Simpson Scott; Parker DavidHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Chair. I want to—Simon Court: Point of order Mr Chair. Apologies Mr Scott Simpson. I'll just seek clarification from the Chair: there were three questions I asked the Minister has not answered them—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): No that's not a point of order the member can sit down. I'm just making an observation to the member he can choose to take heed of it or not. He can continue the way he does that's his prerogative; however I'm just indicating to him the way that the committee stage has been intended to be conducted to be most conducive to ensuring that the members get the information they need. It is entirely in the member's hands how he continues. The Hon Scott Simpson time will start again.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Thank you very much Mr Chair. I want to pick up on some of the comments from the Minister from Mr Court and particularly from my colleague Chris Bishop because Part 4 on page 148 at clause 95 has the relatively benign first subclause that says There must at all times be a natural and built environment plan (a plan) for each region". That on the face of it sounds perfectly reasonable. As the Minister has said the plan of the legislation is to have far fewer plans full stop across the nation and that would almost inevitably result in less planning from districts for instance like mine in the Thames-Coromandel area.But the risk I suspect is that the devil will be in the detail. So Part 4 then goes on through the next more than 20—nearly 30—clauses to describe the rules the processes the exceptions all the matters relating to things like aquaculture activity protection of customary marine titles charges for coastal occupation environmental contributions. There are a myriad of rules and in fact most of the clauses that follow clause 95 relate to rules for the planning committees. Then there is Schedule 7. Schedule 7 goes into even more detail about the preparation change and review of the natural and built environment plans. It is a mind-numbingly complicated and detailed schedule. Therein I think lies the challenge for the Minister because notwithstanding what he said about this not being an additional layer of "local government by stealth" being inserted into the whole local government environment that's not the perception out there in the real world. Out there in the real world there is real concern about the way these committees are going to be formed what their role will be what influence and what power they will wield over the lives and property rights of citizens.There can be no doubt that these committees are going to be extremely powerful. The scope and breadth of the material and considerations that they will be tasked with making decisions upon are truly mind-boggling. This goes to the root cause of criticism from a number of submitters about property rights about access to democracy about democratic accountability and about regional representation. So my question to the Minister is relating to how does he see the evolution of these committees going from what I'm sure he thinks is a laudable principled approach to morphing into hugely powerful expensive administratively cumbersome red-tape bureaucracies in their own right. I'm very concerned that the potential here is that the intent that the Minister seeks to achieve from the creation of these regional planning committees and the work and breadth that they are required to do will actually over a period of time become self-fulfilling bureaucracies in their own way. They will employ staff they will have chief executives they will have secretariats they'll have legal advisers they'll have consultants and the opportunity for endless extra cost on and burdens on ratepayers will be in my view very large. The second point I want to make relates to regional representation and I'll use an example from my own electorate in the Coromandel. Now we're told that there are going to be 16 of these committees and my part of the world the Coromandel is always usually aligned with the Waikato region although parts of it fall into the Bay of Plenty Regional Council area as well. We already feel in the Coromandel that our decisions and life impacts are already too Hamilton-centric by way of these things. We already feel—notwithstanding the good people of Hamilton—that often decisions that are made in Hamilton bear very little real relevance to what occurs on the Coromandel. We've seen instances of that most recently as a result of weather events that have occurred this year where we get regional decisions made in Hamilton or even Tauranga Bay of Plenty that have a direct impact on the peninsula that bear little or no relevance to the physical situation that people of the Coromandel Peninsula find themselves in. So my questions to the Minister relate to how can he be sure that there will be adequate and proper regional representation; how can he be sure that these committees are not going to morph into bureaucratic monsters of their own making that have little or no democratic accountability; and how is he going to make sure that the vast array of rules regulations and materials that must be taken into account are actually going to be achieved and fulfilled?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): In the same way as the Auckland Unitary Plan involved the bringing together of the plans of all of the prior cities including Auckland Central Waitakere Manukau and the North Shore and other cities in Auckland which was essentially left within the control of local government to do with an independent hearings panel hearing public submissions—that's what will happen in the new process.Simon Court asked the question as to why we didn't just put this in the charge of the Ministry for the Environment. Well that would be central government taking over local government processes. We're not doing that. We're still leaving it to local government and I believe it will work. The key is that the first plans need to be well supported with some support from central government not taking over the process but providing some monetary support for those that go first so that the ones that go first do it well and create good precedents for those that follow."