SpeechLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It's my pleasure to take a call on this bill the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill and I do at the start want to acknowledge the work that has been done by everybody in this Parliament—officials Environment Committee members—in getting through 136 submissions in a very short period of time. As has been said by previous speakers on this side we do support this legislation although we don't believe it goes far enough and as Erica Stanford my good colleague has said it probably should be in place for longer.That being said there are some issues that I wish to talk about. While we are accelerating projects or bringing them forward and a decision needing to be made in around 25 days—which is a massive improvement on what has traditionally been the case where it can be years if not decades—it is important to understand what this legislation also does in a level that doesn't require consent. We do support the permitted activity status that has been given to the New Zealand Transport Agency KiwiRail Kāinga Ora and councils to do minor work but we shouldn't kid ourselves: as part of that there will be some trade-offs and some community members worried about small work who might've previously had an ability to object won't have that. That being said I think that's OK.I also acknowledge the fact that the previous National Government brought in the ability for call-in provisions. Those are provisions that are available for the Minister for the Environment at any stage if something is in the national interest to bring something to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and take it through a process that takes no more than nine months. If you want to look at what that can do and the success of that one only needs to look at the projects that have been through that and the Hon Nathan Guy took us through the Kāpiti Expressway previously. In my view unless the call-in provisions had been available to the Government those types of projects would still be stalled in the starting blocks.The call-in provision has been used by the Minister for Auckland water and I do acknowledge the point that's just been made by Jami-Lee Ross previously that that is a nine-month process; a deal's being done with Hamilton City to give some short-term relief but at the end of the day that consent could've been included in this bill. The Minister used the call-in provision—that's fine. That's better than not using it but the same issue could've been dealt with in this bill.We're also awaiting the Tony Randerson report which various Ministers will have seen—and I have no objection to them seeing; it's their report. But fundamentally that will change the Resource Management Act (RMA) I suspect and I think there is cross-party agreement right across the Parliament that the RMA does need to change. So we are in a sense doing a knee-jerk reaction right now on the basis that we are looking after jobs and we want shovel-ready projects and that is a laudable goal. My issue—and I spoke about it in the first reading—is I don't believe we're going far enough and quickly enough. We've included a small number of projects—and I understand there are second tranches third and fourth tranches but if you look at the projects that have been included right up—and I'm particularly critical of the housing ones not of the projects themselves but of the scale of things that have been put in in the first part.Our side of the House also believes that this bill should not time out in two years—that actually it should go for up to five and I understand a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) will be submitted later that will do that. We say that because we have been and I think many members of Parliament have been frustrated at how long it takes to get these big projects up and running—not only big projects in fact; a lot of projects up and running. While it's important for everybody to have a say the fact that everybody is having a say under the current RMA ends up costing the country the community and the very same people a lot of money time and effort. Yesterday or the day before $3 billion of shovel-ready projects were announced. Many are going to be dripped out further in the lead-up to the election. Wouldn't it be good for some of those projects to be included in the schedule at this point so they don't have to be added at a later date by an Order in Council and further delayed? I suspect what we're going to get in the lead-up to the election is handing the cash around but no actual physical start for a long long time.I also want to comment on the local government aspect of this. This is a significant change for many. Many local authorities may want to have a say on some of these projects—they may—and they have an ability to effectively as a registered person in the process but the conversation about which project should be advanced through this process versus which they would like to proceed is actually not as I understand it Minister—and I'll come to it in the committee of the whole House—a decision for them. It is a decision for you as the Minister at the outset. So when I look down the Schedule 2 projects and when I understand the number of councils that are having conversations with Shane Jones and his fund and the finance Minister about shovel-ready projects I hope there is alignment there. I hope that when the right hand gives out the money the left hand is working out which projects can or cannot be included.There is also the capacity issue. We know and the Minister will know this that the Environment Court has had capacity issues. A lot of processes get held up for capacity issues. When we add more and more things to the panel and the EPA and the process that's going to be followed we have to have specialist panels and people that have the capacity to do this. Many people struggle with the complexity and it'll take a certain type of person to be on those panels. So there is a balance between how many things you can put up versus how many things they're going to fix and in my view the list we've already given does not actually translate into giving the most shovel-ready or urgent jobs; they happen to be a list that's available. Nineteen hundred and twenty-four projects were submitted to the Infrastructure Commission to look at and I think that in that there are probably well over a hundred—well over a hundred—that would need fast-track consenting if you were going to get them shovel-ready in a time frame that'll make a difference to COVID-19. So I say to the Minister: if that's the scale of what we're trying to do where is the capacity within the EPA or the panel to do that?Lastly I haven't yet put an SOP in but I do want to talk about the four-laning of the Napier to Hastings Expressway for no other reason than this: that land is fully designated—fully designated. The only thing that needs to occur is a couple of consents for some bridges and the money for the bridges. We are already wasting money on that part of the road because we're putting safety barriers and all sorts of things on the wrong alignment because when it's four-lane those safety barriers are in the wrong place. So I'm watching $20 million nearly be spent on safety barriers on the wrong alignment because this Government is not aligning everything it does with what is the long-term solution. So when we look at these projects we need to look at them holistically. That is a project that is shovel-ready could be included here fully designated and if we make a decision about that quickly we will stop wasting money.So we support this bill. We don't think it goes far enough and I thank you for the opportunity to say my piece.