Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you Madam Speaker. I want to acknowledge the work of the Hon David Parker in shepherding through what is not only a massive piece of legislative reform but it's an issue that is hugely important to New Zealand. As well as being cheaper faster and better resource management law I'm confident that the new planning system that this bill begins to usher in will not only protect the environment better than the old system but it will allow our towns and cities to grow it will allow the homes to be built that we desperately need and it will encourage more liveable and successful cities.I want to devote my call to some comments about how the whole issue of urban tree protection will be dealt with under the new planning system. I think everybody understands that trees are extremely important to the life of our cities. There are many reasons as the Lorax said that we must speak for the trees. They bring beauty to our lives they attract birds they give shade they are good for our mental health. The urban forest futureproofs our cities for climate change. They cool cities that are becoming hotter and hotter because of the increase in hard surfaces associated with intensification. Climate change is making our cities wetter and more flood-prone and trees absorb and filter stormwater. They improve air quality they provide a very important acoustic buffer in our neighbourhoods and most importantly kids can climb on them.Now the problem that we need to address is that the big change that's under way in our cities—the intensification that must happen in order to allow more homes to be built and allow space to be used more efficiently in our cities—is putting great pressure on the urban forest. We must build more homes and we must allow our cities to grow up but all of these things are putting pressure on the garden suburbs of our 1950s-style cities. There is clear evidence particularly in Auckland that the development pressures unleashed by the reforms of the Auckland Unitary Plan have led to a massive surge in new homes being build—particularly medium-density housing—and that is speeding up the loss of trees on private property.We need to strike a better balance. Through the changes that we are beginning to debate today we are going to make it easier for councils in their new plans to protect the special trees that people love in their neighbourhoods. Under the National Planning Framework to be released next year we will allow councils to create a rule in their plans that would protect trees of a certain size or age. They're often referred to as specimen trees. Now that would mean that if a property owner wants to remove such a tree they would need to get a consent and this gives communities through their council the opportunity to weigh up the value of a specimen tree against the value for instance of developing that patch of ground or for the council and the landowner together to find a win-win solution.Now this is not possible under the current rules in the Resource Management Act (RMA) put in place by the National Party in 2009 which require councils to schedule individual trees or groups of trees on specific named and sited properties if they want to protect them. These restrictions from 2009 certainly give certainty to landowners and developers but they make it virtually impossible for councils to protect the very special trees that people value. Under our proposals councils will still be able to continue protecting trees by scheduling them as they can under the RMA but we won't be going back to the pre-2009 system where in some places property owners routinely needed to get a consent to remove trees.But preserving our urban forests requires much more than just regulating what happens on private property. The National Planning Framework will also direct urban councils to develop an urban forest strategy as part of their plans. It will be evidence-based and it will contain percentage targets for canopy cover. Auckland is currently at an average of only 18 percent canopy cover. The international benchmark is 30 to 40 percent. Brisbane has canopy cover of 44 percent Melbourne has a target of 40 percent by 2040 and it's worth noting that in our major urban centres today some suburbs are leafier than others. Auckland's working-class suburbs have substantially lower canopy cover. Māngere-Ōtāhuhu has 8 percent cover. My own electorate of Te Atatū in the Henderson-Massey Local Board area which has some of the fastest urban intensification going on in Auckland today has just 15 percent canopy cover and it is reducing on a weekly basis because of all of the intensification. The strategies will need to cover not just trees on private property but trees in the road corridor and in parks and in public places and ideally these urban forest strategies will use a range of methods and incentives to increase public acceptance of urban trees and build a sense of collective responsibility for the urban forest.The Government recognises that the future planning system will make it easier for councils to protect the urban forest but it is going to take considerable time for those changes to bed in and in fact it could take up to a decade before the Natural and Built Environment Act (NBA) plans that will be created under this legislation that we're debating today are operational at a local council level. So we will amend the current RMA and possibly the existing national direction as a transition measure to ensure that the outcomes that we are talking about today can be put in place much earlier than they would be if we were going to wait until the new system ushers in a new generation of NBA plans. So what this means is that over the short term councils will still be able to protect trees using schedules in the RMA plans but they will be able to introduce a narrow tree protection rule where a resource consent is required to remove a specimen tree of significant size or maturity. In addition to that councils will still be able to use things like financial contributions where they will have the ability to rebate financial contributions levied on a landowner or a developer in order to incentivise the retention or the planting of trees.The same principle applies to development bonuses when a landowner or developer wishes to do anything that is not strictly enabled under the detailed provisions of that local plan. They can then negotiate with the council and in doing so the council will have the opportunity to incentivise the retention of trees. Finally the Medium Density Residential Standards which are subject to current intensification plan changes are designed specifically to allow outdoor space to be grouped as communal space in developments thereby allowing more space for trees amongst the medium-density developments. So there it is. That is the approach that we are taking in the course of stewarding this new planning system for New Zealand on one important aspect of the urban environment and that is how we protect and enhance the urban forest.