Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement for the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill.

This bill continues the coalition Government’s commitment to reform the resource management system, to drive economic growth and increase productivity by making it easier to get things done in New Zealand. It follows on from fast track and our first resource management amendment bill, which passed into law in October.

This bill is a precursor to full replacement of the Resource Management Act (RMA), but it makes important changes in the short term to make it quicker and simpler to consent renewable energy, boost housing supply, and reduce red tape for the primary sector. As I said, at length, in the last debate, the current RMA isn’t working; it’s a handbrake on growth for the country.

We have taken a phased approach to RMA reform. Phase one, which was completed almost a year ago, was to repeal the previous Government’s excessively complicated reforms. We’re now in the middle of phase two: making improvements to the existing RMA, to cut red tape and green tape for primary industries and development in infrastructure, whilst maintaining environmental protections. These reforms will lay the groundwork for phase three: the long-term replacement for the RMA, with legislation based on the enjoyment of property rights.

There are five major changes in this bill. This is quite a chunky and substantive bill; far more substantive than bill No. 1. The infrastructure and energy package in the bill gives effect to the Government’s Electrify New Zealand reforms, which are all about making it easier to get renewable energy built, as well as improving how ports run.

There are key changes delivered through this bill—councils must decide renewable energy generation consents within one year of application; consents for renewable energy generation will receive 35-year consents by default. The default lapse period for renewable energy consents and for infrastructure project designations will go from five years to 10 years. Ports will be given “requiring authority status”, and port coastal permits will be extended for another 20 years, to 2046. Designating authorities will no longer have to complete detailed assessments of alternatives when they are the sole landholder.

The housing package is particularly important. It includes reforms to enable the first pillar of the Government’s Going for Housing Growth policy. It will allow councils to opt out of the medium-density residential standards (MDRS), as well as providing councils with ways to make faster plan changes. It also provides for new intervention powers for the Minister for the Environment to ensure councils comply with national direction.

In relation to the MDRS, the bill introduces a ratification vote for councils on the medium-density residential standards to decide whether to keep, change, or remove them, whilst also ensuring councils are providing for 30 years of housing growth. The quid pro quo of being allowed to opt out of the MDRS is that councils deliver 30 years of live-zoned housing growth.

The bill also makes changes to the streamlined planning process and requires all plan changes that use this process—including for the MDRS—to establish an independent hearings panel (IHP). The bill empowers the Minister to appoint up to half the members of the IHP. The bill makes councils, rather than the Minister, the final decision maker, but it also provides the Minister for the Environment with new intervention powers to ensure compliance with national direction.

All of that is quite complicated, sir; let me just give you a little bit of colour. Over the last few years, councils been going through this process to bring their plan changes into line with not only the MDRS but also the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD). I think everyone acknowledges that having the councils appeal to either the Minister responsible for RMA Reform or the Minister for the Environment is not a particularly great way to go about it. It’s produced some quite good outcomes in some cases, but it is not really what you’d like. The bill changes that and it means that councils are the final decision-makers.

However, it is also true to say that the independent hearings panel process has not been that great either. the bill provides for the Minister to appoint up to half the members of the IHP. To give effect to the Government’s Going for Housing Growth policies, it is necessary to have greater intervention in the way in which councils complete the housing and business capacity assessments as per the NPS-UD, and there’s a range of changes coming there as part of the national direction package, which is not included in this bill but is coming next year.

The changes in the bill will allow councils to delist heritage buildings identified in the district plans in a faster way, using the streamlined planning process (SPP). At present, if councils wish to remove a building from the heritage list, they have to use a standard plan-making process. It’s a very complicated process, very convoluted, it has many steps, takes a long time, and has quite broad rights of appeal. Under the changes introduced by this bill, councils will be able to apply to the Minister for the Environment for an SPP that is of appropriate scale to the issue being addressed, and the changes for housing and heritage will work in conjunction with national direction, as I say.

The third series of changes is around the farming and primary sector package to unlock primary sector productivity. It reduces the regulatory overlap between the RMA and the Fisheries Act. It will provide for flexibility and certainty for marine farm consent processes. It will make farm plan certification more practical and cost-effective, as well as making sure resource consent applications for wood processing are decided within one year.

There’s a section in relation to emergency and natural hazards. The bill will make responses to natural hazards and emergencies more efficient and effective, as well as ensure that the planning system is not allowing inappropriate development in areas with significant natural hazard risk. The bill introduces a new regulation-making power to support emergency responses to assist with recovery, and clarifies and strengthens councils’ ability to decline land-use consents or to apply appropriate conditions where there are significant risks of natural hazards, and, of course, we are working on a natural hazard national direction package, which, I think, has been quite widely welcomed by local government land, and that will be part of 2025 as well.

Finally, the bill introduces a series of sensible system improvements, which, I think, most people will welcome. There are higher fines for non-compliance. There are changes to how resource consent applications are dealt with. Fines for non-compliance with the RMA will be increased, and insurance that pays those fines will be banned. Councils will be able to recover more costs from those breaching the RMA, as well as consider compliance history during resource consent applications—and there’s a bit of debate around that, and during the fast-track process.

We’re also changing the discharge rules under section 70, to provide certainty and to align with changes to section 107 that were done through the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2024. There are minor changes to Department of Conservation (DOC) functions, to improve the management of discharges on the DOC estate and improve RMA compliance checks on offshore islands. The amount of further information a council can request from a consent applicant will be clarified so that it is not overly onerous. Applicants will be able to request to review consent conditions prior to a consent decision being issued, and councils will be able to return abandoned consent applications. These are system improvements—is the easiest way to describe it.

I think it’s worth noting that these changes are designed to work in conjunction with a whole series of changes we’re making to national direction—national policy statements and national environmental standards are next year. Much of the changes we are making are designed to port over into the new regime.

We’re acutely conscious that the Government is moving fast and we’re making a lot of changes to resource management law, but we eventually want to settle on a system that is enduring and we eventually want to settle on a system that settles down, so that we can actually get on with implementation. As much as possible, we are taking a least-regrets approach to reform. As much as we can, the changes through this bill and the changes through the national direction, next year, we want to port across and transition into the new system to reduce the need for constant chopping and changing and constant council churn and flux. That is a difficult task, I’ve got to be honest with the House. That is tricky, but if we can get it right, we can create a more enabling framework for everybody, and an enabling framework that also protects and upholds environmental protections and also sets environmental bottom lines. I think it is possible to do that.

I actually think there’s more consensus across the Parliament, when it comes to resource management reform, than, perhaps, you would think from what we’ve heard during the quite heated debate around fast track. I think most people are in favour of greater standardisation. I think most people are in favour of fewer plans, and most people are in favour of less litigation and more certainty, most people are in favour of an enabling framework and a spatial planning framework that makes it easier to plan, consent, and deliver infrastructure for the future. Most reasonable people are in favour of that, and that is the Government’s goal as well.

A lot of 2025 is going to be about the delivery of national direction and building a framework that can set New Zealand up for growth and development whilst protecting the environment in the 2020s and beyond. Thank you.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Hopefully I’m a reasonable person, and the list that the Minister, the Hon Chris Bishop, just gave out, many of the things—I cannot recite it verbatim, but they are things that I certainly agree with. We should move this system and the resource management system to the national instruments and away from a bespoke consent-by-consent issue. That is why, of course, we reformed the Resource Management Act (RMA) over a long period of time and had the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act.

Both of those Acts were repealed last year—last December—and the Minister says with pride, “Look at all the things we’re doing.” “Look, we’ve repealed this legislation that fixed the Resource Management Act, which, we all agree, doesn’t work,” he says. Then, in the next breath, he says, “Oh, and we’ve done this fast-track bill”—which will soon be signed into an Act—“that railroads over all of the environmental protections.” I heard, in that list, that we do need to protect the environment, and that is not what the fast track does.

Now, I realise I am talking about a different bill—I’m talking about the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill—

Hon Member: Yeah, speak to that bill.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Whoever made the snarky little comment over there on the National side, I say to you that it’s relevant, because if you were listening to your Minister, you would know that this is a set of different pieces of legislation to replace what we had done and what that Government has repealed.

I noted, when I was listening to the Minister and when I was listening to the Prime Minister in question time, that there is a lot of focus on checklists, and it might be that this piece of legislation—this one in the House today—is only here the week before Christmas to meet that checklist. We all know that we were only in the committee stage of that fast-track bill last week, for hours and hours and hours, because it was on that checklist, and we saw those amendments that came in at the very last minute. This is a very bad way to make laws, and it seems that the Prime Minister does not understand that fundamental need for laws to be scrutinised.

Now, this bill, as we’ve heard the Minister say, covers a range of different issues. It is not a replacement for the RMA at all. It’s not a Natural and Built Environment Act or a Spatial Planning Act or what he says might happen next year. It changes rules around fishing, with the Motiti decision. It could end up enabling more houses on green fields as the quid pro quo for not having the medium-density residential standards (MDRS). It is a backtrack on the MDRS. In the last term, National and Labour agreed to have these mixed-density residential zones provisions. This National Government is backtracking on that by not requiring councils to do it but making it optional. It makes all the other discussions—and I’m going to come to this soon—on bipartisanship and working together very different when that is the record that we are dealing with.

Then, there is a change to section 70, and the Minister noted that that links in with that out-of-scope, in my opinion, change to section 107 that came through the last RMA amendment bill a month or so ago—a change that was not consulted on, that was not in the bill as introduced, but that some irrigators and others wanted and were able to submit on, but groups like Forest & Bird were stopped from submitting on. There was a change to that section 107 that links with section 70 here, and there would have been an opportunity, if this Government was interested in good-faith proper processes, to have had that section 107 discussion here. They haven’t done that.

There are also changes to farm plan certification that may or may not be beneficial, and, of course, we’ve heard that appeal rights for heritage decisions are going to be changed. It doesn’t deal with the funding of public infrastructure, which is always the trickiest issue. It does also work on hazards compliance, emergency regulations, renewable energy, and ports. I will be asking officials for their advice on comparisons with the Natural and Build Environment Act, because it seems that some of those provisions have come from that.

On that note, we will be supporting it to select committee, and we hope that the Ministers will ask their members to interrogate it and improve it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill makes a wide suite of changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) and, ironically, it wouldn’t even have been needed, and actually isn’t needed in this form if the Government hadn’t embarked on a wholesale destruction of legislation through urgency; legislation like the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act. So, no, we won’t support this bill, because it’s poorly done and there are a number of provisions that just aren’t consistent with Green Party policy.

For example, we’re sceptical about the Going for Housing Growth framework in this bill, which makes what was the wonderful and, temporarily, bipartisan medium-density residential standards optional. If we want smart and efficient cities, we need to prioritise building homes where the infrastructure already is. Mixed-use housing and enabling more housing and shops around strategic transport corridors is a good step towards building the density we need to bring our cities to life. However, disjointed greenfields development, and a transport policy that prioritises cars will see the status quo of sprawl continue.

We literally can’t afford more car-dependent sprawl, especially with the urgent need to reduce emissions.

Hon Simeon Brown: I hope you don’t drive a car.

SCOTT WILLIS: Sprawling suburbs will see the efficiency of our cities decline, and I wish I didn’t need to drive a car. I wish we had trains and rail-enabled ferries, but that’s not happening either. There is nothing stopping councils for zoning for fewer new homes under the Going for Housing Growth reforms than they would have been required to allow for under the medium-density residential standards if the medium-density residential standards required more than their contested 30-year targets. It’s a lost opportunity, flooding urban land markets with supply, but it’s a win for the nimbies in Epsom, and it will allow for discharges into polluted water bodies and override local decision-making.

Additionally, this time frame limits the identification of options, the level of analysis, the collation and review of evidence, and engagement with industry, council, iwi, hapū, and Māori and other stakeholders. It does not favour those communities the Government is elected to serve. We know, now, that this Government hates local decision-making, and even the area where I was looking for some positive—and there is a little bit of positive, but it’s pretty disappointing.

As the regulatory impact statement (RIS) says, “constraints imposed by the policy development process (ie the limited time available to undertake the analysis and the inability to conduct consultation with affected groups) have meant that the criteria cannot be fully met. In some cases, the evidence base is missing on which to form a clear understanding of the policy problem, and its causes, which limits the analysis of options to address them.”

To be clear, we can support things like a 35-year default consent duration for renewable electricity generation, but oppose a 35-year default consent duration for long-lived infrastructure like gas pipelines. We’re not convinced that doubling the lapse periods for renewables, up from five to 10 years, is helpful when we need to build renewables at pace and avoid land banking. Any positives in this bill have clearly been regurgitated from the Natural and Built Environment Act, which begs the question again: why throw out something really useful when it could have been amended and gained more support?

We understand that the RIS was prepared when several decisions from Government were still to be made, such as the Government’s direction on fresh water and the inclusion of wood-processing projects. This is the problem with the Government’s rushed lawmaking, something that legal experts, officials, and even a Cabinet Minister have warned against. It’s bad, rushed lawmaking, like so much this Government does; like the failure to get law through because it’s badly written.

Now, instead, what I’d like to see—what I think this Government could do—is deliver the long-promised National Policy Statement for Renewable Electricity Generation, promised six months ago, and a natural environmental standard for smaller wind projects, something that was called for back in 2010. That’s 14 years ago. I know many farmers who are waiting and waiting for this legislative change so they can build and host small wind farms.

The member’s time has expired. Just before I take the next call, we did have a sharp shock and a bit of a shake there. It was very, very brief, and so if that does happen again, we will be ducking and covering.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I rise in support of this bill on behalf of the ACT Party. We certainly welcome advancement of our coalition commitment in this bill around the councils being able to have the choice of applying these medium-density residential standards. I’m sure some of my colleagues will speak more on this through the select committee process and second and third readings. Obviously, my definition of “medium density” is being able to see two of my neighbours, so I’m probably not the best person to speak to it.

I do want to talk about the farm plans and the elements that relate to primary industries, though. We all know the benefits of farm plans. They enable farmers to be able to highlight the critical source areas on their farms, to be able to work out plans and procedures of how they can address that and work together as a community. These are important tools that will help our farmers drive better results to the environment.

Now, what we’re doing in this bill is ensuring that the plans that many farmers already have—virtually every single dairy farmer already has a water management plan, every horticultural grower has one through the Good Agricultural Practice scheme, many sheep and beef farmers now have them through the FAP Plus process. This is about ensuring that peat farmers are not going to have to do a job twice. If there’s one thing farmers hate, it’s having to do something twice. They want to do something once and they want to do it right.

Hon Damien O’Connor: They milk cows twice a day.

Hon ANDREW HOGGARD: We’ve got the systems in place already and it’s important that we use them. The member there is making a lot of noise. Previously, he was saying how he loved these plans and how the farm plans already provided what he wanted to have. Yet we had a system that wouldn’t have allowed those, so we’re fixing that. We’re making what he tried to say was going to happen, actually happen. That’s what we’re doing in this plan. We’re removing the duplication throughout this process and we’ll obviously be looking at other things we can improve there.

Just finally, this is all about providing certainty to farmers that it’s going to be good operating going forward, that they’ve got certainty to invest—they know where the rules lie and they can invest well. That’s so critical with section 70. That, combined with the section 107 rules, placed a huge degree of uncertainty, particularly for many farmers in the South Island, as to whether or not they could go ahead with their farming businesses. Would they be able to get consents? Can they invest for the future? Huge risks that were holding farmers back.

By providing this certainty, people know they can invest; they can make better productivity on their farms. I commend this bill to the House.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. Look, I’ve had 30-plus years of personal involvement in the Resource Management Act (RMA), and I’ve seen it work really, really well and I’ve seen it work really, really badly, as well. What almost everyone says is that it’s become a triumph of process over outcomes, and it’s become too unwieldy, and it’s still not delivered adequately for the environment. Look, I chair the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and I’ve also met with many businesses, iwi councils, etc., all around New Zealand, and almost without exception they are saying that the Resource Management Act is a barrier to development.

This Government is resolutely focused on making New Zealand’s economy more productive. If we don’t do that, then the things that the people on the opposite benches say that they care about—we will not be able to afford them. We will not be able to afford the good quality social services, the health and education system, etc. We will not be able to afford the quality of life and the wages that we all aspire to. That is what this is all about. We often talk about an infrastructure deficit. The Infrastructure Commission’s advice to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee was that we invest about the right amount in infrastructure, but what we don’t do is get value for it, and that is largely because of the processes that we get tangled up in.

Look, there are four quick points that I wanted to make. The first one of them is the duration of some of these consents: re-consenting is a bane on our economy; the cost of it and the uncertainty of it is costing this country millions, even billions, of dollars a year.

Secondly, the medium-density residential standards (MDRS)—I had the joy of dealing with that at the council. What this does is it gets Government out of making the decision and allows local councils to make the decision with their community. We rely on them to do that professionally and competently and to engage with their community really, really well, and that is very, very important. The MDRS did not target growth close to services. It allowed it to be scattergunned all across urban areas. I think that is a really good move forward. The one plea I would make in this is that if we’re going to require councils to meet 30 years of population growth, they need to know what 30 years of population growth looks like, because we are not replacing ourselves—it is based on immigration, and we don’t have a population strategy. That is something which belongs here, not with council.

Third thing to mention is it simplifies the process for listing and de-listing heritage. Heritage is really, really important and I hope that that is done well and thoughtfully, and it’s not just based on reckons.

The final thing I wanted to say is that it expands the councils’ powers to manage natural hazards. This is really, really important—the insurance industry will tell us to stop building dumb things in dumb places, because otherwise they will pull out of insuring.

Glen Bennett: Fast-track bill.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Kill the fast-track bill.

ANDY FOSTER: That is really, really important—and, yes, it might challenge that in some ways. Look, the other thing to say there is that if we had allowed councils more power, we probably would not have had the Christchurch red zone, and that has cost this country enormously. Building the right things in the right places is absolutely essential.

I’m looking forward to the submissions on this and I’m sure they will assist the bill, going forward. I commend the bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā hoki tātou. E tū ake ana ahau ki te mihi ki ngā mahi huhua i oti nei i te iwi Māori i roto i ngā tau 30 neke atu, ki te whakakanohi i a ia me tōna mana i roto i ngā kawenga, i roto i ngā hapori, te whakawhanaketanga o tēnei whenua. Nāku anō ngā kōrero mō te Kaunihera Māori o Aotearoa i waha i tērā tau ki mua ki te aroaro o tēnei Kāwana i tēnei taha i tērā wā.

Ko Tātai Hākurei me te hunga rā, a Hōri, rātou i whakakanohi i te hiahia me te tūmanako o ngā tini marae o te motu, ā, aroha mai, kua hoki pēnei mai tātou.

[Thank you, Mr Speaker, and greetings to all of us. I stand to acknowledge the many endeavours that were completed by the Māori people in the last 30 years or more to represent themselves and their authority within the responsibilities, within the communities, and the development of this land. I myself spoke about the New Zealand Māori Council, who last year came before this Government on this side at that time.

Tātai Hākurei and those people, Hōri, they who represented the needs and hopes of the many marae of the nation, and, sadly, we’ve come back to this.]

To groups such as the New Zealand Māori Council, Te Tai Kaha, Te Mana o te Wai—groups that have poured years into already consulting and working with the Government themselves as the Māori, the tangata whenua Treaty partner, with the Government Treaty partner for the last five years—sadly, we find ourselves here, back at the place where Māori rights are being stripped out of the Resource Management Act (RMA) quite bluntly. The RMA has served as a 30-year barrier to Māori fulfilment and achievement and exercising of their own rights inside their own rohe, in towns in their own rohe—30-year exclusion.

So, here we are, the Government are using renewable energy and housing projects as an excuse to continue to remove Māori rights and voices from the consenting process and to diminish Māori rights and interests in our whenua, our moana, our fresh water, our geothermal areas, everything. While we acknowledge the need for Aotearoa to transition to renewable energy, Māori need to part of this transition. We will no longer be sidelined, as we have been for the last 164 years. This side of the House, who are the Treaty partner—the current Government—need to take some deep consideration of their role as the Treaty partner in this House. The Ministry for the Environment admitted that the short time frame afforded to the bill prevented full engagement with te iwi Māori, and there’s nothing new there. This is a consistent pattern. We’ve been dealing with it through this whole first year. It’s exhausting.

The Government have refused to engage with te iwi Māori, despite their own ministry identifying numerous Treaty breaches. Despite the fact that they themselves are the Tiriti partner, they seem to care nothing for it—the very document that underpins the workings of this House. It will further reduce our already limited influence in the consenting process, as I’ve said, for the last 30-plus years, particularly as it relates to sites of significance, or wāhi tapu; the takutai moana, or fresh water; and te wai Māori, our coastal marine taonga.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi said, “ō rātou whenua, ō rātou moana, ō rātou kāinga, ō rātou taonga katoa.” [“their lands, their oceans, their estates, and all of their treasures.”] I think you fullas should know that line inside out; I know you don’t. Heoi anō, without consent or consultation, this bill will make it impossible to recognise Māori rights in fresh water, geothermal rights—all of the rights that I’ve already mentioned that were enshrined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. By the way, those rights weren’t granted to us in Tiriti o Waitangi. They were pre-existing rights that Te Tiriti simply acknowledged. Te iwi Māori want renewable energy and we want more houses, but we cannot afford to lose more rights.

As has been voiced by this side of the House, doing away with ideas like te taiao, te mauri o te taiao—“mumbo-jumbo”, I think they called it down here. “Mumbo-jumbo”—I’d put it down to a thousand-plus years of living in a place, watching it, using it, utilising it, dispensing it, observing it, and maintaining it for that long, but “mumbo-jumbo” it’s called over here. It’s a little bit like the prayer that starts every sitting of this House—mumbo-jumbo. Like that sceptre over there—mumbo-jumbo. [Interruption] Oh, yes—yes, yes. Go and think about it and come back.

Thirty years’ worth of exclusion—30 years’ worth of exclusion. Te mana o tēnei Whare, kāre au e paku, paku, paku whakaaro nui ki te mana o tēnei Whare, te mana o tērā taha, me ngā tāngata e noho nā, e kawe nei i ngā mahi a te Kāwanatanga. Kūare rawa atu ki ngā tikanga o te Tiriti o Waitangi, te Tiriti o Waitangi nāna koutou i whakaae kia noho mai ki tēnei whenua, ā, ka riro i a koe tētahi mana mō te toru tau.

Kia kaha, kia hāneanea tō noho mō te rua tau. Ka mutu te rua tau, kua ngaro noa atu koutou.

Nō reira, ka huri, ka hoki anō ahau ki ngā kōrero nāku i tīmata.

[The authority of this House, I have not an iota, iota, iota of consideration for the authority of this House, the authority of that side, and the people seated there that are carrying out the activities of the Government. Entirely ignorant of the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi that allowed you to settle in this country, and you have received some power for three years.

Go for it, sit comfortably for two years. After two years, you will be gone.

And so I’ll pivot, I’ll come back to the statements that I myself initiated.]

We do not support the bill in the slightest.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill in its first reading. I’ll be chairing the select committee that the bill is going to. I’m very much looking forward to the submissions that will be received, and I know that the committee will give very due and full consideration to all the submissions.

I want to just make the point in the House this afternoon that this bill is a part of the fix-it plan that we campaigned on as a Government, a coalition Government, just over 12 months ago. This time 12 months ago, we were busy repealing the previous administration’s natural and built environment and spatial planning legislation because we knew that that would just further stymie and act as a further roadblock to getting the country growing and thriving, particularly in economic terms.

This bill is intent on actually providing across five key themes: the first one being infrastructure and energy, the second one being housing growth, the third one being farming and the primary sector, the fourth one being natural hazards and emergencies, and the fifth one being systems improvements. It’s a precursor to a significant rewrite of resource law in New Zealand that will come later in the term of this Parliament.

On that note, then, I endorse the bill. I’m looking forward to hearing what submitters have to say and to working with the select committee on it. Thank you.

Thank you. As you will have heard from a prior speaker, Rachel Brooking, on behalf of the Labour Party, we are supporting this at first reading to select committee. I would have some words of advice for the Government on this.

There has been, now, too much to-ing and fro-ing on Resource Management Act (RMA) law and as a country we actually need to settle it. I have heard the Hon Chris Bishop say that he’s up for that, to trying to reach an accommodation that everyone can live with; and I heard Te Pāti Māori’s disquiet with the legislation because they don’t feel that their interests are properly protected or provided for in this legislation. I think the Hon Scott Simpson, when he chairs this select committee, will, I hope, apply his wisdom to the hearing of submissions so that some of these issues can be worked through in a way that everyone can live with them. Otherwise, we’re actually going to continue the game of ping pong here in a way that’s not very good.

Now, I heard the other side say that this is the key to unlocking the development potential of the country. It is relevant to that—I’m not denying its relevance—but I do think that it’s a little bit overstated that it’s planning constraints that lie behind New Zealand’s lack of productivity growth. Indeed, I don’t really know of any planning constraints—I know they’re frustrating to the rural sector, on whom we rely for the vast bulk of our primary production exports, but I think there’s some exaggerated claims as to that being what’s held back productivity growth in New Zealand.

I’ll mention a couple of areas that I think deserve serious consideration. Te Pāti Māori are concerned that their article 2 rights, in respect of what they still are left owning, are effectively frustrated by the existing planning legislation. The Natural and Build Environment Act—which replaced the RMA; which the incoming Government repealed—did delegate to Māoridom the right to, for example, consent communal housing, papakāinga, on Māori land. Now, I think those sorts of recognitions of tino rangatiratanga under article 2 should not be problematic for us as a country. I don’t see why we should be politicising those issues.

Similarly, if there is a geothermal resource which is sitting under Māori-owned land, I don’t have a problem with that consent decision being delegated to the Māori owners of that land either. I think if the Government was willing to listen to those sorts of concerns from Māoridom, some of these issues might be sorted out.

Now, I don’t go so far as to say that any subset of the population should be able to take all decisions in respect of land—even their own land, whether it’s a private non-Māori owner or a private Māori owner. For example, I don’t think we should follow the North American example of where you can consent a casino on people’s land. I think that’s bad law.

That said, there are some good things in this legislation, and I’ll run through them. It might surprise the Associate Minister for the Environment, the Hon Andrew Hoggard, but I agree with what’s proposed here for farm plans. I think that having the audit and certification regimes trialled through farm industry organisations—I know that’s something that the Hon Damien O’Connor wanted and he was frustrated that we hadn’t landed that in a more simple form by the time we left office. I think that’s good progress, but it should be in support of an objective, which is, where we have degraded waterways, their gradual improvement over time; and where they’re in good condition, not allowing them to degrade further. If this, however, is accompanied by efforts to undermine the existing freshwater protection rules that we have under the RMA, that will be a step too far, in my opinion. There have been some criticisms of the Te Mana o te Wai framework, but surely as a mature society we can work through those differences and get somewhere where we land there.

I’ve only got limited time. In respect of the flip-flop that we had from National on the medium-density zone—which they agreed under Judith Collins through Chris Bishop and Nicola Willis, but then resiled from later—my concern about this iteration is that if you don’t internalise the inefficiency of improperly put infrastructure costs to the decision, you’ll get to an economically wrong outcome and I hope the select committee looks at that as you do.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill.

There’s an old farming saying: “Every dog has its day”. The Resource Management Act, as we know it, is well past its use-by date. Is it past its use-by date? Yes, it is. Does it need fixing? Yes, it does. Can we fix it? Yes, we will. Yes, we can, and, yes, we will, thank you.

This amendment bill seeks to, in amongst what it seeks to do, make it fit for purpose and to make it easier to consent for new infrastructure, renewable energy, and building houses. It is also enhancing some of the rules for clarification around some of the requirements within the farming sector.

We used to be a country that got stuff done, and then, all of a sudden, we weren’t. This bill gets us back on the path to doing stuff, so what’s not to like about that? I’m more than happy to commend this bill to the House.

The previous speaker, Mike Butterick, just talked about the fact that the Resource Management Act (RMA) is broken and needs to be fixed, but I would say that this legislation is more about tinkering than fixing anything. As was said from my colleagues earlier, we had a plan—we developed a plan, we designed a plan—and then, of course, the plan of the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act was canned this time last year. I know my colleague in the House, the Hon Rachel Brooking, mentioned earlier that she wrote to the Minister responsible for RMA Reform to say, “Look, we will work to find a way forward.”, but, of course, there was no reply to that.

We reluctantly, I guess, consider what is being proposed here this evening, and we see there are, obviously, good parts to it—there are challenging parts, but also good parts. For us, we need to think critically about what we’re doing since we’re back, I guess, at square one in many ways, with the RMA. I mean, it is a struggle, because this does feel like tinkering, but, none the less, it is the bill that is in front of us.

As I look through the legislation, there are some things that I think are OK. There are a few things that do disappoint me, though. Often in this House, particularly with this Government and particularly around RMA reform, there’s calls for “Let’s work together, let’s work in bipartisanship, let’s do all that together.”, and we did. It’s hard to trust that process when we committed—and I know that the Hon Judith Collins, David Parker, and Megan Woods stood on the podium together back in 2021 to announce and implement the medium-density residential standards plan, which, again, in this legislation, they’re watering it down. They’ve said, “No, we don’t really like that any more.” For us, it is a challenge when we talk and want to be bipartisan but then it comes back to bite us.

As I look at this legislation, I just want to bring the House’s attention to a couple of things. One is around the emergency response and natural hazards, which, I think, in this day and age, we need to consider and we need to look at in terms of where we’re at. You know, earlier in the afternoon I was speaking on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, opposing it as best I could, but in my speech on that legislation I talked about the Insurance Council of New Zealand and their concerns in terms of what is going on around climate and the challenges of climate change.

With this bill, it does introduce new regulation-making powers for the Minister to respond to natural hazards and other emergencies and enable recovery efforts in affected areas. I think what the bill does, it’s helpful in terms of outlining an assessment of natural hazards and risks that councils must then complete the assessment in terms of this, and when they want to grant land consent for an area subject to natural hazard risks.

I look at the agenda for today in terms of legislation that’s being formed and being made, and I think it probably is important to have that in here, in light of the Fast-track Approvals Bill, to have this part of the policy in place, because there are some real challenges around consenting and our natural hazards in terms of where we are and where things are placed. I think, if this bill does provide an increased suite of tools that are going to help in terms of looking at our natural hazards, looking at what emergency events may arise and finding ways to make better decisions and to be more effective, that is something that we can support, because we know that there are going to be more challenges, and in terms of when councils are looking at consenting, when they’re looking at the areas for growth in terms of building houses, we’ve got to find a way forward.

Finally, as a member of the Environment Committee, I would like to speak to my colleagues on the Environment Committee, as this bill will come to us. I will challenge myself and I will challenge my fellow committee members to really delve into this legislation—to interrogate it, to listen carefully to submitters who submit on it, to look carefully at the bill, at the challenges it poses, not just to go along with what is expected from the Ministers above them but to actually really look into this legislation to make sure that we can bring this back to the House and have it in a far better condition than it is today, to really look at what is important in terms of going forward with this legislation. We commend this bill.

I rise in support of this Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill. I think everybody in this House agrees that our resource management system here in New Zealand is holding us back and the management of our resources is flawed.

This is part of our plan of reforming our resource management system. It has three phases. This bill is part two. Of course, we’ve already gone through and repealed some of the unworkable legislation that had been put in place. This is really about targeted changes to the current resource management system and this will address some of the more necessary changes that we need to do to really drive economic growth and productivity.

Of course, we’ve already traversed this, as other speakers on this side of the House have talked about, making it easier to consent for new infrastructure, including renewable energy, building houses, and enhancing the primary sector. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill be considered by the Environment Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.