Natural Environment Bill

I move, That the Natural Environment Bill be now read a second time.

Over the past six months, the Environment Committee has carefully considered submissions on one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation in New Zealand. The committee heard from councils, environmental organisations, iwi, Māori organisations, infrastructure providers, farmers, growers, businesses, practitioners, and communities. I do want to start by thanking the Environment Committee for their work. I also want to thank the submitters and the officials for their contribution. Their collective work has produced a better bill.

The committee has recommended practical improvements to improve certainty, reduce unnecessary compliance costs, and make this legislation more practical to implement. At the same time, the committee has kept the core architecture of the new planning system unchanged. The Government welcomes and supports those recommendations and will vote accordingly.

New Zealand needs an environmental management system that protects and enhances the environment, without holding us back the way the Resource Management Act (RMA) has. There isn’t a corner of this country that is not affected by the failure of our planning system. The failure has helped drive our housing crisis, our infrastructure deficit, and our inability to take advantage of the abundant land and natural resources that we are blessed with. We are fixing that, and the select committee’s changes make sensible improvements to the bill.

Let me just deal with a few of the changes recommended by the committee. The bill now includes a goal to support and enable enhancement of the natural environment. Now, the bill’s purpose clause already contained this language, but bringing it into the goals sends a clear signal that the planning system should value and enhance the natural environment. Having this in the goals means that it’ll flow through the system via the funnel that is the core of the legislation.

The committee’s also improved the goal for the use and development of natural resources by acknowledging the importance of food and fibre production—including aquaculture. There may be some who question this change, but I want to be clear that using and developing natural resources is a legitimate part of our system. If we want to be a prosperous country that protects the environment, we also need our natural endowments to be used and developed to support communities, businesses, and the economy.

A very important feature of the Natural Environment Bill remains environmental limits. These are a central mechanism to manage environmental outcomes in the new planning system. They will set clear expectations for the condition we expect the natural environment to achieve and maintain over time. They will give resource users, communities, and decision makers more certainty, and despite what some may say, they keep environmental outcomes at the centre of the system. It’s worth remembering that environmental limits are not a feature of the RMA—they are not. They are a central feature of the new planning system, and they have been retained. The committee has made some changes to environmental limits. There’s now a broadened pathway for national standards to allow activities that may breach limits, where there is a net public benefit. This is not a free-for-all. It expands on the infrastructure pathways the bill included at introduction, and reflects the feedback that this pathway needed more flexibility. For example, commercial vegetable growing that feeds New Zealand could access this pathway if there’s a net public benefit and a national standard is enabled to create this.

The committee also recommended changes to clarify how limits are set to make sure they’re reflective of local context. It recommended a change that, I think, goes to the heart of the new system: communities will need to consider environmental, social, and economic outcomes when setting ecosystem health limits. That balancing exercise will also apply to the Minister when setting human health limits. Environmental limits must be able to work in the real world—that does not mean, as some people will tell you, that the Government does not care about the environment—but the committee has also recognised that an environmental limits regime that is too rigid or narrowly focused is also bound to limit our prosperity, just like the RMA did.

The committee considered a range of issues that are especially important to our agriculture and horticultural sectors. Farmers and growers raised concerns about workability, compliance costs, and certainty. The committee has listened carefully to those concerns and, therefore, made significant improvements. The primary sector is critical to our economy and to our regions. The environmental management system needs to work for those who use it and continue to protect what matters. Freshwater farm plan requirements have been made more risk-based and cost effective. Audit requirements have been simplified so that only farms meeting the threshold for certification are also required to be audited. This ensures farm plans remain cost-effective, proportionate, and focused on higher-risk activities.

The committee recommended removing the provisions that would have enabled alternative, market-based allocation methods to be introduced. The Government agrees with this change over time in principle, but submitters raised significant concerns about the lack of detail about what these new methods would look like and how they’d be implemented. Those are legitimate and reasonable concerns, and given that work hasn’t been done yet, the Government is agreeing to the committee’s recommendation that those provisions be removed from the bill while that work is done. We do need to take the time to take people on this journey by getting the basics of design and implementation right. Until then, “first in, first served” as an allocation approach will continue. It is also true that relying solely on “first in, first served” is not a long-term solution for New Zealand’s prosperity in those critical areas where our resources remain under pressure. It is less efficient than more competitive approaches. We intend to do more work on this, but that is for another day.

The committee’s also recommended removing the precautionary principle from the bill. I want to be clear with the House about what this change does and doesn’t mean: removing the precautionary principle does not mean ignoring environmental risks. Decision makers will still consider risk and uncertainty; they’ll still assess the best available information and possible environmental effects. What changes is that decision makers won’t be pushed to decline permits, because the information is incomplete, so uncertainty will not automatically lead to the most restrictive outcome. This change supports evidence-based, sensible decision making. It also addresses some potential confusion about the way the new system’s overarching procedural principle works. That principle says that decision makers should act in an enabling way, and this has been nicely refined by the select committee to “act in a pragmatic way that supports practical solutions”.

The committee has also refined the bill’s levies provisions. There are actually two different levies in the bill, with one focused on central government and regional council activities, and one focused on management units. What the committee has done is significantly strengthen the guardrails around how the Government activities levy is set and what it can be used for. It has made clearer the Government’s original intent that both levies are only for covering costs, and it’s improved the connection between who pays and who benefits. These bills do not contain a water tax or any other tax. The changes should give resource users confidence that the levies that could be used will be fair, targeted, and genuinely useful.

One other change I do want to mention is around permitted activities. This did cause a bit of a misunderstanding at select committee, I’m told. Not all permitted activities will require registration. Registered permitted activities are separate to regular permitted activities, and councils will only be able to require registration where national instruments specifically require or allow it. That was the Government’s original intent, but it wasn’t clear in the bills as introduced, and the committee has fixed that up.

The committee has also fleshed out the Wildlife Act approvals process. The bill now provides an integrated pathway for Wildlife Act approvals to be sought alongside natural resource permits, where a project requires both. These changes reduce duplication and improve efficiency. The committee has also considered how iwi participation will work in the new system, including Mana Whakahone ā Rohe agreements. It’s not in the report back from the select committee, but the Government has signalled that it intends to bring forward amendments relating to these arrangements at the committee of the whole House stage.

Existing and initiated agreements will not carry over into the new system. Instead, councils will be able to enter new, more focused iwi participation agreements, and some have questioned why this is the case. The simple reason is that the new system has to have new mechanisms within it to operate, and so it makes sense that people operate within the confines of the new system. Porting over a concept from the old RMA into the new system doesn’t make a lot of sense. We did decide earlier on that with the existing arrangements, because there weren’t that many of them, it just seemed simpler to carry them over. However, in the meantime there has been a massive influx of applications, with people spending enormous time and energy on them, and we would rather that energy and time go into developing more narrowly scoped arrangements in the new system, reflecting the new law and the new participation arrangements that will be there.

The new agreements will record how iwi authorities will participate in statutory planning processes needed to give effect to Treaty settlement redress, and there will be clear legislative guardrails. I’m intending to publish the Amendment Paper around that soon.

The committee also heard feedback that implementation must be realistic and achievable, and the transition period will now be 39 months rather than 30. This is still ambitious, and we all need to work together with the system users and operators to get it right.

The question before the House is whether or not the select committee report has improved the bill. I believe that it has. We now have more workable environmental limits, environmental enhancement, and workability for councils, community, and the primary sector. I thank the committee for their work, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is difficult to know where to start with this speech because, of course, there are two bills, and, shortly, we will be discussing the second bill, the Planning Bill. There is so much material that goes between them, one thinks—well, I could speak about all of these topics in both speeches because it makes no sense that there are two bills here.

We’ve heard from the ACT Party that it is the end of integrated management by putting the Natural Environment Bill out separately from the Planning Bill, but then we’ve heard from the Minister responsible for RMA Reform that, no, the two Acts have to talk to each other. They do talk to each other, in a way, with repetition throughout both bills, and then we have this issue of how the goals in both the bills will talk to each other, because there’s nothing in the bills that gives us any idea about that. That is one of very many problems with this piece of legislation and, in fact, the next one that we’ll be talking about.

Now, the Minister was just talking a whole lot there about what the select committee did and what the select committee reported back, and saying how, somehow, this bill has improved. Well, it has not; it has got worse. It is very disheartening to be part of a process where you engage with Government as much as you possibly can and, in good faith, put up ideas throughout a process, and everything goes backwards and becomes all about some people being able to trash the environment—that is what we have here.

The Minister noted one change—I’m amazed, actually, that there was a couple of positive changes in the select committee report. One of them is this goal to support and enable the enhancement of the natural environment, but it only crops up in this bill and not the other.

I guess I’ll start at the start of the bill, and that is that we have a purpose statement that is to “establish a framework for the use, protection, and enhancement of the natural environment.” So we have a framework and not much else in that purpose, and then we have goals—and the Minister’s talked about a number of them—but there is no hierarchy between those goals and there’s nothing about how they will interact with the goals in the Planning Act, which are very development-focused.

That is important, because what happens is the Minister gets to determine any trade-offs between those goals. When there’s a conflict between the goals, it is for the Minister, and national direction to determine that hierarchy, and we say that that is not good enough. The constraints around how national instruments are made are not nearly fulsome enough, and this is one person—one Minister—having far too much power, but it is also decision making that will be judicially reviewed and judicially reviewed and judicially reviewed. We heard in question time the Minister of Finance saying, “Oh, this is going to be great because it’s all about economic growth and efficiency.” These bills are not about efficiency; they will do the opposite of efficiency, and that is that they are going to create great inefficiencies, and we will not move forward with our plans in this country for many, many years.

Again, it is frustrating to note that the Labour Government repealed the Resource Management Act and we replaced it with the Spatial Planning Act, which was a small piece of legislation that was looking out 30 years to do good spatial planning, and to link up infrastructure and areas that you might want to build in and those areas where you don’t want to build in because of hazards. Then there was the Natural and Built Environment Act, which this Government came in and repealed, and so now we’ve started again.

The Minister said in his speech, “Well, one of the things about this new legislation is that there are environmental limits.” That is a good thing—to have environmental limits. He then said that the Resource Management Act (RMA) didn’t have environmental limits, and academics have argued about that. But accepting that was one of the reasons why, in the Natural and Built Environment Act, we had environmental limits. You can say that the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management also contains environmental limits, and that, in fact, is in the RMA as it is.

It is good that environmental limits have come across from what was in Labour’s legislation into this legislation. However, they have been watered down so much that they can no longer be called limits. There are so many different ways to get around the limits that they’re not a limit, and so it is a fiction to say that these new pieces of legislation have environmental limits—that is, environmental bottom lines.

What I am talking about there is if a river is already contaminated so much that it does not meet an environmental bottom line for those contaminants and we know that it’s not going to go to the life-supporting capacity of that water body, then people should not be able to put more pollution into that river. What this legislation does is it says, “Oh well, the Minister can decide a whole lot of routes for people to put more pollution into that river.” That is not improving our environment and it is not a regime that has limits, as the Minister would say that it is. That is upsetting, as well.

Now, specific to the Natural Environment Bill, the Minister then talked about “first in, first served” in our legislation. In Labour’s legislation, there were provisions for alternative market-based allocations, just as there was in this bill when it was introduced into the House. Those changes have been taken out by a select committee, after some lobbying from farming groups in particular, and that is a great shame. It was not saying that those allocation methods had to be used immediately, but we know that the “first in, first served” model has a lot of unfairness in it.

Those users of a resource, being water, who have already been able to upgrade the use of their land with water—that gets baked in, and it becomes very difficult for new users to use that land. We know that there is a lot of Māori land where it has not been developed, and so they do not get the benefit of the “first in, first served” model, which is why iwi groups have been asking for some time for these alternative allocation methods.

The Minister also spoke about farm plans and catchment groups—well, he didn’t speak about catchment groups. There is a real missed opportunity in this legislation to deal with catchments and the benefits that we’ve seen from policies, again, from this side of the House like Jobs for Nature, which has enabled people to work and very much focus on a catchment and see how those relate to regulatory instruments.

We have heard from another Minister in the House about how there are going to be these farm plans and that it means that farmers do not need to get resource consents. That is not my understanding of the legislation, and where there are more difficult environmental issues, there will still be a need for a resource consent, and so I think the Government should be clearer in their discussion on those points.

In my next speech, I’m going to talk more about regulatory relief and Treaty issues in general. I do want to note that the Minister also picked up on the word “pragmatic” being used in the principles of this bill. That is a word that that is not usually found in legislation and he used it as a way of explaining why we’ve got rid of the precautionary principle, and I think that that tells you everything you need to know about this legislation. It is there for slogans; it is not there to improve our environment. It will lead to greater inefficiency, and so it’s not doing either of the policy objectives that I have mentioned—and I’ve heard the Minister say this before, as well. We need a more efficient system that does better for our environment, but this does neither of those things.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I want to start by agreeing with something that the Minister responsible for RMA Reform said. He said that the Natural Environment Bill is the most important piece of environmental legislation that we have in this country. Now, that is absolutely correct, and that is why it is so incredibly concerning and alarming for anyone who actually understands what is being put on the Table here today by the Environment Committee and by this Government: they will know and understand that this core piece of environmental legislation has completely failed the environment. This is proposing to put in place a dysfunctional system that, ultimately, cannot deliver for New Zealanders or our environment, and why that is just so completely frustrating and disappointing is that New Zealand needs a functional resource management system—they need it so badly.

The Minister also talked about how not one corner of the country is unaffected by the Resource Management Act (RMA) failures. We all agree that the RMA has failed in so many ways, but where it actually stood up at times—not always, but at times—was for the environment. Imagine where we would be if we didn’t have those environmental rules in place. That’s exactly where we’re going with these new bills. I feel completely disheartened with the process that myself and my colleagues here and even those members in the Government that are here today—the process that we undertook was such a sham. We completely failed New Zealanders and their need for a functional RMA system.

I want to start, as well, by acknowledging and thanking those almost 4,000 submitters who actually took the time and lent their expertise and experience to this process. Seventy-four percent of those submitters actually opposed these bills outright—that’s how bad they were at first reading; 22 percent expressed mixed or unclear views; and less than 4 percent supported the bills. Now, why didn’t we listen? Why didn’t we take the evidence and the experience of these people and actually translate that into the system? You know, we were even lucky enough—and, again, I want to acknowledge the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and his team, and also our independent advisor Bronwyn Carruthers KC.

Now, the Minister, again, keeps asserting that the Government believes that planning decisions should be “evidence-based”, and yet he and his Government and the select committee members refused to engage with the pile of evidence and suggestions that could have made this a functional system. You know, it was particularly disheartening when the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment just laid out for us so clearly hundreds of recommendations that would have helped this be functional legislation. Not only were they entirely rejected by the Government members, they did this really—I don’t know; I want to say offensive—underhanded thing where they moved a motion to accept the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations, which simply asked us to ask for more information. They were like, “Oh, well, we have asked for more information and, therefore, we haven’t entirely rejected the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations.”

I just found that, especially coming from not only an evidence-based science sector but even coming from local government, where local government has these guardrails and requirements about actual evidence and actual community engagement—they understand that and they’re presented with that to make the best possible decisions that they can. Then I get here to Parliament and it’s just absolutely dismissed. Evidence is completely dismissed. Why this is so disheartening and important for today is because New Zealanders need to know that these bills are simply locking in more delay—decades and decades of delay that we have already experienced, particularly when it comes to environmental issues.

I want to touch, specifically, on the freshwater aspects, because I’m reminded of the history of freshwater progress, if you can call it progress in this country. In 2003, the dairy industry worked with the Government to come up with the Dairy and Clean Streams Accord. That was a voluntary move, which is where we’re going to with these bills, where things are just going to be voluntary and industry is just going to be able to write their own rules and certify and audit, for example, their own farm environment plans. That evolved again later, in 2013, by the Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord. Particularly where I’m from in Canterbury, we had things like the zone committees, and we had regional plans that never actually changed the circumstances and turned the dial when it came to freshwater pollution.

Where we’re at now, in that time, where those voluntary measures have come in and everything in between, is at a place where almost half the country’s total river length is unsafe for swimming, and God forbid anyone puts their head under or their kids touch the water and it gets in their mouth. Over half of monitored river length shows moderate or severe pollution, and the same with over half of our lakes—so 63 percent are in poor or very poor health. E. coli is detected in 45 percent of monitored groundwater sites between 2019 and 2024, with over a third seeing rising nitrate pollution.

Things are getting worse, and these bills are going to make it worse. We cannot stand here today and pretend that this can be something that we can work with in the future. These bills need drastic changes. I mean, we’re literally in 2026. We need our resource management system to—for example—talk clearly to our climate legislation, because the only place where climate emission reductions actually take place are at a local level. In these bills, in this particular bill, we have this bizarre concept where, with climate change, we’re going to ignore climate mitigation or the need to reduce emissions at a local level; we’re only going to consider the positive impacts of reducing climate emissions. So, by all means, let’s consent a new coal-fired power plant or dairy factory. Excuse me, Mr Speaker, I’m just losing my voice. [Takes a sip of water] Thank you. Oh, water—we need it so badly. But, by all means, you know, don’t consider those emissions—but if that coal-fired power plant just puts a special filter on that might slightly reduce those emissions, then that will be seen as a positive thing.

This does not make sense. These bills will ultimately fail New Zealanders. The Green Party stands completely opposed to them. I’m absolutely sick of these fictional empty words that say that this is going to be more efficient and more workable, when the immense wealth of experience and expertise from iwi and hapū, from local government, from practitioners and lawyers and people across the country understand that this is taking us backwards. We need to understand that nature is the only thing that is the backbone of our economy, of our society. We need it to function.

The ACT Party supports the second reading of the Natural Environment Bill, and I’m pleased to outline why. I am a practical environmentalist. I've worked on landfills, I’ve rescued and relocated eels, and I’ve cleaned up some of New Zealand’s most hazardous sites. The Environment Committee heard a fairly consistent message from submitters. They want better environmental outcomes, but they want a system that was practical to operate, proportionate in its requirements, and capable of producing real-world results.

Farmers, growers, agriculture operators, councils, and landowners repeatedly asked for a system to be focused less on process and more on outcomes. I think the committee has responded very well to that feedback, and I thank all the members for their hard work, including the members of the Opposition. The result is a bill that remains firmly focused on effective environmental management, which is now more workable and more certain and practical to implement.

Environmental management should not be one-size-fits-all. Different problems need different responses. Voluntary action may be more appropriate in some places, and more direct regulatory intervention in others. The aim should be to use the right tool for the problem. The Environment Committee has reinforced that approach throughout its recommendations to improve the bills. The primary sector is a good example. Farmers and growers typically know the challenges on their land intimately and the practical steps needed to address them. They want environmental management tools that work in practice but avoid unnecessary cost.

Minister Bishop touched on limits, but it warrants further discussion. Environmental limits remain a critical feature of the Natural Environment Bill. They will allow communities to establish their expectations about the state of the environment in the area they live, and that gives a much stronger and more consistent direction than under the current RMA. The committee’s changes strengthen the limits framework for real-world application. There’s a lot this country needs: data centres, electricity, aggregate, critical minerals, roads, pipes, homes, farms, the list goes on. The committee’s expansion of the infrastructure pathway to allow limits to be crossed where there is sufficient public benefit is a practical and pragmatic move.

The reality is that some resources are fixed in their location. We don’t get to choose where the aggregate is, where the wind blows, or where the country’s best-growing soils are. If we want roads, affordable electricity, and affordable food, we need to be able to use those resources where we find them. Limits won’t always accommodate these activities, but it doesn’t make those limits any less necessary. That’s exactly why this release valve, this ability to cross limits, exists. It’s also consistent with another key committee recommendation: to make requirements to consider environmental, economic, social, and local context, including local geology, for example, much stronger when setting limits. This all reflects a critical truth: an environmental limit so aspirational that it precludes communities from having access to the food, the jobs, the security, and the prosperity they need is never going to be sustainable.

The committee also looked at biodiversity protection and regulatory relief and, I’m pleased to say, has not recommended any significant changes to the Government’s intent here. Under the RMA, we’ve too often seen significant constraints placed on private land, with little consideration of the consequences for those private landowners affected. The bill’s regulatory relief framework introduces an important discipline into the system, which has been missing from the RMA: where significant biodiversity controls are imposed on private land, and where they’re done for good reason, councils must consider whether regulatory relief is appropriate, and be able to therefore justify those decisions to give relief to their communities. This ensures that protections are proportionate, transparent, effective, and durable where they’re applied in a way that painting significant natural areas (SNA) and other overlays over productive land was simply not durable or sustainable under the RMA.

It also supports fairness. It’s simply unfair for a private property owner alone to bear the cost of providing the public good of environmental protection for biodiversity. If those outcomes are truly in the public interest, councils should be prepared, and they will be required, to confront the costs of those decisions, not simply transfer them on to individual landowners with a “Congratulations, you’ve won an SNA on your property. Check out our colouring in. Aren’t you lucky?” That ends when these bills are passed shortly.

The committee also heard concerns from the agriculture and aquaculture sectors and has recommended adding controlled activities back into the bill. The Government originally took it out of the new system because we were seeking to streamline the number of activity classes in matters that councils were burdened with planning. However, submitters explained that controlled activity status provides certainty that is important, which means they can actually see a pathway to get consents with very few obstacles, and that’s important to them when they’re seeking finance for their operations. The committee heard this and made the sensible activity to reintroduce the controlled activity class.

The committee also kept a very important new accountability mechanism: the Planning Tribunal. That’s a practical, proportionate way of resolving disputes that is absolutely necessary in the new system. The tribunal will be accessible, and it’s going to enable applicants and councils to test whether the new system is working as intended: to challenge unreasonable consenting decisions and unreasonable demands for technical reports, which can often cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and prove nothing more than what we already knew when we started—that a paddock has been a paddock for 50 years and is probably not a bad place to build something else that farmers need, or a wind turbine, or just about anything else. It helps reinforce the standards that Parliament is setting through the reform programme, which is efficiency and effectiveness in the planning system, and making sure that the environment is protected but that we can still get on and build stuff.

There are many other important facets to the legislation as reported back. We can thank Minister Andrew Hoggard for his hard work on the freshwater farm planning system, setting up farm plans as an important and proportionate tool, which will play a lead role in managing the effects of farming in the new system and reducing the need for consents for common activities that farmers already know how to manage well. We can thank another ACT MP, my good friend Mark Cameron, whose member’s bill paved the way to removing adverse impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from the system. Councils are not well placed to try to solve the world’s climate change problems, and New Zealand’s effort is already led excellently through the emissions trading scheme. Just for those members in the Opposition concerned about climate change, I want to note that an hour ago it snowed in Wellington, so maybe the climate emergency is over.

We’re replacing the precautionary principle with a focus on proportionality. That’s hugely important, despite the fact that some former RMA lawyers, who are now members of Parliament, seem to think that precaution above all else is how we’re going to unlock New Zealand’s potential—it won’t. Wildlife approvals can also be granted through a single Natural Environmental Bill process, based on the select committee’s recommendations, which will untangle many projects, including ones that I’ve previously worked on, where wildlife permits were needed for exactly the same activity as a resource consent was required for.

This bill changes the way we see the environment and manage the environment. It moves us away from a system that rewarded delay, paperwork, and process for process’s sake, and towards one that rewards good environmental outcomes. It sets a clear environmental limit framework and gives people the freedom to get on with using their land responsibly and focuses regulations and rules where they’re actually needed. The select committee strengthened the bill, making it more practical and easier to use while keeping its core purpose intact, because protecting the environment shouldn’t mean making it impossible to build a house, build a road, grow food, generate electricity, or invest in New Zealand. We can do both.

This bill’s another step towards replacing the culture of begging for permission with a culture of responsibility and unlocking New Zealand’s potential. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to offer our continued support for this Natural Environment Bill. It is a totemic effort to redesign our environmental planning system, and credit to the Environment Committee for the work they’ve done on this hugely complex piece of legislation, and obviously for the work that Minister Bishop and Under-Secretary Court have done to bring this legislation back to the House.

It’s particularly important for our rural communities and our farming and primary sector. Interactions with the environment are inherent in growing, farming, forestry, fishing, quarrying, and mining; you need to be able to build dams or renewable energy projects. The Resource Management Act, as well intentioned as it was at the time, had metastasised into a labyrinth of complex rules that had been amended and amended again to the point of dysfunction—a chilling effect on investment. It simply had been too hard to get anything done in this country.

That’s witnessed, actually, by the fast-track process—part of the New Zealand First - National coalition agreement—where major projects have literally queued for the opportunity to have a clear line of sight and an expedited process. We now have 420 megawatts of renewable electricity in the process. Ngāi Tahu could not even get through the former process, and after 22 years their Hananui Aquaculture Project has finally been approved. We’re unlocking the potential of our regions, but with the progress of this bill we’re now offering a streamlined process to become available as part of a standard process.

I’d like to thank the select committee again for their work—really complex; there was a lot to get through. The core architecture remains, coming out of the select committee to this second reading. I’d also like to thank the Minister responsible for RMA Reform, particularly for his willingness to engage with the primary sector. There is a blizzard of important detail to work through, and there were some concerns.

The positive developments here—among others, but the ones I’d like to highlight—are that the primary sector and aquaculture production are incorporated in the goals. These are $64 billion worth of export earnings, and New Zealand First makes no apology for supporting and advocating for the primary sector to be incorporated in this goal. Every single New Zealander’s standard of living relies on that sector thriving. As a coalition, we have an aim of doubling our exports, and this piece of legislation is part of the framework that’s needed to unlock that potential.

The limit-setting was something that had been keenly looked at in terms of how that was going to work in practice, and the changes made through the select committee process have allowed more flexibility and for a local and regional context to be taken into account. The Minister outlined vegetable growing in his speech: we do not want to be importing our cauliflowers from Australia; we want to be able to grow our own vegetables here. So that’s one example of how the limit-setting and some flexibility will allow for that to happen. It will give some ministerial discretion to allow for those regional realities.

The most famous one that came up quite regularly under the old system is the water in Canterbury. It was coming out of the hills, out of the native bush, at a higher nitrate level than the national bottom line. It was simply impossible to meet that rigid national standard. It was so dispiriting for farmers or anyone interacting with the environment in Canterbury that there was literally nothing you could do; it was actually naturally at a higher nitrate level. So this change and this amendment really matters to give that regional context.

It’ll be more risk based in the planning framework that is being developed, and this will be the tool that actually delivers the on-the-ground, practical solutions: the riparian planting, the wetland creation, the critical source areas, the sediment traps; those things that farmers up and down the country and that the 290, I believe, catchment groups we’ve got now operational that we’re supporting as a coalition—those are the sorts of tools that they’re using to do practical, on-the-ground things that will actually make a difference, whereas spending, often, tens of thousands, sometimes into the hundreds of thousands, of dollars to get a resource consent that was, essentially, a tick-box exercise that needed every man and his dog to sign off on it was getting us nowhere. We need to be putting the thin resources we’ve got into actual, practical environmental solutions, and this more risk-based farm planning framework will allow for that.

I’d like to also highlight, because I addressed it in my first reading speech on behalf of New Zealand First, that we were very concerned about the market allocation model for water nutrients. This has been removed, and we’re really pleased about that. I signalled in the first reading that that would be contentious. Where it has been used overseas, it has in some cases proved to be disastrous, where the resource, whatever it might be, has ended up going, yes, under a market-based model, to the highest-end use, but in the meantime hollowing out communities and creating quite a lot of inequity. I note that the Minister said the “first in, first served” basis hasn’t served us well; I’m not actually so sure about that. It is actually a property right situation, and this bill looks to lock in property rights or give them more weighting. I think “first in, first served” actually has served us reasonably well, but, obviously, that will be for a future Parliament to determine. But, in the interim, I’m very pleased that the market-based allocation framework has been put aside.

This bill allows for a much more pragmatic planning system. We can absolutely deliver better environmental outcomes if the rules, as they will be now, will be clearer, more flexible, and more pragmatic. The size of the economic prize is significant. The modelling shows that this will add half a percent to our GDP on a year-on-year basis—that is significant. We’re all about to go out onto the hustings, and we’d all like to promise better health services, more infrastructure, more resources into education—all those wonderful things that we want to be delivering as a Government—but we have to be able to pay for it. We have to put in place the measures, the regulatory settings that will allow us to unlock our economic potential, and this bill is an important part of that framework.

New Zealand First continues to support this bill. We think it’s been a practical and pragmatic response by the select committee and the Ministers. You know, it’s not going to be perfect; this is a big piece of work, and we’ll have to come back to it at some stage in the future, but at this stage, this is our very best effort. We commend all those that have contributed to the submissions, the Ministers, and the select committee. New Zealand First continues to support this bill to the House. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The next call is a split call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Thank you. I rise on behalf of Te Pāti Māori to oppose the Natural Environment Bill. Look, from our perspective, this bill is less about planning, pragmatic, streamlining, and everything else that’s trying to be sold today; it’s about who holds power—who holds power over our taiao, our w’enua, our wai, and our future. The Minister responsible for RMA Reform is asking Aotearoa to believe that we can make development faster and everything else will somehow just seamlessly fall into place, but history has told us otherwise as Māori. Every major environmental law has never simply been about planning; it’s always been about power and who benefits from that power and which generation it costs.

The Minister has asked numerous times for Māori to trust that our rights are being protected in this particular law and legislation. Māori submitters overwhelmingly told the Environment Committee the complete opposite. I want to say that again: Māori submitters told the select committee the complete opposite. They warned that this bill weakens recognition of Māori relationships with w’enua, wai, and taonga; it narrows participation; it undermines arrangements carefully negotiated through Treaty settlements, because these are the people who are having to live on the ground and make it happen.

I want to repeat something that a really smart wahine, Tina Porou—who’s well known in the environmental space; who’s well known as an adviser for National Iwi Chairs Forum iwi and hapū. She warned that these reforms shift Aotearoa away from a w’akapapa relationship with our taiao and toward a property rights model. That is exactly what this bill does. It claws back all the progress that’s happened where we recognise the mana and the status of our taiao. When we see that we’re no longer treating our taiao with the w’akapapa and the taonga that it has—and, in fact, it’s a commodity to be managed, to be gotten out of the way for economic growth—then we have some real concerns as kaitiaki. Kaitiaki is not just about us as tangata w’enua; it’s actually about tangata Tiriti who take real pride, who also spoke out about this bill.

The greatest casualty that we have fear for in this bill is hapū. Throughout Aotearoa, it has always been hapū who exercise tino rangatiratanga over our w’enua and our wai. It’s always been hapū who knew every awa, every puna, every wāhi tapu and every ngahere. Yet, this bill increasingly recognises Crown-recognised iwi authorities while reducing the practical role of hapū: those on the ground who have to live with the consequences of what this House decides. It worries us because, when you erase hapū from environmental decisions, you erase the people who have carried responsibilities for generations. The Minister, again—I can’t reemphasise this enough—tells us that Treaty settlements are going to remain protected. The Treaty settlement entities disagree with that, and they warn that it is going to weaken their status.

Freshwater: in Wai 2358, the Waitangi Tribunal has already recognised Māori rights and interests in freshwater, yet this bill deliberately avoids resolving ownership allocation or authority. Instead, it continues with uncertainty and has locked in the polluters’ rights. That is another thing that we have concerns with: mana whakahono. At the very same time, the Government has removed Mana Whakahono ā Rohe, and those agreements were brought by councils and tangata whenua, and negotiated to solve the problems of our taiao. Instead of strengthening those relationships, this Government has ruined them, which brings me to another concern.

This bill gives extraordinary powers to Ministers. This bill centralises authority like we’ve never seen before. It allows Ministers to intervene and direct councils, shape planning, and override locally developed arrangements. Of course we want renewable energy; of course we want to see infrastructure and thriving regional communities; we want to see more homes, but none of that requires a bill like this which weakens te Tiriti, which displaces hapū, which removes te Tiriti, which affects, adversely, Treaty settlements. None of that requires the silencing of tangata whenua, of mana whenua.

I want to remind our people: you have a choice, in November, to be with a Government that sees you and hears you and treats our taiao as something that future generations should honour. This Government is shameful in how it treats te Tiriti, and our taiao, and our people.Kia ora rā.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. On behalf of the Green Party, I stand also to oppose this legislation.

I want to look at the way that the bills are structured as separate entities, as if somehow the taiao is not connected. The unfortunate thing with the way that the bills have been carried out and designed and developed is that it’s been to the exclusion of the rest of us in the House. If there had been an opportunity for us to put down our barriers and sit at a table together and wānanga—bring in experts and tangata whenua to wānanga what worked and what didn’t work in the old Resource Management Act (RMA) and whether we can find workable solutions—that would have been gold, but instead, we have legislation that is being dictated from out of Cabinet and we have a select committee that has done its bidding. It’s done its bidding because it turned its back on over 70 percent of submitters who outright opposed this legislation—both pieces of legislation—as they stood. That’s the shame of it: that we haven’t taken the time to really reflect on the journey of what we learnt from the old RMA to where we are today, because there are plenty of learnings. In a previous life, spending five to six years on the Labour-led Government reforms from an iwi perspective—all of that was for nothing because it all got repealed as soon as the new Government came in.

We need sustainability in the system. We need to know that we have a system that puts the taiao at the centre to provide balance for economic development, balance for the way that we can plan our districts, the way that things are built and infrastructure is implemented, and the way that voice can be heard and enshrined. I agree with my colleagues: te Tiriti o Waitangi has been undermined once again. I’m reflecting on what my iwi Tainui has said very clearly in their submission, where te Tiriti o Waitangi and Crown-Māori relationships have been eviscerated by this legislation. That’s no simple thing for iwi to come out and say. If I reflect on what Waikato-Tainui said in their submission, they said that this bill is a direct breach. It’s a direct breach of the Kiingitanga Accord, where the Government is meant to sit at a tēpu with Waikato-Tainui and look at policies, look at plans, and sit down at the earliest stages and work out something that is beneficial for all: for water bodies, for tangata, for te taiao, and for the district. That has not occurred.

The Government is breaching Treaty settlements as they exist. They are breaching kawenata tapu, such as the Kiingitanga Accord, and they are undermining the few little levers that we had in the old system in terms of relationship agreements and Mana Whakahono ā Rohe transfer of powers: all being thrown in the bin. It’s being scrapped by a Government who is turning its back on taiao protections and turning its back on tangata whenua. Rather, we have a system that’s now being established—it’s all centralised and standardised like a funnel, and somehow we are all the same. We’re not the same. Taranaki is not the same as Bay of Plenty. Tai Tokerau: we are unique—we are so unique in Tai Tokerau. We are special and different, and we need to be able to be treated as special and different in the system. This system does not treat any difference. We are mainstreamed as communities. Our impacts, our voices, are different and yet, at place, we are going to be treated exactly the same, because this is a standardised process that has a focus on economic development and not on te taiao. It’s demeaning. It’s demeaning for taonga species, it’s demeaning for our biodiversity, and it’s demeaning for tangata whenua relationships.

Now, going back to te Tiriti elements of this bill, we can see very clearly a transfer of powers, the relationship agreements, and Mana Whakahono ā Rohe were meant to come across into the new system. Of course, this Government, through the Prime Minister, straight after the report was released, was, like, boom, “No, we’re going to scrap those relationship agreements—they’re not transferable—and now, we’re going to turn our back on those few things that Māori had as levers to mahi tahi.” As tangata whenua, we want to have strong relationships. We want to work with local government, we want to learn and work together with communities and Governments, but this Government doesn’t care, because we’re all the same! That’s the crying shame of what we have in this legislation: it is that it degrades and undermines relationship at place.

Look, I rise with great excitement for the second reading of this Resource Management Act reform. I want to thank members of the Environment Committee for their marathon efforts in bringing these bills back to the House. I also want to thank officials from the Ministry for the Environment and our advisers from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for the months of work that they have invested in the RMA reform.

I acknowledge our Minister, the Minister responsible for RMA Reform, the Hon Chris Bishop, for his work, vision, and decisive action in replacing the broken Resource Management Act (RMA) with a new planning system. This new system will enable our primary sector, enable the construction of more homes and infrastructure, and enable the development of renewable energy for New Zealand, all while continuing to protect our environment.

This has been a hugely complex piece of work. As a committee, we have spent hundreds of hours working on these RMA bills to make them more workable. I also want to thank submitters for their comprehensive, thorough, and valuable submissions. We listened, we heard, and we made many changes to the bills to ensure they work well into the future and create a better resource management system. Our committee’s recommendations included a range of practical improvements that strengthen certainty, reduce unnecessary compliance costs, and make the legislation more practical to implement. The core architecture of the planning system remains unchanged. The new two-bill system will be retained, characterised by goals and national instruments, and set direction from the top. There is a narrowing of matters that can be revisited at each successive level of decision making, more consistent planning rules, fewer consenting requirements, higher thresholds for public participation and consents, and a clearer focus on managing the effects that matter.

Changes to the purpose of the goals of the bill will give stronger recognition to people’s enjoyment of their land and the importance of food and fibre production. We heard loud and clear from our horticulture, agriculture, aquaculture, wine industry, and many primary industries that food production should be included in the goals. We listened, and this change was made to include food and fibre production in the goals, including wine production.

In response to concerns raised by submitters, our committee has strengthened the safeguards around natural resource levies. The bill clarifies that environmental limits must balance environmental, social, and economic outcomes, and be workable. These limits will be workable in practice to ensure successful implementation and protect our environment. This RMA reform results in a resource management system that is simpler and more predictable, and makes it easier to the build the homes, infrastructure, and energy projects New Zealand needs, while protecting the environment. It also enables our farmers and growers to be more productive. This is part of our plan to fix the basics and build the future.

[Authorised Cook Islands Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

I rise on behalf of the Labour Party to voice our concern against this bill. It’s interesting, following the member Catherine Wedd, who has just resumed her seat, because she is the chair of the Environment Committee that progressed this piece of legislation, which I have to say, looking at the Table, is not an insignificant amount of commentary there in front of the House. I thought there would have been perhaps a little bit more of a fulsome contribution from the chair of that committee, but, unfortunately, that is not to be the case today.

We know, on this side of the House, that the Resource Management Act (RMA), historically, has been perhaps slow to react. It has been slow to develop aspects around its purpose and, as a result, environmental degradation is what has followed in this country. That’s why the previous Labour Government sought to do something about it. That is why the previous Labour Government sought to, effectively, introduce two bespoke pieces of legislation to send a firm, strong signal that we were serious about doing things better and we were wanting to do things right.

I was able to speak in the first reading on both of these bills, and, as my colleague Hon Rachel Brooking has indicated, it’s still not quite clear as to why they’re two separate bills. Perhaps it is around trying to force a lack of integration in terms of approach to resource management in this country.

But the interesting thing is that at the time when I made my first reading contributions on these bills, a lot of the conversation was about much hope in the select committee process. We, at that time, didn’t agree or accept everything that was in the bills, and the interesting thing is that there are two bills in front of the House—they follow each other, but they kind of cross over, which makes it a little bit difficult to stick to one, but I will certainly try for the time being. The interesting thing is that we voted for the legislation at first reading in an attempt to be constructive around reform.

It is very rare, I think, in this Parliament, but perhaps not as rare under this current Government, that you actually get back a bill that goes to a select committee with the intention of opposing parties to say, “Look, we’ll send it there in the hope to work out some of the issues that we have.”—it is extremely rare to get a bill come back to the Parliament in a far worse position than when the select committee actually received it, and this is the exact situation that we have right now confronting this House. We had issues that we identified at the time of first reading, but, as a party, our members on that committee were absolutely keen to engage in good faith and in good spirits to address the issues that had been identified, and not only does this bill come back to the House worse off but, following the select committee’s issuance of its report, the Government has identified changes that submitters were not even able to speak to, as a result.

So it is unfortunate that the bill has come back. We didn’t oppose the bill at first reading for the sake of opposition’s sake. We were able to support it while identifying that we had some concerns and some issues, but we wanted to constructively lay those out and identify them and work through them in the many hours that the select committee had available to it to progress some of those changes.

I want to also acknowledge the many, many individuals and organisations who submitted to the process. Now, I’m not on this Environment Committee. I was on the Environment Committee in the previous term, where we did introduce the two replacement bills for the RMA, and so I know that there is a particular focus on ensuring that when submitters come to a select committee, you’re able to identify what their issues are. The 3,204 submitters and 178 oral submitters—I want to acknowledge the work that they did. It is unfortunate, though, that they haven’t been able to, I guess, be heard on some of the changes that have occurred since this bill has come back from select committee.

The purpose of a select committee, as we know, is to listen and is to test some of the assumptions that might exist, or either be apparent in the legislation or may be absent in the bill in terms of legislation, and, at the end of the day, what we want to come back from select committee with is a piece of legislation that is in an improved state. It is deeply unfortunate that the Labour Party find ourselves today, having seen and been part of that process—actually, the bill that’s come back is far worse.

One of the most troubling aspects of this process is that some of what many would consider significant policy decisions emerged after the select committee had actually reported back. We accept that there are some tweaks from time to time—I mean, you get that. That’s what the committee of the whole House process or stage is all about, but we are talking about some fairly fundamental changes that exist. In particular, in terms of Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements, they are a key example of a massive change. The Minister responsible for RMA Reform himself today said, “Well, you know, at the time, the position of the coalition Government was to say that we’d honour the ones that were already in place, but for those that were not, well, then we wouldn’t look to carry those into the new system.” What we have now is something completely different and they intend to go much further, and I’ll touch on that, if I get a chance, in the next bill.

One of the key things that the Natural Environment Bill talks about is either a hierarchy or, indeed, a lack of hierarchy. My colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking has talked about the fact that there are many instruments in RMA circles that are able to create a natural order in terms of hierarchy, whether they are standards or whether they are statements.

Under this bill, if there is a conflict that arises between the goals that might be identified in this bill, there is a new process around how you identify how that conflict could be treated and how it, effectively, could be resolved. You don’t have a structure where there is, effectively, a hierarchy or a pyramid and you identify which one is able to pull rank and, therefore, that one stands.

Under this bill, effectively, there is a huge level of discretion that is handed over willy-nilly to the Minister of the day, and that can cause some significant issues. That can result in chopping and changing, depending on who the Minister of the day might be; it can result in the exercise of ministerial power to differing degrees, depending on who the person that holds that ministerial warrant at the time might be; and, significantly, it potentially leads to an ongoing form of judicial review on an ad infinitum basis, meaning you would have this constant litany of decisions being reviewed and actually not getting to the certainty that the sector—when I say “the sector”, I’m talking about those who are planners, those in local government, those in development, and those in much broader organisations in terms of environmental and non-environmental NGOs, as well—actually needs when we are confronted with resource management (RM) in terms of how that is going to function in our community.

What that means is that this Parliament will have on the statute book a bill that won’t actually be efficient. It will be ad hoc in how it is delivered and applied. It will be non-integrated—because we’ve heard that already, and that certainly is what sort of permeates through the select committee’s report—and it will lead to inefficient approaches to RM aspects in this country and fundamentally disconnected, disjointed outcomes for communities.

Much has been said about the environmental limits. Now, environmental limits are good things, and that’s why we had them in our legislation when we were in Government. But what’s being proposed by this Government is—like its Prime Minister—something fairly tepid, and it is basically little to nothing in terms of its meaning. Environmental bottom lines will be at the whim of the Minister of the day, which actually means that you can’t really call them bottom lines. They are kind of fluid approaches for environmental considerations—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Watered down.

TANGI UTIKERE: —that are watered down, and will continue to be watered down every single day that that continues to sort of move along.

This is a bill where it is unfortunate that it has come back in this state. It is far worse as a result of going through the select committee process, which I have to say is unbelievable—I mean, you certainly don’t expect that. It is one that we will continue to oppose, but again, it is disappointing that those that did engage in the select committee process on the basis that what was coming back to this House was going to be what they thought was in front of them at the time—it is far from it. On that basis, we will continue to oppose this terrible, terrible piece of legislation.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it is a real privilege getting to speak today on the second reading of the Natural Environment Bill. Here we go. [Member picks up the bill] It’s certainly a voluminous piece of legislation.

As we’ve worked through the process of the bill, front and centre of my mind have been all the rural families, in particular, which I strongly align myself with. The ones in particular at Lagmhor hall who we met in October last year were really being confronted, with their businesses and their livelihoods being potentially wiped out, and the process was very onerous. Well, these bills have worked hard to address that and make it so that people—families and other businesses like that—can actually plan for the future in a way that gives them some certainty. That’s really, really important.

There have been one or two criticisms of the bill which I would just quickly like to address. There’s the fact that we are changing the bill so substantially. When we look in terms of environmental outcomes, the Resource Management Act (RMA) has not delivered, and you just have to look at the history. These bills will actually allow us to do that. It’s time we took a different path.

There has been criticism of there being two bills. I note with interest that Labour had two bills in the previous Parliament. The other thing is ministerial powers. Well, currently under the RMA, the Minister has quite a lot of power as well in terms of national policy statements for fresh water, for example.

Effectively, we’re just streamlining the whole process, and for that reason, I really commend these bills to the House because we’re about fixing the basics and building the future. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The next call is a split call.

Yeah, well, that’s about it—that speech sums it all up from the other side. It was a minute and a half, talking about such an important piece of legislation that I think Tangi Utikere was very good at critiquing and breaking down in terms of this whole process that didn’t go well. Despite a bipartisan type of approach that the Opposition took, it was obviously too much for the Government to take on board, and—

Ryan Hamilton: Tell us about the bill—that had a select committee.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yeah, it was a select committee, but it was a fraudulent select committee. It was all a bit of a sham, as we all know.

Grant McCallum: Oh, were you there, were you, Willie?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: No, I’ve been told—oh, somebody’s been offended.

Ryan Hamilton: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m seeking your guidance, but to call a parliamentary select committee process a sham—I think that should be withdrawn.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Let me take some advice on that. I do take the member’s point, but can I ask the Hon Willie Jackson just to rein it in a bit and get through his four minutes.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will rein it in. We were just unhappy with that select committee process—if that suits the Government better—because there was very much a bipartisan approach that went into it.

One of the things that has come up over the last couple of days is the Waitangi Tribunal’s view in terms of the Treaty principles and the Government’s position in terms of Māori rights. I noticed that we got the typical responses from the Minister with regard to the tribunal’s views in terms of the Treaty principles, basically, being under attack. This legislation is an example of that.

Our people have made the point particularly that when you make clear distinctions in terms of giving effect to the Treaty and taking account of the Treaty, that, in effect, waters down the whole Treaty obligation, in effect, and I think it’s just time to remind people who might be listening or who might be viewing this that giving effect to the Treaty is meaningful. It is meaningful—as you would well know, Mr Speaker, having studied this area—because it means that there’s a high and active legal obligation requiring decision makers to ensure that Treaty principles are practically implemented and prioritised in outcomes. That’s why, as a Labour Government, we tried to get some consistency around those types of references to the Treaty and the obligations that groups and organisations had.

The watering down of this clause is major. We’re now into the “taking into account”, which, as legal people will know—and I’ve got a few around me—is a much lower legal threshold. What does that mean? That just means you only have to acknowledge or think about Treaty principles alongside other factors before making a choice, without a duty to ensure a specific, Treaty-aligned outcome, and, sadly, the thrust of this Government has been to introduce clauses like that—watered-down Treaty clauses that take away Government obligations. That’s what this Minister has been pushing through.

We want a substantial commitment from the Government. We want a substantial partnership with iwi. Again, that is under attack.

You can say whatever you like, but we attended the iwi leaders hui in Queenstown, and there’s huge disappointment in terms of this Government’s attitude and strategy around tikanga Māori and around Māori rights. This legislation—and I know we’ve got more speakers; I’m sure they’re going to address it, too. The obligation to Māori must be questioned and the obligation from the Minister—the Minister must show a stronger commitment in terms of his relationship with Māori. That is what they are saying to us at iwi level, that’s what they said to us at the iwi leaders meeting in Queenstown, and I ask the Minister to consider that. We will continue pressuring the Minister to honour those obligations. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai. Kia ora. Thank you. I’m pleased to stand up and talk to what has been a mammoth piece of work that’s happened in this term in Government. Once again, like other Environment Committee members, I thank all those involved, the many ministerial officials, and also our fellow committee members, with whom we had very lengthy and quite robust conversations about what we had before us.

I look at the Resource Management Act of today and it’s very clear in my mind that it’s one of the biggest frustrations of our country. It is a piece of legislation that has become over time almost a litigious piece of legislation, one that frustrates people from being able to build, to create, to use our natural environment, and to be able to constructively contribute to our country’s economy but also just to our livelihoods and our lifestyles in its own way. I look forward to the committee of the whole House stage—which will be coming up shortly, as we’re all aware—and I commend the bill to the House.

Meitaki maata, Mr Speaker. Happy Cook Islands Māori Language Week.

This is an important piece of legislation for us to be debating, and as the speaker before me said, we are looking forward to the committee stage, because there are a number of issues to traverse there—including changes that New Zealanders have not had an opportunity to have a say on. Look at the Table before us, members; the commentary is huge. New Zealanders really are interested in this, and it is important, not only for people who are looking for development opportunities, who are now looking to buy homes and looking to do something in their local area, but it will have a huge impact on future generations of New Zealanders—not only in the regions but in the cities we call home, and what they look like. That is why it is appropriate that we give really careful consideration to how not only this law will work but, also, to how we continue to find areas of bipartisan agreement around the table on what sorts of planning reforms we need in Aotearoa.

The Resource Management Act (RMA) has been difficult to use. That is why Labour repealed it. We are in this position today, talking about National’s answer to Labour’s reforms, because, in many areas, the Government has failed to be able to find those emerging issues of consensus. The real tale here is that, in this term, we have found consensus on many of the aspects of this which are most important to it. There is an emerging consensus around an infrastructure pipeline, for example, that is long term and removed from the day-to-day political cycle. That is a good thing, and it’s something we should hold on to very carefully, because for the long-term good of Aotearoa and the way that people see Governments responding to their needs, we should be able to demonstrate that Parliament can rise above the political fray and find long-term development opportunities for not only the private sector but, also, for the State to provide the sort of infrastructure that we need to be able to live in our towns and cities and our regions.

This is an example where we have had Labour MPs around the select committee table, engaging in good faith, trying to find bipartisan common ground. That has not emerged. We found out—not only from the select committee’s report but, then, also on Monday, like everybody else did when it was announced to the public—that the Government had introduced some further provisions which were further and further from that centrist position that National and Labour should, frankly, be the guardians of. There should be centrist support for Māori rights and representations within our planning system. We should acknowledge the place of Māori as kaitiaki of their natural environments to which they whakapapa. That is not only a good thing for iwi Māori, but it is a good thing for all New Zealanders and something we can be proud of that makes us special on the world stage, because this is a practical embodiment of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which is our foundational document.

These should be the things that we could have found bipartisan support for. Instead, we are stepping back, once again, in this House, and that is the real story of this bill. This is a bill where National sided with ACT to turn what could have been a story of bipartisanship in our long-term legislative programme and turned against those aspirations of most New Zealanders who did not give them a mandate for this kind of change. We have, instead, seen them use our legislative process in this way—in an unusual way—where this was not something that most New Zealanders could have a say on through the select committee. If you were a New Zealander who had paid lobbyists to do it for you with the Cabinet, then you did get a say. That is unfair, and that is not something that we should continue to support in our legislation-making process, because planning law is important.

We’ve also had the Minister of Housing, who came along to his annual review and said, “Without reform of the planning laws in Aotearoa, all the rest is tinkering around the edges.” I agree—this is critically important—but if all of the other reforms have been tinkering around the edges, then this was something to make sure that we found sticky, long-term, bipartisan commitments to. We must resist the urges of the politics of the day to go for some of those political issues which come up and are hot issues at the time, but simply won’t be in 10 years. I doubt that any member of this House will be on their feet debating the importance and the place of Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements in 10 years, because, by that time, it will be clear that that was a blip on the radar and that that was a debate that was stirred up by certain interests seeking a certain percentage of the party vote when it was a particular issue of the day that they could use social media and the media cycle to exploit. It doesn’t have a place in laws like this, which are going to be in effect for a very long time and where decisions which are made under them tomorrow will have an impact in 20 years, and in 30 years, and in 40 years.

That should be the same category with which we put in the rights of public participation. Within a law like a planning law, it should set up a high-level framework for ordinary citizens to come along and tell their councils, to come along and tell their elected representatives, what they want to see in their local areas. It’s quite good, members, when we have a system which sets out very clearly that things like waste-water treatment facilities and things like your local sewage processing plant are things that elected representatives should have a say in and are things that councils should think very clearly about where they go and who has them in their local waterways or at their beaches, and it is not something which we should make completely devoid of any public participation rights. That’s really important and something which has been eroded in this system. We should always stick up for members of the public being able to have a say, even if we think that councils and other organisations that are building infrastructure are stymied by that. It’s important that we think carefully about them and that there are checks and balances within the system. Otherwise, you get a continuous undermining of public trust in the system, which, ultimately, doesn’t just hurt the rules but hurts those projects and hurts their ability to continue. These are things that we need people to buy into in the long term.

This is also a bill which has walked back those commitments around environmental protections in the natural environment, which should also be bipartisan. We should all be able to find agreement around how we continue to protect those things that are most important to our identity as New Zealanders—clean waterways and air to breathe are things that we will have very clear protections around. This bill continues to step that back by, say, not having a hierarchy in the goals and purpose; by not having a clear way for challenges to be brought by protectors of certain areas; and, also, then by introducing regulatory relief provisions when elected members are trying to implement what would be baseline-level protections that they know their communities support for their certain areas. Those are all things that undermine people’s faith in the system in the long term. They’re not just technical rule changes; these are rules which are about people getting together in a room and making decisions together. That is the way that our democracy is intended to work.

Even though the Government does have the power—using its coalition parties in support to make those technical changes—these aren’t changes which are sticky and these aren’t changes which give people more faith and more buy-in into the democratic system. That’s why we continue to oppose them—it’s changes like this that we should be very wary of—and to look for genuine engagement in the committee stage. There is Labour support for much of this planning reform. The irony of this debate is that this was an opportunity to build out on that growing level of support, around building cities and regions where everyone has a stake, where people can afford to buy houses, where people can be proud of their natural environment, and where people can have a say at either their local level or with their nationally elected representative, because that’s what’s important.

The final point I would make—and the Hon Willie Jackson also made this point—is that Māori participation in these schemes is not just important now; it’s important in the future. For the Crown to turn its back on some of those very important agreements that exist, not only at the local level but at the national level, in participation in the use of our natural resources and the protection of our natural environment is just another opportunity for further growing mistrust and for further creating misunderstanding between iwi and the Crown. It is very important that we mend those relationships—which this Government, frankly, has undermined in a number of ways in this term—so that those don’t become another political football and something which the Crown cannot be relied upon to be an honourable partner.

It is important that the Crown maintains its commitments to consult on these kinds of changes and to involve iwi Māori in these kinds of changes, because these are most fundamental to iwi reclaiming their sense of kaitiakitanga and their sense of rangatiratanga over their rohe. It is constitutionally important and it is intergenerationally important that iwi continue to be able to find their place at the table and continue to be able to have a voice where they are respected within the system. That is what I hope we can address at the committee stage, but, for now, Labour does not support this bill.

[Authorised Cook Islands Māori text to be inserted by the Hansard Office.]

The Natural Environment Bill is about protecting what makes New Zealand special while creating a framework that is both practical, proportionate, and fit for the future. It replaces a one-size-fits-all approach with clear environmental limits, greater certainty, and more flexible tools to manage our natural resources responsibly. It safeguards air, water, soil, ecosystems, and human health while enabling New Zealanders to build the homes, infrastructure, renewable energy, productive energy, and productive industries our country needs.

This bill recognises that environmental protection and economic growth are not competing goals; they go hand in hand. By providing clearer rules and reducing unnecessary complexity, we can achieve better environmental outcomes while giving communities, farmers, businesses, and councils the confidence to invest. This is a balanced, modern approach that protects the natural environment while protecting a stronger economy and a better future for all New Zealanders. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments be agreed to.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Natural Environment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 67

New Zealand National 48; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 54

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 14; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Planning Bill

Legislative Statement