Simpson Scott; Parker DavidCHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): I call the Hon Stuart Smith—oh sorry the Hon Scott Simpson.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): He will soon be Mr Chair—soon be. Not long to wait now.The Environment Committee chair the Hon Eugenie Sage has actually done I think a very good job in summarising the nature of the hearing that we had back in June to discuss Estimates with the Minister for the Environment. But when I was listening to her assessment of what we discussed I could not help but draw the conclusion actually that for the last five years we have heard very similar commentaries from the select committee chair: a lot about what's going to happen a lot about the money that has been spent and the increase in taxpayer money that has been allocated a lot of talk about the increased number of people working in the Ministry for the Environment but almost no delivery in that five years. Very little—still talking about the same things that this Government was talking about five long years ago.Now we find that the much-vaunted resource management reform programme appears to be utterly mired stuck somewhere either within the Government caucus or the factions that lie within it or in the Ministry for the Environment's huge staff numbers. But somewhere in amongst all that it seems not to be making progress. We were told that the Minister hoped to introduce the two fundamental pieces of legislation in October and so one of the questions I have for him is: is he still confident that that date will be met and will the natural and built environments legislation and the strategic planning legislation come to this House before Christmas? Will it be in this calendar year and if not why not?One of the issues that I want to traverse is the $178 million that was allocated over four years for implementation of the new legislation and the new regulatory environment that will accompany it. What I'm keen to know from the Minister tonight is: how much of that $178 million has already been spent? What has it been spent on and by whom and where? And what are the benefits so far to date? We heard back in June from the Minister that the select committee—we were given an assurance that the select committee process would not be truncated that it would be a full select committee process even though the two pieces of legislation would be considered by the select committee and the Parliament simultaneously. That we know creates difficulties and challenges for the committee but also difficulties and challenges for those people who are interested in submitting—for councillors for councils for stakeholders for environmental NGOs and for citizens. That will be a tricky call.So those are my first few questions and I'd be happy to hear from the Minister on those.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you Mr Chair. Can I thank the Environment Committee for the work that they did examining the Estimates and thanks for the chair's summary.Responding to the Hon Scott Simpson's questions the suggestion has been made that we've been dragging our feet on Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms so I thought I would explain to the committee the process that has been run. Of course in the nine years of the National Government there was a suggestion that the RMA should be reformed and it never was. We came to office—Hon Scott Simpson: That's because Labour opposed every single initiative.Hon DAVID PARKER: It's because Labour opposed it? Actually we weren't in Government; the National Party had the votes but they didn't choose to prioritise that. Notwithstanding the fact that the RMA has for a long time cost too much it's taken too long and it hasn't properly protected the environment; nor has it enabled the development outcomes that we need as evidenced in part by the lack of housing opportunities that we have in New Zealand which have driven land prices so high.So when we took office we realised that RMA reform was necessary but we also realised that there were two urgent matters that needed to be addressed first. One was making advances on land supply which we've done through instruments like the National Policy Statement on Urban Development and the medium-density residential zone which the National Party together with the Green Party cooperated with us on. And we also needed to make progress on water quality because freshwater quality has been degrading in the country quite badly to the point where the majority of rivers and lake sites that are monitored by councils for safe swimming are not safe to swim in in summer according to World Health Organization standards.So we made significant progress on both of those issues during the last term and then towards the end of last term kicked off a review of the RMA system led by the Hon Tony Randerson QC a retired Court of Appeal Judge. He in turn built on earlier reviews one of which was done under the National Party—and I thank them for that—by the Productivity Commission. Other reports were by Local Government New Zealand through the Environmental Defence Society the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) Inc. Infrastructure New Zealand the Property Council and of course another report by the Waitangi Tribunal. We then said Look we'll broadly implement the Randerson report." And we are following that. The $178 million that is in this Budget moves towards implementation of that.The implementation money is spread over four years. We're already starting to spend that this year on putting together the national planning framework which is the consolidated form of national direction that provides guidance. If you have the Natural and Built Environments Act (NBA) and Spatial Planning Act (SPA) sitting at the top the next layer of rules sits in the national planning framework which then inform the SPA and NBA plans. So in order for the new system to operate you need the national planning framework to be in place. We also have money for draft plans including assisting probably three regions with their first SPA and NBA plans. Plan formats and some electronic tools are being developed. All of those things are necessary to make sure that this new system launches efficiently because I think one of the lessons that we've all learnt in this House across the House is that the lack of national direction the lack of standard plan formats the lack of central government assistance in the first plans to manage out if you like unnecessary complexity and divergence between plans—so I think that answers the member's question about money for implementation and RMA time frames.Final point: yes we are intending to introduce legislation in October and we still expect a full six- month select committee process."