Spatial Planning Bill

Good morning, members. The committee is resumed on the Spatial Planning Bill. When we suspended the debate last night, we were considering clauses 1 and 2. Once again, the question is that clauses 1 and 2 stand part.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s good to be back this morning. For those people that are watching on their television sets or perhaps listening on their wirelesses or even on their crystal sets, maybe, I want to just give a little bit of a moment’s background about where we are and what we’re doing. So we are considering, at the moment, what’s referred to as the title and commencement phase of the committee of the whole House—that’s clauses 1 and 2 of the Spatial Planning Bill.

Now, the Spatial Planning Bill is the second leg of the Government’s trifecta plan to reform and change the Resource Management Act regime that has been in place since the early 1990s and which is accepted—I think across the Parliament—to have had its day. But when we come to this Spatial Planning Bill and its relationship with the Natural and Built Environment legislation, the two are intimately and fundamentally connected. So when we come to the commencement of this Spatial Planning Bill, it’s a very simple commencement clause; it reads: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” Now that stands in stark contrast to the commencement provisions that go in the sister piece of legislation, which is the Natural and Built Environment legislation. Now, in that piece of legislation it was a very long and complicated commencement clause. This one just says, “the day after the date [at] which it receives the Royal assent.” That’s a more traditional, standardised, and familiar commencement clause to members of this House—it’s pretty simple.

But my question to the Minister is: why, in this piece of legislation, does it not necessarily match the quite complicated and convoluted commencement process in the Natural and Built Environment legislation? And does she think that this is actually going to be able to commence a process that will kick off in a way that will be synchronised with the sister piece of legislation? Because it’s very important that we consider these two pieces of legislation as a box set. We do of course not yet have the third part of the legislation, which is the adaptation piece. We’ve been told that that will be introduced to the Parliament before the Parliament rises at the end of August, so we’re running out of time on that and it would be helpful to have some clarity and comment from the Minister in the chair as to how the commencement date of this piece of legislation fits with the sister pieces of legislation—the one that we have seen and considered at length and in detail and also the piece of legislation that we haven’t seen and are yet to consider.

Well, I’m very happy to agree with the Hon Scott Simpson on a number of points there; of course, this bill is very, very closely linked with the Natural and Built Environment Bill, and I also agree that it has a very simple commencement clause. Of course, I would refer to Schedule 1 in the transitional provisions that this bill is about making a plan and that plan must be made within three years after the committee is treated as established under the Natural and Built Environment Bill. So they are clearly linked. In terms of the climate adaptation piece of legislation, that is a discrete and difficult topic as I know the member appreciates, and these two other pieces of legislation can work without it. Of course, it will be a good piece of legislation when it comes through and important for New Zealand dealing with climate change.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to be speaking on this bill this morning. I would like to also point out that the people in the Coromandel have moved on from crystal sets, and when I was last there—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: We’ve still got munted roads.

Yes, I know, and the Minister is quite confused about a crystal set and we’ll have a chat about that later. I have to say that neither Scott Simpson nor myself were in Hastings in 1066, but we are aware of what went on then, so having a good sense of history is quite a good thing.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: David Parker was there.

Yeah. But, Mr Chair, I know you’re interested in the title and commencement clauses, and I am focusing on the commencement clause, and I would like to ask the Minister: given that this legislation and its sister bill, the Natural and Built Environment Bill, are so intrinsically linked to the economic activity of New Zealand and will be when they come in, and that we have an election in about 70 days, wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to have a commencement date that was enough time for the incoming Government to assess whether they wanted these bills or not? We are having, effectively, a referendum on, among other things, the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, “RMA 2.0”, and I think that given it is so broad and it covers so much of the activities of New Zealand—in fact, we almost have to have a consent to have a bowl of fruit on the table in—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Organic fruit.

Organic fruit—yes, maybe. So it would seem appropriate to let New Zealanders have their say on it rather than try to rush it in. The National Party has the position that we will repeal it. So it seems pointless to try and just ram it through in the dying days of the Government to try and usurp the democratic process.

I’d really like to know, Minister, if you personally considered this when you were working on that, and when you were on the Randerson review panel—I know that you weren’t the Minister then—but surely it would have been—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Would’ve had aspirations, though.

Would have had aspirations. But would you have considered this has such an effect on our democracy that it actually should have been put up for the community to have a say? If you’ve got confidence in this as being a good piece of legislation, surely you’d have confidence that the public would vote accordingly in favour of that and therefore you would have a commencement date of, say, 1 January—I don’t know what day of the week that is—2024 or some period after the election which would give time for an incoming Government to consider whether they wanted to run with this or not and therefore save New Zealand a whole lot of time and expense. When this bill receives the Royal assent, no doubt there’ll be a whole lot of officials beavering away with the implementation of these bills. So I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to say that this legislation and its sister legislation—I like it that the legislation is female today—is good for the economy. It reduces red tape. National says they don’t like the Resource Management Act and they don’t like this, so who knows what they will do. But if it was in partnership with ACT, then it’s pretty terrifying.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, the Minister need not fear. ACT has prepared our alternative solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature. But, Minister, I just want to come back to the commencement. Only a short time ago, this current Government passed the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act, which required councils—the major metros, including Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, for example—to go through a planning exercise to provide for three units of three storeys on their entire metro area. And councils like Hamilton and Auckland, which has consulted on plan change 78, that would require that policy of this Government to be implemented by a certain time frame—they are delivering that; it’s costing them a lot of money, it’s costing submitters a lot of money and time—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Mr Court, get to the point of your question, please, and not concentrate on too much context.

Yes, Mr Chair. The concern, for the Minister, is that while all of that planning activity is going on under the existing Resource Management Act, a parallel planning activity will have to commence once this Spatial Planning Bill becomes law, which will, essentially, duplicate a whole lot of planning work undertaken by Auckland Council, by Hamilton, Christchurch—these other metros.

So, Minister, wouldn’t it be helpful to delay the implementation of the Spatial Planning Act—if it becomes law—say, to 12 months from the time that this is passed, and give it an implementation date similar to that of the Natural and Built Environment Bill, so that these councils, who are already carrying out significant plan changes as a result of the last piece of legislation this Government passed, can at least complete that process or have a landing on it so they’re not trying to carry out the implementation of the Spatial Planning Bill at the same time as they’re still carrying out the plan changes directed through the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and other Matters) Amendment) Act. Minister?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ve just got a question around—there’s been a bit of talk about sister bills this morning, and obviously there’s a third one that we haven’t seen yet in a little place I represent called Tongapōrutu. We actually have a rock structure called Three Sisters, and the tide and the climate actually came in at one point and washed one of them away. And, fortuitously, the climate actually came in again and formulated another one, so we’re back to Three Sisters.

So what this has to do with the commencement clause, Mr Chair, is I just wanted to ask the Minister, in as much as she is able to tell us, about the third sister in this set of bills. In respect of the commencement of that bill, are the clauses in that bill to be constructed in a way that the commencement of that bill will nicely align with the commencement of the two bills that we’ve already previously discussed, so that when it comes into force it’s all working in tandem and we have three sisters again?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Very good and pertinent points raised by my colleague Barbara Kuriger. I want to focus again on the title, and then I want to come back to the commencement.

Earlier in this debate, we discussed briefly—I was going to say “at length”, but it was actually quite a brief discussion—why the bill’s name had been changed from its original, conceptual name of the “Strategic Planning Bill” and then it got changed to being the “Spatial Planning Act”. We had a little bit of a debate about that, and the Minister answered some questions. But my further thinking on it, given that the words “spatial” and “strategic” are not synonyms that are perfectly aligned—they do have different meanings, different contexts, different words—I’m wondering whether the Minister considered at any stage, either she or her officials, the possibility of perhaps changing the name of this piece of legislation to the “Spatial and Strategic Planning Bill”. That would have then covered off both bases and actually been a kind of a compromise that would have potentially fulfilled both ambitions that are contained in the words “strategic” and also “spatial”. The Minister, I’m sure, would maybe want to comment just briefly on that.

The naming of legislation is quite important, because it does send a tonal sort of cultural, overarching perspective about what the legislation is supposed to be. It, effectively, is the name on the tin, and if, potentially, we could have had the “Spatial and Strategic Planning Bill”, maybe that would have been a way to allay the concerns of some people who felt that the change of name from “concept” to “implementation” has been one that’s worthy of significant comment.

I want to just pick up, secondly, in relation to the commencement—and I’m following up on a point that my colleague Stuart Smith made about the timing of this package of legislation—the suite of these two bills and the third one that we are yet to see is, effectively, a referendum. I want to cast the Minister in the chair’s mind back to the original implementation of the Resource Management Act in the early 1990s. The reason I’m traversing that is because I think that that methodology could have been a template pathway for something similar in terms of the commencement of this legislation.

Back in that day, there was a Labour Government in power. Sir Geoffrey Palmer had done quite a lot of work in formulating the Resource Management Act that we know today. It had gone to a select committee, there had been submissions, it had come back to the House, it had actually concluded a second reading, and then all that was needed to pass that legislation was a third reading. It had got to that point, but before a third reading took place, an election—the 1990 election—intervened and there was a change of Government. Jim Bolger’s Government came into Government. Jim Bolger appointed Simon Upton to be his Minister for the Environment. The bill was picked up by the new Parliament—the Bolger-led Parliament—and then sent back to select committee. It was quite an unusual process, but it was a process that was effective, and it straddled a political timing landscape that is not dissimilar to the one that we currently confront.

So, with that background and the second sending back to select committee, I’m wondering whether the Minister had given consideration to a similar timing process that would have the potential to allow the next Parliament to have a look at this, potentially make some tweaks, some changes, some modifications that would have allowed a process not dissimilar to that that occurred with the implementation and timing and commencement of the of the Resource Management Act that we currently have today. That resulted in, effectively, a cross-party, bipartisan approach that gave, I think, a greater degree of certainty not only to citizens but also to officials, who, up and down the countryside, will be looking at this commencement date. This is likely to be passed using the Government’s—[Time expired]

Thank you, Mr Chair. Touching on a number of those points, I’ll start with the Hon Scott Simpson’s point about the name, which is, of course, actually part of the debate—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: The title.

—the title—that’s right, of the Spatial Planning Bill, and he asked if there was some discussion there about that the word strategic is not a synonym for spatial, and I totally agree with that; they are different things. That is why, particularly at clause 15 there is a lot of focus on the strategic plan—on the strategic nature of the spatial plan. You could call it either a spatial plan or a strategic plan, and you could have called it a strategic spatial planning bill as well, because the plan needs to be both spatial, and of course strategic. That is quite a mouthful if you put two Ss in there as the member knows—my issues with two names with two Ss—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: There’s nothing wrong with two Ss.

That’s right. So that is the reason there. Of course, spatial planning is an internationally recognised term as well.

Going into some other commentary, Simon Court was talking about the enabling housing legislation and the work of councils. Of course, the transition provisions here mean that a spatial plan isn’t required until that three years from once the committee is set up, so the timing is quite different. In terms of the three sisters, the rocks that have come and gone, due to climate change. You know, that third piece of legislation, that is discrete, and it is really difficult to work at how as a country we are going to deal with climate adaptation, how we do that in a fair manner, and that requires a lot of thought, particularly around existing activities. The thinking is that that is a separate piece of legislation because it does deal with these issues that aren’t about the normal day to day planning that the Natural and Built Environment Bill is about, and of course the Spatial Planning Bill is about more than day to day planning—you’re looking out there 30 years. So, of course, you’re looking at areas that are going to be affected by climate change, but then that is for your future planning, rather than the existing issues that we have as a country with many of our communities that will be affected at some stage—we don’t know when—by sea level rise, and that are already being affected by stronger weather events, as the member knows. So when that piece of legislation does arrive, it will have its own commencement section, and of course it will have to interact with these pieces of legislation, these sister bills, but also a number of other pieces as well.

Then the Hon Scott Simpson gave us a history lesson, again, and suggested that—as we’ve heard already in these debates on this bill—we might be wanting to send this back to select committee in another Parliament for tweaks and modifications. Which is very different from the National Party statements that I’ve heard throughout these debates, that in fact the whole thing needs to be repealed, and very different from ACT’s position as well. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise.

I move, That the question be now put.