Twyford PhilJAMI-LEE ROSS (Botany): Madam Chair thank you very much. I have done just that—I have put forward a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that identifies a parcel of land that I think does need protecting. And I'm sorry to hear the Minister is carte blanche ruling out any SOPs about parcels of land. Can I ask him because I have to ask questions: would he be willing to consider my SOP 515 because I think it's quite a good one? Oh OK I'll come back.Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Urban Development): I would not I'm sad to say. I know the member feels strongly about this but to start in an ad hoc way listing a whole lot of neighbourhoods or communities that would be excluded from this bill would fly in the face of the very purpose of this bill. If the members choose to read the bill they will see that it is full of checks and balances. It has been carefully designed to ensure that we get high-quality decision-making that will deliver quality urban development. Those are the checks and balances.I've already talked about the independent hearings panel. I've talked about the consultation process the requirements for councils to be fully involved and have their views sought and formally included in the process. There are also checks and balances that require the powers that are being exercised by Kāinga Ora in these specified development projects to go up to Cabinet. So there is a democratic accountability. That's the way to deal with this issue and to ensure we get good-quality decision-making; not to just rule out a list of different communities around the country from intrusion.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Botany): It may fly in the face of the purposes of the bill but I have to ask: why does the Government care so little about the interests of local communities where members of Parliament would be able to identify parcels of land which are important to those local communities—in some cases I'd say quite sacred to how local communities feel. The member for the East Coast Bays raises an area in her electorate. And I think what the National Party should be doing is putting forward Supplementary Order Paper on areas that are important for their particular communities. I have also to ask the Minister why the Government has come here with this type of bill when yet again we're seeing some add-ons to the Resource Management Act (RMA) over and over again—and successive Governments have done this—which just highlights very clearly that the Resource Management Act is broken and needs to be overhauled and fixed from scratch. If the issue is that you can't get developments through the process fast enough do something to make the process faster. If the Environment Court is so slow to process appeals and that's the very reason why we want to abandon the access to the Environment Court do something to make the Environment Court faster. Has the Government done that? No. Did the last Government do that? No. We just go through the Parliament and tack on new bits to the RMA make it more complex make it more difficult and effectively override community rights. At the heart of this specified development projects" are effectively private plan changes. It's a similar way of doing it. The process that was set up by the last Government around the independent hearings panel for the Auckland Council was done that way so that we could avoid large-scale appeals. Part of the reason why we wanted to avoid large-scale appeals was because getting through the appeals is so slow. But appeals particularly when an organisation that is not the local authority is not democratically elected by the local authority has the ability to come up with plan changes or specified development projects—we're moving the decision making around what a community looks like further and further away from the people who actually elect the decision makers and in this case with plan changes its local authorities. If it is so logical and obvious that the independent hearings panel would take note of Environment Court decisions why don't we just put it in there? If it's so logical and the Minister thinks it'll happen anyway then let's just put it in there because it is logical. And there are communities around the country that care deeply about how the plans look in their area. They care deeply about the fact that through the Auckland plan process Housing New Zealand left right and centre were throwing appeals in whenever they could because they didn't like the fact that local communities were standing up for themselves. Housing New Zealand and now the Kāinga Ora they have an agenda which is about forcing mass-scale huge developments on local communities. They want to override what local communities care about and this bill will enable this. The very reason why I've put up this SOP—albeit not in my electorate but very close to it; an area I used to represent when I was on the city council—is because I've seen for years and years Housing New Zealand attacking the ability for locals to try and protect that area. Now we're all local community—most of us are local community MPs electorate MPs. We all at some point in time would have had someone talking to us about the issues with the plan that the council has development issues that are coming our way. Whether we like it or not view shafts are important to people—how their local community looks to them. Local people care about green space in their community the ability under this bill to wholescale remove community objections. Yeah sure there's an independent hearings panel. Yeah sure there'll be judges chairing them but that's not good enough. Why is the Minister and why is this Government so anti-community when it comes to suggestions and ideas from members of Parliament that are in touch with the communities that wish to put these up? Why is this Government also not coming forward with a proper Resource Management Act amendment bill which would speed things up properly but still maintain community democratic rights? That's what we're losing here. That's what this bill does. I'm not anti-development but I am pro-community and I don't think this bill does that.Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Urban Development): I thank the member for—I think there are three points that are worth responding to on that. So on the member's last point about the RMA he'll be pleased to know that my colleague the Hon David Parker is well advanced with a comprehensive reform of the RMA including the urban aspects of the RMA. The member will see shortly proposals that are emerging from that process that do tackle the fundamental problems of the RMA: that it for instance doesn't protect the environment very well it costs too much and it takes too long. And so the member should look forward to seeing those proposals.In relation to Stockade Hill which is the subject of the member's SOP 515 the member's SOP would amend the bill to exclude Stockade Hill and a zone with a 1 kilometre radius of Stockade Hill's summit from any exercise of the powers in the bill thereby excluding them from acquisition and development under the bill. That would have the effect of locking up land in a far more Draconian way than currently happens under the Auckland Unitary Plan and that's certainly not the objective of our bill. Third the member seems to think that the motivation or the policy intent for this bill is slowness of appeals to the Environment Court under RMA processes. That's not the main intent. The purpose of this bill is to allow the Government councils council development agencies like Panuku iwi and private developers to undertake large-scale complex developments that would otherwise be far too complex and risky and uncertain for the private sector to do on their own. Fragmented land titles are often complicated and outdated network infrastructure three waters and roads remediation issues—these are things that actually make large-scale urban development projects particularly in brown and greyfield settings far too complex for the private sector. And what happens then? They simply don't happen. So this is about giving councils the Government and the private sector and iwi the tools to do the very large-scale high-quality developments that we need in our big cities—that cities in Australia and in the North America and Europe have been doing for decades using public authorities like this to get through the complexities of large-scale urban development. So it's not about the slowness of the Environment Court. It's about bringing together all of the tools and the powers that currently exist within the law but are scattered across 20 different statutes. Councils asked for this. They want these powers because the existing proliferation of different statutory powers is so complex for them and so time-consuming. What this bill does is that it brings them all together in one place. It's streamlined it's expediting and it's designed to make development much easier."