Hobbs Marian: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
Hobbs Marian: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
[Volume:627;Page:22351] 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 I am very happy to rise to support the third reading of this legislation. I am glad to see the improvements to the Resource Management Act that are expressed in this legislation. I owe a great many thanks to the members of United Future because they understand the notions of compromise and working an issue through but they also understand that complex legislation like this requires constant improvement—as does my other favourite the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. 
I want to put this legislation into context—the context of planning. People sometimes think that the Resource Management Act is all about the environment but it ain’t. It is about our living and working together. Those members who can look far back to their first marriages and think about the arguments about how they operated in the bathroom the bedroom the living room or wherever and how they and their partners organised their lives together—[ 
Interruption 
] I thank Mr Cullen. I am referring to people squeezing the toothpaste from the middle or whatever. 
Those members will know that there are always difficulties. That is what the Resource Management Act is about. Environmental planning is far more than legislation. It is about councils that make decisions. It is about paying for training of their councillors. It is about demanding that they are able to make good decisions out there. It is about supporting the quality planning website where people can go to avoid reinventing the wheel because it gives them access to the arguments of other good planners in other councils up and down the country. 
It is about strengthening the Environment Court. When I assumed this ministry 6 years ago people were waiting 2 or 3 years to get their cases heard. The average was 18 months. Now the waiting time is down so far that one can get a case heard in that court in 6 months. We had a backlog there of I think over 3000 cases. The backlog is down to about 1200 and falling. 
How did that come about? It came about through appointing more judges. It came about through setting up the system of mediation so that 80 percent of the cases are now mediated successfully and do not go to court with all the money that that involves. And it came about through simple processes of recording and planning for the Environment Court and the registry. 
Then we have questions around enforcement and monitoring. As the Minister for the Environment I do have concerns about this. That is why I have some strange problems with National going on and on about that speedway. The speedway may well be a good thing but the problem is that a rule was made and ignored. It is the same story with some of the problems we have had in Environment Waikato where consents have been set and ignored and we have had some very strange habits as regards discharge of contaminated water. So we have some real issues around enforcement and monitoring. 
It is also about the review of effects of plans and consents. It is all very well when people sit down and write up a plan or give a consent because they think that X is going to happen. Do they ever check whether X has happened? That is the role of the Ministry for the Environment. A whole division has now been set up in that department to be involved in looking at enforcement and monitoring as we work through it. 
Then there are things like the national environmental standards that were set up by this Act so many years ago—15 years ago—and totally ignored for 9 years. In fact I was told when I first became Minister to ignore the whole idea of a national environmental standard because it would cost $4 million to introduce one. Now at this very moment the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand headquarters staff are saying: “Whoa we’re being left out.” They do not understand that so far in the setting of further environment standards we are just at the stage of scoping to see which standards may actually be of use before we impose something written out of someone’s head and not tested out there in the industry. A standard will be set as will a time line just as was done when we set the air quality standards—on which I note the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society made no submission. [ 
Interruption 
] It did not tweet. For us to be involved in something that will have significant effects on the environment—effects such as clean air—is terribly important. 
The last thing I want to say to do with that—as the Minister looks round at me—is that setting standards alone is not enough; it has to be supported with some finance. So if we set a standard for clean air we have to do something about supplying warm homes. We do not just tell people to turn off their fires or their wood-burners without finding something to replace them and working with those people particularly the most vulnerable. I have just been in Tokoroa and in Christchurch where some excellent work is being done on that matter. 
New Zealanders say that a clean and healthy environment is an aspect of living in New Zealand that they value highly. But we do not get such a healthy environment merely by wishing for it. We believe with many other nations that economic development environmental health and social justice must be balanced. The Resource Management Act is a matter of balance. So are district plans. They are matters of balance. That demands good process. It demands the type of compromise between the competing demands that often exist between United Future the Greens and ourselves. But that planning and consent can be informed only by efficient inclusive procedures. That is what this legislation achieves and it is why I strongly support it.