Graham Kennedy: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Graham Kennedy: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6201] 
Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green) 
: 
 This is the first time that I have intervened in this debate. I will address some general issues in the first instance pertaining to environmental protection and sustainable management as they are involved with the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill. I may address some specific issues later pertaining to ministerial powers of coastal protection. 
The stated purpose of this amendment bill is to simplify and streamline. “Simplify” means to make something less complicated and easier to understand reflecting a characteristic belief on the part of this Government that New Zealanders are inherently unable to comprehend anything that may approach a complicated level. “Streamline” means to shape something so that it can move as effectively as possible through liquid or gas. The purpose did not say anything about red tape. The Minister for the Environment in sponsoring the bill noted in his first reading speech: “Over the nearly 18 years since the Resource Management Act became law there has been growing criticism across all sectors about the slow and costly plan preparation and consenting processes.” He warned: “Decision-making processes … must become more efficient.” The bill he exalted would provide a timely support to measures to stimulate the economy. He concluded that “stronger tools for managing anti-competitive behaviours and new consent pathways” were required. 
My main contention is that the bill represents the Government’s rather distorted view of reality. The Government since its election in November has essentially conveyed two mantras into this House. One mantra is that we need to balance economic opportunity with environmental responsibility. The second mantra is that we have to remove the nanny State. Those two mantras inform this Government’s approach to pretty much everything. It brings the mantras with the claim that it has an electoral mandate to articulate them. It sees the Resource Management Act as a central strut of this Government’s implementation of that philosophical orientation. 
That approach suffers from several mistakes both of logic and of political judgment. The logical mistake is the following: the economy and the environment are not separate and discrete entities that can be balanced. There is only one thing; there is only the environment. That is the reality. The economy is simply human activity within the environment. If humans display such hubris that they can pretend to live and grow outside the environment they will perish. If humans display even a lesser amount of hubris and think that they can engage in economic activity and then tend to the environment separately and subsequently they will suffer. To use the jargon that even the erstwhile Association of Consumers and Taxpayers can understand the economy is a subset—that is to say it is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. 
The second mistake is a political mistake: the belief that the nanny State is the central threat to the New Zealand people. What arrant nonsense! It is true that Labour developed a reputation for being a nanny State and I think it indeed befitted the assertive leadership of 9 years of the previous Government. It got a belly laugh in the course of 2008 and a negative vote in the November election. What about the rest of us? How are we best described using similar imagery? The erstwhile Association of Consumers and Taxpayers is best described as the robber baron State: those who wish for unbridled freedom to make excessive personal wealth. National is best described as the cowboy State: those who wish for freedom to desecrate then modestly pretend to clean up the environment afterwards.