Sage EugenieEUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Sir Geoffrey Palmer is right: Sir Robert Muldoon's ghost is back in the Beehive. He is striding the halls of Parliament with this bill. Muldoonism" was an assault on democratic processes and the rule of law with legislation like the National Development Act and the Clutha Development (Clyde Dam) Empowering Act. Muldoonism was about the executive making a decision and imposing it by its will. That is what this Resource Legislation Amendment Bill is all about not only in its content but also in the way in which it is being considered by the select committee and because of the way the Minister dominated the whole select committee process.Select committees are supposed to be Parliament's workhorses. They are supposed to be places where bills are scrutinised where public submissions are heard and seriously considered and debated and then changes are made to the bill as introduced and recommended back to Parliament. The Minister is claiming the select committee worked like that. He was not there but we in the select committee had to wait 5 months on his pleasure while he negotiated and worked with officials and with the Māori Party to amend the bill and then have the final departmental report put in front of the select committee. So the select committee process was an absolute sham and it acted more like a rubber stamp for the Minister rather than being a serious consideration of the bill.The flimsy speeches by Government members opposite just show how weakly they engaged with the bill. They just waited until the Minister said "Oh these provisions are all right." and then they would approve them. That has been one of the problems with select committees under this Government and the way in which they have been weakened because the executive has dominated the lawmaking process.But this is typical of what is actually in the bill as well because increasing the power of Ministers and centralising decision-making in Wellington and overriding local and community decision-making has been one of the defining characteristics of this Government. We have seen it in the changes to the Local Government Act we have seen it in Nick Smith's dismissal of elected councillors in Canterbury and we are seeing it in this bill with the major increase in the powers that the bill gives to the Minister particularly the Minister for the Environment to actually make regulations and then override local and regional councils and their ability to consult their communities and develop plans.This bill is all about having development—and how it happens in our towns cities and countryside—happen much faster and through new processes where the Minister puts his or her stamp on them and is able to dictate the content of district and regional plans. This bill puts executive power and individual property rights ahead of community and environmental well-being and community decision-making and it is all about Ministers in Wellington acting to speed up the decision making; it is not about the quality of those decisions.We have heard from other speakers about the major opposition—from Fonterra to Forest and Bird to Fish and Game New Zealand—to the powers in new section 360D inserted in clause 105 of the bill and the Minister's regulation-making powers. Those provisions in new section 360D have been reduced slightly but there is still a major power for the Minister to directly insert provisions and plans through the new national planning standards which were previously called a national planning template. The Minister for the Environment can use those to direct what provisions should be not just in plans all over New Zealand but in specific regions. If the Minister says that a plan must be amended then it has to be. Seventy-seven percent of submitters opposed the ability of the Minister to make regulations and then to have these national planning standards insert provisions directly into plans—77 percent of submitters—yet that provision is still in the bill. These regional and district plans are critical in guiding the decisions about how development affects our land our coast our air and our water.Yet the Minister wants the power to directly make decisions on plans in Wellington. In a process where there is considerable potential for abuse private developers who are applying for private plan changes can apply and get the council and the Minister to agree to a streamlined process and there may not even be any chance for members of the public to have a say in a hearing in front of the decision makers. Nor is there an ability for members of the public to challenge those decisions through the Environment Court in that streamlined process. The other major element of new section 360D inserted in clause 105 that is of concern is the ability of the Minister to use regulations to strike out provisions in plans that he or she considers duplicate or to overlap other legislation. From the start this has been aimed squarely at those communities such as Northland Auckland and Hawke's Bay where there are GM-free provisions in their plans. It is aimed at allowing the Minister to remove those provisions in order to allow GM crops to be planted. What this Government fails to recognise is that a major sector of our marketing advantage overseas is because we are GM free yet through new section 360D which the Māori Party has not succeeded in getting removed from the legislation we potentially undermine that and are able to allow GM planters and others to compromise our GE-free status.Nick Smith claims time and time again that this bill is a litmus test on housing affordability. It is nonsense to blame the Resource Management Act (RMA) for the housing crisis that his Government has helped create. He has been the architect of spiralling housing prices by the Government's failure to recognise and provide for the major increase in demand caused by the 2 percent population growth annually and the major increase in migrant flows its failure to implement a capital gains tax to control speculation its failure to encourage intensive urban development by properly investing in public transport so that people build close to rail routes and bus routes and its failure to amend the Residential Tenancies Act to ensure that renters get a fair deal. It has exacerbated the housing crisis with its sell-off of thousands of State houses.Nick Smith blames the RMA for high section prices because he wants to hide just how much this bill with its very permissive approach to subdivision is a charter for property developers. It could have been written by property developers because of the way in which it promotes ad hoc subdivision and development and urban sprawl with little consideration of the impacts that this will have on our coast on waterways and on neighbours. Nick Smith's claims about housing and the housing crisis and the need to amend the RMA are based on anecdote and the regulatory impact statement made that very clear.There is no compelling evidence Minister that the RMA is to blame for the housing crisis. In the Auckland Unitary Plan we have provisions that encourage more compact and more intensive development. We do not need this bill to do this. The bill's permissive approach to subdivision will not apply just in Auckland; it will apply around New Zealand. So unless there are effective plan provisions already in place we will have much more subdivision occurring in sensitive areas like on top of our beaches and potentially in areas like natural hazard zones. What is the point of trying to control housing development in natural hazard zones if you have also got a bill that is encouraging residential development and subdivision as a permitted activity because of the way it overturns the presumption in the current Act that you cannot have subdivision unless there is a resource consent or a plan rule that allows it?The Green Party also opposes this bill because of the way in which it restricts and overrides the basic rights of public participation. It goes against people's right to have a say on development that affects their neighbourhood or places that they care about. Informed decision-making is good decision-making. A number of submitters from airport authorities to Fonterra highlighted the value of public involvement both in plans and on consent decisions. Airport authorities want the ability to make submissions on subdivisions that may be within an area affected by airport noise so that they do not have issues several years hence because of reverse sensitivity and people complaining about airport noise. But under this bill that is potentially disallowed because of the very permissive approach to subdivision. So it is fast decision-making that the bill emphasises not good decision-making.We oppose the bill because of restrictions on the right to appeal to the Environment Court and the value that that court has in being a check on decision making. It is a bad bill. It should be binned."