Smith Stuart; Brooking RachelSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Chair. Actually my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson made the very good point that the Minister is able to intervene to extraordinary lengths within these pieces of legislation despite all the evidence that suggests that localism is a much better way to go for a more efficient management of resources and spatial areas whereas this Spatial Planning Bill sets out to allow the Minister to have the wisdom of Solomon or perhaps the wisdom of Parker to—Hon Scott Simpson: Which would be the greater wisdom do you think? STUART SMITH: Well I'm not going to make that judgment; I'll leave that to the reader to make that decision. But if we look at clause 60 the Minister may direct amendments of spatial strategies and it goes on to say that The Minister may direct a regional planning committee to amend its regional spatial strategy if the Minister is satisfied that the amendment is necessary or desirable to ensure that the strategy complies with any of—" and it goes through a number of things. But why would you set up committees to make decisions that they have to take to the teacher like their homework and then they'll say "No go and rewrite your essay. It's not good enough."? It just doesn't seem to be an efficient way to run a system and I know this might be a shock to some on the other side but not all Ministers are great at their job. Sometimes you can get a rogue Minister who's not doing a very good job and yet they have the power to step in and—Hon Scott Simpson: Marian Hobbs was one. STUART SMITH: Exactly—she was. Hon Scott Simpson: She went rogue.STUART SMITH: She went rogue—that's right. I'm not suggesting anyone is going to go rogue but you have to have that as part of it. I mean the reality is that with human nature being what it is we are not all equal. Some people make a better job of things than others. Ministers do come and go and yet we're setting this up to have one person to control this—one person. I'd like the Minister to explain why. It doesn't really seem like there's a reasonable test in this to say that the Minister has to have reasonable cause to actually come in over the top of the regional committee and make a direction. So I'd like to know some detail about this and perhaps the Minister could give us an example—that would be really helpful—of when she thinks that in the way this legislation is written it would be reasonable for a Minister to come in over the top of the regional planning committee and rule over the top of it. Thank you. Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you Madam Chair. As the members will know the Resource Management Act (RMA) currently has a lot of ministerial powers and most of these powers in here have been carried over from the RMA with those existing checks and balances. So you'll see there that the member Stuart Smith was referring to clause 60 and at clause 60(3) there is a whole lot of revisions that the Minister must do if they are using that discretionary power found in subclause (1). The ministerial powers don't enable the Minister to get involved in the day-to-day decisions of the regional planning committees or the territorial authorities and of course under this new system the Minister has an appointed member on to those committees so I would expect that the need for any intervention would be reduced because of that. But of course the members have said that not all Ministers are perfect and likewise not all regional committee will always be perfect or they may not be. So this is why we have these ministerial powers in the bill."