Natural and Built Environment Bill

Members, we come now to Part 9. This is the debate on clauses 568 to 629, on “Subdivision and reclamation”. The question is that Part 9 stand part. I call on the Minister, the Hon Dr David Parker. Sorry, the Hon David Parker. I keep on promoting you.

Thank you for that. It was a very easy doctorate.

Hon Scott Simpson: Was it philosophy or medical?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I think I got it in a Weet-Bix packet. For the help of members, I’m advised that these provisions are all but identical to the provisions in the Resource Management Act (RMA) and they deal with subdivision and reclamations of land. Members will see that for every one of the sections that are in this Part—and I have checked through every one of them—there is reference made to the equivalent section in the RMA.

I note that the Minister said it’s just the same as what’s in the Resource Management Act (RMA) in relation to subdivisions and surveys and allotments, which is the sort of meat and drink of actually getting things done and building houses, building new houses, and trying to increase the supply of houses to deal with the housing affordability issues that we have. So it’s pretty fundamental about the work of part of this Act to get things done and to help people get into houses more cheaply and effectively.

The question I have is: to say, well, yes the clauses and the meaning of all this is unchanged from the RMA, but what impact does the changed purpose of this legislation, as it interacts with this section, have, if any, on this section? So if we’re talking about requirements for approving survey plans, for example, in clause 572, what impact does the same law that we currently have under the RMA—what impact does the different purpose of this legislation have on the operation or handling of that?

Because now we have to take into account te Oranga o te Taiao—the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment, the relationship between iwi and hapū and te taiao, and that is based on whakapapa, the relationship between the health of the natural environment—all these sorts of concepts which I have no idea what they mean in practice. I imagine that we will be spending a lot of time in the courts trying to figure that out, but I’d be interested to know what the Minister thinks. What sort of impact, if any, will that different purpose and different sort of framework for the whole Act have when it comes to the specifics of the approval of survey plans, of the certificate of approval from a territorial authority, the requirements relating to subdivisions—all those basic things, which he says hasn’t been changed?

But my fundamental question is: will it operate in the same way and will it be more efficient or less efficient? Will it be easier for people to subdivide their property and build new houses, or will it be harder? Will they, in some way, have to demonstrate that they understand the relationship between the health of the natural environment and its capacity, or will they have to try to explain what the health of the natural environment is? Will they have to sort of demonstrate when they’re dividing things up that they understand the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment, whatever that means? So those are the sorts of questions I have for the Minister.

The provisions of Part 9 are very, very mechanical. It’s about if you have a subdivision, what documentation do you need? You need a plan, a survey plan—that’s covered here. There are requirements of survey plans that are sent out; there are requirements relating to conditions of the subdivision or consent. Now, these are very mechanical issues as described in Part 9, and they really are a carryover of the Resource Management Act.

In respect of the member’s question, “What does the impact of the purpose clause on these provisions have?”: very little. These are very detailed mechanical provisions. In respect of, “Do these provisions change the supply of land under the new system?”: no, they don’t. If the supply of land increases under the new Act, these are the mechanical provisions to give effect to those subdivisions. Will there be an increase in supply of land? Yes, there will be. That increase in the supply of land comes from earlier parts of the Act that we’ve already debated.

But, for example, “System outcomes”, in clause 5(7)(b), one of them is that the “development capacity, in relation to housing and business land, [be] available well ahead of expected demand”. So we are baking into the system, in a way that I think virtually every party in the House now agrees with, expansive land markets so that we don’t drive house prices too high through artificial scarcity of building opportunities. But that really has no effect on Part 9. That’s just, once that happens, Part 9 is administrative as to how you give effect to a subdivision.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, the Minister has made that point quite clear, which is that Part 9 is, essentially, a cut-and-paste from the existing resource management legislation.

But let me just hypothetically talk for a minute. For instance, if I was my very good friend Warren Mayall from the beautiful Pāuanui part of the Coromandel, and I wanted to do a subdivision—just by cutting and pasting the existing provisions of the Resource Management Act (RMA) into the newly proposed Natural and Built Environment Bill, where are the improvements? Where is the streamlining? Where are the pieces in this, admittedly, administrative and functional part of the legislation?

Where are the pieces of Part 9 that are going to make it easier for Warren Mayall, for instance, of Pāuanui to do a little bit of subdivision, to do some development work, and to make advantage of what the Minister has told us throughout this debate and, indeed, throughout the whole genesis of this change to our existing RMA environment? It’s supposed to make things easier and it is supposed to make things quicker, faster, and less complicated, but this part is just a cut-and-paste. It doesn’t seem to make any improvements at all.

Yes, it’s detailed, and we could go through—as, I’m sure, some of my colleagues are intent to do—clause by clause, subclause by subclause, and point out some areas that need to be tested, but just because it was in the Resource Management Act from 30-odd years ago and it may have been subsequently amended over the multiple times that the RMA has been amended since it was first passed by this House, it doesn’t mean necessarily, I think, that it should be just the subject of a straight cut-and-paste without some kind of opportunity to review, to improve, to streamline, and to make it more efficient. So, without referring to any particular clause in Part 9, I’m keen to know how the Minister feels that this part is actually going to improve his overall legislative package, and what it might mean for my very good friend Warren Mayall in Pāuanui.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To the Minister: it’s a broader question in terms of how the bills fit together, and so I accept what you’re saying about this part of the bill. But as we went through the select committee, we were almost in live timing with the cyclones that were happening, and we thought a lot about where we build and how we build, and we saw—and the Minister has probably seen this himself—overlays of where wetlands previously were and where flooding lay.

The question is really related more to the interaction of this bill with the spatial planning and freeing up land. Are there likely to be more as we build on to the climate adaptation bill? Accepting that we haven’t debated or had the opportunity to talk about that yet, is that actually going to, again, talk about how we might free up land? Is that going to have some ability, again, to restrict the land available to apply these clauses to, because we looked, as a committee, as we were doing this, and we were thinking, “My goodness, have we built in some places that we shouldn’t have built? Have we left enough space between houses?”, and all of those sorts of things. So my question is more about how all of that fits together, please.

Those questions really relate to the higher parts of the bill that we’ve already debated, not to the mechanical provisions relating to subdivision and reclamation in Part 9, which are a carry-over of the Resource Management Act parts and are purely mechanical.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, if I could go all the way to clause 606(8), which speaks to a “lake means … lake [where a] … bed area [of] 8 hectares or more”—so 20-odd acres, if you want to use the old terminology. If you can envisage an area where there are half a dozen property owners that have a contiguous boundary between them all; topographically, they have built a dam structure there that would have a bedded area larger than 8 hectares. Is that then construed as a lake in this instance, and would it stifle the profitability of actually subdividing the said land? You could see it playing out in real time: property owners that share this contiguous reality not being able to subdivide their land, based on the terminology of “what is a lake?” Gracious me, a lot of the lakes I know have actually been man-made and they’re not naturally forming bodies of water. Do you think that needs to be revisited?

This section applies where there is reclamation next to the sea, a river, or a lake where you reclaim land next to that lake—or, if you hadn’t reclaimed it, there’s generally access provided alongside most areas of the sea, lakes, and rivers through what are called “esplanade reserves” or “marginal strips”. So this says that where you have reclaimed land; then you need to be thinking about whether there should be an access strip along it, and it says that an esplanade reserve must be set aside from the allotment under the section’s name, but only if it’s been required as a condition of the resource consent that was given for the reclamation.

Oh, thank you, Madam Chair. Just a quick one, Minister. So I know you said if a land had been reclaimed, but actually land can be reclaimed—as we saw along the Kaikōura coast—by an act of God. A significant amount of land can be, actually, reclaimed by an act of God. Do those provisions apply to God? Does God have to apply for an esplanade plan and provide access? Because he’s done a massive amount of work lifting up a significant amount of territory out of the sea for access for a lot more people. Actually, a good example—and the Minister, I’m sure, will like to know—is access to the Cape Campbell Lighthouse. It used to be completely guided or controlled by the tide; that’s no longer the case because of the reclamation of the land and that esplanade doesn’t seem to be there. Is that something that is covered in this bill?

I call on the Minister, if he wants to address that particular question.

Boundaries to land sometimes change through natural causes. Whether the change to a pattern of land goes into an adjacent title depends a lot on the age of the title. Some titles that go back a long way went to either the high water mean spring mark or to the midline of a river. Others are subject to esplanade reserves. Some of those esplanade reserves move with rivers; some of them do not move with rivers. It depends on the circumstance and the time of the creation of the title.

I move, That the question be now put.

Given there are no other calls, the question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 9 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 389 be agreed to.

Members, Part 10 has been struck out of the bill following an amendment recommended by the Environment Committee.

Part 11 Compliance, monitoring, and enforcement