Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement for the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): 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 (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Today, the Government introduced the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill. It’s a major milestone in building a modern resource management system or planning an environmental management system. Those bills are not having their first readings this week. We could have done that, but I think it’s worthwhile that those bills—they’re around 700 pages, I think, in total—sit on the Order Paper and members have a good chance to digest them. They are chunky pieces of work, and I encourage members to have a read, and, no doubt, caucuses will wish to consider their positions on those bills.

Camilla Belich: Grateful.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: What’s that? Are you shaking your head already?

Camilla Belich: No, I said we’re grateful that we get to read it.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Right. Well—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I think there’s a legislative statement, isn’t it?

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: No, no, I’m into my speech. Those bills are going to go to select committee, as I say. But until the new system is in place, there is quite a degree of uncertainty, which I think many members will have heard about around the community, around what happens in the interim. This bill, the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill, aims to provide that certainty. We do want to make sure that businesses and communities can continue to operate smoothly. At the moment, consent holders face an unnecessary burden. Many of them are required to renew resource consents under the current system, even though the new system will be in place. That will streamline processes. It’s our view that that is inefficient and unnecessary. These are temporary yet urgent changes that will avoid uncertainty, stress, and cost.

There are two key changes to the bill, and, actually, it’s a very short bill. In fact, it’s a five-clause mother. It’s a five-clause bill, so it’s a very short bill. Two key changes: first, it extends resource consents set to expire before the new system is in place, and it reinstates and extends recently expired consents where a replacement application has already been lodged. This is where people have a—their resource consents have expired. I forget the exact section of the Resource Management Act—

Hon Andrew Hoggard: 124.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: 124—there you go. Thank you, Minister Hoggard—124, where a replacement application has already been lodged, and it just makes sure that those recently expired consents can be reinstated and extended until December 2027, ensuring they fall within the general transition provisions of the new resource management legislation, which will include longer-term arrangements for all consents and benefit from select committee scrutiny.

The bill imposes minimal costs. Consent holders do not need to take any action. If Parliament agrees to this bill, authorities will simply update the records, notify affected parties, and so the only cost is really just the process of Parliament passing the legislation, which of course I’m keen that Parliament do quickly. We are progressing it under urgency to give immediate certainty and avoid unnecessary expense during the transition. Thousands of consents expire every year, and every day that passes risks additional and unnecessary cost.

There are, I know, members of this Parliament who have been contacted by people who are quite worried about what—they’re welcoming of the new regime. They’re quite keen on resource management reform. In fact, they’re very keen on resource management reform, but that is a few months away. It’s a while—well, it’s not a while away, but it’s not tomorrow; if only that was true. But it will be sort of mid - next year, depending on progress through the Environment Committee, who I’m sure will do a good job. But there’s a bunch of people out there who are pretty worried about what happens in the interim. This bill provides that certainty and that relief for them.

It’s a practical solution to a temporary challenge, and it reflects the Government’s commitment to a smooth transition. I won’t belabour the point, but there are provisions in the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, which members, I’m sure, will want to consider in due course, that allow for quite a smooth transition as the bill is passed and into the transition phase between 2026 and 2029. But, in the interim, this provides some certainty for people, and I think it will be widely welcomed in the community. Thank you, sir.

The question is the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s very sad that we are once again in this House on an all-stages urgency bill, with a bill that we have seen only this afternoon. There is a departmental disclosure statement that we have just picked up off the Table now, because in the Minister’s press release that came out this afternoon, the link did not work. But is it quick reading, because it just says no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Has there been a regulatory impact statement? No. Has there been a proper analysis of how many consents this will apply to? No. No, no, no, no, no—that’s all we see in this report. We’re asking why this bill needs to be in all-stages urgency and how many consents it is going to affect, because we don’t get that in this departmental disclosure statement.

We’ve just heard from the Minister responsible for RMA Reform. He has said that there’s no cost to this bill and it’s totally fine. What are the costs to the environment? That is the main and most important question that we will be traversing in the committee stage and during these speeches as we find out more about this bill. He has said that “Well, it’s very short.”, but that does not mean that it is not important, and so what are the costs to the environment?

We’ve heard that it means that consents that are due to lapse get to continue on, and surely that’s a fine thing. But the types of consents that we’re talking about here, I think—but I’m not entirely sure, because, of course, there’s been no analysis—are most likely to be consents that regional councils undertake or that they administer for discharges to water and for the taking of water, which relates to irrigation, it relates to hydro dams, and it relates to drinking water, and there are a whole lot of very important issues there. It is also for putting pollution into waterways—those are the sorts of things that you have consents for.

There are also air discharges. We know that we have problems with air quality in New Zealand. Just last week, in scrutiny week, I was asking the Ministry for the Environment what has happened with the national direction on air standards that our Government was working on over two years ago now, and this Government still hasn’t put out anything on it, when we know that air quality affects our health. These are the important issues that the types of consents that are in this bill will relate to.

The coastal marine environment is also relevant. The Minister might like to spend some more time in his second reading speech describing the types of consents that he thinks will be affected by this bill.

Land-use consents are ones that are administered by territorial authorities. You might need a landuse consent to build a house in some particular zone or area. Once you’ve obtained that consent and if you don’t let it lapse and you undertake that activity, that type of consent stays, and so it is not relevant—which is my understanding, and the Minister is very welcome to correct me—to needing to roll over the consent.

I’m also interested in the point that the Minister made about people being excited about his new regime, and he was saying that it could have been sooner. I agree with the Minister that it could have been a lot sooner, if he had reviewed the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act rather than repealing them at about this time of year in 2023. That was two years ago. That work would have had significant economic benefits to our country and would have also improved the environment, and I’m worried that the people who are interested in Mr Bishop’s new bills are there because they think that they might be able to do worse for the environment. That is why they want this bill to be in place, and I would very much like the Minister to tell me in his second reading speech that I am quite wrong about that and to go into some detail about how it is so.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I was genuinely surprised when I saw this bill, and I want to put that on the record, because Minister Bishop and Simon Court have been very—maybe “collaborative” would be too strong of a word, but they’ve involved us at some points along the way in the resource management development. I want to give them credit for that. What was really disappointing with this was not having any heads-up about it at all. That would have been a really basic thing to do, right? If this is so important and urgent to the transition, just let us at least know about it, right? Then we can actually understand it. The fact that we’ve just got this bill literally an hour or two before it goes through all stages in urgency is absolutely unacceptable and very, very disappointing. I think it’s a particularly disappointing point when we’re going into what will be such a substantive process ahead, where we’re actually trying to make this whole resource management system work, and then we have this bill.

I’m thinking way back to another urgency when the Government—again under urgency—extended all coastal marine permits to 2050. That was unbelievable, but I thought, “Hey, that’s limited to that. That’s limited.” Now we have this, which applies to virtually all consents. I agree with my colleague Rachel Brooking; I would love to hear any kind of impact assessment—any kind of consideration that has been given to the impact of this bill—on extending virtually all consents to 2031. In the Government’s press release, one of the eight released—and they’ve done a great job of just completely swamping the media and the general public so that no one knows what the hell is going on—they say that this bill will ensure a smooth and fair transition to New Zealand’s new planning and environmental management system. We heard the Minister also say it will avoid uncertainty and stress. I just need to say “What bollocks” to that, because I wonder if it is fair to the many people across Aotearoa who literally cannot drink their water because consents operating in their local area are not up to scratch.

I wonder if it’s smooth and stress-free for those communities across Aotearoa who, again, make that costly mistake of doing basic things like swimming in their local river or at their local beach and get sick, just like those six kids just last month in Canterbury who were hospitalised and the dozens of people who also suffered the effect of drinking-water contamination. This is, sadly, a reality across our country, and this Government seemingly has complete blinkers on when it comes to the very real impacts of this and the fact that blanket bills like this result in those impacts continuing. When they continue like that, they don’t get better; they get worse. This is the irresponsible nature of a bill that’s coming through like this. It is estimated that every year, between 18,000 and 100,000 New Zealanders get sick from drinking pathogen-contaminated water—every year—and up to 800,000, particularly those in our rural communities, could be exposed to unsafe levels of nitrogen in their drinking water. These are the actual implications of consents that are not up to scratch and that have adverse effects on our environment. Communities are left with the cost; they suffer the health impacts.

It’s completely unacceptable, and I would love to hear answers throughout this process, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the Green Party is absolutely against this abhorrent bill.

It was also a surprise to me that this was my call, as much as it was a surprise to Lan Pham that we actually do need a common-sense move—that’s what this bill is—to recognise that we must provide a smooth pathway for those holding existing consents under the current Resource Management Act (RMA) to transition to the new planning system based on property rights, which Minister Bishop and I announced today. This bill that we’re debating now, the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill, is a simple extension of time for consents under the existing RMA to allow the new resource management reforms for the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill to pass into law, which the Minister and I intend to deliver by the middle of 2026.

This Government’s already implemented a plan stop, recognising it makes little sense to continue to spend ratepayer dollars developing plans that deal with a system that is soon to be replaced. This consent rollover legislation supports that. Thousands of people have RMA consents expiring over the next year, and without this bill, these people will be stuck confronting the eye-watering process and cost to renew them in what will soon become a legacy system. Today, we’re going to relieve the burden of everyone going through that painful process. However, recognising that some individuals may still want to pursue a new application or continue with their existing application, this bill provides choice to those who wish to continue under the RMA or wait to take advantage of the wonderful, enabling transitional provisions of the new system. I want to reiterate that these changes are needed to avoid wasted time, money, and effort that’s much better spent on gearing up for the new modern planning system that will deliver growth, affordable housing, and environmental improvements.

One clear example demonstrates its importance: up and down the country, people have been confronted with the excesses of the RMA we’ve so gotten used to. It’s reached absurd heights. In September, my parliamentary and ministerial colleagues Andrew Hoggard and David Seymour went to mid-Canterbury to visit a farmer by the name of David Clark. The Clarks had an A-grade environmental record that met all of their targets and 17 years of good compliance history, yet they found themselves faced with an estimated cost of anywhere between $60,000 to $300,000 to get a consent to continue operating their A-grade farm, and council were threatening to publicly notify their application, at great cost and time, unless they complied with exorbitant information requests out of all proportion to the risk council said they were trying to manage.

It turns out the Clarks’ example is another canary in the coalmine, uncovering story after story we have of world-leading farmers in similar positions facing costs and delay that they can’t afford, which they would simply, if they faced those costs, have to pass them on to consumers and households. The Clarks represent a microcosm of farmers up and down this country facing tens of thousands of dollars to reconsent operations. In many cases, these farmers are some of the best conservationists themselves. David Seymour promised the Clarks he would come back to Wellington and ask how enforcement against these “walking zombie laws” that are the RMA could be stopped. Today, we’re delivering on that promise, fixing what matters for farmers and for so many more hanging out for this temporary relief.

Today, Minister Bishop and I have announced our plans to replace the RMA with a system based on property rights and clear environmental limits. Core elements of the new planning system are intended to apply as soon as that legislation gains Royal assent sometime after mid-2026, including a further transitional consenting framework that will immediately start to relieve some of the absurdity of the RMA. Against this backdrop, this bill is clearly a common-sense and compassionate move. It’s less than 1¼ pages. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. History, I think, will judge that this is a big week for the future of the New Zealand economy—a turning point, taking the blowtorch to red and green tape. This bill is relatively simple in its execution: a sensible streamlining of our planning provisions, an interim measure while our new Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms come in, and rolling over existing resource consents. The previous speaker, Simon Court, highlighted the Clarks—and I think many of the people on this side of the House will know the Clarks or have met with the Clarks and be very familiar with their scenario—but there are farmers up and down the country that have just been exasperated—thousands and tens of thousands of dollars and years in some cases, just trying to roll over existing status quo resource consents. That’s what New Zealand First has shown with aquaculture, where we’ve been prepared to roll over those permits out to 2050. We actually think this is a pretty modest provision as we work into the overall RMA reform, but it is a sensible transition measure, so we just support it. It is a completely broken system as it stands. The bureaucratic pain needs to end. We support this bill.

I stand to give a short reply to this, because I’ve only had a short amount of time—I guess this is how it’s going to feel when communities are given no notice in a non-notification of changes, including consenting changes, that affect their iwi, their hapū, their communities that they have been protecting and fighting for forever.

The whole objective of this bill is to provide certainty, but it doesn’t. It’s meant to avoid unnecessary administrative burden and costs for consent holders during the transition to new legislation. Well, what about the communities affected by those consent holders? What is it doing to them? It isn’t providing certainty. In fact, what it’s doing is it’s reopening old pollution consents that many iwi and communities hoped were finally coming to an end, in the excuse of being transitional only. What we have here, sadly, is a Government that has decided that it will continue with the degrading of water, with the unsustainable extraction of our awa, as we see with Waikato, and it has had no respect at all for those communities that have been fighting for years and years, who live in the communities and know the strain that is happening within their very own taiao.

I think one of the words that we’ve sort of had to come to battles with is that this unjustifiably grandfathers in a number of resource consents. It will effectively lock mana whenua out of any opportunities to transparently challenge any existing consents. How is that providing certainty to anyone else but the polluter? What does it take for this Government to realise that bringing these things through urgency doesn’t provide certainty for anything other than people out there knowing that this Government has one objective, and that is to destroy the resources that have been meant to be kept for our future generations. We have seen many iwi and hapū, up to two generations, that have been fighting to make sure that some of these consents come to an end. They have opposed grandfathering. It is deeply, widely rejected by iwi, by communities, many who have experienced raupatu, because it rolls over rights of existing consent holders where they would usually have been required to reapply. Why are they being denied the community input, the iwi rights, that have been acknowledged here in Treaty settlements? Why is that now being denied? This has an impact on future generations. It is absolutely deplorable that it is being done through urgency, and many, as I said, are going to be so unfairly locked out of opportunities.

Let’s think about what those consenting entities look like. Let’s name what kind of things they do. We have some of the worst, worst quality water in Aotearoa that has ever been seen in modern communities—the worst. We have polluting dischargers that are now being told, “You’re going to roll over.” There’s no accountability. “We’re so worried about you. You’re going to roll over, because your transition is more important than the community’s transition, who deserve to be well.” We’re going to have industrial emissions rolled over—industrial emissions rolled over. We’re going to see stormwater run-off rolled over; land use, poor land use, rolled over; coastal permits rolled over; marine and cultural structure rolled over, without any accountability; and we’ve got infrastructure projects—because we know this is the Government of infrastructure—rolled over meaninglessly, despite the communities fighting for years and generations to make sure they’re accountable.

One of the things that we’ve talked about, and we saw this with—and I don’t know who this Minister is speaking to, but Waikato awa have been sitting there and talking about the protection of their awa. Auckland Council, we’ve got Fonterra, AFFCO—all their consents rolled over to extract and take out whatever they want. Till when? Till 2031. This Government has absolutely declared war on iwi and all of those communities who care about their—

Grant McCallum: What a load of rubbish.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Then go and ask them why they are all having to take this Government to court, because you refuse to listen and honour Te Tiriti and honour their settlements. This Government is doing nothing but shamelessly declaring war on all of those who care about their taiao. Kia ora rā.

Look, it’s a real shame to hear, on the other side of the House, the Opposition members saying no, no, no, because on this side of the House, we say yes, yes, yes. The new Resource Management Act reforms are going to create a culture of “yes”, where we get things built in this country—infrastructure, housing, renewable energy. Look, we’re about backing rural New Zealand, backing our farmers, going for growth, and creating jobs and opportunities. I commend this bill to the House.

Meitaki maata, Mr Speaker. Look, it’s interesting, we’ve just heard a contribution from a Government member saying it’s all about “no, no, no, no, no”. Perhaps I’ll, just for the benefit of the member, indicate what that relates to in a moment. But I’m not surprised that she probably actually hasn’t had time to read the departmental disclosure statement herself, because it’s only landed on the Table within the last half hour or so. I think we can forgive the member for referring in that way, because she probably hasn’t read the information herself.

For the benefit of the member, the “no, no, no, no, no, no, no” is in relation to part 2 of the departmental disclosure statement. I won’t go through all of it, but I’ll just identify some of these questions to which the answer was no. The first one was: “Are there any publicly available inquiry review or evaluation reports that have been formed or that are relevant to the policy to be given effect to by this bill?” No. A further one: “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this bill?” No.

Now, there’s a little bit of a caveat with this, and it talks about the fact that the urgency within which this legislation was prepared did not allow time for a regulatory impact statement (RIS) to be developed. Now, that might be OK in circumstances where there perhaps was not a lot of time, but these Resource Management Act reforms have been something that the Minister responsible for RMA Reform and the Government have been working on for quite some time. Why is it now, suddenly, at this last moment towards the end of the year, that the Minister has, under urgency, introduced this massive change?

Now, we all accept that there needs to be some consideration around transition provisions, but why is it that the Minister and Mr Court didn’t even foreshadow or think about the implications that the changes—that they are telling us are coming next week now—would actually lead to? It’s because of the fact that the regulatory impact—we’ve just had a bill that preceded this that had a RIS. That’s fantastic. We are starting to see a common thread here from this Government, when it comes to urgency, that a number of bills don’t have regulatory impact statements. But in this circumstance, where this has been in the pipeline for quite some time, why the Government is not prepared to actually have a RIS for this piece of legislation going through all stages is baffling. It really, really is.

When it talks about the impact analysis becoming available for any other aspects that the policy might be given effect to by this bill, there again is a no. Why? It talks about there being several thousands of consents that would have recently expired or are likely to expire in the next year or so, based on the limited data that’s available. Now, it might be around half of those consents that would be captured as being due to expire. That’s what is contained in the departmental disclosure statement. But I would have thought, and I join with the Hon Rachel Brooking, that the Minister should be able to indicate how many numbers we’re talking about here. How many consents are we actually referring to? Yes, there are thousands of consents around the country that are active or are through a reconsideration or reapplication process, but how many are we talking about here?

The Minister also says that there isn’t going to be any cost associated with this apart from Parliament’s cost, but there will be costs associated with this. The reality is that the Minister needs to be able to provide to this House an understanding of the context and what that looks like, because it is pretty important.

When we are talking about consents, they are an ability to permit a particular course of action or activity, and so that does confer a special set of rights and responsibilities on those that hold those resource consents. What this bill will do, in haste, is actually extend the applicability of those consents for quite a period of time. Now, as I’ve said, I can understand why there might be an ability to turn one’s mind to the need for strong transitional provisions. I think anyone would accept that. What they actually look like, I think, would be an important consideration. But I also think it would be helpful for transitional arrangements to actually be available to the public so that we can hear around what would work for them and what wouldn’t work for them.

The fact that this is a bill that is being rammed through Parliament, all stages under urgency, actually denies the opportunity for the Parliament and members of this House to hear from those that hold consents, those that don’t, those that administer the consenting process, those that might observe—whatever. I think there are a number of questions that the Minister has an obligation to respond to. One that’s top of mind is actually: what is the total number of consents that would be impacted by this move? We’ll continue to explore that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I recently attended a meeting in mid-Canterbury at the Lagmhor Westerfield Hall full of farming families who are facing an uncertain future, burdened down with cost and stress. The reason was the Resource Management Act and the consent process they were engaged in. We have a new bill that will be read next week which will help make this process a lot easier for them. This bill here actually allows them to get into that new process and remove some of that stress and uncertainty. I commend it to the House.

The bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading