Planning Bill

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

The Planning Bill is at the heart of this Government’s plan to replace the Resource Management Act (RMA) with a simpler, clearer, and more consistent planning system—one that can build New Zealand’s future. In the first reading, I made it clear that we need a planning system that stops getting in the way and starts getting things done—a system that enables more houses, faster infrastructure, greater investment, and stronger growth through faster, more consistent planning.

I want to thank the Environment Committee, who carefully considered submissions from Kiwis around the country. I want to thank the committee, the submitters, the officials, and everyone who contributed to this important process. The committee has made a range of sensible and practical improvements that the Government supports. I want to canvass some of those issues in this contribution today.

I think it’s important to note that the committee has improved the legislation, but it’s also kept the core design in place. That matters, because this is not just another tweak to the existing RMA; this is about a replacement planning system that delivers what New Zealand needs: more homes, better infrastructure, more renewable energy, stronger food and fibre, practical environmental protection, and stronger economic growth. The independent analysis shows that the gains from getting this right are significant: lower administration and compliance costs, less duplication, and stronger long-term growth. But the system will only be realised—or the gains from the system—with a workable bill, and the committee’s recommendations help ensure that it is. I want to thank the committee for that.

The fundamental design of the reforms is important—a two-bill framework: a Planning Bill that focuses on how land is used, developed, and enjoyed; while the Natural Environment Bill, which we’ve just canvassed, focuses on the natural environment being used, protected, and enhanced. We talk about the overall framework containing a funnel, with clear purposes and goals at the top of the system, national instruments to set direction and provide consistency, regional spatial planning to resolve those big strategic issues, and then local decision-making to apply those decisions, rather than reopening them.

There’s been quite a bit of debate about national direction and various different powers that, apparently, I’ve arrogated to myself as RMA Minister. All planning systems worldwide—including the RMA, by the way—contain clear, coherent national direction from the centre, because it is important that central government has the ability to, for example, send a signal through the system that infrastructure is important, that we want abundant development opportunities around the country, and that renewables is something to be embraced, not made difficult. The way to achieve that—and the RMA does this in part already—is through clear national direction. In fact, one of the criticisms of the RMA, from 1990 through to around about 2007 and 2008, when central government started taking it seriously, was a failure of central direction or national direction to make the system work. We’re being really upfront right from the start in saying that a coherent document that sits at the core of the system will provide greater consistency around the country and send a clear message about what sorts of outcomes the Government is trying to achieve.

There is greater national consistency at the heart of these reforms, where there is a move towards fewer plans, and the scope for relitigating issues at each stage of the decision-making framework remains significantly reduced. The planning system can’t provide certainty if every decision is constantly revisited. That is, unfortunately, the case far too often at the moment. We need clear rules, and that is a support for long-term investment.

I think we’re going to spend quite a bit of time in the committee of the whole House stage on the purpose and goals. Those are really important. The select committee has amended those provisions, making them clearer and more focused. The committee has also made it clear that the goals do not sit in a hierarchy and they don’t all have to be achieved in the same place at the same time. There’s been a bit of debate about this in public. That is actually a core system design. Endless re-litigation about which goal is more important than another goal and the whole section 6, 7, and 8 conundrum in the RMA is part of the problem. Different goals will be applicable in different circumstances at different times, but the goals set the objectives of the system. If an objective is not in the goals, it’s not part of the system.

One of the biggest shifts in the new system is towards competitive urban land markets. The committee has strengthened that goal by making it clearer that the planning system should provide development opportunities for housing and business beyond simply meeting current and expected demand. That is a big shift. For too long, the planning system has limited land, constrained growth, and pushed up costs. When land is artificially scarce, homes become more expensive and businesses have fewer options. We cannot keep planning for scarcity. New Zealand is not a country that is short of land. What we are short of is a planning system that works. That is part of what this Government is trying to change. The planning system has to allow land supply to materially exceed demand. More opportunities to build means more housing, more investment, and more productive cities and regions.

The committee has also sharpened the infrastructure goal. The new focus is simple: the planning system should enable infrastructure to meet and respond to current and future demands, because we can’t grow without infrastructure. Investments like water and transport, renewable energy transmission, schools, and hospitals take years to plan, significant investment, and they require certainty and confidence. One of the most important features of the new system is regional spatial planning. We can’t plan for housing, infrastructure, transport, and natural hazards in isolation. We need a system that looks ahead, makes those strategic choices early, and provides confidence about where our regions are heading.

The committee has recommended a number of improvements, including sharpening the strategic focus and strengthening decision-making requirements. It has recommended strengthening the connection between planning and implementation by requiring central government participation in the spatial planning secretariat. It’s not a takeover by central government but the recognition that the transport agency and the central government, who often control—well, always in the case of schools and hospitals; those committees need that input. The changes support better long-term decision making and alignment between planning and infrastructure investment.

The bill continues to recognise the benefits of activities that reduce emissions, so it will be easier to consent renewables—electric vehicle charging infrastructure, for example—and other developments that supports the shift to a lower-emissions economy. At the same time, the bill makes it clear that the planning system will not manage the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. The Government’s view is that those issues are dealt with through our dedicated climate change framework, including the Climate Change Response Act and the emissions trading scheme, rather than through the planning system. The committee has strengthened the natural hazards goal, and we welcome that. The focus is now on managing the risk posed by natural hazards, not just managing the effects of those hazards. That is an important shift. Communities around New Zealand face growing risks from flooding, storms, erosion, and other natural hazards. The planning system has to help communities identify and manage those risks early and support them to adapt.

There’s been a bit of debate, in the last bill, around Māori rights and interests and the upholding of Treaty settlements. The committee has recommended changes that provide more certainty while maintaining the Government’s approach. The Māori interests goal remains. The bills will continue to recognise interests by supporting participation in national instruments and planning processes, identifying and protecting sites of significance, and enabling the protection and development of Māori land. The Government’s commitment to upholding Treaty settlements also remains unchanged. The committee has made it clear that Treaty settlement redress and arrangements must continue to be given the same or equivalent effect until the Crown and post-settlement governance entities agree how those settlements will be upheld in the new system. The committee has also addressed Māori interest in spatial planning by requiring spatial planning committees to include someone with knowledge and experience of te ao Māori and Māori development. I think the Government, quite to the contradistinction to what Arena Williams was saying in the previous debate, has got the balance right on this issue.

Getting the new system right is just as important as getting it in place quickly. There is going to be some time to prepare for the new system, so the committee has recommended extending the transition from 30 months to 39 months. That includes the full 12-month process for the first national policy direction—a sensible recommendation given the importance of this. We are intending to publish a non-statutory draft soon, before the publication of a draft that’s consulted on per the new legislation, next year. We are committed to replacing the legislation, but it is important that implementation is orderly and achievable. The first national instruments will turn the goals of the system into clear direction for councils and applicants, infrastructure providers and communities, and users. In the meantime, a transitional consenting system will operate under an amended RMA to ensure some benefits of the reforms are felt sooner. The committee has refined these provisions, making it easier to remove out-of-scope effects from district plans and limiting these effects to district land uses.

The committee has also recommended a new procedural principle encouraging the use of digital tools and systems. Consistent data, common standards, and modern digital platforms will help deliver a planning system that is simpler, faster, and more consistent. I’m looking forward to talking more about the digital investments later on. The committee has also considered concerns from submitters about ministerial powers and the balance between national consistency and local decision-making. As I’ve already said, the Minister can already set national direction; it’s an important part of the system. I want to thank the committee for their hard work on both bills. I’m looking forward to getting into the meat of the bills in the committee of the whole House stage, but, for now, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

As a member of the Environment Committee, which the Minister responsible for RMA Reform just thanked, I would invite him to consider the amendments that I will be putting up to both of these bills. If he wants enduring resource management reform, that is the thing to do. It is very frustrating—again, I use that word—to hear, “The committee agreed this. The committee agreed that. The committee agreed this.” The committee, by majority, agreed to make the bill worse over and over again. That is because of the influence of forces that talked to Government Ministers and then Government members doing the bidding of the Ministers and agreeing to all these terrible changes. It’s very disappointing, and it’s particularly disappointing when you spend so much time in those committees.

Now, in my last speech, I said that I would touch on regulatory relief and Treaty issues in this speech. I do want to also mention one of those issues that the Minister was saying the committee agreed to: what he calls the core architecture of the legislation. He says that this comes from a clear purpose statement and goals that have no hierarchy, and that we don’t want a hierarchy like the resource management has with that sections 5, 6, and 7—he didn’t say “mess”; it was some word like that. But what we heard in the select committee—and what we’ve seen from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the Rt Hon Simon Upton, subsequent to the report back of these bills—is that they just don’t work. The core architecture of these bills does not work, and that is because there are goals between the bills and between themselves that will be in conflict.

Somebody has to decide the hierarchy of those goals that are in conflict. Where, in the Resource Management Act (RMA), you might look to section 5—the “Purpose” section—in these bills, the “Purpose” clause is just about setting up a framework. Those purpose clauses are not going to help. Then, if you looked to the RMA, you would say, “Well, section 6 is ‘Matters of national importance’. They are more important than ‘Other matters’, in section 7.” There is a hierarchy, so you don’t get the muddles, whereas, in this legislation, they’re just all put out. In the Planning Bill, they’re very development focused, and in the Natural Environment Bill, there is some more emphasis on the natural environment, but when those goals are in conflict, what is going to happen? Here, everything relies on the Minister and national direction clarifying what happens when there is a conflict, and that is incredibly problematic. We had many experts in this field telling us that it is just unworkable—it does not work.

That is one of my many efficiency frustrations with this legislation. It just won’t work. I’d love it to work. I want a more efficient system that does better for our environment—two very simple objectives—but these bills do not do it. We can try and make some changes so that they do do it. One of the changes would be to remove the regulatory relief provisions. That’s a simple thing to do in terms of drafting; a few deletions to happen there. Why we need that to happen if we want an efficient system is because, one, they are crazy. These clauses about regulatory relief are importing some ideas about private property ownership that we have never had in New Zealand, and trying to say that, if there is any biodiversity protection or landscape protection or heritage protection or site of Māori significance protection, the council has to be able to compensate that private landowner for that protection. It’s really important to know that these protections are ones that can already exist. They might be in a resource management plan, and they might be wanting to roll them over into these new plans, but before the councils can notify a new plan, they’ve got to identify whether or not anybody might need regulatory relief, and there’s a whole lot of bureaucracy that it needs to go through.

In fact, in Newsroom today, we have Dr Greg Severinsen, who works at the Environmental Defence Society, who said, “It will delay the creation of new plans for years, create enormous uncertainty for everyone, and generate a wave of litigation unlike anything we’ve seen under the Resource Management Act.” This is not efficiency; this is great inefficiency. It will create a cottage industry, and there will be a need for many more lawyers. Also, we know it’s going to cost somewhere—the Government’s own report said—between $7 million and $1.99 billion. Why is that gap so big? Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, as a local MP, but probably your councils and your councillors don’t want to put up rates, and that is something that we see around the country. Councils are not flush with cash, so when they have it put to them that either they can have an environmental protection or they can pay some rates relief or monetary compensation to a landowner, if they don’t have the money, they will choose to get rid of the environmental protection. That is a very bad thing.

Now, we move on to Treaty issues. We had, in the Resource Management Act (RMA), a general Treaty clause, which was to “take into account the principles” of the Treaty, at section 8. There was also a much more powerful provision—there still is, because the RMA is still in place—at section 6(e), and that is about Māori and their ancestral lands, water, and taonga. That is the most powerful provision in the RMA. We have also, thanks to a National Government, introduced Mana Whakahono ā Rohe so that councils can be efficient in their relationships with mana whenua. We also have kaitiakitanga in there, as well, and some other provisions.

What we did, when we were in Government, was we changed that general Treaty provision to “give effect to the principles”. Of course, section 6(e) came through, as well. What this Government has done is got rid of the general Treaty clause—there is a Treaty clause at section 8, but it’s substantially weakened—and it does not have the fulsome equivalent of section 6(e). Then, whilst the bill as introduced had the Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements in it, the Government has subsequently decided to get rid of them, just hours after the select committee reported back. We had the Minister say, in one of these readings today, “Oh well, this new regime is so different that we need different types of instruments, so there’s no point in having the Mana Whakahono ā Rohe.”

That is cynical. That is not the reason for this change at all, because this new legislation—piles and piles of it on the desk here—still provides for plans, and it still provides for consents. The architecture is not that different. Councils are still going to have to consult with—although not be as involved as they would under our legislation and not as involved as under the Resource Management Act; this is regressive from the Resource Management Act. There is no reason not to have Mana Whakahono ā Rohe, apart from the fact that this Government wants to go backwards on every single thing it possibly can to do with mana whenua, and that is a disgrace. Of course, we would be bringing those provisions back.

Now, I would like to direct people to the Labour Party differing view. It starts at page 118 of the select committee report back, and it does have a couple of pages there of other issues that I’m not going to have time to speak to at the moment. But I want to assure anyone watching this that we are working very hard to make sure that we can bring the amendments that would enable those issues that I’ve spoken about in the House and that are in this commentary, as well, to the House when we come back for the committee of the whole House stage.

I also want to, once again—and I’m sure I will say this many more times—say how disappointed I am that this Government chose to repeal the legislation that the Labour Government had put through and just dismissed it out of hand, spend years and years on this legislation, and then bring something to the House that is not credible.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I have to say I agree so much with the comments of my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking, both in this debate and the previous bill on which my colleagues Lan Pham and Hūhana Lyndon both spoke.

I am one of maybe two qualified planners in the House, and as a planner who’s worked extensively in the system as it has been, I would be one of the first to say that I’m in favour of reform, that the urban planning rules are not getting us the outcomes we need, that there’s an opportunity to get much better outcomes for the environment and for people, and that it can cost less. It’s something that, right across the House, all parties in New Zealand should be able to agree on. I believe Minister Bishop did indicate, initially, that he was interested in getting us all to input into these bills and into this system, and maybe there would have been an opportunity for us to support this bill. We have made numerous constructive suggestions to the Minister and the Environment Committee.

While there are some aspects of the proposal which we can support, we cannot support this bill as drafted, and definitely not the Natural Environment Bill. I just have to say, upfront, listening to the speeches from the Minister and Government members, it kind of makes a mockery of the whole process. Maybe they really believe what they’re saying, but what they are saying in their speeches is not reflective of how the actual select committee process worked. We had over 4,000 submissions. We had huge numbers of organisations who work in this area, local government, iwi, hapū, resource management experts, lawyers—all sorts of people—and environmental advocates trying to constructively participate in this process.

I know that there’s a lot of first-term MPs on the Government side on the Environment Committee. In fact, I think they’re all first-term MPs, and maybe that’s why they don’t understand constitutionally the way things are meant to work. The way it’s meant to work is the select committee is meant to actually listen to the public and think critically and propose amendments. It’s the select committee’s job to hold the executive to account. Every time the Minister says, “Oh, the Government agrees with the select committee recommendations.”, that’s absolute rubbish. It was made very, very clear to all of us on the select committee that Government MPs were not thinking for themselves, were not suggesting any sort of investigations or alternative approaches. They were simply carrying out the will of the executive and Ministers. So it’s not the case that the select committee has made these recommendations and the Government is accepting them; the Government has made these recommendations, and the select committee Government MPs rubber-stamped them. Probably they’re not capable of thinking about it, but they’re not interested in it, because they think that doing what the Ministers are directing them to do is the best way for them to move up the pecking order in their party.

It exposes a real constitutional issue with our law-making process in Aotearoa New Zealand. If we had things going through a local government process, it would not be like this. There would be experts and evidence, and the public would be taken seriously. Here, they were basically completely ignored. The only people who get to have a say on this legislation and influence what was recommended by the Government and then rubber-stamped by Government MPs on the select committee were basically the agriculture industry. Big polluting industries got whatever they wanted, and the ACT Party got whatever they wanted, but nobody actually listened—obviously, the Hon Rachel Brooking and Lan Pham and I and Priyanca all listened—to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It’s worth noting that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was, for 25 years, a National Party MP and Minister. He is a farmer from rural New Zealand who’s absolutely expert in this area and cares very passionately about getting better outcomes. There is no way that he should be totally dismissed and ignored by the parties of the Government, and yet he was—he absolutely was.

I will quote what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, said. He says, firstly, “The Bills represent a wholesale rejection of localism.”, and there’s no doubt about that. Being from a party that actually has called for greater national direction in the Resource Management Act (RMA)—and I agree with some of the proposals around standardising zones and the rules in zones—it’s just a bit of a joke to say that this National, Luxon-led Government supports localism when every single step they have taken is about centralising power, about taking power away from local communities and local government, and about punching down on local government rather than ensuring the whole system works well, because we know that many decisions are made better at a local level than at a central government level. This is a very objective, independent point of view from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who spent a quarter of this century representing the National Party in Parliament.

Now, this is more to do with the environment bill, but it’s an absolute joke to hear the Minister say that, somehow, they’re preserving environmental limits in this or introducing environmental limits. It’s factually inaccurate that that’s what the bills do. Overall, the whole story about how, somehow, National’s the saviour getting rid of the RMA when they repealed bills that replaced the RMA. We spent five years having a robust process to come up with an alternative to the RMA, and I may not have agreed with every aspect of it and they might not have agreed with every aspect of it, but it was a total waste of the public’s time and has created more uncertainty to repeal the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act, especially because the few good things in these bills were actually just brought over from those.

It’s all just nonsense. It’s all a weird PR exercise where they couldn’t possibly support the previous work that had been done over five years, when that was far more consultative and it involved people who were users of the system and who are people living in New Zealand, who care about the outcomes for the future—that is good legislative process.

Grant McCallum: That’s what we did—that’s what we did.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: We could have made amendments—that is a complete joke, Grant McCallum. You are living in a fantasyland where you think the Northland Expressway, which is going to go to the Auckland region—entirely within the Auckland region—is going to help Northland. It doesn’t even sort out the fricking Brynderwyns—oh, my God!—and because we’re spending $4 billion doing it, we’re never ever going to get the replacements that are going to fix the roads in Northland. That’s down to Grant McCallum and this National Government prioritising baches north of Auckland over actually sorting out the roads in Northland. But that’s another story.

The expert advisory group—and I quote from, again, Simon Upton—that helped plan this reform called for “a system that can achieve broad and enduring consensus across society, so as to put an end to the ‘flip-flopping’ of RMA reform that has meant long-identified solutions to issues … have not been implemented.” Then Simon said, “The Bills before the House do not come close to providing the basis for a ‘broad and enduring consensus across society’. For that reason, they would benefit from more consideration.”

It was a big waste of time. It was a big waste of my time sitting on the Environment Committee, because the chair was just like “Let’s just keep going. Let’s keep going.”—an absolute box-ticker. It was an absolute box-ticker. It doesn’t actually care about the outcomes for the country, and that’s the problem with this Government. Everything they do is motivated by shallow, slogan-type approaches, and they are living in a fantasyland where they think that if they repeat something enough, it becomes reality. They’ve said, “Oh, it’s the National Party that’s getting rid of the RMA and coming up with workable bills.”, when clearly the vast majority of people who came and spent their time talking to the select committee were saying that these bills are unworkable, that keeping the environment and planning bills separate is illogical, and that the way we plan cities has a huge impact on environment, biodiversity, and carbon emissions.

There is insufficient recognition of Te Tiriti. The changes which will be made at the committee stage to remove reference to the Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements are totally unnecessary because they’re already in the legislation now, and so to say they had to get rid of them is nonsense.

It does not include adapting to and mitigating climate change in the goals. Of course that should be absolutely front and centre of any urban planning system—

Simon Court: It just snowed—climate change is over.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —because it will make it far more efficient for us to respond to the challenges and to reduce emissions if we—I understand what the impact of planning decisions would be—plan so that we’re going to have less emissions and we’re able to respond.

But we can hear, right now, Simon Court, who is an absolute climate denier. This Government is filled with people who absolutely deny what is happening. We go outside and we see record heatwaves that are going to cause droughts and food shortages. We’ve seen record floods in Wellington that are costing people money, and yet the Government MPs are in absolute denial about that.

Anyway, I won’t even get into regulatory relief. Hopefully, my colleague will talk to that.

ACT supports the second reading of the Planning Bill, and I’m pleased to outline why. I’m also pleased to help the member Julie Anne Genter with her understanding of climate change. It has just snowed in Wellington for the first time in?

Andy Foster: 15 years.

SIMON COURT: 15 years. So I think we can declare the climate emergency over. Now, Opposition MPs have helped make the point that their vision of a planning system is all about process and not about outcomes.

Too many people experience a planning system that is slow, costly, and unpredictable. As a civil engineer, I’ve had to get resource consents. I’ve had to get private plan changes to change one land use to another in order to clean up contamination so that land can be put to better commercial and industrial use, and New Zealanders, whether they’re building homes, investing in infrastructure, running businesses, or managing land, face unnecessary barriers that hold back growth and opportunity.

The Environment Committee heard clear and consistent evidence about the problems and heard that reform is needed. Not every submitter did agree on the solution—I’ll grant that—but they did recognise that the system is not serving New Zealanders like it should. It was a common theme that there’s a need for a planning system that better recognises property rights and is clearer about when and why regulation is justified, and the committee has reinforced that direction.

One of the clearest examples is the committee’s recommendation to place the “enjoyment of land” at the start of the bill’s purpose clause. That is not a drafting technicality; that represents one of the central principles in the new system.

Property rights matter—property rights matter. Opposition members, property rights matter. The starting point should not be that people ask the permission to undertake ordinary activities on their own land; rather, people should be able to use and develop and enjoy their land, unless there is a clear reason for intervention, and that represents a very important shift in New Zealand’s constitution around the use of property. It places greater weight on the freedoms that people reasonably expect to have as landowners, while recognising the need to manage significant impacts on others. This shift is not just a legislative one, because a legislative change is just one of the key mechanisms; it’s to drive a corresponding cultural shift.

The Resource Management Act (RMA) encouraged a culture focused on process—which we heard about from the Opposition MP speaking on the bill—in which decisions are repeatedly litigated, and development is too often treated as something to be constrained, rather than enabled. This culture should meet the same end as the RMA: it should be removed and replaced, or jammed in the shredder and replaced with something that actually works. This culture shift starts with a narrowed scope of effects to manage and a higher bar for regulatory intervention. This reflects the simple but important principle that regulation should focus only on effects that really matter and should be proportionate to the scale and significance of the effects on people.

The committee recognised this and it has retained the approach of specifying effects that are out of scope of the system, but it has recommended changes to improve clarity and certainty, because if a planning system tries to regulate every possible effect, it becomes too complex, too costly, and much less effective. It also creates uncertainty for applicants and decision makers. Having a more focused approach will make the system more practical and predictable.

The committee also heard extensive feedback around participation. The bill keeps the Government’s approach of focusing participation higher up in the system. It means ensuring strong opportunities for public input when national instruments and spatial plans are being developed. Those are decisions which are intended to have long-lasting effect, and public participation can have the greatest value at that point.

The committee has also retained provisions to lift notification provisions, focusing on participation by those directly affected by proposals, and to reduce the need for hearings to only when it’s necessary. People should have a strong voice and be heard when strategic decisions are made, but once those decisions have been made, the system should not encourage the same debates to be relitigated through every individual consent application and by every Tom, Dick, and Hōne from around the country, or even across the world—the quid pro quo being free to do more is leaving others to do the same. This is another key culture shift.

Regulatory relief is a novel concept in New Zealand. It’s still a bit of a mystery to the Opposition, judging by their comments, but it’s a key driver of culture shift to a more proportionate and property rights - based system.

The committee has retained the core design of the regulatory relief mechanism. The principle is simple: if a planning control is imposed for the public benefit, then the public should face some of that cost. That does two things: it removes the incentive for councils to overregulate—they can currently impose heritage or outstanding natural landscape controls on private property, without bearing any of the cost. You could get a letter tomorrow saying, “Congratulations. You’ve won an outstanding natural feature on your property. It’s going to make it impossible to develop, but aren’t you lucky!” That’s not going to happen in the new system.

Hon Rachel Brooking: What about those ones that have been in plans for 20 years?

SIMON COURT: We’re going to restore fairness, Rachel Brooking. If the public wants to preserve something of genuine public value, like significant heritage, the burden shouldn’t just fall on that private property owner. Put simply, regulatory relief introduces discipline and fairness into the planning system. It’s going to be a significant culture change.

The Planning Tribunal is another critical accountability mechanism to drive culture change. The committee has responded with several refinements that are going to make the tribunal more workable, and thank you to the committee members for that. It’s going to be an accessible means to resolve disputes about issues like information requests, all those technical reports that councils demand are stacked up before they’ll even accept an application; consent conditions—some of them nutty and doing nothing to protect the environment or human health. Regulatory relief and other administrative decisions will also be covered by the Planning Tribunal. It’s going to strengthen accountability and put a referee on the field on behalf of those system participants who have just had to accept councils’ decisions in the past. They’re going to have a planning tribunal as a ref. People need confidence that decisions can be challenged through practical and affordable challenges, and that law is going to be applied as Parliament intended.

I acknowledge the work of the Environment Committee. There was a significant amount of information to digest in a short amount of time, and I thank everybody who took the time to make submissions on the bill, including those—the very few of those—who believe the resource management system was working fine. Many people have agreed for a very long time, including institutions like the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, that the RMA has imposed costs of up to $1.3 billion per annum just on consenting infrastructure alone, without building a single silt fence or building a new wetland to deal with sediment and runoff. That’s just the consenting cost. It can’t go on, and it won’t go on. The Planning Bill and its complementary bill, the Natural Environment Bill, are going to resolve these issues.

The committee has preserved the core foundations of the Planning Bill and its clear principles: a respect for property rights, proportionate regulation to the risks that need to be managed, and a planning system that will enable growth instead of obstructing it. That matters, because planning rules are not just an abstract issue. When it takes too long and costs too much to build, New Zealanders pay through higher rents, higher grocery bills, higher energy prices, and less opportunity. This bill replaces a system that too often rewarded delay, rewarded obstruction, and rewarded the uncertainty of council rules and systems with one that gives people greater confidence to invest, to build, to grow their businesses and grow their communities in the way that they choose. It protects property rights and will make it easier to deliver the homes and the infrastructure, the energy, and the economic growth that New Zealand needs so we can become more wealthy and afford to pay for all of those other things we need, like healthcare and education and, of course, defence. This bill is about unlocking New Zealand’s potential, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on this important Planning Bill. Now, New Zealand First has not actually got enough MPs—yet—to have MPs to put on this select committee, the Environment Committee, but I did join in a couple of times when I didn’t have another select committee which was going through that time, and I could see very easily the complexity and the number of issues that the select committee was having to deal with.

I also took some time to meet with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE), seeing as he’s been mentioned on a number of occasions in this debate, and actually met with him at least two—or maybe it was three—times, and his team. Also, I want to say thank you to Simon Court for having a couple of good conversations about it as well; that was all very helpful, because both of these bills together are immensely complex.

Look, I just thought it would be worth starting to say that, because I just want to respond to a couple of things that the Hon Julie Anne Genter said in terms of the select committee itself. Actually, in reading through the report, on this bill anyway, I thought they gave a very honest summation of the kinds of issues that they dealt with and where they landed and why they landed in the particular place that they did. I’ll just pick up a couple of those, if I can, just to start off with.

First of all, there was the reflection they made around the two bills versus one bill, because that’s been raised, and they talk about the PCE and Bronwyn Carruthers KC not finding any rationale underpinning those two bills. They reflected that very accurately, but they also said why they landed on the two bills as opposed to one.

I thought the other one which was really good that I picked up early on was the issue around ministerial discretion, the Minister’s ability to make those planning documents, and I’ll come back to that later on. “We acknowledge the potential for instability in the system if a Minister were to set a different direction from their predecessor. However, we consider this to be a political decision and something a Minister would have to keep in mind, in addition to the legislated requirements when developing new national instruments.” They responded to those issues, and I thought at least they worked their way through those, so I thought the comments were a little harsh.

It was Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman who coined the phrase “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything.”, and that, ultimately, is what this bill and its sister bill, the Natural Environment Bill, are all about. Now, there are some parties in this House—and I think we probably all know which ones they are—and some people in this country who believe that wealth can be generated by taxation, by redistribution of the fruits of the labour of other people, by their innovation, by risk taking, etc. They believe that money comes from the Government. They probably also believe that lamb comes from the supermarket; it doesn’t grow on a farm—and I don’t know where the milk comes from, Grant, but it’s probably in a bottle rather than from a cow.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Oh, and do they use natural resources to make those things? To make the milk?

Hon Member: It’s meant to be creating value.

ANDY FOSTER: So—I don’t know what they’re talking about, but anyway, I’ll carry on. My point is that these people believe that redistribution can build wealth—it doesn’t do that. Most of the time, it actually destroys wealth. Ultimately, as Paul Krugman said, productivity, in the long run, is almost everything, and that is what this bill is about and what the last bill is about.

Something I talked about in my maiden speech: we can aspire to be where we used to be, top of the tree like Switzerland, or we can be like Zimbabwe, divided and poor, and that’s the recipe that the Opposition, I think, would go to. Productivity is about what gives us higher incomes. It’s the sure way, the best way, to deal with cost of living. You can drive prices down, but that’s the best way to deal with cost of living. We hear often from the Opposition about people leaving to go to Australia. It’s the thing that allows us to be more competitive with Australia. It allows us to pay higher wages. It allows us to pay high-quality public services, health, education and so on. It allows us to be more resilient.

Now, there are some on the Opposition who would say that, actually, the best thing we could do in terms of the environment is export adverse effects on the environment—let some other country face those adverse effects rather than us do that, because that makes us feel virtuous somehow. All that does is export GDP, export jobs, and does us no good and makes us less resilient. What these bills are about is helping our economy to be more productive and New Zealanders to be better off while protecting the environment.

The Resource Management Act has been long acknowledged to have placed a heavy burden on the economy. It’s been compared, in some places, to trying to run—to be more productive, if you like—with a ball and chain around our ankles, and you know what that would look like.

It’s appropriate that the report back—I don’t know that I’ve seen too many other report backs that look quite as heavy as this, and this is one of the two bills. This is what happens every time when you do anything in terms of planning—this would be a small resource consent application. That is what we’ve done in this country: we’ve made it so damn difficult to actually build or do anything, and that is what these bills are about trying to make easier so that people can actually get on—as Simon Court said, it’s about outcomes; it’s about delivery and getting stuff done.

Now, across this House, we had a special debate not that long ago on the National Infrastructure Plan—remember this one?—and we all spoke glowingly about the plan and about the Infrastructure Commission. Now, in that plan, the plan says, of the Resource Management Act, “There is widespread concern that the RMA isn’t adequately supporting community development aspirations or protecting the environment.”—failing on both counts. The plan goes on to say, in the understated way that people like this do, “Infrastructure providers spend about $1.3 billion each year on consenting.”—that’s not design, that’s not engineering; that is just consenting. “International comparisons”—and here’s the key—“indicate that New Zealand may be near the upper end for regulatory approval costs.” That’s just the direct cost. It’s not the uncertainty; it’s not any of those bits. They say that for a typical infrastructure project, the consenting cost averages around 5.5 percent of total cost, and for small projects more like 16 percent. That is what the Infrastructure Commission is telling us. They say that “consenting has become more complex and expensive [and] processing times have … increased”.

So not only was it bad; it’s got worse. That is a key reason why, of course—and we all know this; we’ve all said this around this House—we spend more than virtually any other country in the OECD on infrastructure and we get worse results. Those things are linked in large part to our consenting regime.

That, of course, was what fast track was promoted for by the New Zealand First Party and implemented by this Government, to help address those things, and it’s already helping for many projects around this country. [Interruption] Of course, the Opposition, who are now calling out—they have tended to oppose all of these things. I mean, their recipe for the economy is just to make things to redistribute. That’s what they would like to do. That would just make us worse.

Grant McCallum: Tax, tax, tax, tax.

ANDY FOSTER: Tax, tax, tax—that’s the answer to everything! We are reading, effectively, the last rites of the Resource Management Act. The Resource Management Act, like Lazarus, has risen only once from the dead, and with the passage of the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill, the RMA will finally be laid to rest.

Now, in the bill, we’ve got this funnel system—and I do want to talk a little bit about this. The legislation sets the high level, then you’ve got national policy direction, national standards, etc.—the idea of having a much greater level of consistency. That’s something which had been sought under the RMA for many, many years, and not delivered probably until relatively recently, and I’ll come to that in just a moment. Beneath that, you’ve got all of those consolidated regional plans, regional spatial plans, land-use plans, natural environmental plans, etc., and looking ahead for 30 years. I don’t know how people are going to be looking ahead for 30 years if we haven’t got a decent demographic plan, something I’ve stood up for many, many times in this House and said that we actually need to know how many people we’re planning for before we actually do the planning, but let’s get to that at another stage.

One of the things—and I’ve already mentioned it—is that there is huge discretion being given to Ministers to balance the competing objectives which are set out in these bills, and that is something that is going to have to be exercised very carefully and it is something which has got to be done in really good consultation. I’m going to give you a couple of examples of consultation—actually, they were from people, one of them is still in this House, the Hon Phil Twyford—the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, which, when it came out, looked very different from when it went through the consultation process. It was, it would be fair to say, quite a surprise to the people who received that. We, as a council, at the time, were doing a district plan for something which we were instructed to do by the Government, and they changed the rules not once, with the national policy statement, but twice, where you had the three by three rules, as well—in fact, I got rung up by the Hon David Parker about two hours before that legislation came to the House, the day before we were about to go out to consult on our district plan. Most unhelpful. Certainty is really, really important for all the players.

We’re going to finish off on just that thing. I was privileged to be at the planning conference that we had recently. We had a planning discussion. Simon Court was there; the Hon Rachel Brooking was there, as well. Out of all the things that they wanted from the planning system, the most important of those was certainty and stability. That is the key. The devil’s going to be in the detail. Making sure that we can deliver certainty and stability through all those national planning instruments, through those spatial plans, etc., is going to be crucial to making these work, to making our boat go faster, and to making New Zealand be a more prosperous and higher-income country. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): A five-minute split call—Oriini Kaipara.

E te Pīka, kia ora. I stand to speak on behalf of Te Pāti Māori and give rise to the voices of the people of Tāmaki Makaurau. I want to start with a question directly to the Minister, as well as the Environment Committee. The question is: where are the amendments? Where are the amendments that guarantee Te Wao Nui o Tiriwā—the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area—and Tīkapa Moana—Hauraki Gulf—remain protected to the fullest extent they are today? When a Government says, “Trust us” but refuses to write those protections into law, into these very bills that we are debating today—the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill—and we fail to see that they’re written in the law, what they’re really telling us is “Trust us until the next developer comes in.”

The Environment Committee itself acknowledged the problem. It acknowledged that strong public concern about the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area, and that consequential amendments were omitted when these bills were introduced. It says that the Waitakere Ranges “could”—they “could”—have similar protections under this new system. But “could” wasn’t written in here. “Could” does not protect the forest. “Could” does not ensure that wāhi tapu won’t be desecrated; they don’t protect wāhi tapu. “Could” does not provide the certainty that the speaker before me, Andy Foster, just said this promises. Nature does not survive on ministerial optimism and vague-ism. “Could” is not good enough; it should have been “must”.

Again I ask: where are the amendments? The tragedy is that this Government isn’t just replacing the Resource Management Act; it’s removing Māori-led solutions that helped make the system work better in the first place. Mana Whakahono ā Rohe wasn’t red tape; it was a bridge between councils and mana whenua. Strength and recognition of kaitiakitanga wasn’t a barrier to development; it recognised the simple truth: Māori have protected these places for generations, long before this Parliament even existed. These provisions were negotiated in good faith, including—hear me out—through the former National - Māori Party relationship, by former Te Pāti Māori co-leader Marama Fox. National once recognised that better decisions are made when mana whenua sit at the table; you don’t give them a call and say, “Hey, what do you reckon about this?” Today’s National Government, e te iwi, is tearing that legacy apart. You can delete sections of an Act, but you can’t legislate away kaitiakitanga; that is innately who we are as Māori, and is innately Aotearoa. I ask again: where are the amendments that guarantee mana whenua remain at the table?

Then we have regulatory relief. Hika mā! Existing protections for biodiversity, heritage, landscapes, and sites of significance to Māori could become subject to compensation claims. I mean, come on! Think about that: the fact that protecting nature comes with a price tag but to destroy it it’s free. Out the gate, e te whānau. The Government’s own analysis estimates potential costs of up to $1.99 billion, just under $2 billion—hika!—a planning system where protecting the taiao, our environment, becomes a liability instead of an obligation. Who pays for it? No one in this Whare; actually, it’s going to be the councils, ratepayers, our hapori, our communities. Once protection carries a price tag, Aotearoa, only those with the deepest pockets can afford to protect our taiao. This bill turns environmental protection into an invoice. So I ask: where are the amendments that stop regulatory relief from undermining the protections that our communities have fought hard to establish?

What about Tīkapa Moana? The Hauraki Gulf isn’t an experiment in deregulation; it’s the heartbeat of Tāmaki Makaurau. For iwi and hapū, including Ngāti Taua, this isn’t simply an environmental asset; it is their whakapapa, their customary connection; their taonga. So, Minister, where are the amendments that guarantee Tīkapa Moana is protected under this new system? Let us bury the myth once and for all: Te Pāti Māori isn’t anti-development; we’re anti being shut out, we’re anti being shut down, and we’re anti having our rights written out of law. Ka nui tēnā—ka nui tēnā. There is no way in hell we’re going to support this bill, unless it stops smashing down on tangata whenua rights and actually acknowledges them.

I was quite amused to hear “Mr Deregulation” Andy Foster’s contributions to this debate, because I remember a time when Mayor Foster pulled out a map of Wellington City and went line by, street by street, house by house to put in more regulation to protect heritage buildings. It’s interesting how people can come around! But it was actually that spatial plan process that we won by getting provisions for more housing to be built everywhere in the city—that we won; you’re welcome, Andy—that made me realise that planning is always political. That’s why I decided to study a Master’s of Resource and Environmental Planning, thanks to people like Mayor Foster. What it showed me was that who gets to have a say and who gets to influence the future of our cities is always political.

It would be easy to dismiss this bill as either neutral, as some say, or as technical in nature, as others say, but this bill is inherently political. The designation of heritage status, Mr Foster, to European colonial villages while some wāhi tapu or historic pā sites have no legal protections is political. The way that privilege is preserved through planning, and specifically how house prices and socio-economic uniformity in neighbourhoods is maintained, is political. Where councils upzone large parts of a city and, suddenly, landowners’ property values go up from $45 per square metre to $1,400 per square metre due to zoning decisions is political. Choosing to disregard Te Tiriti o Waitangi when reforms under the previous Government intended to give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi is political.

As Tina Porou, my personal favourite planner and somebody that I have always looked up to, says, “Planning law is never neutral.”, but it shouldn’t be overcomplicated either, because it really is very simple. In fact, this bill probably takes a bit far in that it’s overly simplistic in its nature because it clearly prioritises economic efficiency of the consenting and planning system in order to make private economic gains, while discounting everything else required to have a functioning city. It makes the foolish mistake of thinking that humans are superior to or separate from the environment that we live in, rather than recognising that we are, in fact, a very vulnerable part of the environment itself.

This bill is agnostic towards the reality of climate change and the number and the frequency of climate-charged weather events that we are experiencing in Aotearoa. It allows for people to build houses in flood plains—I mean, that is absolutely absurd and insane.

It’s a very immature and amateur approach to one of the biggest opportunities for planning reform in recent memory, which deserves time, attention, and collaboration, and it could have got it. But, like my colleague Julie Anne Genter has said, the select committee members seemed to be more interested in how quick they can become a Minister than in actually doing their job on a select committee to scrutinise this bill.

Now I’ve only got a minute and a half left to talk, and so let’s talk about Mana Whakahono ā Rohe. This bill renders Māori as invisible within our planning system. This is about decisions for whenua that Māori own, and whenua and moana that they have kaitiaki obligations towards, and, by the way, these are over scraps of land in comparison to all of the land that was alienated from us. Anyway, we retain kaitiaki status, and Mana Whakahono ā Rohe existed as a term of participation, good faith, and partnership between Crown, councils, and iwi and hapū, which was a thing that the National Party used to believe in, but clearly do not any more.

The Minister responsible for RMA reform said in question time last week that “It is also true that iwi Māori should not be involved in every individual consent merely as of right. That is the kind of red tape we are trying to get away from in the new system.”, and I challenge the Minister to name one iwi and hapū that is involved in every individual consenting decision in their rohe—because it’s not true. It’s disinformation, and it’s downright disrespectful to iwi who have stood alongside Crown and council to develop the planning system that we have, and now it has shit all over that relationship—it completely has—to placate the Federated Farmers association and the Taxpayers’ Union. That’s exactly what it is.

Debate interrupted.