Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): I know it's a great treat to have another go on my feet on these linked bills. I think it's a—David Seymour: Not for the audience.STUART SMITH: Well yes—the audience are really enjoying it I'm sure!The regional spatial strategies which the Spatial Planning Bill sets up will have a 30-year lifespan. And as was discussed in the last speech by Rachel Brooking—I think she really highlighted how complicated this is and how these things are supposed to knit together and work seamlessly while I'm struggling to see how that's going to work. We've gone from 100 plans down to 15—and that sounds fantastic. What a great way—we'll cut the number down. But the problem is that we've got lots of councils around New Zealand and they represent communities of interest and their licence to operate if you like in a public sense is that they represent their communities and when they get too big they become a real problem and Environment Canterbury (ECan) is one good example of that. There may well be others but I can only speak from my own electorate's perspective. The Marlborough District Council is a unitary authority it's a regional council and it's a territorial authority—they do a fantastic job easy to do with one council; no issues there. All the planning situations all seamlessly work together. Yeah of course there's issues but they're not as bad as anywhere else—it's a one-stop shop. But in the southern part of my electorate we have district councils and we have ECan. Now ECan stretches all the way up to the Clarence River—for those that don't know that's in south Marlborough—and then goes all the way including Christchurch along the main divide down into the Mackenzie Country. So it starts up in the great electorate of Kaikōura it goes down next to Matt Doocey's electorate and includes Christchurch which—Dr Duncan Webb: Duncan Webb's electorate.STUART SMITH: Dr Duncan Webb over there and then Nicola Grigg and then it goes to the highly respected MP for Waitaki the Hon Jacqui Dean. And so what I would put to the House is that there is nothing in common with Kaikōura and Christchurch there is nothing in common with Hurunui and mid-Canterbury and there's nothing really in common at all with any of them in the Mackenzie Country. And yet they are all under ECan. And that is why ECan is the car crash it is because it does not actually—Hon Eugenie Sage: Well you put commissioners on for nine years why didn't they fix it?STUART SMITH: —I think the Green Party have at last woken up—represent its community well at all because its community is so diverse and not at all knitting together. And that's exactly the way we see ECan operate it's is an absolute mess. And that is what we will see when we go down to 15 plans I have no doubt about that. I think the work now of the Commissioner for the Environment on his catchment work that he's doing that is the way to go to manage these sorts of things. Sometimes less is not more. And I think in this case and when we're talking about plans it will definitely not be more and it will cause a huge amount of problems.I'll give you an example of central planning—this is what we're talking about essentially central planning. I'll give you an example of how badly that can go wrong because I know Rachel Brooking and Angela Roberts have been wanting me to bring wine into our debate and so I'm going to do that for you tonight. And so I'll go back to the early 1970s in Hawke's Bay and Montana Wines were looking to expand their vineyards and they wanted to expand and plant vineyards there however the planning rules wouldn't allow them to do so. But this had a happy ending because Frank Yukich he got so frustrated with these planning rules that wouldn't allow him to plant grapes and expand their winery operation so he went off down on the advice of a Department of Scientific and Industrial Research scientist named Wayne Thomas and had a look in Marlborough. He went around he was so struck with the region everybody thought too cold"—the central planners said "Too cold couldn't grow grapes there." However the Marlborough District Council were much more accommodating than Hawke's Bay. And so he ended up with his own money putting deposits on 1600 hectares of land to buy for vineyards not telling anyone. I know the land agent who's now since passed away who went out and purchased these properties. He was not allowed to say what it was for who was buying it—there were rumours going around Marlborough "Somebodies buying land up." No one knew what it was for. Anyway in the end they planted grapes there and then on 14 August in 1973 he said—I quote—"Wines from here will become world famous one day." And how right he was against all the advice.Now I can tell you there were a couple of other moving parts in that since the 1984 vine pull went on there was an issue with Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations and along came Ernie Hunter and Ernie Hunter had sauvignon blanc went to the Sunday Times Wine Show in the UK—I'm coming to the bill Madam it's all about central planning—and he won there and that is how sauvignon blanc got its start in the world. If we'd listen to the central planning rules there would be no grapes in Marlborough there would be no wine industry and New Zealand would not have got there. So the point is that if we expect that central planning rules will get it right they will not.Now the Minister mentioned aquaculture and the importance of being able to get the locations of wharves and things right. Well I'm sorry I don't think that central planners are going to get that right at all. Businesses will either put it in the right place or they'll put it in the wrong place and lose some money and someone else will do it in the right way. That's how we get innovation. So I guess the underlying point I'm making is that we need the freedom in New Zealand to be able to innovate. That is one thing that we can do and we do it well. We have a reputation for being the number eight wire innovators well I think it's a lot more complicated than that and we don't give ourselves enough credit for the innovation that we do do. But that requires a regulatory framework to allow those things to flourish. And central planning for those sorts of things will not work. Yes we need some planning there's no doubt. I do think that we need to protect our best soils in New Zealand totally agree with that. Where you draw the line becomes a real issue though and it's a property right issue and people that are on what they feel is the wrong side of the line are going to be very upset about that because it will actually make a significant difference to their economic wellbeing. However that is what those tough decisions do have to be made.But again this bill has a number of issues which I canvassed before about you know "In preparing an RSS"—that's a regional spatial strategy—"the [regional] planning committee must have [particular] regard to relevant iwi and hāpu management plans and … must have regard to mātauranga Māori" as well. I don't have a problem with that as I said earlier in the previous bill. But what about everybody else? Do they not have any special interest in things that are happening in New Zealand? Why would it only be one group? People that have spent generations on that land and—I've forgotten what was the term?Harete Hipango: Ahikā.STUART SMITH: Ahikā. Whose ahikā is better than anyone else's ahikā? Whose is more valuable than anyone else's?Tāmati Coffey: Don't steal our words—don't steal our words.STUART SMITH: I'm not stealing; I'm borrowing it.Sam Uffindell: We're all New Zealanders.STUART SMITH: I think that is exactly the point—Sam Uffindell has just made an excellent point "We are all New Zealanders" and we are all New Zealanders. We forget that at our peril. I think enshrining things in legislation that call that into question is wrong—it's just plain wrong.Actually while I'm on it and I'm on a roll the decision of the Supreme Court shows the foolishness of getting rid of the Privy Council. We must have things—we want to have a say in our own way not have activist judges expanding our legal system. And that's exactly what we'll get with this piece of legislation it will be years of court cases years of heartache. It will break some people trying to get things done. It will end businesses. It will stifle innovation. And we'll all be the poorer for it—all of us will be the poorer for it except for the few people that get selected to be on the committees. And they'll be well paid and they'll be probably all related and we won't have a chance of getting rid of them. And we should if they're going to have anything to say about our planning laws. This bill is as flawed as the previous one so I condemn it to the House."