Parker David; Salesa JennyNATURAL AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT BILL Second ReadingHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I present a legislative statement on the Natural and Built Environment Bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon DAVID PARKER: I move That the Natural and Built Environment Bill be now read a second time.This reform is delivering on the Government's commitment to repeal and replace the Resource Management Act (RMA). Others have said it was necessary; we've done it. I want to start by thanking the Environment Committee for its substantial work on the bill along with the approximately 3000 people who took the time and effort to make submissions on it. The Government has accepted the improvements the committee has made to the bill.This is fundamental systemic reform. As such it is complex and we rely on the input of system users. We've heard it and we've listened. We didn't embark on the reform lightly. We've done it because the existing system under the Resource Management Act is failing: costs too much takes too long and has neither adequately protected the environment nor enabled development. It's been a fail on the environment and a fail on development.Consenting costs have ballooned and urban land prices soared. Overly restrictive planning rules have hindered much-needed housing and other development. No one is enforcing intensification but plans have prevented people doing what they wanted and the country needs. Costs have spiralled in the five years to 2019 council consenting fees increased by between 66 percent and 124 percent and processing times by up to 50 percent. Consenting for mid-sized infrastructure in New Zealand represents 5.5 percent of total project costs compared with a range of 0.1 to 5 percent of project cost in European countries. New Zealand is outside of the extreme end of the European range. This legislation fixes that reducing the waste of time and money.The new system will deliver significant cost-saving benefits to system users. In effect it means that people building infrastructure subdividing land to build a home will on average be able to do so more quickly and for less cost. Economic advice commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment indicates that for every dollar spent the new system will deliver from $2.60 to $4.90 in benefits. Indeed the $4.90 is the mid-range; it could be more.System users get the biggest benefits through a 20 to 40 percent reduction in consents. Total efficiency benefits for system users are estimated to be between $210 million and $430 million per annum. The new system will contribute to more affordable housing; it will enable infrastructure more efficient development and more efficient land use. On top of that the environment will be better protected as we move from an effects-based regime to one that focuses on biophysical outcomes. Until now too much weight has been given to nimbyism based on subjective matters of taste and not enough attention has been given to biophysical environmental outcomes or environmental limits.Over the years the RMA has been subject to repeated criticism and tinkering by successive Governments. Everyone knows that it's time to act; to get on with it. It seems however that some of our political opponents have now fallen back in love with the RMA and they're now proposing to ignore the hard work from the councils from development interests environmentalists civil society across the Government—who over the last five years have worked to get this reform right. They'd rather sweep it all aside start again and condemn the country to more years of inertia all for the sake of a few votes.Our opponents should know that this reform is needed. They don't need to take my word for it; they only need to look at the reports by the Productivity Commission the Environmental Defence Society the Property Council Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) Infrastructure New Zealand Local Government New Zealand Waitangi Tribunal and of course the Randerson panel. The RMA has been a fail on housing and a fail on infrastructure and a fail on environmental protection.Today's an opportunity to comment on how the bill has been changed at select committee. This new bill together with the Spatial Planning Bill will be the cornerstone environmental and development legislation of the country.The committee clarified the purpose clause—te Oranga o te Taiao is a defined term which emphasises the importance of protecting the health of our natural environment while enabling appropriate use and development of resources. The Treaty clause in the bill is a give effect to the principles of the Treaty" clause similar to the Conservation Act. In response to a submission from the Chief Justice the committee has made it clear the Environment Court itself is not constituted pursuant to that Treaty clause. That Treaty clause is of course applied by the courts when they make decisions under the new Act.The Natural and Built Environment Act shifts the focus of the current resource management system from managing adverse effects to promoting positive outcomes. Clarifying the role and purpose of system outcomes was a focus of submitters. The committee added outcomes for sustainable use of the coastal marine area for public recreation and for the habitat of trout and salmon.Not all outcomes can always be achieved across all places. What should be prioritised where and resolving tensions between outcomes is achieved through a hierarchy of instruments preserving the King Salmon logic helpfully provided by the Supreme Court. Principles set out in the Act help guide decision makers. The Natural and Built Environment Act (NBEA) working in concert with the Spatial Planning Act will reduce resource consent numbers—there will be more permitted activities.The bill includes the "polluter pays" principle in Part 1. This ensures appropriate consideration is given to minimising or avoiding environmental damage and reinforces the concept of environmental responsibility. Reducing reliance on the resource consent process is a key goal and in Part 5 we've taken steps to make consent notification better.The central record of local iwi and hapū maintained by Te Puni Kōkiri becomes a code at the time it is assessed. This means councils and applicants will now for the first time have certainty that they have notified all who should be notified. The current uncertainty which is a cause of a lot of litigation and delay is resolved. Of course the central record can be updated but it can be relied upon as a code when it was used.We've put measures in place to ensure conditions set by regional councils and territorial authorities don't duplicate or contradict each other—over 100 plans reduced to 16. This means they've got to be made regionally. Enabling local voice is important. Can I thank the local government sector for these submissions on this important point and the steering group who we worked closely with throughout.It's crucial that people can have their say. We're not putting in place 50:50 co-governance. That was a request of Māoridom and it is an effect of some provisions like the Waikato River Authority or the Hawke's Bay Regional Planning Committee that the prior ACT-National Government put in place but we're not carrying forward that for everyone into the new system; we're just carrying forward the status quo. There will be two Māori representatives on each regional planning committee or a greater number if the local councils and people locally wanted it.Statements of community outcomes and regional council statements of environmental outcomes will have strengthened weight. The regional planning committee must have particular regard to them and there is a new step being created through Schedule 8 for councils to assess how the regional planning committees have done so and committees will also be required to state how they've done it. All plans once notified are of course heard by an independent hearings panel.Over 1000 submissions on urban trees. We've added a new function for territorial authorities to protect tree canopy. This does not mean blanket protection. There will be more national direction on that in the planning framework.On fast-track consenting—established in 2020 as a response to COVID—we've on average reduced consenting time by 18 months. That process has now expired. It's reintroduced for infrastructure and regionally significant housing developments. Goes live when the bill passes.The bill knocks over "first-in first-served" which allied with a bias in favour of renewal has prevented the rational and economically efficient allocation of water in New Zealand that has had both unjust and economically inefficient results. For this to be meaningful renewals for consumptive water uses need to be shorter than 35 years. The current average might surprise members—it's only 12 or 13 years—but the theoretical maximum is 35 years. During the transitions renewals will be for 10 years but they'll be easy to get.We provided exemptions for renewals for hydroelectric facilities. They don't consume water but they can still get 35 renewals. And the bill had been amended at select committee to enable regulations for further exemptions for significant infrastructure projects like perhaps new water storage projects. There are many provisions in the Act to improve infrastructure. I'm not going to have time to go through them all.On implementation the poor implementation of the RMA almost guaranteed its failure. We're not going to do that this time. If you try to do the whole country at once you get poor-quality outcomes the system gums up and everything's delayed. So we're going to turn the system on region by region. Central government will give extra help to those who go first; high-quality precedents will help those who follow. Existing RMA authorisations like resource consents are preserved and acknowledged in the new system. We avoid the duality of plans that we had under the Town and Country Planning Act and the Resource Management Act.Let's stop wasting money as a country on excessive amounts of long-winded ineffective processes. Let's better protect the environment and within those environmental limits enable development. I commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to."