Resource Management (Extended Duration of Coastal Permits for Marine Farms) Amendment Bill

Members, we now come to the Resource Management (Extended Duration of Coastal Permits for Marine Farms) Amendment Bill. Members, we first come to Part 1. Part 1 is the debate on clause 4, “Amendments to Part 7A of Resource Management Act 1991”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My first question to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries relates to this rather unusual provision in this Draconian piece of legislation that says that on the rare occasions that a council might be so brave as to embark upon a review of a decades-old consent for use of a marine farm, they can’t recover the costs of doing so.

My question of the Minister, who is so old that he was in the office of Geoffrey Palmer when the Resource Management Act (RMA) was originally passed and so has intimate knowledge of the Resource Management Act more generally—my question of the Minister, who will be aware that the Resource Management Act has always allowed for a charging regime to be imposed by regional councils for the use of marine space—for example, if a regional council wants to charge for a boatshed or for the occupation of marine space for marine farming, my understanding, under the RMA, is that a regional council would be able to embark upon a charging regime for the private use of the public space.

So my question for the Minister is: having taken away the right of a council to charge for the costs of reviewing the terms of an occupation licence for aquaculture, is he also taking away the discretion of councils to have a charging regime for the occupation of marine space, which is currently allowed for under the Resource Management Act? And, if I’m wrong that that right currently applies under the Resource Management, could he correct me as to my misapprehension?

Thank you. Mālō e lelei, Mr Chair. Thank you. I know this is the committee of the whole House stage, and I have a number of questions that I’d like to pose to the Minister. It’s certainly accepted that Part 1 is the substantive part with a number of suggested amendments to a number of clauses there.

One of the issues that was raised by submitters—and I’d just note that even with the reduced number of days that were available for select committee submissions, actually 13, over 1,000 submissions were received. First of all, there was a consistent theme around opposition to the bill, but that to one side, if that was not going to be accepted by the Government, then there were a number of suggestions around changing the time frame within which the coastal permits would be set down. There are a couple of Amendment Papers in my name that do seek to do exactly that.

If I can turn to new Subpart 1A—and I apologise in advance, but as we work through each of these new sections, many of them are like alphabet sections—new section 165ZFHA, inserted by clause 4, which comes down to the interpretation. I would like to ask the Minister whether he is satisfied, given the passage of time since he has considered this matter, that there is a view out there that, actually, a more appropriate term could be that of a 10-year period of extension that is automatic—there’s an Amendment Paper in my name that does reflect that; that’s Amendment Paper 55—or what was offered up, which was actually widely supported by the public in terms of submissions, which was a five-year period.

Now, I know the Minister has previously indicated that the 20-year period is where it sits, but I think what’s really important is justification for concerns around mitigating aspects that might need to be considered and whether a five-year or a 10-year period, which may be seen as a short-term or a medium-term sort of perspective, might be more appropriate. So I have a number of questions for most of these clauses. In the spirit of the committee stage, I’ll leave it here and pick up once we get a response from the Minister.

Thank you, Mr Chair. My question follows on from my colleague the Hon David Parker, who raised the issue around local councils having to foot the bill if they wish to do a review of a coastal permit. In the select committee process, the majority of all councils that submitted on this piece of legislation were in opposition to this rollover of consents, regardless of environmental impacts or the ability for people to participate in the process and encourage a review. When it comes to councils having to foot the bill for this in particular, there were concerns raised around the cost of it. We know that there is a substantial cost to review these consents, and the unfairness of it having to be footed by, basically, the ratepayers.

I’d like the Minister to help us understand why he feels that local ratepayers should have to foot the bill should councils wish to do a review of a consent, given that ratepayers already pay substantial amounts of money to councils for various other things. Why should ratepayers be charged for a consent review when, in fact, these farms are in the sea and in the ocean, which are, in my understanding, the commons where no one has specific ownership of that particular area? I would like the Minister to explain to us why he has decided that councils should have to foot the bill for any review of consents, whereby ratepayers will have to foot the bill for something that, in actual fact, they are not part of—for example, a marine farm.

It’s not they who are potentially causing pollution, it is not they who are causing any issues, and yet, unfairly, they will have to be the ones that will ultimately pay for any review, thereby making it difficult for their councils, I think, to undertake reviews, because ratepayers will be up in arms if they think councils are spending their money on things that they don’t think are fairly their cost. So I’d like the Minister to explain to us what the thinking is behind that decision.

It’s a pleasure to stand and help shepherd this overdue piece of legislation through the House. Of course, this piece of legislation points out that at a deeper level, we actually need an aquaculture bill. Sadly, I was unable to achieve everything I wanted in this bill, and I will now turn to the questions posed by the former Attorney-General.

Now, this is unashamedly a piece of legislation designed to generate more confidence and certainty in industry to create jobs and to boost economic earnings and export revenue. Yes, it will require the council to meet the costs on the rare occasion that they may find that there is a strong need to review the conditions of farms that had existed for decades, and the next 25 years will give the confidence to the owners of these farms and their permits that they can dedicate their scarce resources to actually achieving economic outcomes, rather than playing a type of roller derby with the local councils.

The council can conduct a review of the conditions, but no council is going to be allowed any longer to pursue their aberrant ways or, indeed, act on nimbyism, which has driven, sadly, an enormous amount of cost structure into this industry. It’s a very good discipline that where the conditions must be reviewed, it has to be of such a threshold with such an egregious case that the councillors and the staff believe it’s worthwhile on behalf of the community to dedicate community resources to address these particular conditions, and not be driven by the growing number of people who want to protect their property values and advocate for amenity values, which go straight into the capital and strengthen the capital value of the small number of New Zealanders that own properties at the beach who don’t want to see aquaculture.

Aquaculture is an industry equally as important as the landscape and amenity values enjoyed by the small number of Marlborough bach owners who have had a very long and successful career at driving aquaculture out of the Marlborough Sounds, and I don’t like that council, because they actually created the seabed and foreshore debacle. Whilst the law does enable it to happen, it ensures that they have to be genuinely serious concerns. Now, there have been some remarks made that scientists and ecologists are concerned. Ecologists must not be allowed to interfere any longer in any indiscriminate, unreasonable way with the march of economic growth to get some jobs in the regions.

In relation to why we are settling for a year of 2050, now, it is quite a long time: 25 years. Given that on 3 September 2024, I’m going to be 65, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll see the full fruition—

💬 Hon Tama Potaka: You don’t look like it.

Who knows, who knows, who knows; young at heart, young at heart—though it’s highly likely that this will remain a contested area. But these are long-term capital investments, and resource management, in so far as industry exists within the marine environment, is about trade-offs. We can’t allow a minority range of concerns to overwhelm the need for regions to boost and create and enlarge the economic footprint in their own neighbourhood to keep people employed and to keep the confidence in the community so that we don’t see this onward drift of people away to Australia, or, indeed, the urban drift. That should provide a necessary understanding as to why the period of time to 2050 is very important.

Now, the Hon David Parker raises a very good point: what is the return to the Crown or to the public for the occupation of what you might say is the commons—i.e., private enterprises occupying either oceanic space in the future, or seabed and foreshore for the purposes of mussels and oysters? Sadly, that particular issue has been confused by the mission creep that we’re seeing in the seabed and foreshore legislation. Hopefully, we will have time to address that oversight in the near future.

Thank you, Mr Chair. There is a situation we have here where we did receive substantial submissions from the Marlborough District Council, which the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries is so disdainful of; a council, I might add, which, in its region, manages 80 percent of the entire value of aquaculture in New Zealand and has 600 of the 1,200 farms in New Zealand. It’s the overwhelming majority consenting authority for the wealth and value that is in marine farming, so it’s strange that we can’t pay some attention to their wisdom on it. I’m sure that in the consideration of resource consents, all factors are taken into account, and that’s as it should be.

One amendment that I propose to you, which is a follow-on from my colleague’s opposite—or alongside, rather, is—

💬 Hon Rachel Brooking: Same side.

Same side—colleague “Same Side”. One amendment that I propose to you is to make it a five-year extension. Now, that was the most commonly struck-upon number by submitters. It’s still a very generous thing to have a free five-year extension. I will speak later to amendments that address the problem of giving extensions to farms that are deemed to be in inappropriate areas.

Also, the other amendment I’d like to speak to—that first one I spoke to was Amendment Paper 60; that’s changing it from 20 years to five years in new section 165ZFHC of new Subpart 1A, inserted by clause 4. The other amendment I’d like to speak to is regarding the director-general.

💬 Hon Shane Jones: Ah, yes.

Pardon me?

💬 Hon Shane Jones: The Crown.

When a consent authority does deem it appropriate to review a consent, currently, there is a requirement, as this legislation has it, that they must get the approval of the director-general. Now, they should not have to get that approval. We also propose that that is an amendment so that if the consenting authority does determine that they’re going to do a review, they don’t have to get the director-general’s approval—that would be less top-down oriented in a central government and less telling the regions what to do. It’s not localism by any stretch, this legislation.

We propose replacing new section 165ZFHI(4), inserted by clause 4, with: “A consent authority is entitled to recover the costs of a review undertaken under this subpart, including any costs arising from a request by the Director-General under section 165ZFHK(3) for information not held by the consent authority in its normal course of business.” And, in Part 2, we propose inserting new clause 5AA, amending section 36: “After 36(1A)(b): insert: (c) section 165ZFHI in relation to the review of conditions for a coastal permit extended under subpart 1A of Part 7A.” That’s Amendment Paper 58.

That amendment would, again, mean that local communities are not paying for the cost of a reasonable review of a consent activity in their area. To my colleague’s point: why is it that ratepayers should have to pay for the reasonable management and assessment and reviewing of consents in their area when, in fact, it is a commercial activity? And the cost of that commercial activity, the cost of its licence to operate, should reasonably be included in its costs. It should be something that that commercial activity pays for.

When we asked and put that question to most of the commercial players in the Primary Production Committee process, they also thought it was reasonable. No one could contest that they should rightly have to pay for the costs of a review of their consent or any of their consent processes. I invite the Minister to support that amendment. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s disappointing to hear the Minister’s response around the lack of support for the proposed time frames, including the one that Mr Abel has just referred to. That is disappointing.

It’s actually also very disappointing to hear his disdain for Marlborough District Council. Perhaps he’d like to have a conversation with his colleague Mr Arbuckle—I mean Councillor Arbuckle, who still sits on that district council. That would be a very interesting caucus committee conversation, perhaps, wouldn’t it? Maybe Mr Arbuckle may want to ask the Minister some questions around that, given he is representing the ratepayers of that council that the Minister has such disdain for. But, anyway, we’ll see if that goes anywhere. Minister, I want to put to you—

💬 Suze Redmayne: Not disdain. He just doesn’t agree with everything they say.

Well, feel free to take a call over that side. I’m very interested to hear in what your contributions and questions might be.

I’m interested to hear from the Minister in terms of the conditions of new section 165ZFHC(3)(a)—this relates to a change in a condition, and, Minister, you’ve cited a process around where conditions may be sought to be changed or are up for review. I’m interested in what an example would be of a change to one of those conditions that would be required as a consequence of extending the duration of the permit, because it seems that the extension action is the actual trigger that would bleed into what that change in condition would be. So, given that the trigger is in the bill, perhaps it would be helpful for the committee to just get an understanding of what one of those conditions might be.

I’ll turn to 165ZFHD. I am going in some form of chronological order, albeit alphabetically. This is where there would be a requirement to update the nature of the extended coastal permit, and it’s particularly around the duration aspect. Minister, there appear to be two options under new subsection (1)(a) when a decision is made that is a decision taken by way of the application that’s lodged—either the first decision to continue operating under the existing permit or the second to continue with an application. So my question is whether or not there is any thinking around the fact that if there is a continuation of an application that, effectively, is live whilst there is still a decision to be taken in relation to the existing permit. There will be cost implications associated with that.

Given the Minister’s view that the councils should not be seeking to, effectively, cost-recover anything—and there is an Amendment Paper in my name that would seek to change that, and I’ll come to that in due course—what consideration is there for cost implications but also in terms of notification to the relevant council or consent authority of that decision to either continue to operate under the existing conditions of the permit or for the council to continue to process the application? How was that notification to take place? Elsewhere through this bill, it refers to written notification. Is that form of the notification going to continue to be silent? Will it be something that is set via annual regulations? The consistency aspect, I think, is quite important. I’ll leave the Minister with those sets of questions.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a number of questions for the Minister Shane Jones, but I would kind of like to start by talking about new section 165ZHFC in the context of “Extension of coastal permits for marine farms”, specifically new subsection (1), in the sense that I understand the intention of this bill is to extend such coastal permits to 2050. However, I wanted to ask the Minister whether he has considered some of the options that have been put forward in the regulatory impact statement, because I understand there are a lot of people—according to the Minister’s response previously—that the Minister doesn’t like or doesn’t think deserve any sort of attention or say regarding this particular aspect. I would have assumed that, as a Minister, the Minister would at least take on board some of the recommendations by the Ministry for the Environment as well as the Ministry for Primary Industries.

I turn to page 17 of the regulatory impact statement, where it specifically talks about, for all forms of extensions, the negative impact that it will have in terms of promoting the sustainable management of natural and physical resources, as well as upholding the Crown’s Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, obligations. Has the Minister considered the ministry and the Minister’s own ministry’s advice on some of these areas? In particular, I also want to draw attention to paragraph 76 on page 18, where officials consider options three and four. In this case, options three and four are extending the consent by 15 years or extending all consents by 25 years, not consents to 2050 as a blanket approach.

I wondered if the Minister could enlighten us as to why those two options were not considered when the officials themselves said that these two options are likely to best deliver on the Government’s goals, with relatively similar net benefits that the Minister has spoken about. I think, in particular, with the Minister talking about the economic benefit, it seems like option three, which is to extend all consent by 15 years, would deliver similar economic benefits that the Minister suggested. Why was that also not considered? If the Minister wouldn’t mind clarifying some of the advice that the ministry has provided which isn’t reflected in the bill.

If I can start with the rather discursive remarks from the last speaker, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, the focus on the date of 2050 or the 20-year duration is driven by a solid commitment to turn around the dire economic circumstances in many parts of regional New Zealand. Yes, we can mount arguments. Five years may enable people to enjoy some short relief before they go through the thicket of unnecessary costs being imposed by these indiscriminate grandees living in regional council with no conception of how their bureaucratic decisions impose costs on long-suffering entrepreneurs and the people that are the backbone of the New Zealand aquaculture industry. I don’t like that thinking.

The second thing: I think the most recent speaker made reference to the fact that I am circumventing or undermining Crown obligations to iwi. A substantial settlement was entered into, in the Helen Clark Government, in terms of an aquaculture settlement. It has been blighted because regional councils have been unwilling, through the planning system, both with regional coastal policy statements, regional plans, and, for me, a very jaundiced interpretation of the coastal national policy statement—something that needs a kina cut, severe pruning. The people that already hold consents as a consequence of this extension will be freed from all of that detritus.

There will be no more indiscriminate cost impositions dreamed up by people who actually are driven, sadly, to undermine industry, because the local communities are the beneficiaries when there is a thriving aquaculture enterprise. They’re often the only jobs in that particular area, but they shouldn’t be used as a mine, where rents are extracted by regional council, unless it’s absolutely necessary. That level of necessity will be arrived at by dint of the fact that the ratepayers and the council need to pay for it—a brilliant discipline, because, after all, the owners of these enterprises need to be disciplined with their spending.

And, yes, OK, some of my remarks may have been a bit rhetorical about the Marlborough council. I know there are some redeemable members of that council, but from time to time—from time to time—the truth must be spoken. The truth of the matter is that particular council is covered perpetually in shame, because they created the imbroglio of the seabed and foreshore, and this is a small response enabling us to better use the seabed and foreshore resources to create jobs and not to pander to the indiscriminate, tiny, irrelevant concerns of ecologists and other such people.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Where to start? We’ve heard about—

💬 Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Nothing.

Ha, ha—nothing! We’ve heard some florid language. We have talked about this power to undertake a review and how, strangely for the Resource Management Act (RMA), this amendment says that a consent authority cannot charge for a review of consent, and we’ve heard the Minister answer that.

Then we have, at the next clause down, the purpose of the review, and some strange language for the Resource Management Act, but it says, “as long as the review is undertaken in a way that—(a) is consistent with Part 2;”—that being Part 2 of the RMA, and we know that sustainable management purpose—“and (b) does not prevent the permit holder from carrying out the aquaculture activity to which the coastal permit relates.” So my first question, with zero rhetoric, is: what is the temporal scale of that (b)? Is the permit holder not able to be prevented from carrying out the aquaculture activity whilst the review is being undertaken? Or is it that they can never be prevented from undertaking that aquaculture work, which would defeat any point of a review happening in the first place, whoever was paying for it? And we know, in this case, it will only be ratepayers who could possibly be paying for it, because of the avoidance of section 36 of the Resource Management Act.

I want to focus on some of the things that the Minister has told us. He has told us that this is all about jobs and that these activities are extant. He hasn’t referred to any evidence showing that they are forecast to continue for ever. I am sure that is his view, though. He hasn’t provided any evidence about these “aberrant” councils reviewing consents, but he has mentioned, a lot, “landscape concerns” and “amenity”. I would commend to him the Natural and Built Environment Act that this Government has repealed, because that did a lot to change the strength of amenity that we have in the Resource Management Act, and I think that is something that this Government should go back to, of course. But, if this is true—if the Minister has the evidence to show that the council is behaving terribly and reviewing all these consents based on amenity values based on landscape—then that could be in the purpose of the review, and the council could have to pay for their own reviews if it was related to those landscape and amenity issues. But no.

What we heard then was that ecologists are trouble as well, and maybe don’t go back to the Natural and Built Environment Act if you don’t like ecologists or environmental bottom lines. I am, of course, in favour of these things—caring about the environment—and that, of course, is what the purpose of the RMA is to some extent as well, with its sustainable management purpose. And that takes us back, of course, to the purpose of the review having to be consistent with Part 2. There should always be a role for ecologists in this. The Minister talked about indiscriminate “detritus”, and I put it to the Minister that indiscriminate detritus can sometimes have important ecological effects, and those effects are ones that may need to be assessed. It should not be for the ratepayers to assess those effects, if they are having a detrimental effect on the environment—the environment that is everybody’s and not just those permit holders’.

So my question is: one, how can the Minister have so much disregard for the environment when this clause still refers to Part 2 and all of these sections are within the Resource Management Act, the purpose of which is sustainable management? And, secondly, what is the temporal nature of new section 165ZFHJ(b)?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you to the other members for giving me the opportunity to ask the Minister to illuminate further what I think is a very salient issue—I think we haven’t canvassed it at all well, and I think this is a wonderful opportunity for the Minister to do that—employment in regional New Zealand and what it actually looks like. I think the Minister might have an opportunity to contextualise, for my benefit, in this jaundiced environment, tino rangatiratanga, giving people self-determination. We hear about it all the time, Minister, from members of the Opposition, that we have an economic activity seen to be sitting in the doldrums. Sir, could you speak to what Part 1 looks like in terms of the extension of 20 years, given places like Auckland Council have certainly afforded a longer period of time, and what that looks like as help to our regions—especially areas like Northland?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have several concerns and questions, and depending on how the debate fares, I also have some proposed amendments tabled. Because I can understand the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries’ appetite for growth, I’d like to ask the Minister for his reflections, please, on how this bill will serve, or relates to, our seafood sector requirements to meet our international trade obligations. I am thinking of free-trade agreements with the UK and the EU and their chapters on trade and environment, when they talk about kaitiakitanga and mauri.

In a similar vein, we are aware that our international trading partners have increasingly rigorous expectations around the credible, sustainable food production—be that terrestrial or marine. So I’d like to understand how the Minister understands the passing of this bill, as currently proposed, will support our marine farm consent holders in modernising, perhaps, to actually keep abreast of these increasing standards over the next 20-odd years, because 20-odd years is a long time, as the Minister has said, and I just do wonder at the wisdom of issuing consents for such a period with such massive changes happening climatically—rising sea water temperatures is one example.

I ask these questions because I wonder whether, firstly, a blanket extension is appropriate for all 1,200 marine farms or whether some form of nuancing might be appropriate, in case, for example, where we do have existing marine farms that do fall short of our regulations of national environmental standards maybe based on their location. Secondly, I wonder whether the review provisions are strong enough or whether they might be appropriate, if only to signal some kind of a direction of modernisation intent.

My other area of concern relates to the appropriate locus of decision-making power. I would like to acknowledge the submissions of the learned officials—among them tangata whenua, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Environmental Defence Society, and, notably, the regional councils’ consenting authorities themselves—for highlighting the very practical realities that the appropriate locus of decision-making power, in terms of this bill in new Subpart 1B, should be local or regional. The whakapapa in each rohe moana and rohe whenua is unique, and, yes, fish are whanaunga too. The mauri, even if we were to define it crudely as the state of biodiversity of each of those rohe moana and rohe whenua, are also specific to place. The kaitiaki ahi kā, those with mana i te whenua and mana i te moana, have obligations to tiaki, to care for, the whakapapa of those places.

My third question to the Minister is, therefore: why are we introducing a central government actor? Why is that needed—in this case, the Director-General for the Ministry for Primary Industries—when regional councils have been doing this work since the beginning of the Resource Management Act and are best placed to assess the adequacy of existing consent conditions and make recommendations according to best practice, if not to the national environmental standards for marine aquaculture?

I do have other concerns relating to appropriateness of cost-recovery provisions, but I think our colleagues on this side of the Chamber have covered those, so I won’t venture into that territory. Thank you. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

There are a number of remarks that cannot go on in their false and ill-conceived way. There is the fiction that amenity and landscape values are of a greater level of significance than jobs and household livelihoods. To the former Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, one need look no further than the debacle of the salmon company struggling after spending $10 million to seek a resource consent—$10 million down the gurgler of consultants, unelected bureaucrats, and unhelpful scientists, people who are driven to act in a manner inversely related to economic durability in their communities. Who wins from that type of attitude?

Yes, there are a tiny number of property owners in areas such as Marlborough Sounds who do not want this type of industry. They should not be able to drive the outcomes that affect hundreds if not thousands of New Zealand families who do not have university degrees to complicate common-sense things and who do not have access to the deep pockets of those groups who want to weaponise environmental law and hide it behind consultants’ gobbledegook. All of that is gone now in this bill. This bill cuts through that level of bureaucratic molasses—all gone. This is purely ensuring that those elements are not weaponised to the point we’re driving communities into penury.

On the matter of giving evidence that a regional council has frustrated, look no further than the area I hail from. The capacity to create additional marine farming enterprises off the coast of Te Tai Tokerau hovers near zero. Yes, there is an example where a group did create, off the shores of Stephenson Island out of Whangaroa Harbour, some new space for mussel farms. That took them millions of dollars, but they now have a consent, and they’ve got it till 2050. They don’t have to submit themselves to these invasive, costly, woke-riddled processes. That’s why this bill is very important.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to take another call in this committee of the whole House stage. Minister, we had 1,100 submitters—1,000 submitters opposed the bill in its current form. We had many submitters suggest time frames of five years, 10 years—and, yes, I know this has been brought up before, but I have a different angle to this, Mr Chair. Both my colleagues Tangi Utikere and Steve Abel also have amendments put forward with regards to the time frames that were suggested. The Minister himself has said that the 20-year duration is to give certainty, to give the opportunity for growth, for regional economic development in the regions, for employment opportunities, and all those things. No one is arguing that that is not a good thing. We all want thriving agricultural marine farms. We all want good regional employment, good regional job opportunities.

The Minister also said that he would have loved to have, ideally, an aquaculture bill and that he couldn’t or didn’t do all the things that he wanted to in this particular bill. I ask the Minister, then, why, aside from the reasons he’s given us, he didn’t seek to give a shorter time frame of the five and 10 years to the sector, for a rollover that would give them certainty and that would give some regional development opportunities for jobs, so that then this would not have been a rushed process and he could have developed a bill that is fit for purpose, that meets all the things that he wanted to do, that gives everyone certainty going forward and looks after the environment, and that ensures proper consultation happens.

We’ve heard many—we had 13 days, I think, for an opportunity for people to submit—concerns around the ability for tangata whenua, iwi, and hapū, to be able to really be consulted on this, for the public, everyone, to be consulted and have the ability to submit on this. Why then did the Minister not take that into consideration and, therefore, have a bill that was fit for purpose, that was not rushed—like this piece of legislation—and that would give him the opportunity to put forward the aquaculture bill that he really wanted to put forward?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m still interested to hear from the Minister around the method for notification under new Subpart 1A, new section 165ZFHD. Just further in that particular section, specifically new subsection (3), it talks about a situation where a permit holder decides to continue to operate under an extant coastal permit that would be extended under this particular subpart. If someone is doing that, then there is a requirement here where they must withdraw the application. This is a situation where there’s an application that’s live and they make the decision to continue to operate under the existing conditions or under the existing permit. This clause requires the permit holder to withdraw the application that they have lodged within a time frame of two months.

Now, my question to the Minister is: why can’t that be automatic? If there is a requirement for notification to occur to the consenting authority under previous provisions—and I’ve got it here; I can tell the Minister, if he needs it—why then is there a requirement for there to be the onus on the applicant to actively withdraw an application? I know that this is largely administrative, but I think it’s an important point that, yes, there’s a requirement under this bill for existing permit holders who would be subject to this extension to make a decision either to continue under the existing conditions of the current permit they hold or to continue with an application that’s currently lodged. In the circumstance where they wish to do the former, as I understand it, there is a requirement for them to withdraw the application, but there’s also a requirement for them to notify the consenting authority of the decision they wish to make. So that’s one particular question to the Minister.

The other is in new section 165ZFHF. This is about the decision to operate under extant coastal permits. Now, new subsection (2) talks about when the surrender of a permit would actually take effect. My question to the Minister is—and language is important, because I know that details matter—when it comes to surrendering, effectively, a permit, what does that actually mean? Why don’t we have the word “cancel” in there? Is it because that at some point in time, actually, that surrendered—what is the status of the surrendered permit? Once the permit is surrendered, is that the end of it, or does it sit there with the potential for it to be uplifted at a future point in time?

So the first question is: why is it that there is an onus on the applicant to withdraw an application where they’ve already made a decision to, effectively, have their permit extended? The second question is around the status of a surrendered permit—and I do note that it is a replacement permit, but none the less, is there a reason as to why it’s surrendered and not simply cancelled?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I would like to first thank the Minister for providing me with much-needed entertainment. But I have yet to get a response from the Minister regarding the question that I asked. I understand the Minister’s position on a lot of the things that he mentioned, but I was specifically asking it in the context of the regulatory impact statement, particularly where the regulatory impact statement talks about the negative impact on promoting the sustainable management of natural and physical resources and upholding.

I would just like to get a clarification from the Minister: if the Minister believes there is no negative impact to the natural and physical resources or that the Crown / Tiriti obligations have been upheld, would that mean that the regulatory impact statement, as has been stated here, is incorrect? Which is good; which is fine. We get that. But it would be good to get that from the Minister.

The other thing that we mentioned before, and one of the other speakers mentioned before, is in terms of what this does to the regions. I will also, I guess, at this stage like to point out that all regional and unitary councils oppose this bill. It would be really good to get the response from the Minister that if this is really good for regional development—and I really hope that it is; also it did state here in the regulatory impact statement that it does have certainty for industry and consent authorities; this is not my area of specialty—why then would the regional and unitary councils oppose this bill if it’s going to be good for the regions? If the Minister wouldn’t mind clarifying that as well.

On the off chance that this does have potential future impact, because the extension of this bill goes to 2050, as we mentioned, has there been any modelling? Again, providing jobs is really, really important for the regions, and we would like to see those jobs sustained for long periods of time. I would like to ask the Minister or the officials whether there has been any sort of modelling around when certain environments or when the agriculture or the consent itself can no longer sustain the same level of jobs or production through a variety of reasons—the degradation of natural resources or the natural environment being one of them. But, for the sake of talking about the courses just in general, has any modelling been done in case something doesn’t go according to plan over the next 25 years? What are some of the mechanisms for that?

In this case, I’m looking at new section 165ZFHC(3), where we’re looking at “The conditions applying to … coastal permit”, and I wondered if anything has been done around that, if any sort of additional conditions or any sort of wiggle room has been provided during this period, or if we are going to see an exponential or increasing investment into something for the same level of output or for the same level of sustainability. I think the Minister used a very key word here, “economic durability”, which I agree with, and I think it would be nice for us to have that, but what happens if we are putting in more investment into it than the output? Would that be considered durable?

Those are the three questions that I would like to get some response from the Minister on. Also just, Mr Chair, for you as well, so far what I’m hearing is we’re still sort of on the new Subpart 1A part of this discussion, but it’d be really good at some stage to weigh in, when we get the clarifications that we ask for from the Minister in due time and move on to new Subpart 1B. Thank you.

I want to go back to something the Minister said in response to my questions, and that was about amenity. I think he may have misheard me because my question was: if amenity is the concern—it’s not ecological things; it’s amenity, it’s landscape—then he should have supported the Natural and Built Environment Act. But also, if that is the point, if the policy purpose here is so that regional councils do not go around doing reviews based on complaints from wealthy bach owners, if that is the crux of the problem, then that is what this constraint on councils not being able to charge for reviews should apply to.

I put it to you that when we look down at new section 165ZFHK, “Concurrence of Director-General required for review to proceed”, that issue around landscape could be embodied in that so that the director-general will only give concurrence for a review to proceed if the review has nothing to do with amenity or landscape or baches, for instance. Then you wouldn’t need, at new section 165ZFHI, this carve-out about section 36 not enabling a council to charge for a review, because you simply would not allow any reviews for those amenity issues.

When I was talking about evidence, the Minister responded with some examples of where marine farms have not been consented in the first place. But this bill is not about consenting of new marine farms; it is all about extending the consents of existing marine farms. The question was about evidence regarding reviews: have regional councils done reviews of existing consented marine farms based on these amenity values that so upset the Minister? So that is the question there. Why not—if the problem is amenity and baches—amend new section 165ZFHK so that the director-general will not give concurrence if the review is based solely on amenity grounds, and then delete new subsection (4) saying, “Despite section 36, a consent authority [has to] bear its own costs”?

Thank you, Mr Chair. We still wait for some of those responses from the Minister, but while we wait for that, I would like to move on to clause 4, which inserts new section 165ZFHH, “Application of extension where coastal permit is under appeal”. It seems very peculiar that in subsection (2) here, it says that “The extension does not apply—(a) until all rights of appeal are exhausted;” or if the application is declined or withdrawn. My question to the Minister is: why is it necessary to indicate in legislation that all rights of appeal need to be exhausted? I note that on a question of a point of law, there is an appeal through to the High Court, which is indicated elsewhere, but why is there a need to insert the reference to ensuring that all appeal rights have been exercised and exhausted? Surely, that’s a natural justice application that exists with all decisions that are made, provided that they are taken through the right judicial process.

I want to follow up on the point that my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking has just touched on, and it relates to the proposed new section 165ZFHI, “Power to undertake review”. Now, it talks about the ability of a consent authority to undertake a review of the conditions that might exist under Subpart 1A, but when we look at subsection (3)(b), it talks about the fact that a review that might be undertaken under this particular provision “must not be undertaken more than once in relation to any coastal permit;”. Now, my question to the Minister is: what if there has been a review that has been sought for a condition of a permit that has gone through the process? And then there is an issue with a different condition of that permit. Is that then subject to no further review, despite the fact that the conditions are distinctly different or separate?

So my question to the Minister is, firstly: is subsection (3)(b), in fact, indicating that the limitation of only one review in relation to a coastal permit is for the permit in toto, or is it related to the conditions, and if it is related to the permit in toto, then how is that providing a fair approach to have other conditions, that might be sought to be reviewed effectively, reviewed by the consent authority?

I sense we’re wending our way to the end of this session, so I shall make some additional remarks. The member makes some very relevant points as to why the rights of an applicant to continue on with a process would be retained. In the event that this legislation does change, there may very well be applicants who are seeking, for example, to change some of the boundaries of a permit that this legislation will allocate to them into, arguably, 2050, and I would say that a lot of people have got permits well beyond 2050. They’ve got permits that go 35 years long, so the fact that I’ve compromised on 2050, I thought, was very modest and reasonable. The policy point that’s made here is to preserve the rights of that applicant to continue, indeed if they feel that it’s necessary because there are problems with the location of the farm, to enjoy those ongoing rights.

On the matter of new section 165ZFHI, “Power to undertake review”, when the review is undertaken—and they will be very, very few in number, because this is not really a troublesome industry. These farms have been there for decades. They’re now an indelible feature of the local environment, and it’s a sad day, actually, that they’re not there in perpetuity, but the only reason we can’t do that is because this is the commons and, if people are going to have a perpetual right, that right, sadly, has to be dealt with in the context of whether there are residual interests with the local Māori through the seabed and foreshore. And I don’t want the industry permanently blighted by that endless fairytale. I would say that the two-year reference talks about the fact that, if there are conditions that need to be reviewed and you have a period of uncertainty, it has to be dealt with in two years.

I really feel that the bill, when you look at the fundamental, underlying purpose of the bill, lays out that there are trade-offs. It is not reasonable that people who have spent their life savings, who have got their houses mortgaged to the hilt to create jobs in wee businesses in regional New Zealand, year after year have to put up with the depredations of unelected grandees in these councils, who do not face the costs of their ill-informed, indiscriminate wandering ways, trying to interfere with the lawful business of aquaculture. That’s why it’s really important that we focus, as I’ve endeavoured to do, on the two-year period.

I don’t really want to talk any more about the regulatory statement, because that’s now an element of history. We’ve got to look forward. Yes, there was a host of considerations reflected from the different Government departments in that regulatory statement. This bill does not undermine any iwi interests. Yes, there were references in the regulatory statement from some iwi who feel that it violates their iwi settlements. Far too much is read into these consultation opportunities in the iwi settlements. They are not the power of veto. They are not going to be allowed to hijack economic development where garden-variety Kiwis are trying to make a living and they fear that their enterprises are going to be hijacked or held hostage by people reading up, or coming up with, the most jaundiced interpretation in respect of the Treaty settlements.

The Treaty settlements were and remain a point in time, and the Crown does have to work with iwi to respect them, but all iwi need to hop on the bus of economic empowerment, whether it’s the iron sands of Taranaki, the aquaculture in Marlborough, or the mining in Tai Poutini.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate the call. Minister, we clearly see your bluster and certainty around the need to trample on your garden-variety Kiwis in the regions who want to have input on what happens in their commons and to make these dictates from on high from the throne of central government. But I do wonder, in considering what a reasonable piece of legislation might look like, if you have any mind to making some reasonable amendments to this. Obviously, we oppose it in its entirety. But, given the nature of this House, with this current Government being so averse to even the slightest improvement or tweak on an otherwise bad piece of legislation, I wonder if you in your wisdom and experience might consider that there are, in fact, some well-considered amendments that could improve this bill. Thank you.

💬 Hon Members: Mr Chair! Mr Chair!

I haven’t finished. I know you’d like me to be finished, but I haven’t quite finished yet. It’s the passion.

One of the things that came up in the hearings, Minister, was the impact of fish farms—finfish farms—being quite significantly different to molluscs. Finfish farms produce a lot of waste: faeces from the fish, and uneaten food. They are well known and understood across the world to generate problems of pest organisms. The nutrient loads that make their way to the seafloor suffocate benthic communities and turn the seabed hypoxic and anoxic. They have impacts on wild fish species and wild species of all sorts of varieties. The antibiotics that are put into finfish farms also have an impact on the environment, and the detritus that comes out of a finfish farm can travel for up to 1,000 metres, indiscriminately. Finfish farms make up a tiny percentage of our total farms—around 2 percent of total consents—and so I have a proposed amendment here that would not give this 20-year extension to finfish farms.

In recognition of the unique characteristics of the complexities we’ve had with them here in this country, with fish dying en masse in one instance—or other instances as well—and with the significant impacts they have, is it not correct that they should be subject to a more thorough scrutiny and consent process? And, simply, the existing status quo consent process could be applied to finfish farms who wanted to extend their consents. They would not be entitled to this exceptional privilege of an automatic 20-year extension. And the other consideration is that, unlike molluscs, finfish are considered as sentient in our legislation, and some people, in a number of submissions, characterised some forms of finfish farming as like battery farming at sea. I know the Minister will have a lot of fun with that, but that is a view that is taken, because fish are animals too. Given they make up only 2 percent of our consents, would not excluding finfish from the bill recognise their more substantial environmental effects? Under this amendment, they would be given this free pass that they perhaps should not have.

Minister, in clause 4, new section 165ZFHB, we propose inserting a new subsection (2), on page 3, after line 16: “However, nothing in this subpart applies to coastal permit authorising aquaculture activities in relation to finfish, as that term is defined in section 2(1) of the Fisheries Act 1996.” That is a proposal that seems nominal and reasonable, and I hope you will consider it, Minister. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. First of all, I just want to highlight to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries the question that I asked earlier around his aquaculture bill. He didn’t come back and answer my question around that. The other thing I wish to highlight is that he hasn’t addressed the question around the director-general (DG)—the question that my colleague Mr Steve Abel asked. I wanted to come back to that particular point because many submitters and also the Labour members and Green Party members couldn’t quite understand why it was so important for the director-general to be given such a lot of power within this bill. A council, as we’ve talked about before, can undertake a review, right? They’ve got, in this legislation, up to two years to do that, but they can only do that if the director-general gives them permission to undertake that review.

Now, earlier on in the evening, the Minister himself made a point around councils undertaking reviews, and he said, “which are very few”. So, if he wants the DG to be there to safeguard against councils undertaking reviews willy-nilly because of nimbyism and all that kind of stuff that he has talked about, why does he see that the director-general is such an important part of that? Councils are going to have to pay—ratepayers are going to have to pay—to undertake a review, so why has he put in that additional step for the director-general, which both the Opposition parties in the Primary Production Committee, perhaps, suggested an amendment at the time to remove? In actual fact, if councils have to pay, they’re not likely to just go and undertake reviews willy-nilly because of nimbyism and all those other things. I’d be very interested in why the Minister wouldn’t consider removing the DG from that process or why he considers it so very important to have the DG there in the first place.

The involvement of the director-general reflects that this Government wants to see the key ministries, such as the Ministry for Primary Industries, driving towards economic development, prosperity, and resilience. We’ve had occasions where regional councils have wandered off their constitutional reservation. One should look no further than the Otago Regional Council and their wilful disregard of this Government’s intention to rationalise and recalibrate water standards. With the director-general enjoying this status, there will be no willy-nilly, no random, fanciful forays on behalf of regional councils blighting economic development within aquaculture. There are and there remains some unresolved issues amongst a host of our regional councils and, I repeat again, one should look no further than the current conduct of the regional council of Otago, who need to be pulled into line. If we had a provision like they’ve got here for the regional councils, we would not have that time-wasting, ideological, foreign thinking we’re seeing in Otago.

The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The committee will resume at 9 a.m.

Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday).