Resource Management (Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Repeal and Interim Fast-track Consenting) Bill

I move, That the Resource Management (Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Repeal and Interim Fast-track Consenting) Bill be now read a third time.

I want to start by saying thank you to members from all sides of the House for the constructive way in which we went through the select committee—sorry, no select committee on this one; the committee of the whole House. Sorry, it’s been a tiring three or four weeks. In fact, it’s been a tiring year. I want to thank all the members. I think it was a constructive way through.

All of the issues have been well canvassed, I think, in the first reading, the second reading, and the committee of the whole House. The Government remains committed to sensible changes to our planning regime that make it easier to get houses built, get aquaculture under way, and get infrastructure built whilst protecting the environment. I think there is a widespread consensus that that is not the case at the moment.

The replacement regime that we are repealing today—the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act—was a well-intentioned but unfortunate and misguided attempt at fixing our planning regime, and many people consider it would not have worked. The select committee heard submission after submission from people, from councils, from developers of infrastructure, from renewable energy providers—and the member who is the Labour Party environment spokesperson, whom I like a lot and have a lot of time for, needs to be aware of her conflict. The Hon Rachel Brooking was a member of the Randerson panel that begat this nonsense, so it’s fair enough that she’s now in the position she’s in. She became the Associate Minister for the Environment but she was a member of Randerson panel, so, to use an equity term, she does not come at this with clean hands. And I don’t say that in a particularly pejorative way.

💬 Hon Dr Megan Woods: Are you suggesting an honourable member is not honourable?

No, no, no. I was just making a law joke. Chris Penk found it funny, even if others didn’t. The Government’s accepted an amendment to the legislation on the floor of the House, so I thought we’d get more joie de vivre from the Opposition, but anyway.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Where’s the Christmas joy?

Christmas spirit and Christmas joy. I’m proud of this legislation. I’m not proud that we had to do it under urgency.

💬 Hon Dr Megan Woods: Proud of what you’ve repealed.

Well, yeah, I’m proud of all the stuff we’re repealing. As I’ve said multiple times, including in public, when something is not a good piece of legislation, by definition repealing it is good. If it was good, it would stay on the statute book.

The members opposite have this really quite odd attitude that everything the Government must do has to be constructive, and we have to pass elaborate pieces of legislation and we have to—

💬 Hon Dr Megan Woods: So you’ve got to be destructive. That’s all right; we get it.

If repealing something that is destructive by definition, actually, is positive in the sense that it will grow the economy and make it easier to do things, by definition that is constructive. So that’s my point—the binary is a false one. Repealing things can take the country forward. To take an example that the Labour Party members opposite might have some sympathy for, the Labour Party spent most of the 1990s saying the Employment Contracts Act was a disaster. They then repealed the Employment Contracts Act, and the Labour Party back then didn’t go around saying, “Oh, well, we’re repealing it. Oh, no, this is not good.” They were proud of the repeal. This is what Governments do. Governments change, the political cycle goes, things come and go.

We came to Government with a mandate to go through systematically and repeal stupid pieces of legislation passed by the last Parliament, by the last Government, and that is what we’re doing. We had fair pay agreements last week, 90-day trials once we get through this; we’ve got the Resource Management Act, we’ve got the clean car/ute tax, and, trust me, there’s more coming in the new year, and I’m looking forward to it. Getting stuff off the statute book is, by definition, positive, right, if it reduces the size of Government and takes the country forward.

Parliament legislates too much stuff, and one of the problems with the last Government was they just legislated all the time—elaborate, complicated, complex regimes that stuff the statute book with complexity. Actually, we need a smaller Government that reduces down the size of the statute book.

Anyway, I somewhat digress.

💬 Hon Dr Megan Woods: I look forward to it.

Megan says she’s looking forward to it.

As I’ve sort of advertised, we’re keeping the fast-track consenting regime which was developed by the last Government. We’re developing our own regime, and work is under way at pace. Simon Court, my Parliamentary Under-Secretary for infrastructure and Resource Management Act reform, is working on that alongside our coalition Government parties.

We are, as I’ve said to the member Rachel Brooking, interested in spatial planning and how we get that more properly equipped. I’ve decided to keep the Spatial Planning Board, and we’ll work through the roles and functionality of that in due course. I do agree with the member, the point she made at various points, that spatial planning does have a real role to play, but I think it is really important, as I said during the committee of the whole House stage, that we do that in a coherent and structured way that sits alongside other Government priorities alongside water reform. And at some point, in due course, we will have to consider the future of local government reform as well, and, of course, it sits alongside our reforms in infrastructure funding and financing, which, as the member knows and the member sitting next to her knows, is fundamental to getting more houses built in New Zealand.

I think of the housing challenge as like a trifecta. You’ve got to get the land-use policy done in a comprehensive way. You’ve got to get competitive urban land markets. You’ve got to get the infrastructure funding and financing arrangements right, and you’ve got to get the council incentives lined up so that councils don’t just see growth as something to be ambivalent about or—frankly, many times—hostile to.

They’ve got to see growth as something that’s a good thing because housing growth is in all of our interests, not least the Government’s, and in 20 or so minutes the Minister of Finance will present the mini-Budget and the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update. I’m not breaking any Budget secrets when I say that the previous Government spent an enormous sum of money every year on housing subsidies—around $4 billion a year once you add up income-related rent, the accommodation supplement, and the tragedy that is emergency housing—and in due course we will have to do what we can to sort that out.

Our planning laws affect almost every aspect of our lives, and it is really important that we get them right. I acknowledge the contribution from Rachel Brooking—the letter, which I will ponder and consider over the summer break, and we’ll come back to her around our sheer desire to create a better New Zealand and a better planning regime. But for now, we have come to the view that the regime put in place by the last Government would have been a retrograde step. We sought at the election a mandate to get it off the statute book.

I regret the use of urgency. I’m not a fan of urgency in a general sense, but I think it is justified in this case because there’s a 10-year transition window, and if we hadn’t got it off the statute book by Christmas, people would spend an enormous amount of time and money over the Christmas period and the new year—spending time and money on a regime that the Government made clear wasn’t going to exist at some point in the future.

So it’s better to get it off the statute book now and start again, and that’s what we’re going to do, and that’s what the Government is seeking a mandate for from the Parliament, and, with that, thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. A lot to respond to in that contribution from the Minister responsible for RMA Reform about me. So I’ll start with that. I don’t normally—

💬 Simon Court: Show us your hands.

Yeah—yes, I know. It was an interesting comment—something about my hands not being clean.

I’m very proud to have been a member of that Randerson review group. It did make me just so interested and motivated in becoming a politician, because I knew that the Resource Management Act (RMA) wasn’t working and that it did need changing. I’m happy to say that I came to that review group with a very open mind about some things which were then decided in that review report and became the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act. So I came to that with an open mind about whether we needed separate environmental-type regulations from urban planning. The experts that we consulted with and people that we talked with were very clear that it’s very difficult to separate those two issues and leads to more complications. So that is why the Randerson review said no to that idea.

I also came to that group with a very open mind about whether or not the RMA could simply be amended, or whether new legislation was required. I’ve listened to Sir Geoffrey Palmer many times at many conferences and his arguments that the RMA wasn’t broken, that it was the implementation around it that was the problem. So I came to that group with that in mind. However, again, we heard time and time again that, fundamentally, the RMA was broken. This is to do with it being so focused on effects, and the whole regime being driven down to that consenting decision-making process. That is expensive. That kept me employed for almost 20 years. That’s not a job I want to go back to. I’ll put that on record here—that’s my conflict: I don’t want to become a resource management lawyer again. I think there shouldn’t be so much GDP in our system at that consenting end.

I’m also, obviously, very interested in the environmental outcomes of the legislation. Of course, they weren’t working under the RMA, and we need clear direction and clear environmental bottom-lines. But my professional interest in this has been always focused on the efficiency of the system and trying to take people—like old Rachel—out of the system, because, really, we should be having clear debates within the community about those planning trade-offs that are always made. As the Minister said, planning is always difficult. People are going to have different views. I said in one of the other speeches, somebody loves a highly modified landscape; somebody else wants to put what I think is a very beautiful wind turbine on it. There’s a debate to be had. Those debates should be higher up the food chain, not at the consenting level.

That is what these two Acts that have been repealed today did, because it is a complicated system. So rather than everything being at the regulatory stage, there was the Spatial Planning Act. That was to say, “Let’s look—let’s look—into the future. Let’s look about where we want to put growth.”—but also, very importantly, where we don’t want it. We just heard the Minister say that there’s a housing trifecta of some sort. I don’t particularly disagree with the issues that he raised, but he missed a really important one, and that is hazards, climate change, and climate change adaptation. We know that there are areas that don’t have houses on them at the moment, where we don’t want to ever put houses—that that would be the wrong place to put houses, because we know that there will be sea-level rise, we know that there will be higher-intensity winds, and we know that there’s going to be higher-intensity rainfall. So there are areas of the country that we don’t want to put more houses. So it’s very important that we have that all mapped out in spatial plans.

Of course, I was very pleased that my contribution to the Spatial Planning Act was to get the word “map” into that Act—eventually. We want to able to see—see what’s going to happen, see that different things happen over different time frames as well. But we also want to know where that infrastructure is—where that existing infrastructure is—that the Minister was talking about in terms of those efficiencies of where you put houses. Obviously, there’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to go with them. If you can intensify areas, then there will already be some existing infrastructure. Some of it might not be big enough, though, so to be able to have those considerations in that spatial planning exercise is very important.

The Minister’s spoken a lot of times about how, “Oh, well, it wasn’t coherent. We’ve got other things going on.” He keeps talking about local government reform. I don’t think that’s something I heard in the Speech from the Throne—I welcome one of the National speakers to correct me on that if I’m wrong—or, particularly, in manifestos either, about major local government reform. So if the reason for repealing the Spatial Planning Act is that there is going to be local government reform, I think that is a very interesting idea, and it’s certainly not one that I’ve heard mentioned before this, until this debate today.

I also heard, again, from the Minister, talking about his involvement, when he was on the Environment Committee, about hearing various submissions. I remind everyone that that was a very fulsome select committee process. It had an exposure bill for the Natural and Built Environment Bill—for the first part of that, for the purpose clauses; that went through its own submission process. The select committee reported back to the House, and then we went through the process of the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill as well. There were many, many submissions on those bills. A lot of those submissions had very useful amendments suggested. They were picked up by the select committee. So what came into the House in the first reading was very different to what came into the House at second reading, and then, again, there were changes made in the committee of the whole House stage as well. All of these things were done to improve the bill.

As I said in one of my speeches on this bill that we’re looking at today, the repeal bill, the importance of renewable energy was not at issue. Everybody agrees about the importance of renewable energy. There were some sections around the time frames for renewal consents, and they were changed in the process. We had debate in the committee of the whole House stage today about what was clause 58 of the Natural and Built Environment Bill—I think it might have become a different numbered section in the Act—and what that was going to do with the planning framework. That included many useful things that would be in that national planning framework, including on hazards, including on papakāinga housing, which we’re hearing about today.

So it’s a great shame that we are not going to have all of that national direction combined into one so it’s not in conflict with each other. Of course, at the moment, it is in conflict with each other. There was a process there, in the Natural and Built Environment Act, to make it coherent. This is really important for users of planning legislation. It is very difficult to be going around, if you are either a council, if you’re trying to draft up your plans, and you have one national instrument telling you do one thing, like build those—grow; you don’t build pine trees—grow the pine trees, and look after that water quality. What are those councils supposed to do? You get lots of lawyers involved, and I go back to where I started: that they just shouldn’t be in the system when the Government could be making clear national direction, and doing that national direction to deal with issues that we haven’t spoken about much in the past, and that is the likes of the sponge cities and the importance of green infrastructure—all things that really came out strongly through the select committee submission process and that were embraced by the select committee. My recollection was that all of the select committee was very interested in what we are doing about hazards and how we are planning for the future. So it’s a very sad day indeed, today, and I condemn this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. We have so many opportunities to do things better. We have so many opportunities in Aotearoa to live more in harmony with nature—to use energy more efficiently, to produce more green, fully renewable electricity that is low cost, and to ensure that our towns and cities are places where people love to live; where our children have the freedom to get around under their own steam, to get to school by walking or cycling or scootering, if that’s what they wish. That benefits everyone.

They could have the freedom to do this, but it requires doing things differently. And for many decades, we had harmful planning rules that came in after the Town and Country Planning Act that made it more difficult for our kids to walk and cycle to school. So in the last 30 to 40 years, kids stopped walking and cycling to school. Parents, rightly, are concerned about the safety of their kids when there’s fast-moving vehicles, larger vehicles, big SUVs, and utes. And then, when parents have to drive their kids everywhere, that actually reduces the freedom and independence the kids have, but it also makes traffic worse. It makes our transport costs higher.

It’s not just pollution. I mean, people do have a right to live free from pollution, but it’s not just climate change that’s the issue. Fundamentally, our transport system is inefficient and it limits the freedom and ability of people to move around.

We have the ability, and the responsibility, to do the right thing, to do things better. Our planning rules aren’t just around urban development—that’s my big focus: the opportunity to do urban development better—it’s also about environmental bottom lines. I have had many colleagues speak in this debate on this bill during the committee of the whole House stage and during the prior stages of this debate. Lan Pham, freshwater ecologist and two-term regional councillor, spoke to the absolute passion communities have had, and the evidence that supports it, with over 50 experts, to have clean water. We could have clean, healthy water, and we don’t have it now.

My colleague Steve Abel was talking about tree protection. Urban trees make so much sense. They reduce the pressure on our reticulated water system, they make our towns and cities healthier and happier places to be, and they’re just so vitally important. But if we don’t have blanket tree protection, then what happens is we lose that tree cover, and with it we lose the water management that it brings, we lose the native birds, we lose the shade and the climate control—we lose all of that. That’s why tree protection is so important. Scott Willis, who for many years worked in renewable electricity and tried to get a community wind farm up and faced the barriers—I know the old planning regime to get renewable electricity up at a community scale. So the Green Party is full of people who have been passionately working to solve some of these problems, to deliver better outcomes for the community, and to be responsible.

The legislation that’s being repealed today wasn’t perfect, but it went through an incredibly thorough process, with two select committees. That second one attracted 3,000 submissions. Now, I heard the Minister—I asked this question to the Minister during the committee of the whole House stage: I asked what experts said that this Natural and Built Environment Act and Spatial Planning Act were worse than going back to the Resource Management Act, and he couldn’t name a single person. He referred to the select committee process, where there were literally thousands of submissions. One of the most disturbing things—to me, I think—was that he didn’t seem to understand that when people came to the select committee process and raised their issues, the Government then responded and there were further stages of the bill before it was passed through to being an Act. I spoke to some of the people who were concerned about things that were in the bill at select committee, like Manawa Energy, like people who were concerned about Te Mana o te Wai. Well, the Government actually responded to all of those concerns and so the final Act didn’t represent what was at the select committee. So all of this really just exposes how shallow the people in the new Government are, how shallow their knowledge is, how poor their respect is for the democratic process. They went out there, didn’t pay much attention to what was actually happening, or any constructive improvements to it; instead, they mindlessly opposed, in Opposition, everything the Government was doing.

They have no clue. The Minister doesn’t even understand the difference between the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act. He’s repealing both of them, even though the Spatial Planning Act is fundamentally a different piece of legislation that was making improvements. But he doesn’t know, because he didn’t do the work in Opposition. All they did was shallowly oppose everything in a bid to get more votes, in a bid to get into Government. But I think the people of New Zealand would have reasonably expected people elected to Government to take a fulsome approach, a robust approach, and not to throw everything out when a bunch of it was actually really useful—a bunch of it was actually useful.

So here we are: the one thing being kept is fast-tracked consenting. Now, that’s not really a surprise. The truth is that the current people who are in Government, who found themselves in a position of responsibility, are not going to exercise that responsibility on behalf of all the people of New Zealand, our future generations, or our environment. Oh no, no, no, no—they are here to represent the existing power structure of people who currently have all the money and power, and they’re going to maintain that and make sure that they can make more money, that they can continue to exploit workers and our environment.

Now, I don’t doubt that there are some people sitting over there who don’t realise that that’s what their Government is doing—they truly think they believe in efficiency and better outcomes and good value for money and protecting the environment in a responsible way. But when you look at the reality of what is in this bill, there was an alternative scenario. The Minister Chris Bishop could have not rushed through urgency to repeal six years of work, where thousands of people submitted, where we spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting the advice and doing the work to come up with a new system. We could see how it was working and make adjustments to it. But instead, they’ve decided to repeal it all within three weeks of Parliament starting—throw out all of that effort.

Personally, I hate waste. And what breaks my heart is coming to this House and seeing the wasted time and effort that could have gone into good legislation, that could have produced better outcomes for our people, for our planet. The current Government throws it all away because they haven’t bothered to try and understand. They don’t actually believe in democracy—they’re here to preserve the existing power structure. The people with the most power and money want to keep on exploiting the environment, want to keep on exploiting workers, and it suits those people.

They need to think long and hard: if you came to this place because you truly believe in solutions, how do the people sitting opposite feel about watching such a shoddy approach to lawmaking, to watching $250 million of taxpayers’ resources, public resources, being wasted and thrown down the drain? And how do they feel—how do they feel—about knowing that over 50 percent of our freshwater waterways are at threat? What is their answer? What is their constructive solution? Why are they delaying the clear national direction that is needed for regional councils to be able to bring in the rules that will actually protect our fresh waterways now and into the future? Because if we don’t act very soon, extinction is for ever—extinction is for ever.

The members opposite clearly believe that they’re in the born to rule class, that they’re the responsible ones, that they’re somehow going to come up with solutions that are going to look after not just the people who are currently the most powerful but the long-term benefit of our natural environment. Because what is happening today is a mindless oppositional repeal from a Minister who’s not across the detail, who doesn’t actually know what’s being repealed, and is going to have to start over the work from scratch. But what they are going to do, and I have no doubt about this—and people watching at home need to know this—is they’re going to use this fast-track consenting to ride roughshod over environmental bottom lines and communities in order to help vested interests achieve the outcomes they want, and ultimately it’s all about conserving the status quo: doing more of what we already know.

You know, the definition of insanity—we’ve heard it many times—is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. When it comes to protecting our natural environment, when it comes to futureproofing climate-resilient communities and building cities that welcome and work with nature, that enable freedom and a future for our children, the current National - New Zealand First - ACT Government has no vision, they have no ideas, and they’re going to be here to maintain the status quo and the existing power structure. The Green Party will continue putting up positive solutions—this bill is not one.

The ACT Party is proud to support the repeal of the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act and the maintenance of a fast-track opportunity for businesses and organisations that want to get on, get a consent, and start building things that produce value. Because unless we do that in New Zealand, we will continue the economic and social decline that the previous Labour Government perpetuated. There’s nothing that signals more clearly the confusion between the need for economic and social growth and environmental protection—the failure to identify a suitable balance—than the Acts we’re repealing here today.

It’s true that resource management reform is long overdue and much delayed. In the early 1990s, I studied resource management law. I proposed to a lecturer that a property development model’s consent conditions would fly through a hearing, and that my development would be given a tick by the commissioners, and that my contractors would be able to start work within a few short weeks. Well, my lecturer told me back in the 1990s, “That’s not how it works, Sonny Jim. You’ll just have to spend a bit more time spending money on resource management lawyers and arguing with commissioners about consent conditions.”

But it turns out all the things that we’ve learnt how to do well, whether it’s erosion and sediment control, whether it’s identifying where threatened bat species are roosting in trees and when is the best time to fell the trees because the bats have moved on—we know all that information. We don’t need the Natural and Built Environment Act or the Spatial Planning Act to send us back 30 years to have a bit of a navel-gazing exercise for further decades on how to resolve the conflict between developing land, economic growth, and environmental protection.

Now, I’ve heard from some members of the Opposition that because the former Minister David Parker spent a quarter of a billion dollars in developing the Natural and Built Environment Act and Spatial Planning Act, we should just let it go and we should just accept that. Well, the ACT Party does not believe in the sunk cost fallacy that has led to the sinking of the Interislander proposal and will no doubt lead to the sinking of many more Labour sunk cost fallacies. Time to pull the handbrake on. Let’s turn this four-wheel drive, New Zealand, around.

Now, I want to describe what a future resource management reform might look like. There was a gentleman who participated in founding one of the world’s modern and greatest States, George Washington. He said that freedom and property rights are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other. Freedom to build means reducing the number of people who can object to the things you want to build, whether you’re a land developer, whether you’re a public asset owner, or whether you’re somebody who just wants to build a distribution warehouse so that your goods can find their way to customers and not have to argue about the colour of it or whether it sticks up a little bit higher than your neighbour’s building.

We need to focus on trade-offs. Land development and economic development lead to social development and social uplift. Protecting things just for the sake of it or because some members of this House, some political parties, believe we can return to some kind of year zero pre-human environmental state—completely unrealistic—completely unrealistic. Future resource management reform must focus on the benefits of development while protecting the places that New Zealanders value and regard as special.

That is what this coalition Government will be bringing in 2024. ACT supports this bill. I commend it to the House. Let’s go, New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in the third reading of this bill, the Resource Management (Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Repeal and Interim Fast-track Consenting) Amendment Bill. As I do that, I say that it was interesting hearing through the readings of this bill, especially from our coalition partners. Some of us, probably, on this side of the House have worked very much with the Resource Management Act (RMA), and I am one of those people, and it is ironic that today I stand in support of going back to the RMA. But it is actually this complexity that we have in front of us with the Natural and Built Environment Act (NBA) and the Spatial Planning Act that has put us into this situation.

It was always ironic to me. With the NBA, it almost sounds like a basketball game. Basically, what we are dealing with here today is a basketball player with the wrong ball going down a court, and we’re actually going to throw that ball out of court and get the right one back on there.

In section 5 in Part 2 of the RMA, the purpose of the Act is really what we should be concentrating on, and the RMA and the purpose of this new NBA is something that we haven’t really explored in this House in this debate. But as we got wider in the NBA proposal, the complexity that that would have brought into the resource management planning would have just been so much and so complex. To me, also adding in the issues around the Treaty and putting the principles of the Treaty into the NBA would just cause that much complexity for users, and it gives people uncertainty.

The fast tracking—we look forward to that. The New Zealand First Party also looks forward to other changes to fast tracking as we go ahead, but having that interim fast tracking retained is something we definitely support. It is also giving certainty to people outside of this House, going forward, of what we are actually doing.

So New Zealand First commends this bill to the House today, and I am proud to stand up for New Zealand First and to actually see that legislation put into the bin.

This call is a split call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. I guess I’ve got to start by, first, commending the Government. You went out to change the course of history, and indeed that is what you have started and achieved. You are going to go down in history as being one of the most destructive and backward-thinking Governments we’ve ever seen in Te Ao Māori.

I get why you’re comfortable picking a fight with Māori, and I’ll say it again: you have parties, like ACT, that got 1 percent of the Māori vote; you’ve got New Zealand First, who got 4 percent of the Māori vote; and National, who got 5 percent. Together, collectively, you got 10 percent of the Māori vote.

💬 Hon Member: A lot more than that—a lot more than that.

And I hear you say, “We had an election”, which indeed you did. But you did not get a strong mandate from Māori, and as the party that got 30 percent—in fact, seven times more than some of you—and who got six of the seven Māori electorate seats, I can confidently say that you are not supported by Māori at all, and especially in this legislation.

We had before us the opportunity to make things better and, unlike everyone in the House today, I’m speaking from the fact that Te Pāti Māori did not support it with Labour. We did not support the Resource Management Act (RMA) changes with Labour, because they weren’t enough. When we look at what it is you’re proposing, I have never seen anything so backward in my life. And I have worked in the RMA space for years and years. You are a Government that prided itself with the National Iwi Chairs. You were part and parcel of working with the iwi in technical aspects of the regulations for the Environmental Protection Authority and for Ministry for the Environment. You were part and parcel of working with iwi on the best practice guidelines—you’ll remember this, David—between iwi and oil companies. You had a record that showed your true intent with the Māori communities.

Te Mana o te Wai, te Oranga o te Taiao—those were kaupapa you supported. And in good will those in Whanganui, Te Awa Tupua; those in Taranaki, Te Maunga Kāhui; those in all our electorates were really supportive of what it is that you were proposing to do. The truth is that what you are doing is you have done some of the most offensive exclusions and amendments that we’ve ever seen. So we question why you replaced—why you deliberately replaced—“Te Tiriti” with “the Treaty of Waitangi”, knowing only 50 rangatira—only 50 rangatira—signed the Treaty. Five hundred rangatira signed Te Tiriti. Why would you convert to the English version, knowing that—

💬 David MacLeod: Point of order. I’m hearing the word “you” throughout the speech here, and I understand that’s not actually appropriate. It should be via the Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you to the member for that point of order. It was something I was going to mention at the end of the speech. I wasn’t going to interrupt the speaker, but now that you’ve brought it up, yes, saying “you” is bringing the Speaker into the debate. So perhaps if the member could talk about “the Government members”.

My apologies for that offensiveness. I guess it’s really hard—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not offended, by the way. I’m just trying to upkeep the rules.

Thank you—appreciate it. We have questioned why it is that we have reverted to the English version, which we all know. I guess it’s probably like your “Te Papa” moment—that you accept that Māori ceded sovereignty. Māori did not cede sovereignty. We are watching this Government erode our rights and interests, under urgency, without so much as engaging with a single iwi and hapū. I look at some members of the Government who have been out in communities asking to support these communities in their wind farms and their ocean, asking to support these communities and their iwi with their economic aspirations, and I really look forward to the conversations that this Government is going to have going forward.

We also questioned the Minister—on the same page, 83—about why “hapū” has been removed. We understand that we’ve got iwi still included, but for some reason hapū have been removed from the bill. This is an erosion of rights and interests of those who make up Aotearoa. Again, I totally understand that this Government doesn’t have a Māori mandate, but the Government must—must—respect hapū and iwi rights and interests. You cannot wipe us out. You can remove hapū from the bill, you can remove our reo from your agencies, but we will not, as tangata whenua, go away.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The word “you”—just remember. I know it’s hard.

I appreciate it. So, hiding in urgency—this is a party that is all about bottom lines. As long as it’s just above dead, this Government is about right. Mauri ora is a top line kaupapa. Te Awa Tupua, Te Maunga Kāhui, all these kaupapa have been about—te Oranga o te Taiao. They are about mauri ora and about keeping up with the top line of what we require, aspirationally and, most importantly, for our future generations. We have a Government that has absolutely provided certainty: it has provided certainty to mana whenua, tangata whenua, iwi, hapū, whānau across Aotearoa, and you have set the tone for your next three years. We do not support the changes and the repeal that this Government has put to us. Kia ora rā.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. This Government’s gone-by-Christmas approach is a recipe for continuing with short-term, ad hoc development, determined by the whims of individual property developers and companies instead of true community consensus, where tangata whenua had a stronger voice in an integrated ki uta ki tai or mountains to sea planning framework—one that, while imperfect, actually had a chance of delivering positive outcomes for all New Zealanders.

And I do want to reflect that with all the huff and puff of the debate of this repeal, it can be really easy to lose sight of what everyone’s really even talking about and why it all even matters. But I want to assure the Government that the repeal of this bill matters. It matters to the 3,000 submitters who gave their time, energy, and expertise, contributing to this fit for purpose environmental management system that—although it went nowhere far enough in recognition of the tino rangatiratanga of tangata whenua—was a step in the right direction. It matters to every New Zealander—tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti—who has ever turned up to their usual swimming, fishing, or mahinga kai spot to find themselves risking their own or their loved ones’ health from simply drinking, swimming, or coming into contact with contaminated rivers, lakes, and oceans, and will have to wait years longer for any improvements.

It matters to ratepayers who welcomed the ability of their councils to actually claim the costs of monitoring, investigation, or prosecution from the person or company responsible for any non-compliance instead of this coming from ratepayer funds. It matters to those growers—and, actually, literally anyone who consumes food who wanted better protection of high-quality rural land and elite soils from urban sprawl; improvements to ensure our environmental laws were better monitored, enforced, and complied with; and a built environment that actually reduces the risks from natural hazards and climate change. It matters to the thousands of consent holders who are already going above and beyond to protect and restore the environment and meet their consent conditions, when the few individuals that we see letting the majority down through serious environmental and resource consent breaches are met with pitiful and ineffective fines that were substantially increased through these Acts as critical deterrents to unacceptable environmental damage.

It matters to councils—it matters because their ability to suspend or end the consent if there was ongoing or repeated failure to implement the consent conditions is now removed. It matters to all the consent applicants: iwi, hapū, councils, courts, and the public, who will now need to continue to wrestle with interpreting the plethora of over 100 different Resource Management Act (RMA) plans and policy statements when the Acts would have reduced this number to 16. It matters to any and every person in Aotearoa who wants to leave a healthy, thriving environment to our kids, our grandkids, and future generations, because that is what true prosperity looks like. In fact, there is so much about this bill that it is repealing that matters—that it reveals that this Government’s action in repealing these acts amounts to nothing more than costly political pettiness.

But the ultimate disappointment in all of this is the short-sightedness. It’s the lack of understanding that the very real limits to our vulnerable environment need to be respected, and it’s the immeasurable value of ecological integrity and upholding Te Tiriti that this Government does not seem to understand. But I appreciate that that may all be a bit of a down buzz, because ‘tis the season to be jolly. So I guess from this Government to all New Zealanders, it’s a Merry back-to-the-RMA-death-by-a-thousand-cuts Christmas for them and our precious te taiao; environment—again, leaving our kids, grandkids, and future generations to pick up the pieces and ultimately pay the tab. And that is something the Greens will never support. Kia ora.

New Zealand’s economy inextricably relies on the use of our natural environment, and it needs to remain healthy for all people’s wellbeing—ngā tāngata katoa. The art is to get the tension between both the economy and the environment balanced. A regime that allows the use of the environment while protecting it, a regime that achieves this outcome as efficiently and effectively as practically achievable—that is what this bill seeks to realise, and I commend the bill to the House.

All good policy starts with the problem definition. What we’ve heard from the Government is that the reason why they are taking New Zealand backwards, back to 1991, into a piece of legislation that is no longer fit for purpose is because the legislation put in place by the previous Government was difficult and it made it difficult to get things done and was bad for the environment. What we’ve had is the Minister in charge of this legislation, the Hon Chris Bishop, and indeed the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, going around trumpeting as one of the key examples of why this needed to be taken back is because it was so difficult to get renewable energy projects over the line.

Wind farms was something that was often touted. Their case in point was West Wind farm here in Wellington, where both Chris Bishop and the Prime Minister would claim that that project took anywhere between seven to 10 years to get consented. This is a fallacy. This is incorrect, and it is wrong. That project took six months from the time of lodging that consent with the Wellington City Council. There was 18 months in the Environment Court. So from consent to the decision coming out of the Environment Court, it was three years, not the seven, eight, or 10 years that we’ve had the Minister in charge, and indeed the Prime Minister, running around telling New Zealanders that it took.

And that is a problem, not just because they are wrong and have been misleading with the information that they’ve been giving out, but it speaks to the problem of putting this legislation through urgency. That is the point of select committee. That is the point of scrutiny. That is what our legislative process in New Zealand is based on, and the ability for submitters to have a say and to be heard. When we have a Government that doesn’t even understand its own problem definition and is intent on rushing through legislation by Christmas, that is where we are running into a huge amount of problems.

The legislation that is being repealed is legislation that is about getting that balance between protecting our environment and making sure that we can enable activity in our economy that needs to be enabled. This was not rushed legislation; this was legislation that went through scrutiny after scrutiny after scrutiny. And were there problems that were identified through that process? Of course there were. I know, sitting on the ministerial advisory group, that in the areas I was responsible for, an issue was highlighted that the legislation, as it was in the bill, was not permissive enough in terms of reconsenting of hydroelectricity assets. So we changed it. We listened to the submitters, and we made the change to the bill before it was passed into the Act that is being repealed today. And that is what good legislation looks like, not something that is being pushed through by a Government that can’t even understand its own problem definition.

And then what we have is that we have the Government still saying it’s so hard to get things consented, but they’re going to keep the fast-track provisions that our Government put in. No wonder, because if you want to look at how you actually get that balance right, how you can see the progress that needs to be made, you need to look no further than the fast-track consenting provisions that our Government put in place after COVID as a means of stimulating activity in the economy but that actually work so well that they were carried over to be a permanent feature of the new planning framework in the legislation that we’re repealing today.

So if I have a look at what was achieved there, nine solar panel projects were approved through that. That was nearly 1.9 million panels that were approved to go through the fast-track process. That is 1,147 megawatts of renewable electricity generation through those projects. To put that in context, the Clyde Dam is 432 megawatts. What we are talking about is something that was nearly three times the output of the Clyde Dam, and that was only solar panels, because there were also wind farms that went through that. Three major wind farm projects were also approved to go through fast-track consenting—again, equal to the Clyde Dam. Of the, I think it was, 108 projects that were referred through the fast-track process that we had—15 of them being green and renewable energy projects—was four times the capacity of the Clyde Dam.

Show me the problem definition, members on the Government side. We are not hearing it. You’re saying—sorry, not you, Madam Speaker; you would never say such a thing, but the Government is saying that it is too difficult to get things done. We are talking about four times the capacity of the Clyde Dam in electricity generation being approved to go through a process in a matter of months, and we are told that that is somehow broken.

We’ve also had Chris Bishop come and say that he is truly a progressor for going backwards, that he is somehow putting forward constructive solutions. Well, I’m sorry, Mr Bishop. All he is presiding over as a Minister is taking New Zealand backwards and showing the lack of vision that this Government holds. All that could be campaigned on was to repeal, not even the replacement of it. The replacement—I might not agree with it, but I could have some respect for it if there was an idea and a vision of what it was going to be replaced with.

But we have a party and parties that are forming this Government that failed in the nine years they were in Government to get Resource Management Act (RMA) reform over the line—they tried and tried and failed and failed again—now coming back, repealing, and saying, “Trust us. Magically we will be able to do something.” Well, we look forward to that, because the track record isn’t great, and instead, we’re going to be going round and round in circles, stuck in 1991 land with a set of planning and environmental provisions that do not understand climate change, do not understand the modern Treaty relationship as has evolved today, does not understand the issues around water shortages, even the multiple amendments to the RMA. Everyone was in agreement. The RMA was broken and needed fixing.

We had the Minister, Chris Bishop, come down and say, “Well, you did it. A previous Labour Government, when they’ve come in, they repealed things too.” And he gave the example of us repealing the Employment Contracts Act. We certainly did, but we just didn’t repeal that stain on our statute books; in our time in Opposition we had come up with an alternative, and that is what this Government is failing to do.

What was put in place—I just have to have a little something I prepared earlier—is the Employment Relations Act of 2000, a comprehensive piece of legislation that was put in place with ideas, vision, and thinking of what we thought a modern employment environment would look like. Are we seeing that from the Government in terms of a comprehensive piece of legislation that shows vision for what they want to do instead? I might not agree with it. I might agree with parts of it. I might disagree with parts of it. More likely than not we would hold different views on bits of it. But I would have more respect if there were parties that could front up to this Parliament and put through something substantive that showed what they wanted to do, not where they wanted to take New Zealand backwards to.

So if we look at the Employment Relations Act—the Minister brought it up as the great comparator that he was bringing in there—this legislation that we replaced it with and the thinking we had done in Opposition promoted concepts of good faith and fair bargaining. It brought in mediation, it brought in personal grievances, it established the Employment Relations Authority and the Employment Court, and it promoted collective bargaining. There was substance with what was being replaced.

This is a Government that has no ideas. This is a Government that has no momentum to take New Zealand forward. All it can do is go backwards to the future, and what we will see is New Zealand worse off for it. This is a Government that has no plan to how it’s going to cut emissions and meet our emissions reduction budget. It has no plans how it is going to have constructive 21st century Treaty relationships, and that is what has been shown in every contribution in this House.

I look forward to a day when we have a Government on those benches actually proposing what they are going to do rather than what they are going to undo, because someday they will need to front up and share what their vision for New Zealand is.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s no doubt that Labour’s new Acts will just simply make it harder to get things done. We’ll be developing our own Resource Management Act reform programme to make it easier, not harder, to do things. We’ll build a new planning system to make it easier to consent new infrastructure. And importantly, in my electorate—central Hawke’s Bay, Tararua, Wairarapa—and across New Zealand, farmers must be allowed to farm, growers to grow, and builders to build so our economy can actually maintain its viability in the world markets. I look forward to the repeal of this legislation today.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. I wish to begin by just reflecting on a quote which was offered to this House by the member from the ACT Party, a quote which he attributed to George Washington, asserting that freedom and property rights are inseparable: you can’t have one without the other. I looked at the language of that quote, and I thought, that language doesn’t seem right for someone who is speaking in the 18th century. It just doesn’t seem right. So I googled. I googled some more and hunted around. That particular quote is often attributed to George Washington, but there is no evidence whatsoever that he actually ever said it. In fact, it was an evidence-free quote from the member for the ACT Party.

There’s a couple of things that come out of that. First of all, this happens to be an evidence-free repeal from the National Government. It stems from nowhere but a desire to undo everything that the previous Government has done. That’s despite the fact that the National Party itself, when it was last in power, tried for nine years to get reform of the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) through, and couldn’t do it. Everyone recognised that there was a problem with the RMA.

Now, these Acts that we put through when we were in Government—the Natural and Built Environment Act 2023, the Spatial Planning Act 2023—were evidence-based legislation. It was a long and evidence-based process, starting with the Randerson committee going through an exposure draft of the legislation, an exposure draft that the Environment Committee spent months—years—looking at it in order to make sure the legislation was good legislation.

Going on from that exposure draft, it went into the actual select committee process. So there was a very long select committee process during which the legislation was improved, which is exactly the purpose of a select committee process. There was a whole lot of evidence that sat behind this legislation. It was good legislation, and it is being taken away to replace with what? Diddly-squat. Just nothing, absolutely nothing.

I want to talk about that again, because one of the fascinating things about the era in which George Washington was operating, in which the founders of the American republic were operating, was one of negotiation, of consideration, of debate, of considering issues back and forth. The American Constitution didn’t come out of nowhere, and it is a document that encourages conversation and negotiation. This is exactly the process that we went through with the legislation establishing the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act—it was a process of negotiation and discussion.

Indeed, that is the characteristic of most of the legislation that goes through this House—negotiation, discussion, reflection, evidence, consideration, often done by the incredible officials we have working for us in the various Government departments, and expressed in a regulatory impact statement, expressed in various ways. But even that was done away with by this Government over here.

So the process behind this bill is flawed. There is no conversation about it. It was a simple “Let’s get rid of it”. It’s a process that overturns the evidence, the hard work, the negotiation that went on for nearly six years in order to get it right. We took our time, we got it right, and we worked on it to improve it as we went through—tossed in the bin by this Government, which, so far, has not introduced any legislation of its own. All it has done is introduce repeal bill after repeal bill after repeal bill after repeal bill, undo, destroy, destruct things, completely refuse to negotiate, do not engage in a long process that we have established in this Parliament and in this country for ensuring that there is good legislation that governs us, governs our property rights, governs the way we interact with each other. It is a disgrace, and the National Party should be ashamed.

I rise to support Resource Management (Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Repeal and Interim Fast-track Consenting) Bill. I stand as a representative of the National Party and I’m proud of my team members who, before coming into this House, have done many great things in their lives, from farming through to agriculture to horticulture. They have been at the brunt of this and they will tell you that the last thing the country needs is this unworkable legislation, holding up the construction of renewable energy, farming, and many other productive things that this country needs. So I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker—reo Māori. Ā, tēnā tātou e te Whare. Kua tae tātou ki te wāhanga tuatoru o te haerenga o tēnei pire me taku hiahia kia whakaatu atu ki tēnei Kāwanatanga i te ngako o ngā nawe e pākau atu ana ki tō tātou iwi Māori, ngā whakaaro o te iwi Māori e pākau atu ana ki tēnei pire, me te hiahia kia mōhio pū ai ēnei hunga i te hōhonutanga o ngā whakaaro me te reo Māori, tā te meakua rongo atu ahau i ētahi kei tērā taha o te Whare e kōrero Māori ana, e whakahua ana i ngā kupu Māori.

Tēnā pea anei te tauira kia whakaatuhia atu ki a rātou te hōhonutanga o tōku reo Māori. Mai i anamata, ka kōrerohia e ōku tūpuna o Ngāpuhi mō te ao i tupu nei rātou, mō te taiao i tupu nei rātou, mō tā rātou tirohanga ki te ao me te whenua ka nohoaia e rātou. Anā, me pēnei te tauira.

“Ka hanga nei i tōku whare: ko Papatūānuku te paparahi, ko ngā maunga ngā poupou, ko Ranginui e titiro iho nei te tuanui”. Ka whakarāpopoto ake ahau i tērā whakataukī. Nā e kōrero atu ana te whakataukī mō te nohoanga o Ngāpuhi ki roto o tōna ake whenua, ki roto anō hoki i tōna ake rohe.

Nā ka tae ki te taima o te Tiriti o Waitangi. Mō ngā mema kei tērā taha o te Whare, me kī pēnei au ki te Whare: ki roto i te wāhanga tuarua o te Tiriti o Waitangi, ka kī atu te Tiriti o Waitangi ki ngā rangatira o te whakaminenga te tino rangatiratanga o ō rātou whenua, ō rātou kāinga, ō rātou taonga katoa.

Ka kōrero anō au i tērā kōrero: ka hoatu ki ngā rangatiratanga o te w’akaminenga te tino rangatiratanga o ō rātou whenua, ō rātou kāinga, me ō rātou taonga katoa. Ka taea e tētahi te kī atu, “āe, he pātai kei roto”. Engari ko tāku e mea atu ana, ki tā te Māori, horekau he pātai. He mea māmā noa te kite atu i ngā kupu me ngā ngako o aua kupu ki roto i te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Nā ka tae mai ki ngā taima o tōku oranga. Ka kapohia ake e ahau ētahi kōrero mai i tōku iwi, o Ngāti Hine. Anei te kōrero a tōku matua, a Tohe Ashby, tohunga o Ngāti Hine: “Kua roa rawa a Ngāti Hine e whakapaipai ana, e whakarauora ana i ngā mahi taiao ki roto i te rohe. Ko tā mātou mahere tuatahi e pā ana ki te taiao i tukuna ki te tari kāwanatanga i te tau 1990. Koinei te mahere ā-iwi tuatahi i tukuna atu ki te Kāwanatanga. Kei roto i te mahere e kōrero ana i ngā mahi rangatira a Ngāti Hine, me ngā kaupapa i mahia e Ngāti Hine ki te tiaki i te taiao, anā, kia tāmatahia ngā repo o te taiao, anā ki te whakarauora anō hoki i ngā momo taonga pēnei i te kūkupa, pēnei i te tuna.

I tēnei wā, he wāhanga poto ki roto i te reo Pākehā e ai ki a Tohe Ashby.

[Well, greetings to all of us in the House. We have arrived at the third stage of the passage of this bill, and I would like to show this Government the thrust of the issues that our Māori people are shouldering, the opinions of the Māori people that they are carrying about this bill, and I want these people to truly understand the depth of the opinions and of the Māori language, because I have heard some people on that side of the House speaking Māori, and uttering Māori words.

Perhaps this is the example to demonstrate to them the depth of my Māori language. Since former times, my ancestors from Ngāpuhi spoke about the world in which they grew up, the environment within which they grew, and about their perceptions of the world and the land that they lived in. And so, the example should go like this.

“I will build my own house: Papatūānuku is the floor, the mountains are the supporting pillars, the roof is Ranginui that is looking down upon us”. I will summarise that proverb. So the proverb speaks about how Ngāpuhi lived on their own land, and in their own region.

And then we get to the time of the Treaty of Waitangi. For the members on that side of the House, I should say to the House: in the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi guarantees the leaders of the assembly the sovereignty over their lands, their homes, and all of their taonga.

I will repeat that statement: it gives the leaders of the assembly the sovereignty over their lands, their homes, and all of their taonga. Someone can say, “Yes, there are questions in there”. But what I am saying is that, according to Māori, there is no question. It is perfectly simple to see the words and the substance of those words in the Treaty of Waitangi.

And then we come to the times of my life. I will grab some of the statements of my people, of Ngāti Hine. This is the statement of my patriarch, of Tohe Ashby, expert of Ngāti Hine: “For a long time, Ngāti Hine has been improving and revitalising the environmental work within the region. Our first plan regarding the environment was submitted to the Government. Within the plan, it speaks about the noble efforts of Ngāti Hine, and the initiatives that were conducted by Ngāti Hine to protect the environment, you see, to restore the wetlands of the environment, and also to revitalise particular kinds of taonga like the wood pigeon, and like the eel.”

At this time, a short section in the English language according to Tohe Ashby.]

To be a good kaitiaki is a responsibility not a right. It is a responsibility that we as Ngāti Hine are born with and one where the right answers for the future are the best found by the first understanding and the knowledge and wisdom left to us by our tūpuna.

Anei ngā kōrero a ōku mātua, a ōku tūpuna e pā ana ki te taiao. Ko tāku e mea atu ana ki tēnei Whare, e hoa, ki roto i tēnei pire ka haukoti i te mana i kōrerohia ai e te Tiriti o Waitangi, i mahingia ai e ōku mātua tūpuna ki roto i ngā tau tekau tata kua pahure ake nei, me te whakaaro ake he aha te take e pēnei ana te Kāwanatanga? Ahakoa tā rātou tohetohe ki roto i te Whare e mea nei, “oh, kei konei mātou mō te katoa o Aotearoa”, e hoa ki roto i tēnei pire me wā rātou mahi kua kite atu kua kaupare ake i ngā mana tūāhua, anā i te mana o tōku iwi, o te iwi Māori.

Ka tīkina ake e ahau tētahi atu kōrero. E 35 tau ki muri, i tukuna atu e tōku tupuna, e Tā Hēmi Henare, tāna kerēme ki mua i te aroaro o te Taraipiunara. E mea nei te kōrero ko Wai 49. Anā ko te tikanga o tēnei kerēme ki mua i te aroaro o te Taraipiunara kia werohia te Kāwanatanga i taua taima nā te mea i tūkinohia e te Kāwanatanga tōna awa o Taumārere, anā me te wāhi ataahua rawa atu i Pipiri, arā ko te Moana i Pikopiko-i-whiti.

Ā te Pēpuere e tae mai nei, ka haere atu ngā mema katoa o tēnei Whare, anā, ki te Moana i Pikopiko-i-whiti, arā ko te Bay of Islands. Kei reira i hainatia ai te Tiriti o Waitangi, ko taku tono ki tēnei Kāwanatanga, tēnā, haere mai ki runga i a au, ki runga o Waitangi. Ko reira totohe ai tātou i ngā kaupapa ki roto i tēnei pire.

E hoa, tīkina mai te mea hei whakapākehā ake i taku kōrero, whakapākehā ake i taku kōrero.

[These are the statements of my forebears, of my ancestors, regarding the environment. What I am saying to this House, my friend, in this bill the authority that was spoken about in the Treaty of Waitangi is cut off, the efforts of my ancestors over the last 10 years, and the thought occurs why is the Government behaving like this? Despite their contention in the House that says, “Oh, we are here for all of New Zealand”, my friend, in this bill and their actions it can be seen that they are averting situational mana—i.e., the mana of my people, the Māori people.

I will take another quote. Thirty-five years ago, my ancestor, Sir James Henare, submitted his claim before the tribunal. It is known as Wai 49. And the purpose of this claim before the tribunal was to challenge the Government of the time because the Government had abused his river, the Taumārere, and that exceptionally beautifully place in Pipiri, i.e., Te Moana i Pikopiko-i-whiti.

In the coming February, all the members of this House will go, you see, to te Moana i Pikopiko-i-whiti, i.e., to the Bay of Islands. That is where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. My appeal to the Government: come to me and my people, come to Waitangi. There we will debate the topics within this bill.

My friend, grab the device to translate my speech, to translate my speech.]

💬 Simon Court: It’s on the screen—I’m reading it.

Āe, ka kite engari kīhai koe i kite; ka rongo engari kīhai koe i rongo. Koinā hoki tāku e mea atu ana me tiki atu te mea ki tō taringa.

Ka kī mai taku tupuna i tūkinohia e te Karauna tōna awa o Taumārere, i tūkinohia e te Karauna tōna moana, te Moana i Pikopiko-i-whiti.

Nā ki roto i ngā tau tekau kua pahure ake nei, i tarai mātou o Ngāti Hine, o te ao Māori, te mahi ngātahi ki te Kāwanatanga kia whakatutukihia ngā kōrero kei roto i te pire i whakamanahia e te Rōpū Reipā i nāini tata ake nei. Anā ko te oranga o te taiao; anā ko Te Mana o te Wai; anā ko ngā mana whakahono ā-iwi. I rongo atu ahau i ngā kōrero a te Minita, kīhai au e whakapono ki wāna kōrero ka whakamanahia aua tūāhuatanga ki roto i ngā mahi kei mua i a tātou.

Kua kōrero mai ōku hoamahi mō te korenga o tētahi matakitetanga mai i tēnei Kāwanatanga ka pēhea ina ka whakakorengia tēnei o ngā pire. Nō reira e te Māngai o te Whare, kua rongo atu ahau i ngā amuamu a wētahi me te hōhā ki tōku reo Māori. E hoa, ka kī atu ahau ki tērā tangata i tupu mai taku reo Māori i tōku whenua. Nō te whenua pū tōku reo Māori. Kia kaua tētahi e haukoti nei i tōku reo Māori ki roto i tēnei whenua, ki runga anō hoki i tēnei o ngā whenua taurikura o te wā kāinga nei.

Koinā te take o tērā o ngā pāti, he kūare. He kūare ki ngā kōrero tuku iho o tēnei whenua, o ōku mātua, o ōku tūpuna. Ko te tono atu ki tērā mema me ngā mema katoa o tērā taha o te Whare, haere mai ki runga i a au, ki runga o Waitangi ki reira kōrero ai tātou i te take. Haere mai ki te hui o Rātana. Kāore e kore ka tae mai. Haere mai, ko reira ka werohia anō e te ao Māori tēnei Kāwanatanga me wā rātou mahi haukoti i te mana motuhake a te Māori.

E tino whakahē nei mātou i tēnei pire. E whakakorengia te pire i pahure ai tō mātou Kāwanatanga. Tirohia ki ngā kupu, e te mema, tirohia ki ngā kupu “mana whakahono”, tirohia ki ngā kupu “te oranga o te taiao”, tirohia ki ngā kupu “Te Mana o te Wai”.

Koinā te mate ki roto i tēnei pire, ka mutu e te Māngai o te Whare, kua tohua nei e tēnei Kāwanatanga tā rātou mahere ki roto i ngā tau e toru kei mua i a tātou. Anā ko tāku e mea atu ana ki tō tātou iwi Māori: kia mataara mai, kia rite mai; he pakanga kei te haere. Kua kite atu i ngā mahi kaupapa here a tēnei Kāwanatanga, me tāku e mea atu ana kei konei mātou te ao Māori e whakakorengia, e tū ana ki runga i tō mātou ake mana motuhake, he mana motuhake nō tua whakarere, ka kore tētahi e haukotingia.

Kīhai au i tautoko i tēnei pire.

[Yes, you see but you do not see; you hear but you do not hear. That is what I am saying, grab the device and put it to your ear.

My ancestor said that the Crown abused his river of Taumārere, and the Crown abused his sea, Te Moana i Pikopiko-i-whiti.

So in the last 10 years, we, Ngāti Hine, and the entire Māori society, attempted to work together with the Government to bring to fruition the statements within the bill that was enacted by the Labour Party recently. That is, the health of the environment; that is, the power of water; that is, the iwi participation arrangements. I heard the statements of the Minister. I do not believe his statements that those features will be enacted in the activities that are before us.

My colleagues have spoken about the lack of a single prediction from this Government about how things will go if this particular bill is repealed. So I have heard the complaints of some and their irritation with my Māori language. My friend, I say to that person that my Māori language grew out of my land. My Māori language is from right in the land. Let no one cut off my Māori language in this land, and also on this prosperous land of this home.

We absolutely oppose this bill. It repeals the bill that our Government passed. To the member, look to the words, look to the words “iwi participation agreement”, look to the words “the health of the environment”, look to the words “the power of water”.

That is the issue of that party—they are ignorant. They are ignorant of the history of this land, of my forebears, of my ancestors. The appeal to that member and all the members on that side of the House is come to me—and my people—come to Waitangi where we will discuss the issue. Come to the meeting at Rātana. There is no doubt that you will come. Welcome, and there this Government will again be challenged by the Māori people, and also their actions to cut off the self-determination of the Māori.

That is the problem with this bill, and furthermore, this Government has signalled their plan for the three years that are before us. And so what I am saying to our Māori people: be vigilant, be ready; a battle is coming. We’ve seen the policy activities of this Government, and what I am saying is that we are here, Māori society that is being dispensed with. We stand on our special authority, a special authority passed down to us from former times. It will never be cut off.

I do not commend this bill.]

I am thrilled to be speaking in the third reading of the Resource Management (Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Repeal and Interim Fast-track Consenting) Bill. This bill, in its 1,300 pages, just added to the storm of reform on local government. Local government have lost their democracy in the Resource Management Act reform that the previous Government put forward. We must not waste a moment of time in getting this bill repealed. So with that, I commend this bill to the House.