O'Rourke Denis: Resource Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Resource Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8568. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): This is a bill of 180 pages and 40 changes in 235 clauses and 8 schedules. It was introduced on Tuesday and here we are on Thursday asked to support it without any prior consultation whatsoever. This is a bill that will take time to study and assess so New Zealand First will neither support it nor oppose it until we have done that properly. We will have no choice but to abstain at this stage and we will decide later whether we will vote Yes or No.I note that the Māori Party has said that it will support the bill conditionally at this stage. It got what it referred to as “pre-bill consultation” yet it says it still wants more demands—unspecified demands—yet to be discussed. We will not know what those are until we hear them a lot later but we know that the Māori Party is always looking for some sort of advantage for Māori over other New Zealanders. We do not think that is clever. We think those are separatist attitudes. They smack of division and of favouritism and New Zealand First will never support any of that. But we will support Māori for fair and equal treatment in all things just as we do for all other New Zealanders. We think it is deplorable that important legislation of this kind has been subjected to some kind of tit-for-tat negotiation behind closed doors between the Government and the Māori Party—and I will have some more to say about that later.Yet it is New Zealand First that has actually been the main playmaker here because the truth is that if Winston Peters had not won the Northland by-election National would have had the votes to pass this legislation as it was originally intended. This is a hugely watered-down version of it. The truth is that there would have been a full attack on the Resource Management Act’s main provisions set out in sections 5 6 and 7 on the pretext that compromising the Resource Management Act in that way was justified and necessary to ensure economic development and the provision of adequate housing. What poppycock that was.The truth is that the Resource Management Act’s principal sections were never a roadblock to appropriate economic development and housing provision. They were never a roadblock to that. The attack was nothing more than a barely disguised assault on a tried and tested and highly respected resource management regime putting profit and commercial interests effectively ahead of fundamental environmental protection. National had in fact already begun to argue that it wanted those things to be equal in the Act but in practice it would have been impossible to do so and commercial interests would have prevailed and the environment would have come off second-best. Anyone with half a brain knows that that would have been the result. Credit for stopping that happening goes to Winston Peters and of course to the extremely intelligent voters of Northland.While those excesses have been avoided New Zealand First does want a bill that delivers speedier and cost-effective consent processes but without compromising the fundamental provisions of the Resource Management Act. It must deliver a sensible balanced and fair regime for Resource Management Act processes that avoids unnecessary costs and unnecessary delays. I myself in my previous life have had involvement with a number of major consent processes. As a result of that I have certainly learned that there were often excessive delays caused by submissions processes that were repetitive and delivered very little additional useful information. They were often submissions purely based on personal rather than environmental or public good interests as well. They were often eye-wateringly expensive with very little to show for that expense.But that does not mean that the submitters should be shut out because a lot can be done to simply streamline the Resource Management Act’s processes without losing that value. We also think that ways to make expert evidence more objective and more useful would also be worthwhile. Overall the Resource Management Act’s processes have caused too much cost and have caused too much delay with no real benefit arising from it. New Zealand First does solidly support—and I want to make this absolutely clear—improvements in processes to the Resource Management Act to make those processes more useful and therefore the outcomes better both for development and for the environment.However New Zealand First will not commit to support this bill at this stage because we have identified already some major areas of concern. There are at least three of those. Section 6 of the principal Act for example requires that functionaries shall recognise and provide for specified matters of national importance; included is: “(e) the relationship of Māori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands water sites waahi tapu and other taonga.” Another is: “(g) the protection of protected customary rights.” We in New Zealand First want to know what all that really means—whether it means for example access to water rights which would not be available to other New Zealanders. If so we would be voting against the bill.Clause 11 amending section 30 will also need careful scrutiny because it introduces a new function relating to what is called “development capacity” requiring councils to ensure development capacity for residential and business land. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with that but the issue here is whether that new provision will result in an appropriate balance between environment and development objectives—or will it really just ensure that the Resource Management Act becomes development-oriented and dominated? We would like to explore that.We are also concerned about the scope of the iwi participation agreements. There is very little in the bill that tells us what those will really be about and how far they will go. We are especially concerned as to what participation and planning processes will mean in practice. It may be appropriate but it may not be and we want to know a whole lot more about that before we are prepared to commit our support. In closing New Zealand First will look forward to studying the detail of the bill to see just what it really does mean because I agree with what Eugenie Sage means: these are not really tinkering provisions; they are in some places at least quite important changes that will require careful scrutiny.We simply do not trust this Government. We do not trust the provisions that it is putting in this bill without adequately explaining why it is doing so. We particularly do not trust it because of the backroom deals it appears to have been doing with some other parties. We are going to take a good hard look at it before we are prepared to commit our vote in the future. We want to keep faith with the people who do want to achieve appropriate development but also with those people who want to make sure that that is balanced with very good environmental security. That is where we are coming from and we will tell the House whether we are ultimately satisfied with this bill or not as the further stages of it proceed.