threaten the very stability of this House and the constitutional and social arrangements that we have in this country. It drives our legislation into an abyss of six-minute units. I’ll say why; I’ll give you some reasons why.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Potaka, just reminding you that this is a second reading, and one of the purposes of second reading is referring, at some stage, to what happened at select committee.

Yes, I’ll go to that right now.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: So you will be heading in that direction?

Yes, I will be.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Not a first reading speech? Thank you.

Yes, I will be. And that direction starts with the Chief Justice’s comments at that select committee, where the Chief Justice said and raised—yes, the judicial comment of the highest judicial officer in this land—that the length and complexity of this bill would further disrupt the courts. It was a public warning proffered by the Chief Justice in light of the extensive expected litigation that would emerge from the proposed wording therein.

Federated Farmers, too, that doyen association of resource users, reflect a genuine objection with the bill’s comments. The reform packaging has been “riddled with new and amorphous terms”, including the need for a national planning framework” set out in the bill to “‘uphold’ ‘the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment’ and to not compromise ‘the well-being of future generations.’”

The Green Party itself has remarked, in the papers, that “the large number of outcomes and the lack of priority for environmental outcomes together with the decision-making principles risk a return to a subjective, ‘overall broad judgment’ approach.” Again, decisions being made on how we feel rather than firm criteria with a touch of discretion.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said that this proposed legislation would generate a field day of opportunities with such sweeping and all-inclusive language. Even the Environmental Defence Society has resiled from the bill, effectively saying that it is word soup—word soup.

When you read through the proposed purpose of the Act, it gives us a moment to demonstrate how the bill innately infuses legal uncertainty. “The purpose of the Act is to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao.”, which includes enabling the use and development of environments “in a way that promotes the well-being of both present and future generations.” Te Oranga o te Taiao—and it sets it out—“the health of the natural environment; the relationship between the health of the natural environment’s capacity to sustain life; the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment; and the relationship between the iwi, hapū, and te Taiao based on whakapapa.” I thought I was going to read the Mabo constitution and vibe as paragraph (f).

The wording makes it very hard for people to make a firm, predictable, consistent decision across resource management, and that is very disconcerting. For example, when you dig down and interrogate the wording proposed—when we refer to the wellbeing of both past and future generations, how do we measure that? Are we weighing this between 50 today and 50 tomorrow?

Are we talking about a 500-year plan like Wakatū Incorporation in Nelson or a 25-year plan like Whakatupuranga Rua Mano or Ngāti Raukawa, Te Atī Awa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira? What is the time frame that we’re talking about here? Because ultimately, the commitment of decision makers, iwi, Māori incorporations and trusts, property developers, and others often rests on timing.

Here, we don’t know where the harvest can come from fertilising and planting something; we don’t know if both present and future generations count for 1, 2, or 20 generations. Because once you start making decisions based on the future generations, you need some guidance as a decision maker. Is that 100 years into the future or 20 years into the future? The wording in this bill, in my view, does not go far enough.

What about the health and wellbeing of communities? What does the legislation give on guidance here? Are we talking about the Whare Tapa Whā model popularised by Tā Mason Durie when we get into spiritual, physical, mental, and social health; or are we back to the Living Standards Framework popularised by The Treasury? Or was it the Wheke model popularised by Rangimārie Rose Pere? You see, these particular models could all be used in different ways with different investment time frames and giving different investment ambiguities and decision ambiguities for decision makers. That’s one of the reasons why I think that the bill, in its current wording, is very premature.

What about the relationships of farmers and their families, like the ones on the Taihape-Napier Road and their connectedness with the Taiao? They, too, have bones buried in the hills up there. Are we saying that their connections are not important? I think that that’s where the Labour-led Government is saying that the relations and the ancestors of people like the member of Northcote and myself, from 200 years ago, Pākehā or Māori, actually divide.

The proposed establishment of the National Maori Entity has actually been opposed by the iwi fresh waters forum group. Rukumoana Schaafhausen has made comments about how that entity effectively seeks to cut against the rangatiratanga of iwi. Yet, we have the omnipotent Labour-led Government saying, “No, this is the right thing to do, notwithstanding that group’s concerns.” The bare words set out in subpart 5 suggest otherwise.

Second, the bill now elevates the standard of compliance and performance against Treaty principles. In the current RMA, as we know, you take account of the Treaty of Waitangi principles. But in this new bill, commensurate with section 4 of the Conservation Act, decision makers are expected to give effect to the principles of the Treaty.

In my brief experiences with the loveable and colourful rogues of Motutapu and Maraetai, James and Billy Brown, and the now famous Supreme Court decision in the Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki Tribal Trust and the Department of Conservation, the courts have made some determinations on how the department needs to give effect of that Department of Conservation to the Treaty principles. But as the Hon Eugenie Sage would recall, notwithstanding that this was a useful decision, the implementation of the decision has left an absolute bureaucratic nightmare. So section 4, when it says gives effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, in fact, when you go through the guidance of that, it’s very thin and concerning.

In my view, expediting the elevation of this specific envisioned in the legislation requires more careful consideration from people who are actually in the game and deliberation to ensure greater certainty for the iwi, the communities, territorial authorities, and to ensure less failure to deliver on reasonable expectations.

We lived through that process when I worked at Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki. We lived through the absolute shemozzle that the interpretation by bureaucrats at the Department of Conservation and elsewhere sought to give to that provision. We were unable to actually progress things in a timely and civil manner because people did not know what to do. They were playing that game that we used to play as children called “Freeze.” Stop, don’t do anything, and never get anywhere.

With these comments. I’d like to reinforce: we support reform, but we don’t support this particular package. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Natural and Built Environment Bill. I truly believe that this is one of these legacy pieces of legislation that I don’t think could have actually been carried through this House or advanced or achieved by any other Minister except the Hon David Parker, and competently backed by hugely competent officials and through the select committee, and with also special mention to Rachel Brooking herself, an expert practitioner in Resource Management Act (RMA) legislation.

Mr Parker is a Minister with a passion for this legislation, but also a very deep, deep political and practical knowledge of the management of our natural resources. There is a lot of intellectual grunt in both the Minister’s office and officials, MPs and select committee, a lot of political graft and toil, and precedent-setting concepts embodied within this legislation for the first time. It recognises the importance of true partnership in terms of getting things done in the second quarter of the 21st century onwards.

The RMA, when it came into being, was a very innovative piece of legislation. But like all innovations, its time is now up, and its replacement is just as innovative, if not more so, than the RMA was when it came into being last century. That’s why it is a pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.