Copeland Gordon: Resource Management (Restricted Coastal  Activities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Resource Management (Restricted Coastal  Activities) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6757] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 Firstly I offer my congratulations to Nick Smith on his bill being drawn from the ballot. Secondly I say that in 2005 during the elections United Future went to the nation with a policy and I quote to: “remove the powers of the Minister of Conservation to block any development or activity that has received a resource consent.” So we are not johnny-come-latelys to this issue; we actually had formed a view prior to the Whangamata marina decision that it was time for this veto power to go. It has outlived its usefulness. The Resource Management Act has been with us for about 15 years. When it was enacted there was no Environment Court. We now have an Environment Court; we now have a proven rehearsed and well-oiled machine in terms of granting resource consents. From United Future’s point of view it is therefore time for the Minister’s power of veto to go. 
Members can imagine our shock and horror in the light of that policy when we actually witnessed the Minister of Conservation veto the Whangamata marina decision. I ask members to think about the issue for a moment. The Whangamata Marina Society had spent 13 years following due process. It had gone through the Resource Management Act process all the way through to the Environment Court. It had spent $1.3 million—not of somebody else’s but of its own money—to get to that point. Quite frankly the veto by the Minister of Conservation following that process and overturning the recommendation of the Environment Court is simply an abuse of process. It is fundamentally unfair and unjust. In our view compensation should be paid to the Whangamata Marina Society for the great loss they have suffered over this matter. Fortunately the matter might be revisited now that the court wisely has said to the Minister that he got it wrong and must go away and do it again. 
That veto decision by the Minister sets a very bad precedent indeed for the whole Resource Management Act process. Why would anybody spend a lot of money taking a project through the whole Resource Management Act process if at the end of the process the Minister can just come along and say: “Sorry it’s not going to happen.”? Why would those who are opposed to various projects bother to go to the Environment Court? Some groups did not bother to go to the Environment Court on this particular situation and said: “No no we’ll just bypass that; we’ll go to the Minister. We’ll get our political ducks lined up and we’ll rely on him to overturn it.” It is really a very unfortunate precedent that has long-term negative effects for the whole Resource Management Act process. 
This decision therefore cannot be allowed to create a precedent. The right thing to do the just thing to do the fair thing to do and sensible thing to do is to remove the Minister’s veto powers. United Future do not believe in Muldoon-style vetoes Fidel Castro-style vetoes or Stalinist-style vetoes. After all people such as the judges of the Environment Court have heard all the evidence weighed and evaluated the evidence and made a decision based on that evidence. This is evidence that the Minister has not been personally privy to and has not personally heard. He has not gone through hours and hours of weighing up the various points of view the pros and the cons. We therefore think it is a most unsatisfactory part of New Zealand law that we still have these Draconian veto powers resided in a person where the assumption basically is that he is all-wise all-knowing and that he alone has the ability to make a decision of this sort. 
Frankly this is not the New Zealand way. The New Zealand way is to follow due process to let everybody have their say and for a decision to be made by those people who have heard the evidence can weigh up the various merits of each individual argument and can make a decision. That decision should stick and there should be no question of the Minister coming along in the future and saying: “I don’t like it—go get lost.” Accordingly United Future supports the first reading of this bill and I suspect its passage all the way through the House.