Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon CHRIS PENK: I move, That the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2025.

New Zealand faces a significant infrastructure deficit. This has spanned generations and different Governments. To acknowledge that fact, to admit that fact, is not a politically partisan point; it is, in fact, simply reality. As our population grows and our existing assets continue to age, demand is mounting for us to build smarter, faster, and better, so that we might boost this nation’s productivity and lift living standards for all New Zealanders. This challenge is particularly pressing for our transport networks. We need these routes to operate a 21st century standard, to move goods from Kiwi farms to global markets, to ensure that first responders can reach people in need, and to allow everyday Kiwis to get to work safely and efficiently so that our economy can continue moving.

Madam Speaker and colleagues, the Public Works Act 1981 is the legislative tool that gives central and local government the authority to acquire and manage public land for the new infrastructure that New Zealanders need and deserve. I think it’s fair to acknowledge—again, over a period of time and not a politically partisan point—that aspects of the operation of this legislation are no longer fit for purpose. Inefficient processes are causing costly delays, and too often the only progress on a project is a legal battle dragging on in a courtroom. These hold-ups are escalating costs and slowing the delivery of new roads, schools, housing, renewable energy projects, and hospitals. I should also add that as a matter of fairness to landowners, faster and fewer processes are most certainly needed. Our proposed amendments to the Public Works Act, on which I’m speaking right now, will accelerate the delivery of critical infrastructure which is essential for New Zealand’s economic growth.

Speaking now as to the scope of the bill, it is designed to respond to the current critical infrastructure deficit and, as such, will apply to a finite set of projects. I’ll make this point again at the close of my remarks, but for the clarity of the House now, I point out that other reforms in relation to the Public Works Act will be progressed by the Government separate to this—a bill on what we’re calling “critical infrastructure”. The bill will streamline the Public Works Act’s land acquisition process for critical infrastructure projects that are listed in a schedule to the bill. These are public works projects that are listed on Schedule 2 of the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 and the roads of national significance identified in the Government Policy Statement on land transport 2024. I should also emphasise that only the agencies that already and currently can use the Public Works Act to acquire land or interest in land—these being the Crown, local authorities, and network utility operators, that are what we know as “requiring authorities”—will be able to use the critical infrastructure process. There’s no broadening of the mandate of the legislation in that respect. So just to be very, very clear, private entities cannot acquire land under the Public Works Act, and this is not going to change with the proposed amendments to the legislation.

Talking now about a replacement objection process—the bill introduces a faster, fairer land acquisition process by replacing landowner objections to the Environment Court, with a streamlined submission process. It outlines the new objection process and establishes the criteria that decision makers must use when determining whether land can be compulsorily acquired under the Public Works Act. Importantly, judicial review remains an option, and I’m confident that this process ensures natural justice rights are upheld. Judicial review, as members will likely know, relates to the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. It’s the right of a person who is affected by Government decision-making to go to the court and to test whether the authority of the executive branch of Government has been exercised in a way that is reasonable. That much will not change, and goes to the important point around natural justice rights—for example, the right to be heard.

The Public Works Act separates public works into central government and also local works. The decision maker for central government work is the Minister for Land Information. A local authority, on the other hand, is the decision maker for a local work, as you might expect. Most land acquisitions under the Public Works Act are settled by agreement. In other words, a compulsory acquisition does not need to take place in the majority of cases. However, when objections are made and these reach the Environment Court, costs rise hugely for all concerned and project timelines blow out. The bill’s proposed submission process will significantly reduce delays by allowing a decision within approximately 60 working days by the time the whole process is played out at its maximum, compared with the six to 12 months, or even longer, that it can take for the Environment Court and subsequent court hearings to hear objections. So while the bill streamlines the objection process, it will still require agencies to negotiate in good faith with landowners for at least three months before compulsory acquisition is considered.

Addressing now the subject of incentive payments to encourage agreement—of course, noting that whether it’s the streamlined process or the current standard court process, it is better for all concerned if agreement can be reached on a “willing buyer, willing seller” basis. To encourage landowners to reach agreement, therefore, on land that is needed for critical infrastructure, the bill introduces an incentive payment of 15 percent of the land’s value for those who negotiate and sell early in the process. To ensure the scheme remains affordable, payments will be capped at $150,000, with a minimum payment of $5,000, notwithstanding the calculation that’s otherwise made on the percentage basis. In addition, there is a recognition payment regime whereby the legislation provides an additional 5 percent recognition to landowners whose land is acquired, whether by agreement or compulsorily, as acknowledgment that their land is being used for critical infrastructure which will serve a significant purpose in improving the lives of their fellow New Zealanders. This payment has no minimum amount and is capped at $92,000. Of course, those who are adept at mathematics—of any gender—will know that the combined total of these is $242,000 where both incentive and recognition payments apply.

I should emphasise again, for the sake of clarity within this House but for anyone also following along closely who may be affected by such moves—in a positive way, I hasten to add—that the recognition payment and, where applicable, the incentive payment that I’ve just outlined will be made on top of the existing compensation provided under the Public Works Act. So the new critical infrastructure incentive payment will replace the limited incentive payment regime currently under the Act, but again I emphasise, it is on top of the 100 percent of the value of the land that is already able to be established. In addition to the point I made earlier about the retention of judicial review avenue, so too will the Land Valuation Tribunal remain available to determine compensation disputes.

I think it’s also important to highlight that protected Māori land will be excluded from this regime in a way that I’ll now point out. The Government acknowledges that the historic confiscation of land, including through the previous versions of the Public Works Act, is a source of pain for many New Zealanders. In contrast to that history, more recently, acquiring Māori land for public works has been, and will remain under this regime, a last resort. Protected Māori land, as defined under the Public Works Act, cannot be acquired through the new critical infrastructure process. Owners of this type of land retain their full right to object through the Environment Court. If land acquisition must occur, such landowners will be eligible for the recognition payment and, where applicable, also the incentive payment to ensure that their role and contribution are properly acknowledged with respect to their unique connection to the land. That’s a matter of legal and moral force, as far as I’m concerned.

Agencies will be able to opt out. In other words, those who are responsible for critical infrastructure projects will have the ability to opt out of the new process on a project-by-project basis. If they choose to opt out, then any landowner objections will continue to be heard by the Environment Court, as under the current system.

Finally, transitional provisions are provided for in the proposed bill. They’ll allow agencies to maintain momentum for critical infrastructure projects where land acquisition processes have commenced before the enactment.

Finally, or my additional final point—my final, final point—is that there will be a review after three years to ensure that the legislation is operating in a faster and fairer way as we intend. As I’ve said earlier, in addition, there is a broader review of the Public Works Act outside this critical infrastructure kaupapa, and we’ll have more to say about that and more in the House in due course. In the meantime, though, I look forward to colleagues’ contributions, and I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I’m just wondering whether there were any other final points from the Minister.

We hear from Government “and we’re here to help”—it’s often said when officials come knocking on the door. Unfortunately, the Public Works Act is not one of those areas where most people see a huge benefit. Indeed, it’s a piece of legislation that’s been in place for a long time, as the Minister said, and it’s necessary to ensure that we do allow for infrastructural development across our country. In many places and at many times and on many occasions, landowners and the Government are aligned; they still see the value of actually developing a work or a project that often impacts on the private land that someone might have or the interest that they have, and that moves along reasonably smoothly, and has done over decades, really, to give us the infrastructure we have. But, from time to time, conflict arises.

The Labour Party will support this piece of legislation, but we do expect the select committee to scrutinise this very carefully, because there are some serious questions that need to be answered. The Minister has said, and we agree, that there is an infrastructural deficit across our country. It’s been exacerbated at times—take, for example, the previous National Government that brought in “sweat the assets” on the roading infrastructure and then increased the tonnage of the trucks. That actually led to the rapid decline in the roading network that we’re facing across this country, and I’m sure my colleague Tangi Utikere will raise those issues.

The projects in Schedule 2 are, for the most part, transport—there is one big housing project, but they’re transport. What isn’t in here is a list of water projects. The National Party and ACT—and New Zealand First too—criticised and slammed the Labour Government for its water initiatives, called “three waters”, and said it would throw that out and would put other alternative initiatives in place. We’re yet to see them. We’re yet to see any infrastructural proposals around water for this country. We have a couple of discussion documents and a bit of a proposal that tries to rope councils in, but, actually, we’re not seeing much action. So, I do say, while we welcome the list of transport projects in here, and one for housing, there is a deficit in the deficit list that we should be looking at.

Look, the Minister has outlined some of the technical details of the legislation, but I’d like to refer to the issue of property rights, which is where the conflict occurs in the Public Works Act: that is, the property rights of a landowner and then the objective of Government to move through that. The Government has got itself into a bit of a bind, I have to say, because it’s been talking about the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, which will form part of this process down the track, but enhancing property rights, it says—RMA reform and enhancing property rights. Well, I’ll put on the record now that jurisprudence will determine where the balance of that lies into the future. All the learnings, all the experience, and all the judicial advice that comes from the RMA in its cases over many years will be thrown out, and so people who think that they’ve got better protection for their property rights, through the RMA reform, are being misled by this Government once again.

This bill rides over property rights, for good purpose; that is, it moderates them. It doesn’t allow access to the Environment Court; people can choose to go to the Minister for decision making. This, potentially, might streamline the process, but it doesn’t give any guarantees. The incentives through additional payments are a good step forward and probably will incentivise that hurry-up, but there is in section 39AAM an ability for the changes to be made to that compensation. The select committee, in my view, should scrutinise that: why should changes be able to be made when we’re passing this through the legislation?

Labour will support this, but there are many questions that need to be answered by the select committee, and I know that my colleagues will be referring to some of those. Yes, we need good cooperative behaviour between landowners and the Government in infrastructure development, but we need to ensure that the balance is always maintained between property rights and the Government and other fairness through this process.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The country that we live in does need investment in infrastructure. The most pressing need is for infrastructure that rapidly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, that helps us stop the loss of biodiversity, that helps us end child poverty. There are so many things that we need to be investing in and, unfortunately, this Government is not making the right choices, by and large.

This bill seems to be directly linked to the Fast-track Approvals Act, which the Green Party opposed, and it is not the reform of the Public Works Act that we need. We do need to reform the Public Works Act, and I was really sorry that Government MPs did not vote for my colleague Hūhana Lyndon’s member’s bill that would have righted a historical wrong and made sure that Māori land was no longer taken in the same way under the Public Works Act. Of course, that was voted down by this Government—hardly a surprise. This bill is the next stage in the fast-track approvals process, which is all about bulldozing through key critical checks and balances from the compulsory land acquisitions process in order to facilitate projects that, by and large, are taking us in the wrong direction.

It doesn’t even matter whether you don’t believe in climate change. I’m sure there are Government members who don’t believe in climate change and don’t think we should do anything about it. The irony is that the vast majority of the transport projects listed in Schedule 2 don’t even stack up according to the supposed objectives of the Government itself. If we want a transport system that’s reducing cost, that’s improving productivity, that’s helping more people and goods move around the country, the vast majority of the transport projects listed in Schedule 2 do not do that. They certainly don’t make improvements in a cost-effective way, and we know that from initial cost-benefit analysis. Although, if you ask the Government now for any information around cost or benefits related to any of the many highway projects that they are proposing to fast track, they will say, “We don’t know the cost.”

So they’ve made these projects a priority without knowing the cost and without knowing the benefits. We have decades and decades now of evidence about what supports economic productivity and what the opportunities are for countries in terms of reducing the cost of moving people and goods. It turns out that what’s good for the economy or productivity is also what’s good for the climate, is also what’s good for consumers. That is not spending billions of dollars on four-lane highways in cities or in the middle of nowhere, because there are more cost-effective ways to do it. The Government MPs just have absolute blinders on when it comes to this.

They will say over and over again that they care about cost-effectiveness, they care about economic productivity, they care about growth, and yet they will consistently support projects—really, it’s like cargo-cult economics. They’ve been to some richer countries, and they saw some big roads and they think if we build them here, it will facilitate economic development. Go learn something about transport economics. It’s so interesting. It’s so fascinating. There are huge opportunities for New Zealand to reduce the burden of transport costs and it’s not through four-lane highways at any cost anywhere. It’s actually a bit deranged what’s happening. It’s a bit deranged the way they’re so convinced that a four-lane highway is the answer to any problem in the absence of any actual economic analysis.

The Green Party is not going to support this bill. We’ll be looking closely at it at select committee. As has been mentioned by the Hon Damien O’Connor, there are real tensions between the things they say they value—like private property rights—and this sort of bill which, basically, gives more power to the executive to compulsorily acquire land. They make up for it through making it possible for people who have their land taken to get maybe a bit more financial compensation. However, that doesn’t reflect the fact that for many people, whenua doesn’t have that monetary value; it can’t be replaced with money. There is an attachment to the land that must be respected and there’s more than just humans living on the land, and we should respect all life.

We would like to see a reformed Public Works Act. This isn’t it. This is just a Government that is very autocratic and seems to hate the environment and has no concept of the challenges that are actually facing us.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill. The Minister in charge has already gone through everything that this bill does, so I won’t take too much of the House’s time. But what I would say is that we all know that we need to deliver a lot more infrastructure and we need to deliver in a timely manner, in an effective and efficient manner, but we also know that, when we are delivering infrastructure, there are a lot of processes, a lot of steps that are involved. Land acquisition is something that is a very important step when we start thinking about any new infrastructure.

We have seen that some of the processes need streamlining. So what this bill does is it streamlines the objections process that is experienced when the step of land acquisition comes, and it also introduces some incentives. So what we want to see is that the process is faster but, at the same time, the process is fairer as well. Of course, we want to hear from the submitters in the select committee process. My colleague Cameron Luxton is on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and I’m sure that the contributions that submitters will make in the select committee process will be taken on board.

So we look forward to seeing in what form this bill is reported back from the select committee. The ACT Party supports this bill. Thank you.

I’m delighted to rise to speak to this bill—[Knocks water glass] That’s not a good start!

It’s all about making sure that we improve our economic productivity, and where I wanted to go to—and this is front and centre for New Zealand First—was the Infrastructure Commission. They presented to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which is where this bill is going to go to for consideration. What they said to us was, “We’re investing enough money in infrastructure in this country to do the job that we need to do; the problem is that we’re not getting value out of that money.”, and what is happening there is that the processes, in many cases, whether it’s the consenting process, the Public Works Act processes, etc., are holding the country back. So it is essential that we make sure that the Public Works Act process is efficient, and that is what this Government has been doing a lot of work on.

As we’ve heard already, taking land compulsory is a really, really significant step. It’s important that there are safeguards there. What this bill does, though, is to make sure that the Ministers who will make decisions in this case have to step through the same criteria as the Environment Court would have done previously, and that gives some protections there. It also brings in, as you’ve heard, some incentives to try and reach agreement first, and that’s obviously an important thing that needs to be done.

But I did want to tell you one very, very quick story and it’s the story of Mt Messenger. We’ve already talked about that last week in respect to the Wildlife Act. You have a new road being built up one valley, through a hill, down—OK, you don’t have a new road, Madam Speaker, but there is a new road being built up one valley, through a hill, and down another valley to then make the whole highway system work better. The problem is that somebody at one end of one valley is not willing to sell. The process has got convoluted. The New Zealand Transport Agency have had to do a very, very complex, very ingenious structure to try and make sure that they can actually build the road, but it is going to come at a cost of hundreds and probably hundreds of millions of dollars because of one person holding out in terms of the Public Works Act. If this was made more efficient and more effective, that means all that money could have gone to something else, whether it’s roading, whether it’s public transport, whatever it might have been, somewhere around New Zealand. That is about making New Zealand fly faster, fly higher, go faster, and that is really important.

That is what this bill is all about. I’m looking forward to seeing it in front of the select committee, and I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Kei konei ahau ki te whakamahara i te Whare ki ngā āhuatanga o te whenua, ngā whenua ka tangohia i te iwi Māori me tēnei pire.

[I am here to remind the House of the features of the land, of the lands that will be taken from the Māori people with this bill.]

Kia ora. I think, given the nature of the earlier debates in the House this morning, it’s really interesting that this Act, the Public Works Act, which has been around since about 1864, I think, is being amended to speed things up. Now, te iwi Māori haven’t had a very good history or relationship with the Public Works Act since its inception in 1864. We talked about the 1863 invasions, this morning, when Tauranga suffered great losses, land losses—all kinds of losses—and a lot of those losses were exacted out of them through the first iteration of this Act. There’s about 66 million acres of land in this country and, before the signing of the Treaty, Māori owned them all. There were a bunch of early land sales which were deemed illegal by the mid-1850s—

Carl Bates: Back to the bill.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Catch up, junior—you’ll learn about this. You obviously weren’t paying any attention this morning. Those land losses were deemed illegal. This would hold out until the 1860s, and, in the 1860s, Māori still retained about 80 percent of the North Island, where Tauranga is an iwi, where the invasions of Grey happened, where a lot of the land loss suffered by te iwi Māori was incurred. But, hey, hey, hey—get back to the bill! These people, I tell you—this is a Whanganui MP.

Māori have suffered loss of land from the Crown through the Public Works Act since 1864, and the scale of that land was probably somewhere in the range of 20 million acres, leading into the 1900s—20 million acres. Today, they want to show up with this piece of paper and tell me that incentive payments are going to build trust in te iwi Māori because it’s going to fix everything!

You want to learn to listen. You want to learn to go and actually speak to the people who suffered land loss on a staggering scale in this country, at the hands of this very legislation—at the hands of this very legislation. The Government, with all these boys from Tauranga who talk so wholeheartedly about their journeys as young men looking at ancient pā sites and battlegrounds—that’s the story in the morning, but in the afternoon it’s “Let’s push the old Public Works Amendment Bill through.”

Hon Casey Costello: Māori want roads, too.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: I’ll tell you about Māori and roads. Māori retained a lot of land into the late 1800s, and do you know what the Public Works Act allowed the Government to do? To put paper roads through that land and carve it up, because the Government was able to then go and take land that was 5 acres either side of that road, even if the road wasn’t built. So don’t throw your things around from that side of the House, because you know absolutely nothing about it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Please don’t bring the Speaker into the debate.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Don’t let the Government throw their ignorance around the House like it means something when the people in the Government obviously know nothing about the history of the thing. You’re in here pleading “Poor you” and “I’m going to look after Tauranga Moana” in the morning, and you’re here in the afternoon passing an amendment to the same Act that led to a lot of the devastation that the Māori people around the country have had to live with. So ka haere tonu.

[So it continues.]

By the 2000s, the retention of Māori land in Māori hands was down to about 4 million acres—4 million acres, and a large proportion of that was tied up in the Māori Land Court, which isn’t like the title suggests, right? It’s the “Pākehā Control of Māori Land Court”.

Māori suffer the greatest losses, and despite the guarantees or the hopes of the new legislation that perhaps, one day, Māori land will be valued at the same value as general land—why would that not already be the case? That’s another story for another day.

Anyway, here we are. We find ourselves listening to ideas all proposed on the premise of good economic productivity that has never managed to trickle down to te iwi Māori. So we do not support the bill. Tēnā koe.

We’re in desperate need, as a country, to get on and build infrastructure. If you look at the estimates from the Infrastructure Commission, or independent consultant estimates, the need for infrastructure around this country is running into the hundreds of billions of dollars, so I support this bill. The purpose is simply to look at streamlining the land acquisition process under the Public Works Act for the Fast-track Approvals Act and those projects that are listed in Schedule 2—and, in particular, the roads of national significance, which is a high priority for this Government.

I look forward to the select committee process, as deputy chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, along with my colleagues Andy Foster and Tangi Utikere and other colleagues around the House; we’ve got members from the Green Party here as well. I want to reassure people that you’ll get a fair hearing at the select committee, so I’d like to encourage people to submit on this bill. Particularly, I’m keen to hear from those who have been through the land acquisition process before, whether it’s private individuals, iwi organisations, or also private companies, just to understand what the current fish-hooks are with the Public Works Act and to make sure that we’ve struck the right balance with this bill. Otherwise, I commend the Minister for Land Information for bringing this bill to the House, and I commend this bill to the House.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. It’s great to be able to take a call on this bill at first reading. It’s a very important Act that this bill is seeking to amend, because it is one that when it is utilised, it is overtly empowering. What that means is it basically has the potential to railroad over many people’s rights. My colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor touched on those property rights and landowners’ rights that this has the interface alongside, so it is important that we do take some time to talk through some of the issues that might come up in select committee. As my colleague has said, we will be supporting this bill to select committee.

I look forward, as a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, as Mr Bidois has said, to engaging with the submitters over this. I do hope that many people will submit to have their views known, because the need for safeguards in any form of empowering legislation is very important, and so that’s part of the process, so I look forward to that.

The bill has a couple of schedules attached to it. Schedule 2, which basically identifies the list of critical infrastructure projects—and it is a significant list. But when one looks through those projects there, the overwhelming nature of them are transport-related. When we look at the Airport to Botany Rapid Transit project, when we look at the Auckland Level Crossing Removal Programme, when we look at an alternative to the Brynderwyns, these are a whole range of transport-related infrastructure projects that are currently on the Government’s roads of national significance list.

Now, whether they actually come to fruition, of course, is another question, but it is interesting that they are contained here. When one looks at the regulatory impact statement (RIS)—interestingly enough, this is actually a Government bill that does have a RIS associated with it—it does identify that depending on the final decisions that are taken, any roads of national significance that are due for construction over that three-year period will need to acquire around 500 properties. That’s a significant amount, so it’s important that we do engage and hear from the community around this and, in particular, around the list of projects that’s contained in Schedule 2.

When I was having a look through there, there’s not much in the South Island, of course, because this is a Government that doesn’t really care about infrastructure in the South Island, but there is the Lower North Island Integrated Mobility there. And, of course, it’s good to see my colleague the Hon Kieran McAnulty here, because he is responsible for securing the funding for the Wairarapa line between Wellington and Masterton whilst in Government, and it’s good to see that there’s secured funding as well for the Wellington to Palmerston North line in Schedule 2 on page 26 of the bill. So it would be interesting to hear from communities in those affected areas about what this bill might mean for them to be able to deliver on the infrastructure needs of this particular project.

Mr O’Connor did reference the fact that I may wish to touch on some of the transport needs around infrastructure as they relate to this bill. While I have done that, I do want to pick up on the point that he has made around the real need for increased investment in infrastructure, particularly when it comes to transport. He cites, rightly, the one example—that the former National Government introduced an ability for an increase in tonnage of heavy vehicles to be travelling the rail network. What does that mean? It means an increase in the need for maintenance costs over a shorter period of time. So it’s these decisions that have led to the infrastructure deficit that this country is facing and so it’s important that we do think about this.

One of the concerns that we will be interested to look at, at select committee, is the role that decision makers will have. What has already been said from the Minister is that this will basically move some of that decision-making capacity from the Environment Court across to Ministers. While Mr Foster talked in his contribution about how Ministers will follow the same process, we must have our eyes open to the fact that it is Ministers that will be making these decisions—very different from those of the judiciary. So through the select committee process, we will be looking to tease that out to ensure that there is a level of robustness that is still within the bill to ensure that that is an important factor that is taken up.

So it is important to see this come through select committee. I look forward to working with colleagues around the House to see what we can do to make it a better bill. I commend it to the House.

We are reforming the Public Works Act to support economic growth and to make it easier and cheaper to build infrastructure. This amendment bill will streamline the land acquisition process under the Public Works Act for critical infrastructure projects, such as the Crosstown Corridor, which involves constructing a railway from Avondale, via Wesley, Mount Roskill, and Onehunga, to KiwiRail Southdown freight hub. People in Mt Roskill will be very happy to have this project fast tracked as it will improve the transport network and benefit people in Mt Roskill. It will be a great day for Mt Roskill. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. As we listened to the arguments and the debates around the House, I’ve been reading up and trying to understand a bit about what this legislation is about, what it does, but also why it is necessary. I have questions around the need for this legislation. I have questions, but, at the same time, as, I think, our small—we often think of it as small and agile, but often it’s heavy and big and clunky. But we get to take things to select committee, where the public gets to engage, where we’ll get professionals from infrastructure industries, we’ll get people from the public, and we’ll get people from the environment sector to actually have their say and to engage in making the laws—which we present here at first reading—at select committee, hopefully making them better if they need to be, or throwing them out completely if they need to be, and that is a good thing. So I’m glad that the Government is taking this to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I’m glad it’s not being rushed through under urgency, because there are questions when it comes to the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill.

I just want to touch on briefly, this afternoon, the role of the Environment Court. As I was looking through the legislation, there’s several references to the Environment Court. Looking at the explanatory note at the start, it talks about the fact that this bill is around “streamlining the objection process, which replaces the right to object to the Environment Court with a natural justice process allowing for written submission to the decision maker[s]:”—written submissions, not an oral hearing, not going to the Environment Court, but written submissions made to the decision maker. Now, that might sound OK on paper. It might sound like something that’s fairly non-offensive or that doesn’t cause any issues, but I believe that there’s something we need to dig into, we need to think about, and we need to understand.

Although legislation, as I said earlier, is done in isolation and we focus just on this bill, we look at what’s gone before: the Fast-track Approvals Act, which is mentioned in here, and what that does in terms of undoing some of our environment protections. We look at what this law does, if it goes through as it is currently written, and what that’s going to mean in terms of our environmental responsibilities and the responsibilities of the Environment Court.

I was reading up on this and I looked at some comments that have been made about this bill. It was Simpson Grierson who made a few thoughtful comments around some concerns they have. I think it’s always good to listen to experts and understand what they say. Like we’ve already said, we’re happy to take this to select committee to develop it more and to understand whether it’s something we will continue to support. But a comment that Simpson Grierson made was that in removing the Environment Court objection process, there are potential concerns regarding the independence of the primary decision-makers—as I said in my earlier comments, the fact that the Environment Court doesn’t participate but the fact you can write a submission to the decision maker. Simpson Grierson put some concerns around that. They put some caveats around the fact that we need to be cautious and we need to be careful.

Yes, I understand what the Government is doing. I understand that they’re moving things through faster. I understand that. But it can’t come at the expense of democracy. It can’t come at the expense of those who have skin in the game, whose land it might be, or who might have connections to that space—that they just get ignored or they just get to write something to the decision maker, because that is a concern.

Simpson Grierson also went on to say that this is a piecemeal and fragmented approach to legislative reform and it runs the risk that we’ll end up with a disjointed and confused Act.

Select committees are one of my favourite parts of being a politician—the fact that we get to thrash things out, the fact that we get to have a contest of ideas across the table, and the fact that we get to listen to submitters, to experts, and to concerned members of the public who want to have their voice heard. So we will vote for this this afternoon. We will take it to select committee. But I caution the fact that, again, there are environmental protections that seem to be loosened and relaxed by this legislation, and I think we need to take that into consideration.

New Zealanders wanted a Government to get stuff done, and New Zealanders understand that that takes actually doing things. What this bill enables is agreement between parties to acquire land in order to move things along that need to happen in this country. It’s practical, it’s by agreement, it’s what New Zealanders want in terms of being able to get stuff done in this country. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Public Works (Critical Infrastructure) Amendment Bill be considered by the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Instruction to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee