Salesa Jenny; Court SimonPart 2 Amendments to schedules and new schedules and Schedules 1 to 3CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 13 to 16 and Schedules 1 to 3 amendments to schedules and new schedules. The question is that Part 2 stand part.SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. We've previously covered off the intention of the intensified streamlined planning process earlier this morning and what's clear is that local government has struggled in some of the tier 1 cities to identify land where intensification is suitable negotiate that with communities through existing planning provisions under the Resource Management Act (RMA) and then deliver back to those communities a plan which sets out where it is suitable to build to intensify. Some councils—like Auckland and like Hamilton for example—have been through extensive processes where they've taken many factors into account and the Auckland Unitary Plan is a classic example of where many different competing and conflicting values and objectives are consulted on widely—and I'll come back to that—consulted on widely: the communities those affected whether they be businesses whether they be professionals people who have direct experience in subdivision in establishing the infrastructure needed to service land whether they be urban design professionals architects. I'm still at a loss to understand how as an engineer who's come to Parliament I find myself here today having to stand up for the rights of architects to design good homes. I thought all of those discussions had been had. I thought that there were already well understood urban design principles about outlook sunlight outdoor space and access to amenities and that we shouldn't need to be re-litigating those in the schedules in Part 2 and we certainly shouldn't be essentially carrying out urban design exercises either in primary legislation by a select committee or the committee of the whole House. Parliament's job should never be to carry out urban design exercises. But that is what the schedules essentially provide for with the design criteria for the medium-density residential standard. And the way that that design criteria the way that the standard is delivered is through the intensified streamlined planning process. Quite a few councils and developers—those people who actually use the RMA—and their planning professionals the consultants who help them navigate their way through legislation through planning law pointed out that actually it would be helpful to have a streamlined planning process for a whole range of things. We know that Kāinga Ora operates a streamlined planning process except it doesn't seem they want to do that for the private sector. We know that there's a fast-track consenting process for COVID-19 projects some of which may or may not be related to COVID-19 and may or may not actually deliver homes or jobs or anything else either. But this process here actually sets out how councils and hearings panels are supposed to carry out their work.It would be fair to say that without offering a similar process to the private sector developers who are bringing on tens of thousands of homes some of them like the Templeton Group pointed out that they've got a billion dollars' worth of work in the pipeline. They pointed out that any delays to the process they use under the Resource Management Act typically cost about a million dollars a year. That's the overhead just to have the project sitting waiting to get into the Environment Court waiting for a decision. They said that some of their projects have spent seven to eight years going through the planning process going to appeal and then going to various courts including the High Court and above to seek direction essentially to have decisions made about very basic elements of town planning—where houses where buildings where streets should go. And what they're asking for is to have the same rights that every other council will have which is to have access to the intensified streamlined planning process. In fact any streamlined planning process that enables them to seek consents under the Resource Management Act or subsequent—[Bell rung] Thank you Madam Chair. So the question is: will the Government consider actually allowing private developers to have access to the same process; if not is it because the Minister and the Labour Party and the National Party that crafted this bill actually believe that all solutions when it comes to housing intensity actually sit with Government or local government? Because most New Zealanders would actually believe that Government is the problem when it comes to getting things built. Its regulations its red tape—it's how difficult it is to get consent even for things like desperately needed waste-water system upgrades in places like Queenstown on the shores of Lake Wakatipu where it's been so difficult to install a waste-water pumping station that the council's had to go and apply for consent to continue wastewater discharges into that lake because it's too hard to get consent to build the waste-water treatment stations that they want to. So they're in breach of consents. So an intensified streamlined planning process is a good idea in principle but limiting it only to local councils and to plans made specifically to implement the medium-density residential standard seems not just short-sighted but lacking in aspiration for a wholesale and complete reform of the planning process. We've heard recently in select committee that that may well be the intention of the Minister's other legislation the Natural and Built Environments Bill and maybe a strategic planning Act. We often hear these things referred to. They are some kind of Promised Land of planning and environmental management and urban development and yet despite the fact that the Promised Land is you know not too far away and while we're all paddling our waka they're spending hundreds and hundreds of hours in select committee collecting thousands of submissions on that particular piece of legislation intending to reform planning and enable housing and save the environment and save a whole lot of other things at the same time. This bill was being crafted in secret over months and months and months while the select committee sat reviewing another piece of resource management legislation. Many of the same questions that developers brought councils even brought and planning professionals brought to the committee asked the same question: why can the private sector not have access to a fast-track development process? Why are they subject to objections from organisations like Greenpeace for example and others who are given standing to object against what essentially are developments that deliver homes and communities and infrastructure to the people of New Zealand? So some of these fundamental issues about who has standing who should be allowed to object are not addressed in terms of the fundamental problems with the RMA. The ability to consent infrastructure to actually service the land that this upzoning provided for by the medium-density residential standard—those matters are not dealt with. There was an opportunity to actually reform the RMA on the run while more stuff is done down the track like the Natural and Built Environments Bill. The ACT Party and other parties developers and submitters have all said that they want an opportunity to contribute but there was no opportunity for consultation on this piece of legislation. There may have been a lot more easy wins in terms of intensified streamlined planning processes than actually have been delivered to the House in this bill and that comes back to the secrecy element the fact that it was essentially cooked up over a number of months without the knowledge of the development community the planning community all of those professional engineers and architects and ecologists geotechnical specialists who could have given advice to the Government and to officials on what a good short-term reform measure looked like. They weren't consulted. So now we have an intensified streamlined planning process which only gives these rights to councils. So what I'm asking the Minister is to please explain: why is this not being extended to the private sector? Why was consultation on this process not carried out with the private sector and councils for that matter? And what is his plan to actually speed up planning to get more houses built?