Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill

Good morning. When the House rose last night, we were on the third reading of the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill.

Mōrena, and a holly, jolly merry Christmas morning we have this morning, although we are in yesterday in this urgency, and so it makes it a little bit weird. I wish I could say I was feeling the Christmas spirit today—I really wish I could—but the unfortunate thing is that we’re starting this long day of urgency with nothing but a lump of democratic override, delayed environmental protections, and more pollution for Kiwis for Christmas.

I think the really disappointing thing that we heard throughout the committee stage was this constant denial and downplaying of the actual impacts of this bill. We heard from Minister Bishop that “It’s just a bill. It’s only five clauses. It’s not that complicated.”, and yet it was so clear throughout that the understanding of the very real implications is just completely absent. We don’t know the actual implications when it comes to exactly how many consents, exactly what the environmental impacts will be of this delay. There was a real incoherence and total lack of understanding within that about our existing resource management system and the people and the resources that go into actually making it work. We haven’t seen that or heard that at all or an acknowledgement of that. I really want to take the time in the wrap-up of this third reading to acknowledge those people, particularly those council staff but also those fantastic landowners and farmers who know and understand the importance of environmental protections and are actually getting on with the job despite anything that this Government is doing.

We also heard from Minister Bishop that we’re, effectively, doing to consents what we’ve already done with plans through the plan stop, relieving everyone of the burden of going through the motions with a major overhaul looming. But what that Government is actually doing is leaving everyone else to continue to live with the burden of the impacts from the activities that happen in their communities, and a lot of these perhaps never should have been consented in the first place, or were finally getting to the position where they would be renewed, where actual rules and regulations that exist within our district and our regional and our unitary plans would actually have some effect. That’s not just for a bureaucratic exercise; that’s actually because we know we’re losing biodiversity and we continue to lose it.

We know we’re losing these last remaining dry land pockets of minute indigenous vegetation and kōwhai. These are the unseen impacts of this bill, and communities will now have to live with those impacts for another five or maybe six years, or longer.

What we find extremely disappointing with this Government’s pushing through this bill under urgency is the power that is taken away from communities that, in many instances—and particularly with iwi and hapū—were finally about to be able to have a say, be able to contribute, whether that be through their own voice or through the voice of the democratically landed plans that actually wrote those rules and regulations that would have had impact.

Instead, we have this complete and utter overreach from this Government, and it actually says everything it needs to say about the Government. They seemingly have zero understanding of a duty of care that New Zealanders actually expect from Government—no matter their stripes—of actually protecting te taiao, our environment, and the value of local voice. The Government waxes lyrical about localism and then takes all the power away from those local communities.

Stuart Smith: Come on, say something positive.

LAN PHAM: What’s really damaging—and I’m hearing from the Government that they want to hear something positive. Well, I think the positive thing that’s going to come of this is that the communities across Aotearoa are seeing exactly what this Government is about in terms of destruction of te taiao, continued exploitation, and they’re going to take the opportunity that the next year brings to vote this Government out.

That’s the positive that I’m taking from this, because no matter what this Government does, for people, for farmers and for landowners who actually understand the world, the environment, and their markets—they know that where we’re going and where we’re ultimately evolving as humanity on this planet is towards increased environmental protection and connection and understanding, not less. This is a rallying call for everyone out there who rejects what this Government are doing to get involved. That’s the positive that I want to take from today.

They also say that this will give certainty to consent holders, councils, and communities while the Resource Management Act (RMA) is being replaced, and that is bang on because it will certainly be the status quo continuing. It means certainty for those many communities across our country—places like Waimate, like Selwyn, like Kāeo up in the North—that their water supply will continue to be undrinkable because of pollution, primarily from intensive agriculture, waste-water systems, stormwater systems. It’s all one bundle. It will mean certainty this summer for New Zealanders who go out and think they can safely swim in their rivers and lakes and they either get sick or—if they’re on to it enough to actually check—find that their local river, lake, or beach is actually unswimmable, and it will certainly mean certainty for the declining trends that we know exist, with more species at risk of extinction, more communities struggling to pay for clean drinking water, and more valuable soil being washed off our hillsides.

Ultimately, this bill and the next steps that it provides for in this replacement of the RMA based on private property rights will give New Zealanders certainty that soon enough, what someone wants to do with the land that they have the influence to make decisions on, whether they’re the overpaid CEO of large milk-processing companies, a mining executive or industrial farmer, or simply a neighbour—those private property rights will be more important than the activity that might have and the degradation and the exploitation that it will have on the communities and people downstream or in proximity to them. That is absolutely not acceptable.

If farming operators want to intensively farm, the nutrient pollution that leaches into the groundwater doesn’t just remain there; it impacts everyone around them and it pollutes the groundwater. We know this. We know that if someone strips the native forest on the hills of their property, the soil that washes down in the storms doesn’t stop at the property boundary. It carries on downstream. It carries on to communities, with sometimes devastating impacts. We know that if landowners plant pine trees on steep land and clear-fell them in one harvest, the logs and the soil don’t respect property rights; they impact all of us.

This bill is just one of the many Government’s short-sighted, ill-thought-out, destructive attacks on even the most basic protections that we have remaining. It can be really hard within this to remember that a better future is possible, but we’re staying focused, and New Zealand should know that it is.

Well, some good news: the previous speaker, Lan Pham, mentioned about whether people can swim. I just did a quick check—it was 28 degrees on the farm yesterday, I was told, and I had a quick check of the Land, Air, Water Aotearoa site, and, yep, the daughters are free to go swimming in the river, it’s all good, and it looked like the rest of the Manawatū was as well. So it’s not all doom and gloom.

In terms of this bill, it’s a very simple bill. We’ve got a fundamental change coming up with the resource management system. We are completely changing it on its head. We are moving to a new system. It makes absolute sense that we take the current consent holders and transition them through into this new system. I don’t know whether the members have seen the various accounts of how much it is costing people to get a simple consent renewal, but it’s tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, to go through this process—all for what? It’s not making the environment any better; it’s making lawyers richer, but it ain’t doing much for the environment.

So this just makes complete and utter sense. The member also mentioned about the fantastic farmers that are out there. Well, these are the people I’ve been meeting. These are the people that are facing these huge costs. If you don’t believe me, feel free to send me an email and I’ll give you the names and addresses—you can go and visit them yourselves and see the absolute wrenching process they’ve had to go through, with the absolute farms they’re running, just to try and get a consent renewal to keep on doing exactly what they’ve been doing, and, in many cases, getting awards for it, getting A grade reports. This bill just makes absolute sense, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill. In the first reading, the Hon Mark Patterson mentioned what a big week this is for New Zealand’s future, and it is a big week, and this is a part of that legislation that will make such a difference going into 2026. It is a turning point in this environmental legislation in renewing the law as we go forward. It’s also taking a blowtorch to the red and green tape that we see that is holding up business and development within the country.

As we heard from the last speaker, it is a simple bill in the fact that it’s a two-year extension; it gives to 31 December 2027 till the Resource Management Act (RMA) replacement legislation comes in. What that does is give some certainty. It also helps around costs, so people aren’t spending unforeseeable amounts of costs on the old, broken RMA. Both sides of this House get up constantly and say how the RMA 1991 is broken, so why would we want to force people to go through that system if it’s a broken system when we’ve got something better just on the horizon? That is the reason we give this extension here today.

The other thing we hear too often from the Opposition, from the other side of the House, is that everyone in New Zealand that’s got a resource consent for some reason is a villain. They’re not; they are genuine people trying to get this economy moving and trying to grow the economy. This side of the House is getting behind those businesses and supporting them. That side of the House is being unhelpful. They’re adding cost and uncertainty by making them go through a broken system. They actually sound like the bureaucracy we’re trying to get rid of. That’s the reason they’ll still be in Opposition in 2026, going into 2027. This Opposition doesn’t care. We do care on this side of the House. We will grow the economy. This is a good piece of legislation, and I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, e te Pika. You know, the hardest thing is not just having this whole debate under urgency but is also reconciling the myth plus the legend and the whole lot of Disney kōrero that’s been going on in the last 12 hours.

What it is is that the biggest discussion here—the fundamental principle of what’s going on—is that there is an assumption that everyone that has a consent is best practising; that they have best-practising environmental aspects to their business, to their thinking, to their culture, to their way of being. But that is not the case for many. For many, this bill has interrupted those who have survived muru raupatu and were expecting to have consents concluding and justice served. That is not what is happening here.

In many situations, we have people who have been absolute great citizens of Aotearoa, who have honoured Te Tiriti, who have honoured settlements, and awa, the Waikato awa, who are concerned with the extraction that consents are doing. In many situations, these are great partnerships and great examples for Aotearoa, to show those iwi, those hapū, those leaders of community, community Māori, that have gone and worked with their councils, that have gone and agreed on what can be the next movement within these consents, but they’re no longer going to end.

That is the fundamental here: not that there are some good farmers, not that there are some good-practising companies; but the fact that the law was meant to protect us all. By extending this, that has been taken off every other citizen who has absolute right to be able to conclude some poor-practising companies with really bad consents. That is what’s at stake here.

I think we need to go back and remind our whānau out there what consents look like. What this Government has said is that those who are not best-practising in polluting discharges, those who are not best-practising in industrial emissions, those who are not best-practising in stormwater runoffs, in land use, in coastal permits, in marine and coastal structures, those who are not best-practising in how they have applied their way into infrastructure projects are now given an extension. That’s the debate, and we should all be applauding those who are best-practising; I certainly do, and there are some great farming practices. We’re all shareholders in Parininihi ki Waitōtara—great farming practices, great land use—but not everyone is in that situation.

That’s where this bill has desperately let down those communities. They have spent years, generations, protecting and expecting justice, and this Government—in the interests, which we continuously hear, of economic development—has told those iwi, those hapū, those communities to go and forget what we had said we would do, which is treat all of Aotearoa equally, all of Aotearoa well, and with justice. And that is not what this bill’s doing. You can sit there and say it’s complex—well, the Government can sit there and say it’s complex—but it actually isn’t.

Why is everything that has to be about justice and economic development involve removing Treaty relationships, involve removing the goodness and goodwill of iwi, involve taking out hapū? Why? Why can’t we sit here and be a Government and be a country and be a Parliament that actually sits here and says, “You’re right, we honour Te Tiriti, we honour the great partnerships and the leadership that’s happening out in the regions, that’s happening out locally.”? No, why is it that everything that involves economic development, everything that involves cleaning things out in this Government, also means moving and sidelining Māori? Why?

That is the problem here: this Government has told all those waiting for generations, across consecutive Governments, that “You do not matter, your consent issues do not matter, your pollution issues do not matter; the fact that your wahi tapu and your ability to want to develop does not matter. But, by goodness, Māori, you matter when we want economic solutions, you matter when we want to make sure we have great partnerships with your dollars. But your principles and your values are thrown and sidelined by this Government.”

That’s what this bill is doing and only this Government will be able to confront the wrath of iwi and many who are unnecessarily having to spend their time in courts, undoing the damage that this has done. This was about honouring, and this Government has honoured and sat there and agreed to every Treaty settlement that has come through this House—every Treaty settlement—but in one swipe, under urgency, without even allowing them the dignity of a kōrero or a conversation, you have decided to sideline their interests, sideline their intergenerational fights, sideline the fact that they have rights to be able to respect this taiao, and you have sidelined every other New Zealander that cares about the future of their mokopuna. Shame on this Government. Kia ora rā.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wish to remind the House and the member Jamie Arbuckle that it was his Government that reinstated the Resource Management Act (RMA) at the beginning of this term after the previous Government had created a whole new piece of environmental legislation, the Natural and Built Environment Act. What was announced yesterday, which is the reason for this piece of legislation before us today, was a radical inversion of the principle and the purpose of our primary legislative structure around the environment, which is the protection of the environment. This Government has now created a situation where public officials will be spending the best part of six years rewriting environmental law because of the time spent by the previous Government and the time spent by this Government. How does that give certainty to the public or to industry? Minister Hoggard said, just now in his speech, that the new RMA completely turns it on its head. It does—it does—because it says that private capital should be the primary focus of our environmental regulatory system, not the environment.

This bill before us, which extends the consents, has had, like so many things that come to this House under this Government, exceedingly little evaluation and scrutiny. There is no accompanying regulatory impact statement. The Ministry for Regulation has not exempted the proposal. The urgency with which this legislation was prepared did not allow time for a regulatory impact statement to be developed. Several thousand consents have recently expired or are likely to expire next year, based on the limited data available—well, we don’t have exact data. The urgent time frames for preparing this legislation have constrained the ability to undertake a broader analysis of the magnitude of the costs and the benefits—this is all in the departmental disclosure statement—and the cost to the environment has certainly not been evaluated. This Government fundamentally does not care about that cost. It is imposing on us new, radically right-wing property rights above the commons, above the public good, above the founding principle on which our nation is based, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It is imposing a new form of—actually, Mr Bishop, in his responses to questions last night used a term, “anarcho-libertarianism”. In fact, the correct term for it is anarcho-capitalism, whereby you place private property at the centre of all considerations, and you enforce the rights of private property.

What’s the problem with that? I’ll tell you what the big problem with it is: the commons don’t belong to anybody. The atmosphere doesn’t belong to anybody. From the mountains to the sea, the rivers, the lakes, the aquifers, the oceans—they’re not the possession of anybody. How can you protect them through upholding private capital and property rights? You simply can’t. The only thing you can do through that is allow the greater destruction and exploitation of them. If you’ve got the loot, you’ve got the right to pollute. If you say that private property, which is capital, is a basis for a right, then the simple fact is that, if you’ve got more money, you’ve got more rights. When Mr Bishop gives the example of somebody putting a garage on the front of their house, that makes it sound like it’s not actually about giving extraordinary extra rights to major corporations in this country—to say that if I’m going to tell Fonterra they can’t put so many nitrates into our rivers, I had better compensate them for it. I had better compensate them for the regulator and the legislator doing their duty—which is protecting the commons from those who would destroy it—for the good of this generation and future generations. That is what environmental law should be based on. This extension is just a pathway to Ozymandian hubris.

Look, the third reading of this bill—it’s been great to traverse everything over the last wee while. I think what is very important to say here is that there is nothing more local than individuals in a community getting jobs done, doing things that are very important for them. I think that what has been said opposite is an insult to the council planners, consent planners, that have put a huge deal of work into what’s been done in the first place. This is making sure that every single one—and I said this last night—has certainty to keep going over the next two years, while we go through the upcoming process. It is important, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Quite a few things to traverse in the third reading of the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill today, and I want to make mention of some of the comments that members opposite have made, particularly Jamie Arbuckle, who said—proclaimed—that those of us on this side who are speaking in opposition to this bill hold a view that those who hold resource consents are villains, and that is absolute nonsense. There is nothing that is further from the truth, and I will lay out, in my contribution to the third reading of this bill, why that is so.

Firstly, I will make the point, though, about the process that we’ve debated this bill under. It’s been under urgency—all stages urgency. While this may be a transitional bill, it provides, according to Government members, some certainty for those who hold resource consent. But there was actually no need, firstly, for this bill at all, if the Government had got their act together and done a better job with the resource management reform that they campaigned on. Secondly, I still don’t understand—although we’ve gone through pretty much all stages of this bill, including a committee of the whole House stage of this bill—why the secrecy for this bill. Is it just that the Government couldn’t get their act in order? Did they not foresee that this was going to happen? I mean, the bill was introduced to the House very—well, a very short time frame before we actually debated this bill for the first time, to the point that when we read the bill and we clicked on the link to the departmental disclosure statement (DDS), the link was broken, and we couldn’t actually get the DDS till we were in this House and we picked it up off the table.

I mean, why this level of secrecy? We didn’t know what the first bill was that they were going to introduce under urgency, and it was this one—a transitional bill that, apparently, just provides some certainty for resource consent holders. Did they not see that this was coming? To my other point that I sort of laid out at the start, that there is actually no need for this bill at all: we spent a fair bit of time and we understand the need for faster consenting processes. We understood the fact that the Resource Management Act (RMA) wasn’t working in terms of consenting or protections for the environment; in fact, we repealed it, and we replaced the RMA with two bills, which were the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act.

Now, this Government took office in 2023, and one of the first things they did was to repeal, in December 2023, those two bills. They have now taken two years to come up with two bills of their own, which, to an extent, mirror the legislation that Labour in Government brought into play, that we had worked on over a considerable number of years. The main difference between their two bills and the ones that we introduced to replace the Resource Management Act is the emphasis on property rights, and that is the bit that is going to be problematic. But, you know, members can judge—members of the public can judge—whether it warranted taking two years to repeal something and to replace it with legislation that is purely ideologically driven by that side of the House.

Now, if they hadn’t taken all that time to replace those two bills, they wouldn’t have needed a transition bill, which is what we are debating under all-stages urgency in this House today. What is the problem with all-stages urgency? Firstly, the lack of analysis. It is just bad lawmaking, and it is becoming a trend of this Government to push through legislation—

Grant McCallum: Did you never do that? Did Labour never do that?

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: Members opposite heckle, “Oh, Labour did it, too.”—but not as much as this Government is doing. Secondly, you do it when there’s an absolute need to do it. That is why urgency is allowed in this House—not to push through things because a Government is shambolic and couldn’t get their act in order, which is what we are seeing now. So it’s bad lawmaking to keep pushing through bills that circumvent proper scrutiny and don’t allow public consultation or public input here. It’s clearly stated quite clearly in the departmental disclosure statement—once we got our hands on that—that there is no regulatory impact statement (RIS) because “The urgency with which this legislation was prepared did not allow time for a RIS to be developed.”

Also, under the section around the extent of impact analysis that is available, it clearly states here that “Several thousand consents have recently expired or are likely to expire next year, based on the limited data available.” That, the Minister did lay out during the committee of the whole House stage: that that information is just not available, apparently. But it goes on to say that the analysis around the size of the potential costs and benefits of this legislation: no analysis around that. Again, it says here, quite clearly, that it’s because of “the urgent timeframes for preparing this legislation [that] have constrained the ability to undertake a broader analysis of the magnitude of costs and benefits.”, with regard to this piece of legislation.

I want to also lay out comments that have been made by environmental NGOs, most notably Forest & Bird. Given that all of their voices were shut out of this process because there was no select committee stage to this—not even a short one, which the Government could have could have done—their concerns are around the blanket consent extensions that this bill provides for. It’s predicated on a few different things: one, of course, the environmental risk that it could pose. When consents are extended without proper environmental assessments, it could pose a serious risk to biodiversity, to marine biodiversity, to water quality, and taonga species.

The other thing that it does is that it circumvents community and iwi or hapū input as well. Blanket extensions without thorough re-consenting or local review will bypass meaningful public input into this, and that undermines our democratic rights as a whole.

Finally, what it also does when you don’t have a review process is you lock in outdated conditions as well. Things move on, you know, things change—

Arena Williams: That’s right—stuck in time.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: This Government is, indeed, stuck in time because science advances and progresses; environmental conditions change. Climate impacts also mean that there will be, potentially, an impact on the environment, and if you have a review process for these resource consents baked in, it allows you to take those changes into account and then decide whether a consent should be reviewed or not.

Forest & Bird also laid out some options for this Government, which I was hoping to traverse in the committee of the whole House stage but, unfortunately, I didn’t get a call, and so I’ll lay them out here—

Ryan Hamilton: It’s because you weren’t here.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: What this Government could have chosen to do is to apply a risk-based review when it comes to consents. They could have chosen to enable low-risk consents to be progressed very quickly. They could have even allowed for higher-risk consent to be accelerated, but to bake in a review process with an allowance for community input there as well. They could have chosen to provide shorter extensions—a six-year extension seems incredibly long. Given new consents can be issued from mid-2026, they could have, actually, picked a shorter time frame, and, basically, what the Minister said during committee of the whole House stage was, “Oh, well, you know, we kind of had to pick a time frame, and that’s it.” They could have also ensured that Treaty obligations were met. Instead of just informing Treaty partners, they could have consulted with Treaty partners and not, therefore, potentially breached their Treaty obligations.

There are a number of things that this Government could have done better, but, unfortunately, they don’t seem to be able to get their matters in hand. They could have foreseen that this was coming. They could have just stuck with the two bills that Labour worked on—that was, actually, essentially, where they’re getting to as well, because we did recognise the need for faster consents. However, we on the side of the House also prioritise protecting the environment. This Government doesn’t seem to feel the need to do that. We’ve seen numerous examples of how they continue to wage a war on the environment. This seems to be the next step.

They’ve framed it as something that is transitional, something that is really “nothing to see here”, but they could have used this opportunity to do things better, and they chose not to. For all of those reasons that I’ve laid out, we do not support this bill.

Arena Williams: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Catherine—point of order—

Arena Williams. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I just want to draw your attention to the comment of Ryan Hamilton. He said during the speech of the conservation spokesperson of the Labour Party that she was not here. His exact quote was “Because you weren’t here.” That is untrue and misleading. The reason why she didn’t get a call was because the person in the chair at the time took a closure motion, and I’d like him to apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Sorry, could you run that by me again.

ARENA WILLIAMS: No problem. It’s prohibited under the Standing Orders to comment on whether someone is in the Chamber or not and to say something which is untrue, whether that’s in a speech or in a heckle. During the speech of my colleague, the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan, Ryan Hamilton called out “Because you weren’t here.”, in response to her comment which was along the lines of “I didn’t get a call in the committee stage and so I will lay my argument out here.” That is untrue and it is unbecoming of a parliamentarian to comment in that way, and I’m asking you to ask him to withdraw and apologise.

All right. Mr Hamilton, that is actually correct. So I won’t ask you to withdraw and apologise. I’ll put that as a warning broadly that we don’t comment on people not being in the House, but I don’t think it reached the threshold of withdraw and apologise.

Look, I’d like to give the Opposition a little wake-up call. When you run a business, you need certainty. When you export apples to the world, when you export red meat to the world, you need certainty. This bill is about giving certainty to those consent holders, to those business owners so they can create jobs and so they can grow our economy. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Five-minute split call.

I’d suggest to that previous speaker, Catherine Wedd, that she wakes up and comes into the real world. There is not much certainty, and those people who survive will be the ones who adapt to the changing circumstances internationally. This is a desperate bill, rushed through the House under urgency, and I’d suggest that it will be shown in history to be faulty. That’s what usually happens.

What we have here is rhetoric overtaking reality. We have a piece of legislation being passed through the House to deal with about possibly 2,500 to 7,000—no one knows, because there was no regulatory impact statement done; no idea of what is the issue here that is at stake—of 200,000 consents being managed by councils across the nation. This Parliament often passes legislation to deal with a very small minority of consent holders or people who break the law. This is the case now. But be careful what you ask for: the Resource Management Act was an Act passed by the National Government. It’s been amended, it’s been chopped and changed, mainly added to, and all would agree that it’s not perfect. But the rhetoric that we have from the people in the House here: blowtorch to red and green tape; turning it on its head. This is what we hear from the coalition partners.

Well, go to the World Bank and ask: what is the reality for New Zealand businesses in this country? What are the hurdles to operating—the so-called certainty that the previous speaker referred to? Well, actually, we’ve been judged number one year after year to operate business internationally. It’s easier in this country than just about every other country in the world. Now, can I say that of course some of the regulations are not perfect, and we should continue to improve them. But if you get into the rhetoric that we hear from the other side of the House, they’re going to throw it all out. We are already a laughing stock internationally for turning our back on our international obligations around climate change and around biodiversity. This will further add to the declining reputation that our ancestors have built up.

The vast majority, as I said before, of regulation and legislation that we pass here is for the minority of people. Deregulation is rhetoric that we’ve heard from that side of the House time and time again. They, in Government, deregulated the building industry. We ended up with leaky homes. They, in Government, deregulated health and safety. We ended up with Pike River and too many people killed at work.

They think they’re going to deregulate the resource management process.

Ryan Hamilton: Back to the bill.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I’ll tell you what’s going to happen: we will have a trail of lawyers up and down this country working out whose property rights are paramount—whose property rights are more important—when one versus the other, when the council versus the private property owner—[Interruption] Oh, they’re asking how this is relevant to the bill. What this bill is doing is rolling over consents on the basis that it will offer certainty—you’re kidding yourselves; you’re absolutely kidding yourselves. This will not offer certainty, at all. What is certain is that we all collectively have some challenges moving forward. Indeed, unless we address those, the rhetoric coming from that side of the House will give people false hope that they can get on and do what they like without any regard for environmental impact or the neighbour’s property rights. Your individual rights as a property owner will be paramount. That’s what we have heard from speakers on that side of the House, time and time again.

Let’s be honest as a Parliament: let’s say that the original Resource Management Act, passed by the National Government, amended many times and now under new proposals, is designed to balance property rights versus environmental responsibility. We in Labour support that approach, but the idea that property rights will roll right through environmental responsibility is ridiculous. It will undermine our international reputation, and it should not be supported.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The previous speaker, Damien O’Connor, talked about reality. Well, I’d like to give the Opposition a lesson in reality. The reality is simply this: I want to commend the Clark family, David and Jayne, for having been brave enough to stand up and highlight the challenges that the previous regime was delivering for them—costing thousands of dollars and creating huge uncertainty for their family. For that reason, I commend this bill to the House.

Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to talk in this final reading of the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill, a bill that was introduced yesterday to the House. Here we are, it will soon be law in mere minutes—that is the way our legislature has been designed. Many people, much smarter than me, have commented on it, but it does seem relevant to reflect on it at this point in the year, when we’re at the end of the year, where the Government has used urgency over and over again. It is less common for all-stages urgency to progress like this, and in a bill which itself removes public participation rights. There is both the removal of public participation rights at the primary legislative stage and then the ability of anyone who wants to comment on the resource consent extensions is also curtailed—there’s some poetry in that.

Let me turn to this bill and what it does. It was actually really helpful to have, and I want to thank the Minister responsible for RMA Reform, engagement in a committee stage that did bring much of that to light. When the Opposition finds on the Table the only information that is provided to us is in a regulatory impact statement that is two pages long and generally answers all questions with a simple “No”, we are reliant on the Minister to talk through some of the policy choices that he has made, and his intentions behind those choices. None of those has been echoed in the speeches by Government members in the first, second, or third readings, and so it’s useful for us to continue to record them here.

If the policy intention of the Minister is to be taken at face value, it’s about getting the balance right; it’s not about continuing consents that have existed for two years, because that is the fix in and of itself. The idea that two-year extensions on consents have no impact isn’t, in fact, what the Minister was contending at all—that a two-year extension is a valuable property right bestowed on these people simply because they have stacked up first is something that he was trying to achieve—but it’s important that we know what we’re doing here, because that has an impact financially on the neighbours, on the people down the street, on the people downriver, on the people in a community, if it is an air discharge.

I want to say to the electorate MPs on the other side who are frustrated with Opposition MPs raising these questions and pointing these things out: if any of you are electorate MPs who have been involved with communities who have brought to you petitions about the local dump discharging its odours next to the school, if any of you have been an electorate MP who has talked to a business owner who is worried about the business that is opening up down the street with a water take or a discharge, this is that. This is about those business owners, those neighbours, those people who come to you and they say genuinely, “I’m trying to do absolutely everything right under the law, and I’m really worried about the person down the road who I think is taking too much—in the 1980s was granted these rights, and it doesn’t fit with the character of the neighbourhood any more. I want to live here undisturbed. I want my kids to be able to go to school down the road without air pollution in the community because now this community has grown and there are more people here.” This is that, right? We know that—that this is an extension of those rights for two years, without any visibility.

That mum who sat in your office and raised with you this issue of the kids going to school next to the air discharge at the plant which was built in the 1970s—this is about her, and this is the legislative answer to her which says, “You have no say.” You know that, right? And when she comes to you, and you say, as her electorate MP, “I would love to help you, this is a legitimate concern. Good on you for going around your neighbours and getting a petition of 20 people. This is engaging with democracy. Good on you. As your electorate MP, that is my role, I will take this to Parliament. I don’t necessarily agree with you, but I will raise it with Ministers.”, this is that. This is “No” to that mum. This is “No” to those community groups that want to go to council and have a say on the water takes. This is “No” to the business owner downstream from those people who have water takes that were granted in the 1980s and that are no longer appropriate, because the environmental science has moved on and we know more about their uses. This bill does that, and there are trade-offs to be made here, but shouting down concerns that are being raised here about public participation is saying “No” to those people.

The choice that has been made here, from a policy perspective, is about whether the balance is right, and that comes down to what resource consents are for. The resource consents that have a time on them are not land consents. We’re not talking about the owners of most blocks of land, because those consents don’t end. The consents that do end, Andy Foster, are water takes, they’re irrigation takes, they’re air discharges—they’re the ones which do have a community impact, and the reason they have a timing on them is because people want to have a say on those. These are the ones we are talking about. When we’re talking about the extensions for farmers, we are talking about the ones where there are legitimate community concerns, where we want to engage in a community dialogue about those, so there is a trade-off to be made here.

It was useful, in the committee stage, to tease out some of these issues—issues like, when you make planning rules changes in Auckland, you have a complicated web of different planning changes; they’re called PC “number number”. In the case that occurred in November last year, council adopted some new rules that were essentially given effect by planning changes that we made in this House. All of a sudden, developers who were wanting to build three-storey houses, because they were relying on the MDRS—the medium density residential standards rules—couldn’t build those any more. We haven’t solved that problem for them, and this bill could have done that—I put that to the Minister. He is working through that, but this is another missed opportunity, and a reason why a rushed legislative process where people can’t come along and have their say, they can’t come to their local MP and say, “Hey, I’m a mum and dad developer. Because I’ve had this land for 10 years, it’s now the right time in the market for me. I can get a builder cheaply, you know, and the husband can do some of it himself. We’re really excited to build this three-bedroom townhouse.”—

Ryan Hamilton: It’s the next bill, Arena.

ARENA WILLIAMS: No, it’s this bill, Ryan Hamilton. Perhaps you could have been listening in the committee stage, which you were clearly in the entire time. The issue here is that when those developers weren’t able to develop their land, they—this is not solving it for them, and this is not solving it for everyone who has issues with the timing involved in introducing this kind of reform. It’s only dealing with those sorts of consents like water discharges, like air issues, that have public participation in them, and it’s just a blanket extension which creates an extended property right with no protections for community.

It is the least to say that this bill also absolutely limits the right of Māori participation in the extension of these, that we have moved on so far from the 1980s, and that should be progress we can all be proud of as New Zealanders, where the ability of iwi and hapū to make their views heard about the use of water, about the use of air, has changed, and that is generally—I think everyone in this House would agree that that is a good thing. They are not able to do that. In some cases, they have been waiting 25 years, 30 years, 35 years to be able to have their say about these water takes which were granted many years ago, before they were settled, before they had an office, before they were able to collectivise and have a say in the environmental planning regime. They will not be able to do that now, not just for two years but, effectively, until 2031.

That was an issue that we played out at the committee stage, we got to the bottom of. It was useful to really understand what this Government is doing here, that those rights will be curtailed, that there has not been consultation with iwi, with hapū, with affected Māori landowners at all, before the introduction of this bill. One can only assume that the quick introduction, the lack of consultation with the Opposition, and the way that now iwi, it is said, will be informed of this rather than consulted is because the Government feared the litigation risk because of this. Why is there litigation risk? It’s because iwi want to have a say, they want to be at the table when it comes to matters of water and air, because they want to be alongside Government and local government and make those decisions as kaitiaki of their whenua. That’s something we should all be able to agree with, but that is not what’s happening here.

Finally, I want to reflect on the difference between making a decision like this under all-stages urgency and having it go to select committee. We won’t know how this affects people or who it affects or how many it affects until this law takes effect, but we all should. All of us who are electorate MPs who have water takes in our area, who have pollution discharges into our air—when you look up and you’re an Auckland MP and you see the smoke in the columns going up, you should know that that has been extended, and you should find out what your community thinks, because that’s your job and that’s the decision we have made today.

Can I just say touché, Ms Williams.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I won’t take too long. We were criticised for being rushed with this process and taking two years to build the RMA. In that process, we’ve created this hybrid bill to, I guess, grandfather or piggyback or support those that are caught in between the legislation process; to carry them over and give them some security. We’ve heard all the scaremongering from the other side about Treaty and rushed and all this stuff. But this is pragmatic. New Zealand is watching, and I’m proud to be part of this once-in-a-generation change. I commend this bill to the House.