Tisch Lindsay: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5535] 
LINDSAY TISCH (NZ National—Piako) 
: 
 I want to spend a few moments talking about Part 1. I want to start with the changes to notification. 
At the moment about 50000 consents have been approved. Of those 47000 are non-notified and about 3000 are notified. [ 
Interruption 
] The 3000 as Richard Worth mentions that have to be notified are too many. The bill of course brings in limited notification. One would have thought that of the 3000 that have to notified now there probably would be an even split; that 1500 would have to be notified and 1500 would require limited notification. But when we look at this a little bit closer we see that the limited notification consents will be 1500 but the number of notified consents could well go up to about 3000. So here we have increased compliance costs. The point I make is that at the moment there are about 47000 consents that are non-notified and one would have hoped and expected that they would stay at that figure. But no the research that we have done suggests that that figure of 47000 non-notified consents would drop down to 45500 and the balance would go back to being limited notifications or notified consents. 
Government members earlier on talked about how this bill will reduce compliance costs and how this bill would be good for business and good for all those people whom we expect to make investments in the community but in fact that will not work. I want to give two examples. In the rural electorate that I represent Piako there are huge developments with chicken farming. Some have new contracts to supply chickens to Inghams Enterprises and chicken meat to KFC and big firms like that. At this stage many consents are coming forward to the district council. There have been a lot of hiccups and there will certainly be more now that there will need to be limited notifications and probably further notifications. 
For example if I already have a chicken operation and I want to extend that operation I have to let the neighbours know. There is no problem with that and usually because these are established operations they are allowed to proceed. But of recent times there have been people who have objected to the addition of chicken sheds and the operators have had to go through the consent process. What will happen now is that even all those neighbours who have consented will have to be re-notified and the whole deal will have to start again. That will add compliance costs and time and it is certainly not something that we would support. 
Perhaps I have a 200-cow cowshed and I want to increase the capacity to 220. I should have to look only at the increase—the extra 20—but under this arrangement I will have to go back to square one and talk about a whole consent process for 220 cows not just the extra 20. So although there is a role for limited notification the view we hold is that because of the extra compliance cost which is a factor we are really concerned about this policy will probably not achieve what it was designed to do in the first place. 
If we look at some of the opportunities that have been lost in this amendment opportunities that we have talked about before such as having independent hearing commissioners having a contestable process for resource consent applications and allowing direct referral through to the Environment Court we see that those opportunities which we believe are important have disappeared. There is also the issue of the creation of a register of professional hearing commissioners who could hear the cases. Although that would cost a little bit of money at the end of the day they would be professionals in the field who did not have a vested interest and they could sit and hear cases in good time. The Ministerial Panel on Business Compliance Costs wrote 50 recommendations to reduce the compliance costs borne by business as a direct consequence of the Resource Management Act and there were another two that related to the Building Act.