Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Look the Spatial Planning Bill is not as bad as the Natural and Built Environment Bill (NBEA) that precedes it or is the accompanying piece of legislation. The National Party agrees with effective spatial planning legislation and a regime. The problem is that allied to the NBEA bill this will be a battering ram around development in New Zealand—it will make it harder to do thingsI want to canvass a couple of points in my contribution on this bill. The Minister for the Environment seems to be of the view that just because a lot of time and energy has been spent on this bill—that it's therefore good. And actually the truth is the opposite: sunk cost fallacy. Just because we've spent a lot of time and money and energy and officials have worked really hard and the Environment Committee's done a good job doesn't necessarily mean it's a substantive step forward for the country or for the environment.I want to pick up on a couple of remarks that the Minister said in his speech. The first is that the development community is looking out for predictability and certainty. That's exactly right—they are. And the problem is at the moment they don't have that. But this throws everything out and starts again with the NBEA bill and the Spatial Planning Bill with these new amorphous legal terms—no one knows how they will be interpreted and no one knows what they mean. And we heard submission after submission to the select committee in relation to this from both the sort of pro-environment wing of the world and the pro-development wing and local councils—you know name a group there was a submission to the effect of legal uncertainty and complexity and how worrisome that was. And none of the changes advanced by the select committee fix that basic problem. So the Minister's right that people are looking for predictability. This throws everything up in the air and creates judicial chaos. That is what is going to end up happening as a result if these bills pass.And it's pretty clear the Government wants to ram them through. Its David Parker's legacy project for this tired Government. Judicial chaos will result. We are going to end up with year after year of litigation trying to define exactly what the words mean in the two bills. That is not a recipe for predictability and certainty.Then he sort of made that sort of mean-spirited remark and said Oh well National and ACT are just opposing the bills because you know it's like a job well done—you know pat on the back haven't I done well? Isn't the Government amazing?" Well that's not the reason we're opposing it.We're up for Resource Management Act (RMA) reform. I've been a member of Parliament for nine years; I've been talking about RMA reform for nine years. And there are members who are a bit more long in the tooth than me. I see Scott Simpson here who's been our environment spokesperson for a long time. I see Louise Upton former Minister in the last Government. No one doubts the National Party's commitment to RMA reform. You look back and—Hon Scott Simpson: Couldn't get any support from Labour.CHRIS BISHOP: Well that's exactly right as Scott Simpson says. I remember back in 2014 as a new young buck MP—Hon Scott Simpson: Still young. Still young.CHRIS BISHOP: Well I'm not that young. I turn 40 in two months—Anna Lorck: Oh you do not! Oh you're so young!CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah I know—I know—I know. I've got the greys already—got the greys already—this is what being an MP does.Anyway so I remember as a young buck backbench MP coming down and solidly arguing for RMA reform and putting forward these ideas. And David Parker and Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins and all the rest of the Labour Party frontbench sat where we're sitting now and said "Oh no we can't have this. You're putting the development—it will overcome the environment. It's such a disaster." And David Parker opposed substantive RMA reform for years. And Peter Dunne sat over there just in front of where my good friend Simon Court is sitting now and he was a stick in the mud on RMA reform and said "No no we can't do this." and he invented every reason under the sun not to do it properly. And you could never get a parliamentary majority through the House to do substantive RMA reform.Then much like they did on the TPP—or sorry I should say the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)—half the Labour Party caucus stood here and marched down Queen Street about this appalling outrageous breach of New Zealand sovereignty. And then what do I see what do I listen to on the radio the other morning? I see Chris Hipkins on the radio. "Oh you need to realise CPTPP is a gold standard free-trade agreement. It's just wonderful. Open markets is the New Zealand way blah-blah-blah-blah-blah." They changed the name—they changed the name. They think adding the word "progressive" to the agreement. Anyway—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Righto Mr Bishop you've had a pretty good five minutes. The bill.CHRIS BISHOP: The Speaker's about to cut me off on it. But I'm just making the point that we're up RMA reform but it has to be substantive.Here are the issues with this piece of legislation. The select committee has deliberately changed the Spatial Planning Bill. It essentially has the same purpose as the Natural and Built Environment Bill. I won't repeat what I said in my earlier contribution on that bill but the idea that clause 3—the purpose is to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao a legally undefined term in New Zealand up until now—is going to make it easier to do things frankly is fanciful. It's completely fanciful. That whole Purpose section massively prioritises protection of the environment. I use the word "protect" specifically because the courts as I said before have found the word "protect" has a particularly strict meaning and it will be interpreted by the courts in a way that massively prioritises the environment over development despite what the Minister says.I mean he sort of waxes lyrical "Oh we're doing this for the development and infrastructure chapter." and all the rest of it. Well that's all fine. You can wax lyrical all you like in Parliament. The actual issue is how these things get interpreted. The Purpose clause of the NBEA and the Spatial Planning Bill—those Purpose clauses suffuse themselves into the various plans that flow from that. It's a hierarchy. Everything has to flow from that. It is going to cause judicial chaos and lead to a diminution in predictability and certainty. So that is the most fundamental objection that we have to these two bills.One of the really interesting themes that came through the submission process was the loss of local democracy. Now I am not someone who thinks that local democracy is a good in and of itself—that it's sort of like a supra good that should superimpose itself on everything. I think there's a balance to be struck. I do think there's a role for national direction through central government. At the end of the day particularly when it comes to housing central government bears much of the fiscal costs of poor local government decision making. So to put that into real terms we spend at central government $4 billion a year on housing subsidies—$4 billion. Over a four-year Budget cycle that is 10 Transmission Gully motorways on housing subsidies on accommodation supplement on emergency housing on income-related rent—you know $4 billion.Angie Warren-Clark: Are you going to cut them?CHRIS BISHOP: We want to reduce that amount down for sure but we want to do it by fixing the housing market. You know it's not sustainable that the Crown spends $4 billion per year on housing subsidies—it's not. And the Government knows that. So the actual answer is competitive urban land markets. And to be fair to the Minister that is one good thing of the Spatial Planning Bill which goes in the right direction.So as I say I am not someone who thinks that local democracy is a good in and of itself—there's a balance to be struck. But the submissions about the loss of local voice that came through the select committee were striking. Hamilton City Council's submission I thought was very good. They said "The framework destroys our ability to make timely cost effective democratically accountable decisions. The regional planning committee plan process is unwieldy costly time consuming undemocratic reliant on territorial and regional boundaries which are irrelevant and unreflective of communities of interest unrepresentative and lacks political accountability." Strong words but they're not actually unreflective of many of the submissions that came through from many local councils.The other point that comes through—which the Minister didn't really address—is all of the Government's reform processes in this area are completely disconnected from each other. It's very discombobulating. So you've got three waters which when it was initially introduced was the four entities and in the middle of these bills going through the select committee process that all got up-ended. Now we're into the 10 regional entities. We've got different structures when it comes to the regional planning committees for this one. But you've also got the Review into the Future for Local Government which is proposing another whole up-ending.So local government quite rightly feels completely discombobulated by the Government's reform processes. These bills are not a step forward. We're up for RMA reform but it has to be things that actually move the dial and will make a difference. These bills take us backwards therefore we can't support them."