Volume 693 Week 52 - Tuesday 27 August 2013Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 693 Week 52 - Tuesday 27 August 2013[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12799. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Tuesday 27 August 2013Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Questions to MinistersEconomic Programme—Progress1.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany) to theMinister of Finance: What progress is the Government making in building a more competitive and productive economy and how is this helping New Zealand families?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): We are making good progress on building a productive and competitive economy. Confidence among households and businesses is improving exports and jobs are growing and this is helping New Zealand families get ahead. Despite the impact of the drought earlier this year the economy grew 2.4 percent in the 12 months to March and almost all forecasts show New Zealand on track for 2 to 3 percent growth over the next few years. This helps all those who have jobs to be more confident that their jobs are secure. And for those who are looking for jobs they can be more confident that there will be opportunities for them. This is good news for New Zealand families.Jami-Lee Ross: According to the latest economic data what are some of the benefits being delivered to families from the improving economic outlook?Hon BILL ENGLISH: First it is important to acknowledge that the circumstances of every single family are different and of course the economy remains challenging for a number of families but there are some helpful indicators. The annual increase in the cost of living is the lowest in 14 years. Floating home mortgage interest rates are the lowest in almost 50 years although there is an expectation that they will start increasing over the next 12 months. There are around 46000 more jobs in the economy than 6 months ago. On average in the past 2 years wages have been rising faster than the cost of living. This of course gives families a bit more headroom to continue doing what they are doing and that is get on top of their debt and realise some of their aspirations.Jami-Lee Ross: What measures has the Government taken to support lower and middle income families during the past 4½ years particularly through a fairer tax and income support system?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Despite the recession and the fact that the Government has had significant deficits we have made supporting lower and middle income New Zealanders a priority. We have maintained large Government support programmes such as Working for Families paid parental leave accommodation subsidies and interest-free student loans. Over the past two Budgets we have invested more than $470 million to support more New Zealanders out of welfare. Households earning under $60000 a year—which is half of all households—will pay around $2.7 billion of income tax but they will receive more than $8.1 billion in income support which means that households earning under $60000 a year are large net recipients of income support.Jami-Lee Ross: How is the New Zealand economy performing compared with other developed countries?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Recently the Reserve Bank Governor noted that New Zealand would be one of the fastest-growing developed economies in the world which I thought was probably a bit optimistic so we went to check. New Zealand’s 2.4 percent growth in the year to March compares favourably with the US which grew 1.8 percent Canada 1.4 percent Japan 0.2 percent and the UK 0.6 percent. The euro area contractedby 1.1 percent. Australia grew 2.5 percent in the year to March. So for many families New Zealand is the best place in the developed world to be if they want job security and the opportunity for a higher income.Prime Minister—StatementsDr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! Dr Russel Norman.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: My question is to the Prime Minister and asks does he stand by—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I am sorry but the level of interjection coming from all corners of the House is too much. Would the member please start his question again.2.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements relating to Government policy?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.Dr Russel Norman: Should New Zealanders believe his statements that the asset sales would not cost more than 2 percent of the sale proceeds or should they believe Treasury figures that show that the cost of selling Mighty River Power was twice that much?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Dr Russel Norman: Should New Zealanders believe his statement onCampbell Live that under his new law the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) would not have access to the content of New Zealanders’ communications or should they believe his subsequent statements that the GCSB would be able to read their emails?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Dr Russel Norman: Should New Zealanders believe his statement that the Auditor-General’s investigation of theSkycity deal vindicated his Government or should they believe the Auditor-General herself who said that the process was neither transparent nor even-handed?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Dr Russel Norman: Should New Zealanders believe his statement that the Henry inquiry had Ministers’ permission to examine their email records or should they believe Judith Collins’ statement at the Privileges Committee that the Henry inquiry did not have permission to read her emails?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Dr Russel Norman: Should New Zealanders believe his statement that he will not confirm whether the GCSB receives funding from the US Government or should they believe this cable from the US Embassy showing that the National Security Agency has funded a position within the GCSB?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.Dr Russel Norman: Given those answers in all their fulsomeness why does he think that the credibility of his statements has fallen to a point where according to the latest polls only 23 percent of New Zealanders believe that he tells the truth?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not.Dr Russel Norman: Does it concern him that fewer than one in four New Zealanders believe that what their Prime Minister tells them is the truth?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The member is wrong in his assertion.Dr Russel Norman: When the Prime Minister said it has been “fun” fighting red zone landowners in court over compensation after an earthquake does he think it has been fun for them?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.Unemployment—Current Rate and International Comparisons3.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) to thePrime Minister: Is he satisfied with the performance of his Minister for Tertiary Education Skills and Employment and are there any areas of his performance that need to improve?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I say to contestant No. 1 yes—and I can see why the member is concerned about employment because all he has been thinking about for the last 20 months is his own employment opportunities which is why he stabbed his—Mr SPEAKER: Order!Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. There were two parts to that question. The Prime Minister answered the first one but he did not answer the second.Mr SPEAKER: On this occasion if the Prime Minister could address the second part of the primary question—are there any areas that require improving.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am sure the Minister himself would say he is not perfection but he is pretty close.Grant Robertson: In light of that answer could the Prime Minister tell the House according to the latest household labour force survey how many New Zealanders are unemployed?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: On the numbers I have in front of me 153000 according to the household labour force survey. That is 65000 fewer because in the last 2 years employment has gone up. What we know is that labour markets are very fluid. Last week one person lost his job; now there are three people looking for it.Grant Robertson: Is he satisfied that 153000 New Zealanders are unemployed?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: To be precise it is 153001 because one got sacked last week by the Labour caucus.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Would the Prime Minister now please address the question that was asked which is whether he is satisfied with 153000 unemployed.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No but what I can say—Grant Robertson: So what are you doing about it?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well the Government is doing a long list of things and actually it would be very interesting if we could go through contestant Nos 1 2 and 3 and see which ones support these. This is a Government—Grant Robertson: Supplementary question Mr Speaker. If he is deciding what to answer I may as well ask another one.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The House needs to settle down. The Prime Minister did answer it very directly and said no he is not satisfied but then the member himself interjected and said “So what are you doing about it?” so he gave the Prime Minister a perfect chance to continue his answer.Grant Robertson: Does the Prime Minister know where New Zealand ranks in terms of unemployment in the OECD and if he does not know does he think it is higher or lower than it was at the same time in 2008?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am advised it is 11th. I am also advised that this is a Government that is moving up the OECD rankings. This is a Government that has had 65000 more people in work in the last couple of years. But what is absolutely fascinating about this question is that this is the member contestant No. 1 who has had this responsibility for 21 months—Mr SPEAKER: And the Prime Minister has no ministerial responsibility for that.Grant Robertson: To enlighten the Prime Minister I seek leave to table figures from the OECD that show that New Zealand ranked sixth in terms of unemployment in 2008 and 12th in 2013.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that. Is there any objection? There is none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Grant Robertson: So is the Prime Minister telling New Zealanders that they should be satisfied that after 5 years of his Government 153000 New Zealanders are out of work?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly New Zealand relative to the rest of the world is doing pretty well. There have been 65000 jobs created in the last couple of years. There has been a global financial crisis that we have had to go through. Our unemployment rate over time is tracking down while the rest of the world is tracking up. But on this side of the House we want to do things to create employment so let us go through the three contestants and see—Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no need for that in this answer.Grant Robertson: I seek leave of the House to table figures from the household labour force survey that show—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Such figures are freely available to all members.Hon Member: They should be chucked out.Mr SPEAKER: No I do not intend to at this stage but if I see those signs raised by any particular member again then I will be asking that member to leave the Chamber for the balance of question time.Student Achievement—Funding and Initiatives4.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura) to theMinister of Education: What recent announcements has she made about investment in education?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Yesterday we announced a $27 million investment in education initiatives targeted to the children and young people who are falling behind. Thanks to the data-rich environment that our Government has championed including national standards we know more precisely what needs to be done where and with whom—schools and parents. The initiatives include $5 million to Building on Success which uses the most effective elements to help secondary school Māori students; $1 million to boost Pasifika success in National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA); $3 million to support new entrants develop literacy and numeracy skills; $3 million to partner with 100 schools to increase NCEA level 2 achievement; and $1.75 million to support teen parents in mainstream schools.Colin King: What does the Minister expect to achieve with this investment?Hon HEKIA PARATA: I expect better outcomes for more kids. I expect better support for the teachers in schools that make this happen and I expect more parentswhānau and aiga to participate in their children’s learning and to support their schools to be successful.Tracey Martin: Kia ora Mr Speaker. What data-rich—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: It is not the member’s fault at all. The microphone was not on when she started. Would she like to start again.Tracey Martin: What data-rich reports if any has she seen that convinced her that to reallocate funds to the untested Building on Success programme was a better investment than the TeKotahitanga programme which has now been cut?Hon HEKIA PARATA: We convened the designers of TeKotahitanga as well as HeKākano as well asStarpath as well as Gateway because we are constantly focusingon how we improve. TeKotahitanga was to have closed at the end of last year. It has helped nearly 49 schools over the 12 years it has been in place. It has been successful for some but not for all. We want it to be successful for all. So working with its designers we have taken the best elements and we are now looking at a targeted but differentiated approach and we expect 100 schools to be involved in this programme each year.Tracey Martin: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I seek your clarification. Was the answer that no reports had been seen by the Minister?Mr SPEAKER: Order! That is not a point of order at all. If the member wants to further debate it she has the opportunity—if she does not today she has another opportunity perhaps later in the week.Regional Economies—Development Investment and PerformanceHon SHANE JONES (Labour): Thank you—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order!Hon SHANE JONES: That is enough Gerry. This is the humpty notdumpty.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! It would be somewhat unusual if the Leader of the House was the one who was ejected from the House today.5.Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) to theMinister for Economic Development: Does he stand by his statement “The New Zealand economy is of course the sum of its regional economies and that is why the Government is placing huge emphasis on assisting each region”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister for Economic Development): I thank contender No. 2 for his question and welcome him to the contest.Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! My patience will run out very quickly with National members unless they simply answer the question that they have been asked.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Yes I do. In the 19 or so months I have spent as Minister for Economic Development I have travelled around and to nearly every region in New Zealand many of them twice three or more times. Everywhere I go I meet talented hard-working business people entrepreneurs and their staff who are investing competing in and growing jobs to the benefit of families right across New Zealand.Hon Shane Jones: How does further concentration of Government services out of the provinces and into main centres like Wellington actually help the regions?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well actually I disagree that that is occurring. In fact a member just to his left is probably complaining about not enough public servant jobs in Wellington.Hon Shane Jones: Why does he think it is right to prefer the wealthy property-owning gentry in Auckland while so many in the regions and South Auckland are suffering?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I appreciate the member has some concerns obviously on that matter and he probably thinks some suburbs like Herne Bay get a greater than their fair share of attention but actually we are focused right across the country.Hon Shane Jones: Was it his objective to cause decline and stagnation in the regions or was it just his incompetence?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Dear oh dear. The member obviously has not done his work. Many of the regions have been growing very strongly for example Taranaki where the member I think made a fleeting visit not so long ago in favour of oil and gas. Of course he is not brave enough to say it anywhere else. Also of course Southland has done well Canterbury has been doing very well in fact the whole South Island hasbeen doing well and Waikato is doing well. So actually the regions are leading the recovery in New Zealand.Andrew Williams: Does he believe that there are significant benefits for regional economies stemming from the mining extraction and petroleum industries and that the benefits from these industries should be shared with the region in which that activity is based?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well firstly of course I do see that and along with any number of industries. Actually they are shared with those regions. If you take Taranaki for example it has the highest level of average income in New Zealand bar no region and when you deduct its housing costs it is the most affluent region for New Zealanders because of its oil and gas alongside its other industries. My view is that we should encourage these industries right across New Zealand so that we can see investment for growth and jobs—Dr David Clark: Where are the jobs?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Be quiet parrot.Hon Shane Jones: What progress has the Minister’s five-member advisory group to assist in the implementation of the recently adopted Māori economic development strategy and action plan He Kai KeiAkuRinga—The Crown-Māori Economic Growth Partnership made or is it simply another failed talkfest like the Minister’s fabled regulatory impact analysis report?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well the member may be pleased to know that that panel has been meeting and advising Ministers and the agencies in terms of economic development. There is a lot of work going on in that area—Hon Shane Jones: Too much hui nodoey.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well listen Shane you might learn something because plainly you do not know anything from the questions that you have asked today. So fundamentally the reality of it is that we are focused on a whole range of things: improving the productivity of Māori land improving the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act working with aquaculture working in the fishing industry with Māori and of course in science so right across the Māori economy. I should add education and skills as well. Again if the member would like to know something about it he could possibly drop me line and I will take him through it.Andrew Williams: Does he agree that New Zealand First’s royalties for regions policy which would see 25 percent of royalties collected by the Government from our mining extraction and petroleum industries staying in the regions where these industries are located would be positive for regional economic development; if not why not?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Actually what occurs is that in fact the whole range of Government investment goes into individual regions and in fact again Taranaki benefits from that but also so do all the other regions. If you look across Government expenditure in each individual region actually everybody gets a pretty fair shake of it. I do not think that just a gimmick where you would take 25 percent of the royalties and put it into a particular area would make any difference. The main thing is to encourage the growth in jobs. Again I would point to the member and encourage him and say yep I agree with him—get out and encourage those opportunities because it is quite obvious that the Labour Party and the Greens will not.Andrew Williams: Is he aware that under New Zealand First’s 25 percent royalties for regions policy $96 million of the $383 million of royalties collected in the year 2011 by the Government would have remained in the regions and would have helped regenerate regional New Zealand by both expanding job opportunities and supporting local infrastructure?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member obviously did not listen to the last answer which was that we actually do invest in every region according to the sorts of things that they need in those regions. So if you take for example a region like Taranaki which is one of the ones that the member talks about in terms of oil and gas investing hugely—Andrew Williams: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Sorry the question was was he aware that $96 million would have stayed—Mr SPEAKER: Yes I am certainly aware of—[Interruption] Order! I am aware of the question and I am aware that the Minister is aware of the question. He was attempting to answer it. If the member does not want the answer any more we will move on to the next question.Fishing Recreational—Economic Impact6.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent) to theMinister for Primary Industries: What is the best estimate he or his Ministry have if any of the economic value of recreational fishing including direct and indirect employment?Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): The value of recreational fishing in New Zealand’s top five recreational species—snapper rock lobster kingfish kahawai and blue cod—is $342 million. Of course there are 638 fish stocks throughout New Zealand and it would be almost impossible to calculate the total value of these or the total jobs created by the recreational sector.Brendan Horan: As he has withheld this information during the consultation period and admitted that he has not consulted with iwi and he has no idea whom his officials have consulted how does he expect the New Zealand public to have any faith that he will come to a fair transparent informed and considered decision?Hon NATHAN GUY: I am aware that my officials have consulted with iwi.Brendan Horan: Does he agree with the statement that nearly a third of us have gone fishing or have gathered shellfish in the last 12 months and that recreational fishers go fishing an average of nine times a year as said by his predecessor the Hon Phil Heatley in a speech to the New Zealand Recreational Fishing Council?Hon NATHAN GUY: I do agree that recreational fishing is hugely important to New Zealanders.Brendan Horan: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! I apologise. I have a point of order and it will be heard in silence.Brendan Horan: My question was quite specific in asking whether he agreed that nearly a third of New Zealanders—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister very adequately addressed that question.Ministers—ConfidenceHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Mr Speaker—[Interruption] Give them a vote Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: It is not within my powers to give them a vote Mr Cunliffe.7.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) to thePrime Minister: Does he have confidence in all his Ministers?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes about as much confidence as he had in his portrait artist.Hon David Cunliffe: Good start Prime Minister. Why does he have confidence in his Minister for Primary Industries who failed to consult either Cabinet or him before proposing snapper quota changes and what will be the consequences for that Minister for breaching theCabinet Manual?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Far be it from me to give advice but the last leader of the Labour Party who spoke about snapper was holding them up and he has gone as well so—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Just address the question.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Oh OK no problems—just offering some free consultancy services to the interested parties.Mr SPEAKER: I am not interested in the free consultancy services though I thank the Prime Minister. Would he now address the question.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: TheCabinet Manual as Helen Clark once famously said is a guide.Hon David Cunliffe: Why does he have confidence in his Minister of Labour’s plans for unfair workplace laws which even Treasury warns would lead to lower wages when 44 percent of New Zealanders have not had a pay rise in the last year anyway?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Good question given the unions have such a big vote. Nice—Mr SPEAKER: Order! Now address the question.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Oh this is just too much fun. I have forgotten the question—something to do with labour. We do promote safe workplaces and that is why the Minister is actually guiding a new health and safety workplace bill through Parliament.Hon David Cunliffe: To continue the comedy feel why does the Prime Minister have confidence in his Minister of Justice Judith Collins when she said that the Henry inquiry was “chilling” and treated the privacy of Ministers in a contemptuous way directly contradicting his statement that anyone who objected to the inquiry’s “basic” intrusions “wouldn’t make it as a Minister”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: She was clearly offering a view and as I said at the time she is entitled to a view. But in the end I put out the terms of reference. Every Minister was able to object to those if they wanted to. None of them did.Hon David Cunliffe: Does he have confidence in any Minister who does not keep his word to the New Zealand public—for example that he would not raise GST before taking office and then raising it after or describing Working for Families as “communism by stealth” and then retaining it?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well having an effective marginal tax rate of 100 percent actually is communism by stealth and that is why this Government actually sold—Hon Annette King: What have you done about it?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well actually funnily enough—interestingly enough I am glad you asked that question; it is the most sensible question I have had all day. What this Government did was lower the effective marginal tax rates. In fact if you want to discourage people from being in the labour markets the very biggest thing you can do is keep raising taxes and raising those effective rates. When you lose 100 percent of every extra dollar you earn why on earth would people bother trying to earn more money?Pay Equity—Employment Court Case8.JAN LOGIE (Green) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.Jan Logie: How can he stand by his statement that equal pay for aged-care workers is “one of those things we’d love to do if we had more cash” when the Employment Court ruling in the case of Kristine Bartlett now means that the Government’s reliance on paying women poorly to subsidise aged care may no longer be a matter of just love but a matter of law?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not familiar with the particular case if the member is talking about the one that is now before the courts. But what I can say is that I stand by the original statement. It is something we would like to do if we had more money.Jan Logie: What preparations is the Government making to respond to equal pay claims based on the 1972 Equal Pay Act following the Employment Court’s decision?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The matter is before the courts.Jan Logie: Who does he think should bear the $140 million a year cost to settle these claims—some of the lowest-paid women workers in the country as at present; the elderly; or the Government?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It is not possible for the earlier two to actually settle that particular case.Crime Prevention—Drivers of Crime Programme9.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) to theMinister of Justice: What recent reports has she received on progress with the Drivers of Crime programme?Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): Last week the Minister of Māori Affairs and I released a report showing that this Government is making real progress on addressing the underlying causes of crime. The Drivers of Crime programme was launched in December 2009 to coordinate efforts across agencies to address complex longstanding problems with an emphasis on reducing Māori offending and victimisation. The latest reports show that offending rates for Māori youth between 2008 and 2012 are down 32 percent. This is an outstanding result and shows this Government’s commitment to reducing crime and improving support for victims.Scott Simpson: What are some of the key Drivers of Crime results?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: We have launched two alcohol and other drug treatment courts in the Auckland region with a Government investment of $10 million. Preventable hospitalisations for Māori and Pasifika children under 5 from the most deprived areas are down 22 percent and 17 percent respectively. More Māori children from the poorest neighbourhoods are now attending early childhood education and significantly more Māori and Pasifika children are achieving at least National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 compared with 2005 rates. The Incredible Years and Triple P foster parenting programmes have both been expanded through health and education and additional funding provided for restorative justice services. These are all key initiatives that are producing positive results in the fight against crime.Housing Affordable—First-home Buyers Mortgages and Reserve Bank Intervention10.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to theMinister of Finance: Does he agree with the Prime Minister that “first-home buyers are a priority for the Government”; if so why are houses more unaffordable for young New Zealanders now than six months ago?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Yes I agree with the Prime Minister’s statement. That is why the Government announced some changes to the KiwiSaver first-home deposit subsidy and Welcome Home Loans to ensure that within the restrictions imposed by the Reserve Bank first-home buyers can get their foot in the door. Secondly we are working hard to ensure that there will be more houses built more quickly so that pressure will come off the housing market and so that first-home buyers like any other New Zealander who wants to buy a house will be dealing with a more affordable market. We look forward to the Opposition supporting the Government’s legislation on that.Hon David Parker: Why after he said that restrictions on high loan-to-value lending would avoid interest rate rises have two major banks ANZ and BNZ already increased fixed interest rates for most home buyers while ASB has begun offering a lower discriminatory rate for borrowers with deposits larger than 20 percent?Hon BILL ENGLISH: You would need to ask the banks about their interest rate policies. The Government has simply repeated the argument that has been made by the Governor of the Reserve Bank that these restrictions may enable some delay until he raises interest rates.Hon David Parker: Is he aware that ANZ is now saying “One outcome of [loan-to-value ratio changes] will be more rigorous application of low equity premiums” or in other words interest rate increases for first-home buyers with deposits under 20 percent; if so who is correct ANZ or the Minister in his earlier comments?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I do not think there was anything unpredictable about the fact that banks are adopting policies that are more discriminating about which interest rates they charge to which customers. That was part of the consultation the Reserve Bank went through with its loan-to-value ratios and we will get to see whether the loan-to-value ratio restrictions have some impact on the market or not. The Government though is focusing on its policy which is to improve the flexible supply of housing particularly in Auckland and Christchurch. In respect of Auckland there is an accord between the Government and the Auckland Council. There is legislation coming through the House which I hope the Opposition will support. The Auckland Plan should become operative in the next few months and that will provide the opportunity for a more significant expansion of the supply of houses in Auckland.Hon David Parker: When he said that the steps his Government is taking are good for first-home buyers did he realise that those steps would lead to almost 80 percent of the first-home buyers with deposits under 20 percent now seeing their homeownership dreams being crushed?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No I disagree with that. Again the Opposition is aiming to undermine if not remove the independence of the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank has powers under the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. It has exercised those powers in respect of the restrictions on high loan-to-value loans which the Opposition used to be in favour of—in fact it said that we were old-fashioned because it was not happening. Now it is. Of course the Government is focusing on increasing the supply of homes to the market. We are still dealing with the legacy of having a booming housing market under the previous Government when it did nothing about supply.Hon David Parker: Why is his Government so determined to protect the advantages of property investors and speculators over everyday New Zealanders who are being left unable to buy even one home?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I completely disagree with that statement. The Government has over 2 or 3 years brought together a range of policies that will increase the supply of houses to the market. That will I am sure upset the plans of speculators and investors who are relying on restricted supply and fast-rising prices and over the next 6 to 12 months we will get to see what difference that will make. But certainly an increase in the supply of housing will make a bigger difference than will the Reserve Bank restrictions on low-deposit loans.Health Targets—Preventative Care and Elective Surgery11.CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National) to theMinister of Health: What reports has he received on the latest national health target results?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): The latest quarterly results for 2012-13 show more good news across the three national preventative health targets. Recordnumbers of New Zealanders have been assessed for heart disease and diabetes in the last 5 years and have received advice on how they can make changes to their lifestyle. More people are getting help to quit smoking. In the last year around 411000 smokers were offered free help and advice to quit from hospital and general practice nurses or doctors—an internationally recognised health prevention measure—and more parents are immunising their babies. Ninety percent of 8-month-olds are now fully vaccinated which is protecting them from childhood diseases like whooping cough and measles.Claudette Hauiti: What other progress with national health targets can the Minister report?Hon TONY RYALL: We are making really good progress with elective surgery which relieves pain and restores lifestyle to people with more than 158000 discharges provided against the target of 148000. All patients who were ready for treatment received their radiotherapy and chemo within 4 weeks of the decision to treat. As the member knows national health targets are a balance of improving access and better prevention and we are seeing more high-priority front-line services being delivered as a result of an increase of an average of $500 million a year going into health over the last 5 financial years.Canterbury Recovery—Offer on Red Zone PropertiesHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): My question is to the Prime Minister and asks: does he stand by all his statements?Mr SPEAKER: The right honourable Prime Minister. [Interruption] Order! I am going to ask the Hon Ruth Dyson to repeat that question.12.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes and apologies. When you are rudderless over there question time finishes so early.Hon Ruth Dyson: Does he stand by his statement to Cantabrians who think the Government’s offer of 50 percent of rateable value for red zone commercial property and bare land is unfair that “One option is the Government says ‘thanks very much. It’s been a lot of fun. If you don’t want to take the offer that’s where it’s at’.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: An option is that the Government says it has put its best offer on the table yes but the matter is before the courts on appeal.Hon Ruth Dyson: How is it fun or fair that red zone property owners with a partly constructed home are being offered the 100 percent rateable value Government offer while those who have not begun their construction are being offered 50 percent yet neither have land insurance; how is that fun or fair?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: The question is whether it is fair and the Government’s view is that these are properties that do not have insurance.Hon Ruth Dyson: Does he stand by his statement that the red zone offer an offer described by JusticePanckhurst in the Christchurch High Court yesterday as being “not made according to law” is generous and fair; if so how can he explain that losing half the value of your land is generous and fair?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Under the circumstances and considering precedent yes those are properties that do not have insurance and for some of those people it will be above what they have paid for it.Hon Ruth Dyson: Did he rethink any of his statements when the Valuer-General stated publicly that there had been no formal analysis of the value of bare land in Canterbury contradicting the written word of Minister Gerry Brownlee who said in the Cabinet paper on this issue that the Valuer-General had said that the land was worth only 10 percent of the rateable value?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am advised that that position was offered by officials. But what I can say is that in the end yes everyone accepts that this is a very challenging and difficult set of circumstances but there is a situation where these properties are uninsured. There are many New Zealanders who lose 100 percent of everything they have through no fault of their own because they do not have insurance. That is why the Government is taking the extraordinary step of offering them 50 percent.Hon Ruth Dyson: Has the Government lodged an appeal against the decision of Justice GrahamPanckhurst announced yesterday?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Not yet but the Government is intending to do so.Chris Hipkins: Does he stand by all of his statements in relation to the Henry inquiry; if so can he confirm that neither he nor anyone in his office indicated that the head of the Parliamentary Service Geoff Thorn should consider resigning?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I stand by my statements and the matter is before the Privileges Committee.Urgent Debates DeclinedCanterbury Recovery—Offer on Red Zone PropertiesMr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Ruth Dyson seeking to debate the recent decision of the High Court on the Government’s offer to buy red zone land from owners as it applied to vacant land and uninsured properties in Canterbury. For there to be an urgent debate there must be administrative or ministerial responsibility for a case of recent occurrence. The member in her application cites the judgment of the High Court issued on 26 August as the particular case of recent occurrence. An urgent debate is a way of holding the Government accountable for an action for which it is responsible. There must be a distinct governmental responsibility for the particular case that is sought for debate. A decision of the High Court is not a matter for which any Minister has responsibility. The application is therefore declined.UrgencyHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): Mr Speaker—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order!Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I do apologise and I appreciate the barbs across the House. But let me tell you that if I were Shane Jones I would not be self-styling myself as “Humpty”.I moveThat urgency be accorded the Committee stage and third reading of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill the Resource Management Reform Bill the Bail Amendment Bill the Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Bill the Patents Bill the Financial Markets Conduct Bill and any bills into which they may be divided; the first reading and referral to a select committee of the Student Loan Scheme Amendment Bill (No 3) the Land Transport and Road User Charges Legislation Amendment Bill the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Bill the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill the Social Security (Fraud Measures and Debt Recovery) Amendment Bill; and the second reading of the Heritage New ZealandPouhere Taonga Bill and the Victims of Crime Reform Bill.All of these bills are currently on the Order Paper and they are bills that have got a certain amount of time on them. As I have explained many times to the House before time in the legislative environment is relatively short. The House sits for only 17 hours a week. By the time you take out a general debate and question time it comes down to around about 13 hours a week which does not give us a lot of time to consider legislation. From time to time it will be necessary to take urgency to advance thingsand as the shadow Leader of the House pointed out last week there are a number of select committees that could do with having some more work to get their teeth into. So this is an attempt to move the House forward in a very positive way with bills making progress and work being sent to the select committees.A party vote was called for on the questionThat urgency be accorded.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment BillIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act 2010Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Thank you for the call on Part 1 of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill. I have one question for the Minister of Finance and that is to ascertain whether when assessing whether these regulations were necessary consideration was given to the trade-off between greater satisfaction with prudential margins and the cost of insurance. That is an issue that I raised in an earlier contribution and I have not yet had a reply from the Minister.Part 1 agreed to.Part 2agreed to.Clause 1agreed to.Clause 2agreed to.The Committee divided the bill into the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Billpursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 333.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment BillReserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment BillThird ReadingsHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: I moveThat the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This is legislation that essentially looks at the prudential arrangements for insurers in New Zealand. The Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act of 2010 established a licensing and prudential supervision regime for insurers carrying on insurance business in New Zealand. It replaced existing outdated and disjointed insurance legislation and aligned New Zealand with international regulatory benchmarks and expectations. This bill represents a significant step forward in terms of delivering comprehensive prudential regulation of insurers carrying on that business in New Zealand. Although the 2010 Acthas proven to be generally effective and robust it is not unexpected that some of the provisions that have been identified as appropriate for reform are considered in this bill.The Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill contain a small number of amendments to the 2010 Act and one consequential amendment to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989. The amendments were identified by the Reserve Bank when reviewing the operation of the Act during the transition period towards full licensing which expires at the end of September 2013. That is a short time away and one of the reasons why we need to get the bills through for Royal assent as quickly as possible. The bills aim to reduce or eliminate unnecessary compliance costs and address technical issues identified during the provisional licensing to ensure a smooth transition to full licensing of insurers. This review has been a useful post-implementation exercise and the Reserve Bank aims to complete a wider policy review in 5 years. The bills allow for a provisional licence to remain in force at the discretion of the Reserve Bank if particular circumstances apply to an insurer. The provisional licence may remain in force until the Reserve Bank is satisfied that it should be cancelled.The bills also allow for overseas insurers to be permitted on application to and approval by the Reserve Bank to provide half-yearly financial reporting based on the home country regulatory reporting requirements. These are important matters as New Zealand I am sure would benefit from more insurers in our local market to augment the large players that currently have such big chunks of our market.Two other proposals are expected to reduce or eliminate unnecessary compliance costs. The first of these allows the Reserve Bank to accept an insurer that is running off its liabilities from the requirement to have a current financial strength rating. I think you would find that Southern Response in Canterbury fits into that category. The second clarifies that in respect of contracts of insurance that renew more frequently than annually disclosure in writing on the insurer’s financial strength rating to the policy holder may be made on at least an annual basis rather than at every renewal.The amendment bill also takes the opportunity to address technical issues—for example providing a limitation period of 5 years within which the Reserve Bank may file a charging document against an insurer that has committed an offence to ensure consistency across both bills. The amendment bill also empowers the Reserve Bank to publish and maintain on its website an official register of licensed insurers with additional content to be determined by regulators. This will result in consequential amendments to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989. I commend the bills for their third readings.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): The Labour Party supports the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill. The Minister who has just resumed his seat Mr Brownlee is quite right in saying that the Finance and Expenditure Committee thought it was important that provisional licences can be kept for a longer period of time than was originally envisaged the reason being that if a company gains a provisional licence but cannot convert it into a long-term non-provisional licence because for example of insolvency then it is desirable that there still be a level of oversight by the Reserve Bank that can occur under a provisional licence that could not occur if the insurer was unlicensed. So this helps the Reserve Bank and the Government through the Reserve Bank to maintain oversight of insurers in that situation.There is an important outstanding issue in respect of the prudential supervision of insurance companies that is not touched upon by this legislation and it is a difficult issue for New Zealand to grapple with. Before I sit down I want to just mention the complexities around that issue and that is whether the prudential standard upon whichinsurance companies are judged is their ability to meet either a one-in-500-year event or a one-in-1000-year event. Of course if the requirement is for them to have a strong enough capital position to meet a one-in-1000-year event it effectively means that they have to have a stronger balance sheet. At first blush you can understand why the Reserve Bank might want companies to have a stronger balance sheet in order to meet a one-in-1000-year event. My understanding is that the Alpine Fault ruptures approximately every 800 years and that would probably be the biggest insurance event that it is possible to contemplate in New Zealand. That is one of the reasons why the Reserve Bank is looking at the—Hon Trevor Mallard: What about the Wellington one?Hon DAVID PARKER: Well the Wellington one would probably go out in sympathy. You know what Wellington is like! The consequences of that would be dire for New Zealand but that is a different question. Whether we should move the prudential requirement to a one-in-1000-year event rather than a one-in-500-year event is not the only part of this question because there are some consequences of that. This has been passed on to me by a number of participants in the insurance industry and I do not believe that they are talking from a position of self-interest. Indeed I think that they have New Zealand’s interests at heart in respect of this issue because they can live with either eventuality.The first consequence is that if there is higher capital requirement for an insurer it may be that that capital is not available to them. The multinationals that are present in New Zealand compete for capital amongst different parts of the world so it may well be that they just cannot get the additional capital to put into their New Zealand operation and their parent company chooses on balance given our risks in respect of earthquakes and the like to withdraw from the New Zealand market rather than bring forward that additional capital to their New Zealand subsidiary. That would mean that we have less competition in insurance in New Zealand and we become more reliant on the remaining insurers which in itself increases risk in the event of a very big earthquake.The second issue is that even if they could get that additional capital in New Zealand to meet a higher prudential ratio to cover a one-in-1000-year event rather than a one-in-500-year event the cost of that increased capital would be passed on to the people who buy insurance or buy premiums from those companies. In other words people’s insurance bills would go up. If people’s insurance bills go up then some of those people who would otherwise have taken insurance will not take insurance or will take lower levels of cover. So in terms of the effect on New Zealand’s insurance cover it could be—I am not saying it would be but this requires careful analysis—that increasing the capital requirements could actually result in lower levels of insurance in New Zealand. So it could be counter-productive if what we are trying to do is minimise the risk of consequences in New Zealand if there is a really bad earthquake. If we have fewer people insured against different sorts of risk—and it is not just their household cover or their contents cover but things like business interruption insurance; all those other sorts of cover would be affected by these same capital ratios—and we have insurance costs going up then we could actually have the opposite outcome from that which we intend even though the Reserve Bank might be thinking that it is improving from its perspective the financial stability of the insurance companies. Overall New Zealand might be worse off because we have lower levels of insurance.The third area where this is relevant concerns the effect on competition with the multinationals. Over the last two or three decades we have seen a concentration of ownership by overseas multinationals of New Zealand’s insurance market. This is also something that has happened in other parts of the financial services sector like the banking industry. As a consequence of amongst other things monetary policy settingsand tax settings New Zealand has been hollowed out when it comes to ownership of our financial services sector. The ability of small New Zealand companies to start up and grow into companies that compete with these overseas companies—who of course repatriate profits as any insurance company would do in that situation—could be inhibited by increasing stringency of capital requirements that make it harder for new entrants to enter into the market and compete.None of those issues are dealt with in this legislation arising from the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill but they are coming at us in respect of an issue as a consequence of the Reserve Bank saying that it is considering whether to increase the prudential requirements from 500 to 1000 years. I for one will take some convincing that the issues I have raised are not more important. The Labour Party supports this legislation.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to speak on the third reading of the legislation arising from the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill. National is firmly focused on responsibly managing the Government’s finances and building a more competitive and productive economy and the insurance sector is a very significant part of the economy—a significant cost for households businesses and Government as a whole and those costs have increased significantly in New Zealand as a result of the earthquakes. We cannot do much about that but we can ensure that Government regulation effectively balances the need for supervision of this industry so as to protect policyholders and the community as a whole and the need to do that in a way that does not add unnecessary costs on to the industry. I think that the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act of 2010 did a generally effective and robust job in balancing those requirements but it is not unexpected that some provisions have been identified as appropriate for reform—and indeed that is what the point of this legislation is—and I am glad to see that we have widespread support across the House for this legislation. It does not involve significant changes to the existing policy and it is expected to continue to benefit from industry support.Certain provisions—can I just trespass on the House’s time for a moment—have been identified as being too onerous in the circumstances where policyholders are not expected to gain material benefits or additional protection even if the insurer complies with their requirements. Those elements have been identified and this legislation will allow the Reserve Bank to exempt an insurer that is running off its liabilities from the requirement to have a current financial strength rating.Often there will be limited public benefit for an insurer to hold a financial strength rating where it is required to cease to enter into new contracts of insurance and for contracts of insurance that renew more frequently than annually disclosure in writing of the insurer’s financial strength rating to the policyholder should be made on at least an annual basis rather than on every renewal.Those are the sorts of things that this legislation has been working on and it is all about making sure that the insurance industry which is so important to the health and competitiveness of New Zealand’s economy is maintaining its strength. On that basis I commend this legislation to the House. Thank you.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): I do not intend—as National is—filibustering this legislation arising from the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill. Labour members intend to facilitate its passage rapidly because we do support it. It does make a number of technical changes which we support to the prudential and regulatory framework governing the insurance sector.I just want to simply touch on two points. First I want to reinforce what Mr Parker said in respect of outstanding business in terms of the Reserve Bank contemplating increasing the prudential requirements on the insurance sector from 500 to 1000 years.Mr Parker made a good point: if that translates to increased cost and increased premium then despite the Canterbury earthquake you could have a bizarre situation where yes prudentially the insurance companies’ requirements are increased however it is too tough for people to get insurance or the appropriate level of insurance and pending—God forbid—we have another disaster like Christchurch we are in a situation of underinsurance.The final thing I want to say is this. Though we support this legislation as a Canterbury MP I just want to say this to the insurance industry. It is appropriate that we are protected and ensure that that sector has an appropriate regulatory framework. But I bring this message to that insurance sector from the people of Christchurch and other places. There is an expectation when Kiwis who have paid insurance premiums all our lives collectively—and none of us until the Canterbury earthquakes really thought that we would ever make a call on that insurance unless Johnny throws the cricket ball through the window as it were or in a minor way—and there is a great almost loathing to some extent of that sector and the inability of that sector to pay out appropriately and swiftly and to a high degree of frequency.I accept that the Canterbury earthquakes are an extremely complicated matter. There are a number of strands that have to be resolved but Mr and Mrs Cantabrian sitting in their munted house 3 years after the event—having paid insurance premiums all their lives having the insurer ring them up if they are a day late or a week short or whatever and making damn sure that they pay—expect that insurance companies will pay up in the appropriate time. In the policies of most people if not all people they say words to the effect that insurers should settle in a reasonable period of time.I note that the Prime Minister of Australia when he was first Prime Minister and they had the Queensland floods came over to Christchurch—in fact Labour members met with him. We asked him whether he was having the same difficulty with insurers that we were having in terms of getting them to write cheques so people could get on with their lives. He said in effect yes. We asked him what he did about it and he basically said that he called the insurers into his office read the Riot Act and threatened to regulate them if they did not start paying out. They reached as I understand it some sort of voluntary time frame—John Hayes: Is this a filibuster when you don’t filibuster?Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —I know that this does not affect Mr Hayes—and 12 months later you had new houses being built further up the hill in Queensland outside the flood-prone areas.We today have people longing to get on with their lives. Charitable organisations in Christchurch which cannot move along are now having to spend many of the charitable dollars they ordinarily would not on overheads like rent on buildings because the insurance company week after week and year after year and engineering report after engineering report will not settle—and likewise with individual Cantabrians and others.I just conclude by saying that it is noteworthy that this legislation looks to protect and enhance the regulatory and prudential framework of the insurance sector. But I say to the insurance sector that many in this Parliament and many New Zealanders around the country demand that they do their bit and that when the chips are down and people have paid and they need their lives put back together insurance companies pay out and pay out swiftly.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):Tēnā koe. I rise to speak on the third and last reading of the legislation arising from the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill. The Green Party has not supported these changes and it will not be supporting this amending legislation so I will take just a few minutes to explain why.The Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill makes nine technical changes to the principal legislation which is the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act 2010. That Act established a licensing and prudential supervision regime for insurers operating in New Zealand and the Green Party wholeheartedly supported that Act. There are technical changes proposed in this legislation—I can completely understand the reasons for some of them but for others we had questions that were not adequately answered during the select committee process. Therefore we decided that although we can understand that there is some need to ensure that during the transition period there is a smooth transition from provisional licences and there was a need for this particular amending legislation in order to extend the provisional licensing period we thought it was important to object to the changes on principle. In the wake of the global financial crisis and with the increasing severity and frequency of extreme weather events it is quite clear that all financial services but particularly insurance need to be moving in the direction of greater regulation and Government oversight rather than less.Although we hear a lot of rhetoric from this Government about cutting red tape and making things easier for businesses the fact is that we are not talking about New Zealand businesses. A lot of the particular changes in this legislation—one of which is allowing overseas insurers to use accounting rules that apply in their home country for interim financial reporting rather than adhering to New Zealand accounting practices—are not benefiting New Zealand business and they are not benefiting the New Zealand economy particularly either. We have seen a rationalisation of insurance providers in New Zealand to a few big overseas-owned players and ultimately the Green Party is very concerned about the risk that this poses to New Zealand.I understand that with the increased number of severe weather events around the world and problems like earthquakes here in New Zealand the insurance industry has been under some strain and we lost one of our own larger New Zealand - owned insurers AMI because it was not in as good financial health as it should have been. The problem is that if we do not have strict regulatory oversight then there is an incentive for organisations to cut corners and to cook the books a little bit in order to compete with other larger organisations that also do not have to comply with a strict regulatory regime.In other words if the Government is not there to set the rules of the game and to enforce those rules and make sure that organisations are doing what they are supposed to be doing then there is necessarily a race to the bottom because competitive pressures will result in organisations cutting corners and stretching the truth. We have seen so much of that in the past few years not just in the insurance industry but in the financial sector. There were how many dozen? I think it was something like 70 finance companies that went under.This is not a case for less regulation. What this has demonstrated to us is that these sorts of sectors financial services sectors actually need more strict Government oversight. I do not understand how these particular changes are going to facilitate and make it easier for New Zealand companies to start up and provide insurance here in New Zealand and provide greater choice to people in the market.In the past few years even with the large number of payouts and disastrous events that insurance companies have had to pay for we have actually seen record profits. Insurance companies have been making record profits.John Hayes: Good. They pay record tax.JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well yeah. The question is why should we be reducing compliance costs which are actually a necessary part of regulatory oversight at a time when it is actually New Zealand households and businesses that are going to be vulnerable if the Government does not do its job of being the watchdog in this sector?The Green Party will not be supporting the changes because we believe that there is an important role for Government to play in ensuring that the economy runs in an efficient way. The best way it can do that is actually by greater regulatory oversight of financial services and particularly of the insurance industry as that is an industry that has been dominated by a few big overseas players and it is essentially too big to fail. Thank you.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the legislation arising from the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill. It is well worthwhile legislation for the House to be debating. Labour is supporting the legislation. Labour believes however that it does not really grapple with the fundamental problems of the insurance market and the insurance industry. It does provide welcome oversight by the Reserve Bank in a way that we think is in keeping with international best practice.It was not many days ago that Wellingtonians experienced an earthquake of the sort of magnitude that causes people to really reflect upon their lives and the way they normally go about things. It was over 6 in magnitude. Fortunately there were no real injuries and no loss of life and there was only relatively minor property damage on this occasion. But we all understand that this House sits on New Zealand’s equivalent of the San Andreas fault the Wellington fault and the cascade of many thousands of small medium and large earthquakes northwards from the Canterbury fault lines that underpinned the devastating Christchurch quakes has raised in the minds of many New Zealanders the degree to which Wellington’s region like Marlborough is at risk of a catastrophic quake in the near future.According to GNS the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences the probability of a quake within the Wellington region 2 weeks ago after the last magnitude 6-plus was put at 21 percent over the following week. That was a one-in-five chance of another earthquake of magnitude 6-plus. It might have been 6 it might have been 7 or it might have been—God help us—an 8. The key point is that with a 21 percent chance in 1 week and a 51 percent chance in 1 year one of two things is going to happen. Either we are going to get a devastating earthquake in central New Zealand and we are going to exceed the ability of the Earthquake Commission and reinsurance arrangements to cope or the mere probability of being rated at that level will strain the reinsurance market even if no quake occurs because insurance is priced based on risk.What are the consequences for New Zealand? Although this legislation deals with ensuring the transparency and probity of the operations of the insurance market—and we welcome that as far as it goes—it does not tackle the two key underlying problems: firstly that the Earthquake Commission’s reserves have been naturally enough significantly run down from coping with the Canterbury earthquakes and we need to rebuild those reserves as quickly as possible in case we get another quake; and secondly that the fundamental problems in the insurance market and the escalating seismic risk around New Zealand mean that we could be in the position where there is a fundamental breakdown of the insurance market itself because insurance becomes priced out of the reach of normal commerce.What will the Key Government do? The answer is that in the face of this historic challenge it is tinkering with this legislation.John Hayes: What a lot of nonsense.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: There is nothing in this legislation that addresses those fundamental problems nothing in this legislation that provides support for the reinsurance market nothing in this legislation—John Hayes is doing exercise. What a wonderful spectacle. I encourage it. You may end up with a body like Mr Goldsmith’s there very soon. And it is lovely to have Maggie Barry with us sitting behind the lovelyJudith Collins garbed as she was today fromPlantorama. It is just likeMaggie’s Garden Show is back with us again. But enough mirth—enough mirth.It is really important for New Zealand that if we get the big one we can pay to rebuild it and we will not get an insurance market that works off the basis of this legislation alone. [Interruption] You can always tell a Government that is in decline because the backbenchers are getting restless. They spend their mornings counting heads between Steven Joyce and Judith Collins knowing that the end is nigh for John Key. Either it is coming in 15 months’ time with a rejuvenated Labour Government or he is going to step down just after. Those rowdy underutilised frustrated venomous backbenchers over there know that they are going to miss out on ministerial office. That is why they are all gathered around Mr Bridges. He is their only touch with greatness and that is a pretty fading dream. Back to the callisthenics from Mr Hayes—Hon Member: Maybe you should go back to your seat.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: And there we are. The parliamentary pantomime trundles on. But in the meantime the problems in the insurance market unfortunately are very real. I am very concerned and our party is very concerned that if there is not a more fundamental set of examinations of the insurance market New Zealand will be caught unable to deal with the big one in Wellington or with the risks that that potential creates in the market.I would ask the Government at what point it will lift its gaze above the tinkering that is going on in this legislation to address those questions by for example setting up another State insurer which could act to provoke competition in the market and keep the international reinsurers honest. Where is the courage from this National Government? Where is the foresight? Where is the looking over the horizon from the Government that would allow it to stand up for what New Zealand really needs? The answer is that there is not any. There has not been any since we faced the great challenges of the Christchurch earthquake and the global financial crisis. The Government has just to use its own words muddled through. New Zealanders are despairing. You can see the hope fading in their eyes and many thousands heading to the departure gates because they expected recovery. What did they get? Stagnation. Unemployment is stubbornly high. There is nothing in this legislation to address unemployment. Unemployment is well above the projections of the Government’s own Budgets from the last 3 years—not surprisingly because it has done nothing active to get it down.Government members are sitting there on their cushy seats in their ministerial LTDs climbing the greasy pole of ambition like Mr Bridges waiting for the market to deliver nirvana for someone more than their own mates. That is not going to work. Meanwhile the insurance market is failing all around. The best that this Government can serve up is tinkering reform extending the micro-regulatory powers of the Reserve Bank and ignoring the elephant in the room which is the fundamental escalation of risk and the inability of the reinsurance market to deal with it within a price range that will work for New Zealanders. It is yet another example of a Government that has lost its way lost its touch and is on the way to the departure gate. Thank you.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): It is with pleasure that I rise to talk at the third reading of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill. This is legislation that is another significant step in achieving clear robust regulatory arrangements across our financial sector. In keeping with much of the other fine legislation that this John Key - led Government has passed it is specialising in cutting red tape and also cutting compliance costs. As we have heard Labour supports this legislation. At the Finance and Expenditure Committee it went through very well. There were a couple of submissions.We had four submissions and we heard from two submitters who recommended a change to the provision of interim financial information requirements—all very straightforward really. I agree with and in fact share David Parker’s approval of the transition process and that the Reserve Bank give oversight to all insurers and that they be licensed and supervised by the bank. They also have to comply with prudential requirements because the Reserve Bank will be both the regulator and the supervisor. I think that will give great peace of mind really to people in New Zealand who are worried about their insurance issues.I would have to say that the member who just resumed his seat the Hon David Cunliffe—who generally takes dullness and smugness to a ridiculous extreme—is now clearly buoyed up by his prospects and contender No. 2 is proving he is somebody who has a little bit of life in him yet. He talks about risks and consequences. That is something that he knows quite a lot about. I guess that when it comes to seismic upheaval which I suppose was the general weak theme of his discourse then once again it is something he is fairly familiar with as someone who has experienced rather a lot of it in his own party—much of it I feel of his own making. He is of course irretrievably dull and not widely liked by his own caucus but there is probably not enough time in this particular call to go into that in any detail.The Greens of course do not support the bill. There is nothing new there. They do not really support anything that encourages growth jobs mining—any kind of improvement to the economy. They are of course consistent and that is not a bad thing really because at least you know where you are with them although I think their hopes of getting any kind of financial responsibilities under Labour if ever it attains the Treasury benches have diminished somewhat.One of the final things I would say in this call is that the legislation empowers the Reserve Bank to publish and maintain on its website an official register of licensed insurers. That is going to have additional content in it which for the first time will actually make it easy for people to shop around to find out who is good and who is not in much the same way that the Labour Party is doing but with very limited success. Thank you. I commend these bills to the House.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First on the legislation arising from the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill. It is particularly a great pleasure to rise after the MP for North Shore and I am sure that insurance is very much on her mind being a recent new resident of the North Shore this year moving over a few months ago to a cliff-top property at Stanley Point. I hope the member for North Shore has taken appropriate insurance for her cliff-top property now that she has finally moved to the North Shore after nearly 18 months of living south of the bridge.But moving on to this legislation we in New Zealand First believe that it is a fundamental requirement for New Zealand to have profound well-functioning solid robust insurance. It is most important. This has been highlighted in the last 2 or 3 years where we have all had a huge wake-up call in terms of the risk that we face in this country where natural disasters and other disasters of a human kind can wreak havoc on a community and can wreak havoc on a town city or region. As a result it is most important that we take the risk out of that and are properly insured.This is very much technical legislation. If you read the background to it it is very much administrative legislation. It tidies up some loose ends puts some greater controls in place and makes sure that it is overall a more robust insurance sector. At the end of the day it is most important because a modern economy—and we do pride ourselves New Zealand on thinking that we are a modern economy—does depend on having the safeguards of a sound insurance sector. The public must have confidence that the sectoris sound and appropriate prudential supervision of the sector is an important regulatory function that this Parliament must ensure is done to the very highest level.We have scrutinised the legislation and we feel that this is good policy. As we have said in this House many times over the last 2 years New Zealand First will support policy where it is in our opinion good policy and we will oppose any bill where we feel it is bad policy. In this particular case this does beef up the insurance sector we do believe it is good policy and New Zealand First will be supporting it. We certainly hope as a result that the member for North Shore will also ensure that her cliff-top property has good insurance as well.Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): If there are no other speakers then let me just reiterate that the Green Party—for the reasons advanced by Russel Norman Julie Anne Genter and me over the previous readings—will be opposing this legislation the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill. Rather than stretching out time let me just pick up on one point of interest this afternoon that was raised by David Parker and explored by David Cunliffe and that is the issue of extending the risk from 500 years to 1000 years. The suggestion from David Parker is that from the Reserve Bank to the insurance companies this will no doubt increase the incentive of the insurance companies to increase the premiums. That will be passed on to the house owner who will either be unable or unwilling to cover their own insurance or at least will have less insurance so it will prove to be counter-productive.I have a high regard for pretty much everything that David Parker does and explains but I wonder whether in fact he is right on this particular one for the following reason. If the insurance company is told to extend its cover from 500 years to 1000 years what it is essentially doing is simply extending the time period of risk. That essential risk factor does not change. It remains the same over the 1000 years. So if an insurance company is accepting a risk over 1000 years it follows axiomatically that it will be charging premiums over 1000 years—precisely the same period. It is not the case that it will be taking the risk over 1000 years and charging over 500 years. If it were then indeed it would be justification for an increase in premium. But if in fact the time period for cover equates to the time period for insurance premiums then in fact there will be no justification at all for increasing any premiums. Essentially almost in an existential sense it is New Zealand and New Zealanders through households being prepared to determine what level of risk they are prepared to cover. This does not arise admittedly in the context of this legislation but it is alluded to and no doubt as Mr Parker and Mr Cunliffe have intimated it will come up or should for consideration before very long.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill be now read a third time.Ayes106New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes15Green Party 14; Mana 1.Bills read a third time.Resource Management Reform BillIn CommitteeDebate resumed from 31 July.Part 1 Resource Management Act 1991(continued)PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the passage of time we were discussing in the debate on Part 1 of the Resource Management Reform Bill what this National Government is doing on the question of tree protection in Auckland. I want to use the remaining time just to underline the point Labour colleagues have made that National is taking an axe to provisions in the local government law that give councils powers where this is an issue—particularly in Auckland on the North Shore where there is this treasure of a coastal fringe ofpōhutukawa forest and also over in west Auckland and the Waitakere Ranges where David Cunliffe and I represent the interests of west Auckland. West Aucklanders want to see the urban forest protected and retained. There are very good reasons for that.Submitters like the Tree Council and the Environmental Defence Society came along to the Local Government and Environment Committee and pointed out not only the intrinsic amenity value of trees and the beauty that they contribute to people’s lives in neighbourhoods like Titirangi but also that they play an important protective role in very steep country like the Waitakere Ranges which has exceedingly high rainfall. Felling one tree—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Phil Twyford.PHIL TWYFORD: Just getting warmed up thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I can see that Mr Twyford.PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you. Felling one tree in the Waitakere Ranges can have a knock-on effect that can affect adjacent properties because the roots of those trees play a very important anti-erosion role. They keep the land from falling down into the valleys and the gullies because the landscape is quite unstable the rainfall is very high—Hon Trevor Mallard: But it’s a good way of making nice flat football fields.PHIL TWYFORD: It is not Mr Mallard a good way of making football fields. This is a very serious issue for the people of west Auckland who want to see the urban forest and in fact the Waitakere Ranges and the eastern coastal fringepōhutukawa forests protected for future generations.Unfortunately what the National Government is doing with the provisions in Part 1 of the Resource Management Reform Bill is that it is imposing a kind of individual property rights takes all mentality on what people in these parts of Auckland regard as important collective community assets. The urban forest is something that provides enormous amenity and advantages for the whole community. But what National seeks to do with this bill is to take away the powers that councils have had to efficiently and effectively protect the forest by the use of general tree protection rules. It is true that there have been amendments to these provisions that will make it somewhat easier for councils to protect those trees—for example a grove a group a line of trees can be protected—but it still imposes on councils the requirement that they have to list every single section that they want to where there are trees that are to be protected. It was the submission of councils that came before the select committee that this will effectively make it too arduous and too costly to the ratepayer for councils to effectively protect all the trees they want to.After all that is the intent of the National Government on this issue. It does not want the individual rights of property owners and particularly of property developers whomay want to bowl a line ofpōhutukawa trees that may be getting in the way of their cliff top views over on the North Shore where Andrew Williams come from or—Andrew Williams: Maggie Barry comes from there now.PHIL TWYFORD: Maggie Barry comes from there now too? OK. Or they may want to bowl a line of native trees on a section in the Waitakere Ranges which would cause instability and erosion and could have a negative impact on neighbouring properties. So the provisions in this bill are a triumph for the National Party’s narrow property rights perspective over the values that members on this side of the Chamber also support which are the collective and community assets the quality of our communities and particularly the ecological asset that the coastal forest and the urban forest represent which is something that we hold dear and regard as important to safeguard for future generations.This argument has been going on now for the last few years. In fact I remember one of the first debates of the last Parliament in early 2009 when the Hon Nick Smith brought to this House rules that laid waste to general tree protection rules and which to a large extent were subsequently challenged and overturned in the Environment Court. The Environment Court decreed that it was OK for some of the Auckland councils to use general tree protection rules to protect the urban forest and allowed those councils to circumvent Nick Smith’s aspirations. Well this bill really is Amy Adams’ revenge on the Environment Court and is one more attempt to impose triumph for private property rights over those of us who would like to protect the urban forest and the coastal forest for future generations. It is just a shame that such an important part of life in Auckland can be put at risk by such a narrow barren world view that is represented by this bill.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I am speaking to the Committee stage of the Resource Management Reform Bill. Labour will continue to oppose this bill. I do want to mention however Supplementary Order Paper 324 which the Minister for the Environment has put up in recent times and speak to that in particular.The section that my colleague Phil Twyford has just been speaking to is clause 12. It is an amendment to section 76 of the Resource Management Act which applies to district rules. The whole purpose of these rules previously has been to protect trees or groups of trees because of their ecological value and because of not only their ecosystem value but also their ecological amenity and aesthetic value. Some of these trees are in groups or lines or are otherwise collected together across a range of properties. So where it may have been easier to say for example that all of thepōhutukawa trees that line the east coast from the harbour bridge in Auckland through to the top of East Coast Bays could be protected from felling trimming damaging or removal the requirement is now that trees or groups of trees must be identified by a particular address or unit title.In the course of this whole discussion about tree protection—and my colleague referred to the impact as I have before in this debate of trees that are not on one’s property but the removal of which or even the trimming of which may impact on another property—it goes to show that it is not just the trees at one’s own address that have an impact on a house or a property.I do want to acknowledge however as I signalled a moment ago Supplementary Order Paper 324 which the Minister has introduced relatively recently. I acknowledge her efforts at trying to address this concern that we have had and I appreciated the advance notice of the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister gave me. I think it is constructive. Although we may not approve of the bill in total we would rather see the bill if it is to proceed go with this amendment rather than without it. So perversely as it may sound to some we will support this amendment because it does allow the replacement of the words the “group of … trees are described” in clause 12—and this isnew section 76(4B)(c)(i)—and that means that instead of just referring to “the trees are described” it replaces that with “the group of trees is described”. By that I understand it is the Minister’s intention that this is to apply to groups of trees so that they are not so readily destroyed by the ability of individual property owners to move on their own sections and properties. So I appreciate that effort.Similarly in clause 12 new section 76(4D)(a) has again the words “regardless of whether the tree or trees”—or group of trees—“or the allotment or allotments are also identified on a map in the plan;”. This all sounds a little bit technical but it does provide for a modicum more protection in terms of the words on the page for groups of trees and that effort is appreciated.However if I just back up a little bit having spoken about clause 12 which was one of the clauses that received the greatest number of submissions and some of the most vehement advocacy for trees and the benefits that they give us in our communities one of the concerns that was raised in the course of the consideration of that was the additional expense or trouble that councils might have to go to in order to identify trees or groups of trees by lot or address or unit title in order for them to be protected.There are some local authorities and territorial authorities around the country that have not done such an exercise previously. They have used only aerial mapping and have identified clumps of trees and groups of trees simply by aerial identification. It is going to mean for some councils and some local authorities that they are going to have to put additional effort and money and time and resources of all sorts into this exercise. When I checked with the two councils—one city council one district council; both unitary authorities—in the Nelson area where I live and work this was not a problem in particular for Nelson City Council. It already identifies trees for protection by address and that is reflected in some other territorial authorities’ practices but it is not universal around the country. There will be territorial authorities local authorities that will find this cumbersome and expensive.There is one other clause that I wish to speak to at this point and it is clause 11. It is the bit about it amending section 53 of the Resource Management Act. Clause 11 is entitled “Section 53 amended (Changes to or review or revocation of national policy statements)”. New section 53(2) says: “The Minister may without using a process referred to in subsection (1) amend a national policy statement if the amendment is of minor effect or corrects a minor error.” This has some concern attached to it because it means that if the amendment is of minor effect or corrects a minor error the Minister is able to do that without any consultation process which is usually required for the development of a national policy statement about any environmental matter whether it is the quality of water or air quality or whatever else it is that the Minister wishes to make a national policy statement on. She is able to do that without consultation—without a consultative process attaching to it. So we are left to work out whether or not the Minister’s judgment of a minor effect or a minor error is a sufficient safeguard for people in determining a change or review or revocation of a national policy statement.This is a serious matter and it is one of the things that has caused us concern during the course of this resource management bill. It received a few mentions in submissions. Obviously people were very exercised by the protections of trees and not as many of them focused on this but still in all certainly the Environmental Defence Society did issue a paper quite early on in the process that said that it found this ability of the Minister to amend a national policy statement if she considers the amendment to be of minor effect or to correct a minor error to be of some concern and that national policy statements should be subjected to a consultation process both in their development and in any rescinding or revocation or alteration to those. So that was another matter of concern.But I started to say before that I wanted to back up a wee bit and just go through some of the figures that pertain to resource management consents. Those have been catalogued elsewhere and I will come to those again later.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): When we were previously considering the Committee stage of the Resource Management Reform Bill I made a mistake and said that the bill would allow the Minister to call in medium-sized projects and appoint a board of inquiry to consider them. That was incorrect and I apologise to the Committee for the mistake. The bill provides for a 6-month deadline for decisions on medium-sized projects including ones that are notified for public submissions but it does not provide for a call in. But I would like to make some comments on these medium-sized applications and the provisions around direct referral to the Environment Court in clauses 13 14 and 15. The Green Party opposes these provisions as being anti-democratic and likely to reduce public participation. The bill enables applicants for medium-sized projects above a yet-to-be-defined investment threshold to avoid a council-level hearing and refer a matter directly to the Environment Court. It removes the relevant council’s power to decline that request except in “exceptional circumstances” which are not defined.An Environment Court hearing is by its very nature much more formal and prescribed than a council hearing. There are a lot more lawyers there are a lot more people in suits and it is more expensive and this constrains the public right to participate because of that expectation that people will have legal representation. This focus on the value of investment as being the threshold for direct referral to the Environment Court putting the application on a decision-making track that is quite different is putting the economic value of the application ahead of the public’s right to participate and be involved in the decision on whether that application should proceed. It is a very arbitrary threshold for an Act that is supposedly based on effects and it is not a good determinant of the complexity of an application nor of its potential effects. As Greenpeace noted in its submission a project that has higher economic value will often have many more effects and more serious effects than one with a lower value. So potentially you should be encouraging public participation on those more complex projects not restricting it by this direct referral provision. It is definitely eroding the power of councils and local authority decision-making to say that this is mandatory and that they cannot decline consent to a direct referral except in exceptional circumstances.There is also a risk that it will impose significant workload issues on the Environment Court by having more applications go directly to it but we are also concerned about a number of other provisions in this bill that affect and seek to restrict public participation. One of those is in clause 49 which introduces the concept of a person who is directly affected by an effect. It can restrict participation in the Environment Court to parties who are directly affected. Often that has been defined in relation to people who have got a private property interest such as a neighbouring landowner rather than a community organisation representing an aspect of the public interest. So this clause is quite a noxious clause and in our view a very unacceptable restriction on public participation and access to justice.I think what we are seeing here is the Government being quite contemptuous of our international treaty obligations. At the Rio+20 Earth Summit New Zealand and more than 190 other countries adoptedThe future we want outcomes document. That document says in paragraph 43: “We underscore that broad public participation and access to information and judicial and administrative proceedings are essential to the promotion of sustainable development.” That builds on very similar commitments in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development of 1992. The bill is trampling on that because of clauses such as clause 49 but also because of the major push in the billto be quite restrictive around time frames. That is all about providing certainty for applicants but not for the community or the environment that is affected by those applications.The National Government and the big corporates have run a very deliberate campaign of misinformation about the Resource Management Act and about decision making under the Resource Management Act under recent years. We have heard time and time again from Government members talk about the costs uncertainties and delays but they do not talk about the cost to the community or the environment from speedy decision-making. That is because the National Government is focused very much on the short term. It does not understand that if you want a smart economy you need to underpin that with a healthy environment. You need to look out 50 years ahead. You need to recognise the importance of the ecosystem services that nature provides—clean air and clean water—and the need to safeguard those services not just rubber-stamp development like mining and drilling and big developments along the coast which cut across those.So there are major parts of this bill—and the whole thrust of the Government’s changes to the Resource Management Act in this bill and the proposed bill that is to be introduced later this year—where the National Government is sabotaging our economy. It is undercutting and trampling on environmental quality at a time when we should be giving integrity to our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand. Instead the Government is weakening our environmental law rather than strengthening it which would help give integrity to that brand.At the moment this is all about pushing through applications and changing the deadlines. In the Act at present we have time frames for specific parts of the decision-making processes at council level but there is not a set period of time in which a decision should be made when it is made at the council level. There is a very good reason for that. Often applicants will change some of the aspects of their applications in response to the concerns raised by submitters through the whole process but the bill is imposing a 6-month deadline for councils to consider and decide medium-sized applications. That compares with the 9-month deadline for applications going to the board of inquiry. Like Local Government New Zealand we oppose that because we are not convinced that there is a problem with timeliness in the Act. When you have got the Ministry for the Environment’s own survey of local authorities in 2010-11 showing that 95 percent of all applications are processed in accordance with the statutory time frames that 87 percent of the notified applications were processed on time and that more than 99 percent of applications are approved there is not a major problem with timeliness. Certainly the National members pull out anecdotal examples of small applications that may have taken a while but there is no solid policy analysis in the regulatory impact statement to support this restriction on making the decision within that 6-month period.It is not good enough in our view to beat up on councils. When the Waikato Regional Council analysed its data about when the time frames in the Act were exceeded it found that one of the most common reasons was that applicants could consult with interested or affected parties after they had lodged their applications. Again it is because of those submitters raising issues and the applicant responding. So as Local Government New Zealand said the bill is trying to legislate for good practice. This is inevitably difficult and arguably pointless when that practice cannot be validly prescribed in detail because a single practice will not be universally applicable. The deadlines that the bill is implementing are very complex. They will make the Act more difficult to administer rather than simpler which is supposedly what this Government’s agenda is about. By controlling the time frame in this way what the bill is doing ispushing councils to rubber-stamp applications to not consider their effects appropriately to not go and subject those to good scrutiny but instead to just push applications through as if the council were a sausage factory and to actually restrict the ability of communities to engage properly.Under the bill applicants will be able to ask for extensions and for the clock to stop in terms of the processing but a council will have only one opportunity to stop the clock and ask the applicant for further information. Often those requests for further information come in response to submissions from the community and the public where they say that these issues are important to them and that these environmental effects will occur and that the applicant has not considered those properly and has not done an adequate assessment of effects. But having the mandatory 6-month deadline for medium-sized applications and having these restrictions on the council asking for further information is going to lead to applications being rubber-stamped.RAYMOND HUO (Labour): I would like to follow on from my colleague the Hon Maryan Street and my Green colleagues and have a look at clause 13 of the Resource Management Reform Bill which is on investment thresholds. Clause 13 requires consents over an investment threshold to be directly referred to the Environment Court. This level will be set by regulation allowing it to be freely changed by the Minister for the Environment. Based on the submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee basically there are two main concerns: one is a lack of definition as to what constitutes an investment threshold and the second is the regulation-making powers of this so-called “Henry VIII” clause. So there are two main concerns.It is unclear why an investment threshold is chosen rather than other measures such as environmental impact. Currently major projects that are not of national significance can go through a direct referral process and avoid the need for a council hearing. This amendment under the current bill is to circumvent the requirement of a council’s permission.I would like to take this opportunity to thank the officials for their great efforts and for their thorough analysis and advice. A significant number of submitters commented on this particular clause and I should say that they had mixed views about the changes to the direct referral process. Basically of the 57 submitters on direct referral only 22.8 percent were in support and if we are taking into consideration those who gave conditional support that probably amounts to 40.3 percent. But overall 22.8 percent of the submitters were in support and 50.9 percent of the submitters were in opposition.Submissions from local government were generally of the view that the proposed changes were an erosion of locally based decision-making and would reduce the ability of councils to make important decisions for local communities. They considered that the clause went against the philosophy and the principle of the primary Act and was a watering down of the role of councils. They considered that the discretion that councils currently have to decide whether to agree to a request for direct referral should be retained.I would like to cite some submissions to support what I just said and in return to support what the submitters wished to express. Basically as I said there are two general concerns. One is a lack of definition as to what constitutes the financial investment threshold and what constitutes exceptional circumstances. Submitters have felt that without this it was difficult to provide a fair and informed response to the proposed change. For instance Southland Regional Council wanted the parameters of a value of investment and exceptional circumstances defined within the Act and this view was held by other district and regional councils. Some submitters felt that non-monetary factors should be recognised in the threshold. For instance Christchurch City Council felt that the financial value of a proposal should not be the sole determinant of whetheran application is directly referred. There may be other reasons as to why a proposal should not be directly referred such as social and amenity considerations. Wellington City Council opposed the constraint on a council’s power to decline a request. It also questioned why costs should be the overriding factor instead of for example the level of effects number of affected parties or consistency with the district plan. I would like to continue with the Tasman District Council which felt strongly that establishing an investment value is arbitrary and not necessarily a good proxy for complexity or potential contention.Rotorua District Council raised in its submission a very important point and I wish to bring that to the attention of the Committee. Rotorua District Council recommended that the threshold be district specific. The threshold in Auckland for example may be quite different from the threshold in Rotorua. Environment and conservation organisations of“New Zealand Incorporated”considered that the Resource Management Act is an effect-based Act and it is not fair to others or to the future to make the choice of a process contingent on the investment. The Bay of Plenty Regional Council considered that it will require additional work for councils in assessing whether an application meets the threshold or in making a determination around exceptional circumstances. Otago Regional Council submitted that there is already a suitable process in the Act in section 357—the objection process—to refer applications directly to the Environment Court. As such the Otago Regional Council opposes the proposed changes and requested that they be rejected. The committee of the Auckland District Law Society stated that it was not aware of any issue where direct referral requests were being refused unreasonably by local authorities anyway.So basically there are two main concerns: one is a lack of definition as to what constitutes an investment threshold and the second is the so-called “Henry VIII” clause—the regulation-making powers. Thank you.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I moveThat the question be now put.JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I rise to speak on Part 1 of the Resource Management Reform Bill. I am a qualified planner. I am very familiar with the Resource Management Act and I would be the first to admit that there are a whole lot of areas for improvement both in district plans and in our urban planning process. But unfortunately this reform bill put forward by the National Government is another perfect example of its inability to understand or define properly what the problems are and then address them in a coherent intelligent way that is going to deliver a smarter greener environment for New Zealanders to live in and a smarter greener economy that is going to enable us all to look after ourselves in the generations to come.As I said before I would be the first to admit that planners have been a big part of the problem over the past few decades. Unfortunately the biggest problems that they have introduced in district plans are not at all addressed by this legislation. So it is very easy for the Government to go out and say that it is cutting red tape and it is going to make life easier for the average Kiwi but in fact these provisions in this bill do the exact opposite. They are going to increase costs for average Kiwis. They are going to increase rates because they increase the costs for councils. A perfect example of this is the tree protection provision which actually makes it much more difficult and costly for the council to ensure that there is adequate tree protection.We have major issues with stormwater in our towns and cities in New Zealand because we get a lot of rain. I am not sure whether there are any people on the National side who have ever looked at stormwater management or who have any understanding but as soon as you start cutting down trees you massively increase the amount of stormwater run-off which then has to go through our stormwater system which is paid for by ratepayers or it just flushes out to sea. So if we have individual landownerslooking to cut down trees because they would prefer to do that it has an impact on the entire community and it has an impact on the management of stormwater in our community. Over time as we lose tree cover we not only lose important ecological services that are performed by trees we not only lose the amenity that New Zealanders absolutely value and are very concerned about preserving as we are looking at increased intensification and development pressure in Auckland but also very practically the consequence down the road of a council like the Auckland Council not being able to manage trees could quite logically be that we have increased stormwater run-off and increased costs to ratepayers. So on the one hand we have the National Government putting pressure on local councils saying they should keep down their rates but on the other hand it is actually taking away their ability to manage development in such a way that would reduce the economic costs and the environmental costs of stormwater run-off by ensuring that there are enough trees to take that water. So it is a perfect example of where the rhetoric is the exact opposite of the reality.The National Government is going to increase costs to councils in the first instance because now councils have to go through this intensely bureaucratic process which is as they said in their own submissions costly and impractical onerous and unworkable and involves huge amounts of time and resources. I am sure that ratepayers around New Zealand do not appreciate the National Government making legislative changes that are going to increase costs for councils and therefore increase rates.There is no joined-up thinking in National. It is looking for short-term gains and an opportunity to claim that it is reducing red tape. But the reality is that the Resource Management Act with all its imperfections already allows most applicants to do whatever it is they want to do. Over 95 percent of applications for resource consents are granted so how can one say that there is a problem when rich developers and property owners are able to do exactly what they want? I agree that processes could be improved.A perfect example of an area that is not addressed in the Resource Management Reform Bill is the onerous cost of parking restrictions which is the single-biggest trigger of resource consent applications. You would think that National would care about reducing the burden of costs on developers and perhaps reducing the single-biggest trigger of resource consent applications which are not grounded in any economic rationality but are simply a hangover of a 1950s car-oriented approach to transport planning which has reduced the ability of New Zealanders to have good affordable transport options. If National was able to look beyond its blind ideology it would address this problem. It would ensure that developers were not forced to provide huge off-street car-parks when they do not want to. Local landowners people looking to build houses—right here in Wellington a staff member in our office told me that they went to build a house and the council was telling them they had to put in two car-parks which was basically impossible.So here is an opportunity an opportunity for the Government to do something in line with its own ideology that would reduce costs reduce the burden to ratepayers and reduce the burden to taxpayers from a car-oriented transport system. Instead what is it doing? It is creating more bureaucratic nonsense for councils to go through to look after trees which are essential not only for amenity but for stormwater management.Of course this legislation also increases the bureaucratic analysis needed for a section 32 analysis with regard to the Resource Management Act but it is looking at opportunities only for economic growth and employment. Unfortunately the additional requirements for this type of assessment rather than increasing certainty and increasing the soundness of the judgments that are being made could quite likely require a level of detail to such an extent that it is actually impossible for local authorities to undertake an adequate necessary risk analysis. Again it is an example of ideological rhetoricundermining good outcomes. I think that there was a whole wealth of submissions on this bill that were very informed and demonstrated that the approach taken in this reform bill is not one that is going to have the result of achieving a better outcome for New Zealanders. It is not going to reduce costs in reality. It is not going to improve councils’ ability to ensure that local communities can look after the development that is happening and ensure that it is occurring in a way that is going to be good for generations to come.We also do not support the changes in this legislation that are going to make it harder for local communities to engage in the process of decision making around resource consent applications. Best practice in the mostlivable cities overseas like Vancouver and in many communities in Europe shows that the more that neighbours and stakeholders can be engaged at the beginning of a process—whether it is for major infrastructure or whether it is for a major development—the better the outcome achieved for the entire community. We are going in exactly the wrong direction on the basis of some narrow ideological rhetorical slogans from the National Party because it is not the party that actually delivers good smart green outcomes for New Zealand. It is simply the party that waves its hands around claims to be solving problems that are not even problems and provides no analysis to support the changes in this legislation. Instead it just gets on with it and gets a worse outcome for all New Zealanders. That is what I have to say.KATRINA SHANKS (National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the question that the question be now put.LOUISE UPSTON (Senior Whip—National): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I thought votes were meant to be taken in silence.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Yes I was going to give an admonishment when we had finished. Votes—and points of order but votes particularly—need to be heard in silence for two reasons which I have been at pains to point out to the Committee. No member in this Chamber will vote under duress but more important we just simply sometimes do not hear the votes. So voting will be done in silence.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 285 and 324 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to Part 1 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Amendments agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 282 in the name of Eugenie Sage to Part 1 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendments not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 1 as amended be agreed to.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 1 as amended agreed to.Part 2 Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): I want to make some comments about Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill which amends the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010. It puts in place a framework for the development of the first combined plan for Auckland Council known publicly I think as the draft Auckland Unitary Plan. Specifically what it does is it establishes a fast-track process for the unitary plan with the establishment of a hearings panel—a kind of one-stop shop hearings panel—which takes the place of the normal Resource Management Act Environment Court appeals process. Labour supports this provision and we have made it very clear publicly since the Auckland Council asked the Government to consider this back in December last year that we give qualified support to the proposal for the fast tracking. I will tell the Committee why.The Auckland Unitary Plan is a very significant development in the life of the new amalgamated Auckland super-city. The unitary plan is the successor to all the old district and regional plans and people will remember that having one plan for Auckland was one of the great selling points for the amalgamation which led to the Auckland super-city being set up. It allows for an integrated approach to managing land use and managing growth in Auckland for the first time ever. I think it is widely accepted certainly on this side of the Chamber that this is one of the significant benefits of the amalgamation of all the old local territorial authorities in Auckland.The unitary plan is significant because it is the first time that Auckland has had a concerted comprehensive and considered effort to manage its growth. The growth of Auckland and the poor regulatory framework that has existed until now is really at the heart of many of the big problems that are affecting Auckland particularly around housing affordability which is probably one of the worst.The unitary plan contains a raft of measures for tackling affordable housing and importantly it deals with the problem of the constraints on land supply which lie beneath the very high prices for residential property in Auckland. The history of that I think is the old metropolitan urban limit which was a fixed limit a boundary around the city and that together with a failure over many years to intensify and build a sufficient quantity of new houses in Auckland and given the forces of supply anddemand was a recipe unfortunately for the very high residential property prices that are plaguing Aucklanders to this day.So the big innovation in the unitary plan gets rid of the old metropolitan urban limit which Nick Smith has been railing against for months and months as such a terrible thing without mentioning that the old metropolitan urban limit is gone. It is a dead duck. It is supplanted in the unitary plan. It is Nick Smith’s convenient straw man to attack and try to blame Auckland Council for the current housing crisis when in fact the draft unitary plan which is the first major kind of planning instrument of the new Auckland Council gets rid of the metropolitan urban limits and replaces them with what the plan describes as the Rural Urban Boundary.The important innovation here is that the Rural Urban Boundary really is a staged shifting of the city limits that successively introduces large volumes of greenfield land in a planned staged fashion over the life of the 30-year plan which will bring quantities of greenfield land—Andrew Little: Sounds sensible.PHIL TWYFORD: —that is right—and provide the land that is necessary for Auckland’s growth and development.So that is a really important piece of the puzzle to understand—that the unitary plan delivers in a staged careful fashion the new greenfield land that Auckland needs for its growth and development. This is not what National Party members including Nick Smith the current Minister of Housing have called for which is a kind of wholesale destruction of the city limits a deregulation of the planning process the effect of which would simply be to allow suburban sprawl to rip across the countryside to Whangarei in the north and down to Hamilton in the south. That is the last thing that Aucklanders want to see. So that is a really important feature of the unitary plan.The essence of the proposal that Auckland Council brought to the Government at the end of last year was a streamlining of the process around this plan. Under the existing law the Auckland Unitary Plan could take between 7 and 10 years to bed in given the scale and complexity of the plan and given all the rights of appeal under the Resource Management Act it could be a decade before that bedding-in process is complete. It is my submission that that is unacceptable for a number of reasons that I want to spell out.The Auckland Council has undertaken a big public process of consultation and engagement. Part of the trade-off for limiting appeal rights to the Environment Court under the Resource Management Act was to front end the plan-making process with an array of public meetings and online consultation. I attended some of those meetings and certainly there was a genuine concerted effort to engage with communities to engage with stakeholders and to really democratise those early stages of the plan-making process.It has been really interesting in that we have seen with the Auckland Unitary Plan the first ever major public conversation in our country’s biggest city about the future shape of the city. You may not agree with the details of the plan you may not like the way the town centres are categorised you may not like the new proposed rules on intensification and you may not like the proposal for high-rise development in some town centres and so on but there is no doubt that this has been a groundbreaking process for Auckland and the first time there has been a major public debate.It is worth noting I think that on the pages of theNew Zealand Heraldevery day and on the major television networks we see these issues. The issues of urban development housing affordability sprawl versus intensification and the relationship between transport and urban development are on the front pages of the newspaper and on our television and radio news bulletins almost every day. They are such a major feature of public debate and I think that Len Brown and the Auckland Council deservesignificant credit for opening up this conversation and leading in a way that frankly we have not seen in Auckland ever before in our lifetimes.One of the things that is most important and that I think justifies the fast tracking is that we have a housing crisis in Auckland right now. There is no doubt about it. We have some of the most unaffordable housing in the Western World. The unitary plan as I said has a raft of measures for dealing with housing affordability and Auckland needs those now. So that is the first reason. What I would say is that it has been rather amusing to see the National Party’s apparatchiks in east Auckland and the North Shore amongst local government circles throwing themselves in front of the metaphorical bulldozer to try to stop and slow down the unitary plan process when in Parliament the National Party has been wanting to speed it up and has been threatening Auckland Council with legislative intervention every day almost and urging Auckland Council to speed up the very provisions that exist in this unitary plan because the Government is so scared about the macroeconomic impacts of the Auckland housing crisis.That was by way of a digression. But Labour does support the fast tracking because firstly the housing crisis deserves extraordinary measures and secondly Auckland has already been through an election campaign. An extensive public process went into the making of the Auckland plan and as I said also with another process around the unitary plan it could take 7 to 10 years—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Are you seeking another call?PHIL TWYFORD: I am seeking another call Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): In the absence of a challenge I will give you another call.PHIL TWYFORD: That is very charitable of you Mr Chairman. As I said it could take between 7 and 10 years for this plan to be finally bedded-down under the Resource Management Act and that is just too long for Aucklanders to have to put up with. That is why we support the fast tracking.There are two issues on which the National Government baulked in terms of Auckland Council’s proposals. The first is that Auckland Council proposed that the unitary plan be given legal weight from notification. The plan has been through all its processes and it is going to be notified next month I understand. It goes out for people to consider and then respond to to the hearings panel and ultimately goes to the Environment Court.But under the Resource Management Act prior to 2009 the plan would have had legal weight from notification. That does not mean it is operative it does not mean that it has legal effect; it means that it will be taken into account along with other operative plans when consenting decisions are being made. That is critical particularly for the considering of consents for housing developments for affordable housing in light of the Auckland Council’s urgent need to respond to the housing affordability crisis.It would have been the case pre-2009 before National changed the law that the plan would have had legal weight. And that is why and it is worth noting that we had all the theatrics from Nick Smith earlier in the year when he went rampaging around the place accusing Len Brown of crushing and destroying the dreams of Aucklanders to have affordable housing. He was trying to shift the blame for the housing crisis on to Auckland Council because he was so desperate to try to have something to show that the Government was doing something about housing affordability. Well if it had not changed the law in 2009 this plan would have had legal weight from notification.Secondly the other thing is that Auckland Council proposed that it should appoint the members of the hearings panel—after all it is Auckland’s plan; after all Aucklanders through their rates will pay for this plan and everything that the plan entails. But no this Government in its centralising nanny State way insisted on havingsole prerogative to appoint the members of the hearings panel. And instead of Aucklanders being able to make that crucial decision Amy Adams and Nick Smith two South Island Ministers from the comfort of their ministerial offices in Wellington have hijacked this process by insisting that they have the exclusive right to appoint the members of the hearings panel.I just think that that is a real shame and it is symptomatic of this Government’s troubled relationship with Auckland that it did not trust Auckland Council to appoint the members of the hearings panel and in fact spurned Auckland Council’s proposal that the appointment of the hearings panel should be done jointly by the Government and by Auckland Council. I think that is a real shame. It is Aucklanders’ plan. They are paying for it. Why should the democratically elected Auckland Council not be able to make that vital decision? It is typical of this Government’s arrogant and interfering approach not only to local government generally but to Auckland particularly that they have insisted on keeping those powers to themselves.Labour supports the fast tracking of the plan but we do think it is a shame that this Government could not see its way to share the process of appointing the members of the hearings panel. We think it is a shame that on the crucial issue of allowing the plan to have legal weight from notification the Government did not go along with Auckland Council’s proposal. In fact because of that we have had to go through this whole palaver around the Government’s Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill which itself would not have been necessary.This whole fuss that Nick Smith has taken us all through is because the Government did not agree to the draft unitary plan having legal weight from notification. Now we have to go through this whole special housing areas bill that Nick Smith has before the House currently and all it does is cherry-pick aspects of the unitary plan i.e. bringing in more greenfield land—CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National): Kia ora. I am really excited to take a call on this Resource Management Reform Bill. In this bill is a proposal to develop a one-off hearings process for the first Auckland Unitary Plan. This is a streamlined process for developing and making operational the first plan which develops a set of consistent planning policies and consistency of rules within a workable time frame. But what I am really excited about is that once the Auckland Council has developed a plan it will be referred to a hearings panel in consultation with the council and the Māori Statutory Board. So although I hear my colleague Phil Twyford across the way say that it was arrogant of the Ministers to not refer to Aucklanders well in actual fact they did. The Māori Statutory Board is very much part and parcel of the make-up ofTāmaki-makau-rau and as we all know the Māori Statutory Board is made up of the iwi ofTāmaki-makau-rau and themātāwaka so it is very much a part of Auckland andTāmaki-makau-rau.We are also a party and a Government that has worked hard to develop its relationship with iwi and this bill is an example of that strengthening of iwi relationships. Iwi are fully involved from the initial stages not as a tack-on or an addendum. Iwi will be at the table and again through the appointments of the hearings panel. I want to reiterate that this bill allows Māori interests inTāmaki-makau-rau Auckland to be considered at the beginning stages earlier on in the process and as I said earlier not as a tack-on or as an addendum. Again AucklandTāmaki-makau-rau Aucklandmātāwaka and theherenga waka will be considered earlier in the resource management planning process with solutions developed up front with iwi consultation and iwi input.This bill is about the timely delivery of the Auckland Unitary Plan. It is the council’s main tool for achieving integrated management of the region’s natural and physicalresources and we know that. It provides rules for whatwhānau can do on their whenua and on their properties. So I thank the Minister for the Environment for bringing these reforms to the House. Kia ora.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to follow up on some comments that Phil Twyford made in respect of Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill—Hon Maurice Williamson: Just to correct them.Hon DAVID PARKER: I will not respond to that interjection. This bill gives form to the way in which the new Auckland Unitary Plan is going to be brought into final effect. As Phil Twyford has said one of the problems that the Government has caused for itself through an earlier stage in the Resource Management Act reforms was that until it passed one of its earlier so-called reform bills new plans had transitional effect from the date of notification; therefore they had legal weight even before they became fully operative. The Government thought that that introduced unnecessary complexity and said that it needed to have more simplicity and so it said that proposed plans did not have any transitional effect even after notification. Of course the folly of that is shown by what is needed to be done now in respect of the other bill that is introducing and giving effect to parts of the Auckland Unitary Plan outside of the Resource Management Reform Bill.But I just want to make another observation as to why that is an inadequate response. I am sure a number of members in addition to me were at a lecture sponsored by Auckland University with Harvard Professor EdwardGlaeser who was in town recently. He was asked the question as to whether land supply was important in respect of growing cities in order to moderate the cost of housing and he agreed that it was. Everyone agrees that. There is actually no one I am aware of who denies the proposition that land supply is not an important ingredient. Indeed the Labour Party has been on record in respect of that position for a long time. In fact we were calling for the new Auckland Unitary Plan to be given effect before the Government belatedly agreed to do so. But the problem with what the Government is doing in respect of land supply alone is that as ProfessorGlaeser said more important than issues around land supply at the margin of the city are rules that limit intensification of land use within the existing city boundary.The problem that the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment has—and I would like her to respond to this point. I want her to admit that during the period prior to Auckland Unitary Plan becoming operative none of the provisions relating to intensification of land use within the city boundary will have any legal weight. That is my understanding of the effect of this Resource Management Reform Bill and it is also my understanding of the companion bill in respect of the Auckland land supply issues the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill. None of it deals with the more important issue—according to the Auckland Council and ProfessorGlaeser confirmed this—that most of the increases in housing stock in Auckland will come about through more intensive use of the land that is already serviced with telecommunications roads public transport sewerage car parking and electricity. Those areas of intensification within the urban limit of Auckland are predicted to be the predominant source of new houses new apartments and new flats. They are going to be within the existing boundary of the Auckland Unitary Plan. Even after the Government—if it does—passes its Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill most of the new supply of housing is going to come from within the boundary and that relies upon changes that are in the new Auckland Unitary Plan that aid the intensification of land use.Rules such as where there is an existing house that might have a basement or an attic area that is quite suitable for having a flat put into it—the planning rules around building a flat under a house within the existing exterior boundaries of the house—arecurrently quite complex. There are quite long and arduous routes for applicants if neighbours object. The plan rules are not facilitative of those sorts of intensification of land use and the Auckland Unitary Plan fixes that. But because of the inadequacy of this Government both in respect of its refusal to assist Auckland in implementing those parts of its plan and because of its prior amendments to the Resource Management Act those parts of the new Auckland Unitary Plan are of no legal effect for years—for years.So despite the fact that the Government knows that from the advice from the council from the advice from its own officials I expect and from the advice from world experts like ProfessorGlaeser all saying that intensification within city boundaries is more important than the admittedly necessary extensions to the city boundary in respect of greenfield land supply and despite the fact that the council knows that that is more important it is not fixing it. So that is one of the reasons why house price inflation in Auckland is double digit and why we have got deposit requirements being required by the Reserve Bank in excess of 20 percent for most first-home buyers. It is because of its concern at the inflation in the Auckland house market putting at risk the financial stability of the banking system and its effects on the wider economy. We have all of these flow-on effects because the Government has not been doing its job for 5 years in respect of resource management and the Auckland plans around housing.I want the Minister in the chair to take a call. If I have got it wrong and the rules relating to intensification of land use in the Auckland Unitary Plan are being advanced through this legislation like the rules are in other legislation in respect of special housing areas then take a call Minister and tell me that I have got it wrong. But my understanding is that the intensification of land use is not facilitated by this. Indeed we still do not have any of those rules having any legal effect until the new Auckland Unitary Plan becomes fully operative to be contrasted with where it was before the Government mucked it up with its last Resource Management Act changes.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Speaking to Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill after quite a truncated debate on Part 1 it is about the Auckland Unitary Plan process. I endorse the comments made by Phil Twyford and David Parker. It is interesting that the Government is all about simplifying streamlining fast tracking and providing certainty for applicants but in terms of providing any certainty of regulation having the unitary plan apply when it is notified and having the rules have weight on notification rather than when the whole process is finished of course the Government does not want to do that and so it has not made that provision in the bill for the rules to have weight when it is notified which we oppose.I would like to talk about the whole plan process and the appointment of the hearings panel because the bill has got quite specific provisions around the unitary plan in order to streamline the plan process and to reduce community input. It gives the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation very significant control of the process because of course it is the Ministers who are going to appoint the hearing commissioners. They will determine how much they are paid and they will set the terms of reference for the hearing commissioners not Auckland Council even though it will be Auckland Council that is paying those commissioners. The whole fast-track process that the bill provides for the unitary plan is certainly not one that the Green Party is enthusiastic about but it has accepted and not opposed it because of the wide range of public support for that and for getting a plan finalised in order to recognise that the bigger Auckland now needs a plan promptly.The bill provides with the Ministers having control of the appointment process an example again of the very centralised anti-democratic decision making that this Government is becoming. Part of its whole image now is of very centralised decision making shutting out the public. Our preference is for the Auckland Council notMinisters to appoint the hearings panel. I have proposed a very modest and reasonable compromise in Supplementary Order Paper 281 that the Ministers and Auckland Council jointly appoint the hearings panel. I would like the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment to say why that is not a reasonable proposal because it would be much more democratic given the mandate that Auckland councillors have from those who elect them and that it is Auckland’s plan not the Ministers’ plan. The joint appointment process would much better represent a partnership between central government and local government than the very command-and-control approach that is this Government’s favoured modus operandi.If you look at the departmental report it says that Ministers should appoint the hearings panel to ensure that the panel is “fully independent from the Council” so that “the panel’s recommendations will not be biased towards the Council.” But having a panel appointed by just Ministers risks its recommendations being biased towards those whom the Ministers and the Government will favour. The joint appointment process in Supplementary Order Paper 281 would avoid that. So that is why we are asking the Minister in the chair to seriously consider this joint appointment process and say why it is OK for the panel’s recommendations to be biased towards those that the Government would agree to but not that it be biased towards the council. This whole appointment process is yet another example of the disdain that this Government has towards local democracy and how it is grasping and grabbing power for the executive and centralising decision-making. It has become a real hallmark of this Government.The other issue I would like to talk to is the whole way in which the scope of submissions operates in the bill because it is clause 125 that puts a new provision in the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act to allow the hearings panel on the unitary plan to make decisions that are beyond the scope of submissions on the proposed plan. It can effectively make a decision on any matter that the panel identifies through the hearings process. This is an extraordinary broad power and it is a very substantive and inappropriate departure from existing law. All of the 31 submitters who commented on this provision expressed concern about it because it is giving the hearings panel unfettered discretion. When you combine that with the fact that Ministers are appointing that panel that is giving it huge scope to influence Auckland’s future by the decisions that it makes recognising that the Auckland Council’s ability to appeal those decisions is very limited and is only on the basis of the decisions that it disagrees with.When you have got a power of the Environment Court to make recommendations outside the scope of submissions parties are given an opportunity to comment on and respond to those recommendations but the bill does not provide an equivalent provision for the hearings panel to invite such comment when it is proposing to go beyond the scope of submissions. That is a very broad extra power that is going to this hearings panel. It blurs the whole boundary between adjudication which is a proper role of the hearings panel and plan making which is the Auckland Council’s role. So Supplementary Order Paper 283 in my name seeks to limit the hearings panel to making recommendations that are within the scope of the submissions by deleting this decision-making power to go beyond the scope of submissions. That would make the whole decision-making process much more robust because the hearings panel would have to base its decisions on issues that were raised by submitters and that had been the subject of evidence that was presented by the submitters and tested through the submission and hearing process.The other issue I would like to comment on is the whole status of the Auckland Spatial Plan the Auckland Plan and section 140 in clause 125. You have got the Government talking about simplifying and streamlining. If the Government wasgenuinely interested in that rather than in promoting an anti-democratic anti-environment anti-community agenda it would have responded to the submissions of Local Government New Zealand and the Auckland Council asking that the hearings panel give more weight to the Auckland Plan than simply ensuring that regard has been given to the spatial plan as section 140(3) in clause 125 currently provides. We need to ensure that the unitary plan is consistent with the spatial plan because of the very high level of public and community support for that plan and because of the way that it is an integrating document. As Local Government New Zealand identified in its submission you have got a problem in local government planning because the Local Government Act the Land Transport Management Act the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act and the Resource Management Act do not talk to each other yet the spatial plan does that integration and seeks to have much better planning because of that integration.The spatial plan is quite a comprehensive and long-term strategy for Auckland’s development. It looks at the present and future mix of residential business industrial and rural activities within specific geographic areas of Auckland. It looks at how you integrate that with essential infrastructure services and investment with transport with open space and with water supply and waste water. The unitary plan is the critical tool to ensure that Auckland Council can achieve the outcomes that it set out in the spatial plan and that spatial plan was developed through quite widespread engagement with the community and with stakeholders. Simply ensuring that the hearings panel just has to have had regard to it is not giving it enough weight. It should be that the hearings panel has to actually ensure that its decisions on the unitary plan are consistent with the spatial plan as Phil Twyford highlighted because of just how that plan will shape the future of the city.The other issue I would like to comment on that will affect the way in which the Auckland Council operates is just the way in which the bill in Part 1 looks at how environmental reporting will be done. We want robust environmental reporting and we want independent environmental reporting but we do not like what the bill does here because it will give the Minister the power to use regulations to specify what a council will monitor and how it will do that what environmental indicators the council is required to monitor and what standards or methods will apply to each of those. There is no opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny on those measures and given the opportunity for the ministry and the Minister to influence that through regulations—ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill. I want to speak in terms of some of the comments that have been made in relation to the Auckland Unitary Plan compared with the seven local authority plans and also the regional council plans that it replaces.Many people would say that Auckland was not functioning under the former plans. That statement is incorrect. Each of the local authorities had robust district plans that had been brought into place over many many years which were a result of widespread consultation with their individual communities. The plans of Manukau of Waitakere of Auckland City of North Shore City of Franklin and of Rodney were all in their own right substantial plans that suited their particular communities but now under one Auckland Council there is a requirement to merge those into one plan and as a result this is what we are seeing before us today.However there are concerns—widespread in Auckland. When sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee we heard from many many submitters including submitters with extensive and lengthy experience in local government and in resource management including Queen’s Counsel including some of the brightest legal minds in terms of New Zealand in terms of planning and in terms of the background to local government who submitted that there were quite a few concerns about theAuckland Unitary Plan as it stood and that in many instances it certainly fell well short of what was a robust document that would withstand scrutiny.In that regard we do support the situation that when the plan gets notified in the next few months it is not then in effect given the greater operative weight—to become the overarching document—until the hearings are fully completed. We heard that from many sources who said that the existing rules that are in place around Auckland would otherwise just be completely trodden on and the safeguards that communities currently have would literally be pushed aside if this plan took greater weight than from when it was notified.In that respect there has been huge push-back from the people of Auckland from communities all across Auckland who have said that the first drafts of the plan had some grave errors. The errors included that something in the order of 47 percent of the properties across Auckland had the potential to have intensive development up to potentially 10 metres high on urban properties and on suburban properties. Also without notification to any property owners the property right next door to you could be purchased by a developer and could be intensified and structures could be put up up to 10 metres high under the proposed plan without you being aware until literally the day the bulldozers moved in and started work.It is unacceptable to any community whether you are in Auckland or whether you are anywhere in New Zealand to have a situation where you are not given the opportunity to at least have some input into what is being proposed next to your property if it is outside what has been established standards in all these areas of Auckland over many many years. Sure Auckland is going to grow and it is going to have an increasing population and there does need to be some intensification in areas. We agree that around many of the town centres and many of the urban centres there will be greater intensification and there will be higher buildings built closer to those transport hubs in those urban centres. But it does not mean in the same breath that people who have been used to living in their suburban homes should suddenly be subject to apartments going up next door without any due process being in place.Therefore in terms of this Auckland Unitary Plan—going through this process with the hearings which will take in the order of 2 to 3 years to complete—it will mean that at the end of that process everyone will have had their full opportunity to have their day before the court effectively to put their submissions properly to the plan as the plan is notified and for that document to then be properly thrashed out so that the final operative plan that is put in place does have total and full scrutiny.It is somewhat concerning and people have said this that areas involving heritage aspects areas involving trees and areas involving intensification around town centres have not necessarily been identified to a suitable level. It is also concerning that some existing structure plans which have taken an awful lot of work to get to where they are today have the potential of being trodden on. I give as an example the Long Bay structure plan which has 2500 homes being built at Long Bay one of the largest subdivisions in the country. More than 6000 people potentially will be living there. It took close to 7 or 8 years of negotiations with the developers to finalise that plan so that there was a totally modern practice in terms of how that significant tract of land would be developed to include all modes of transport to include parks to include reserves to include view shafts out to the Hauraki Gulf islands and to ensure that it ended up as a modern 21st century development.That proposal also included a very significant court case through the Environment Court with the North Shore City Council and the Todd Property Group which ended up with a very very good result for all parties which saw the whole community buy into itin the end and that resolved a situation for the community—not just the North Shore community but people from all over Auckland—who loved Long Bay.Long Bay is the busiest regional park in the Auckland area. More than a million people a year go to that particular regional park and they wanted to ensure that the urban intensification around that park was certainly kept to the best it could be in terms of the effects on the coastline on the marine reserve nearby and on the environment of that part of the northern part of Auckland and of the North Shore.Under this unitary plan and what was proposed all that work over 6 or 7 years was basically going to be thrown out the window and this unitary plan was simply going to be put in its place. The whole area of Long Bay was going to be just swallowed into the unitary plan and the standards and the rules of the unitary plan would have been trodden on in terms of the Long Bay situation—7 or 8 years of hard work would have been literally for naught.As a result of this I am sure that when this process goes through the proper hearings process and goes before the commissioners that will be revisited as will all the very good aspects of the likes of Long Bay. There are many other similar structure plans of new developments around Auckland that will similarly see their opportunity to be readdressed in terms of what those communities expected from those particular developments. We will not have just a one-stamp-meets-all approach to Auckland. They will still recognise the fact that different parts of Auckland do have different requirements their communities have different expectations and as a result we hope that there is a good outcome from that.We have some reservations about the fact that the Government has not allowed the appointment of local commissioners as well as central government - appointed commissioners on this. We feel it would have been advantageous to have a mixture of commissioners so that there was both local input and central government input into this very very important plan of what is our largest city. Time will tell whether the decision of the Government to not include locally appointed commissioners is the right one. Aucklanders certainly will not appreciate commissioners being appointed from other parts of the country who will not necessarily have the full understanding of the implications of the plan on the local communities of Auckland if it is not treated with respect in relation to local situations. We certainly hope that the commissioners who are appointed have a very very high level of understanding.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to speak on the Resource Management Reform Bill. I want to focus on the Auckland Unitary Plan which is a very very important document for the city and indeed for the country. Housing is an issue for all New Zealanders to be concerned about. If inflation in housing in Auckland is out of control that ultimately leads to increasing interest rates which causes ripples throughout the New Zealand economy. Making sure that we have got on top of that issue is a very serious priority for this Government. The Government has been guided particularly by the work of the Productivity Commission in looking at housing affordability. There are lots of factors but the supply of land is an important one so I commend the work of Nick Smith in conjunction with Auckland Council on the plans that he has got there to free up supply and get the houses built so as to make housing more affordable for Aucklanders.The unitary plan is a very important part of that mix in the long term and depending on how good a plan it is it may help or it may hinder Aucklanders to get into their homes. It also affects their lives in so many many different ways. The first iteration of that plan that we saw certainly was not perfect. There is a sense that maybe the council has bitten off more than it can chew. I am certainly concerned about extra costs being put on. In the drafts that I have seen there is a requirement I understand to have newcommercial buildings have five-star ratings for a green status. That is not exactly the way it seems to me to make sure that we can build properties and get businesses into factories and offices as cheaply as possible. We need to have flexibility rather than necessarily having ideological blinkers from planners demanding that they do things x y and z regardless of the cost.There has also been very significant concern in the community particularly around Epsom where I am based about some elements of the intensification. There is a real balance to be struck between spreading out and intensifying. I am not sure that it has got it right and again I am concerned about some of the ideological blinkers of some of the planners who if they are not carefully controlled could lead to the housing dreams of many New Zealanders being lost. So I am amazed that anybody would think it would be a good idea to make the plan operative immediately on notification given the size of the task and the scale of it—Phil Twyford: Not operative—legal weight. It’s different.PAUL GOLDSMITH: —or to have legal weight even. I think the Government has absolutely got it right in not taking that step.We have heard a lot of complaints from Mr Twyford and others moving to the issue of the hearings panel that somehow the council should be appointing all the hearings panel people. That would be I think a dreadful outcome. They are setting the rules. It is very important that this process has clear independence.Phil Twyford: Arrogance.PAUL GOLDSMITH: It has nothing to do with arrogance. It is about making sure that Aucklanders in a plan that will affect their lives over the next three or four decades and that has been proposed by the Auckland Council—very strong direction from the Auckland Council about what it wants to do. It is about intensification. It is about all sorts of plans and theories. It is very important that Aucklanders can see that there is an independent group of highly qualified people who can go through that plan line by line. The council can advocate for its argument but people can see that there is strong independence there and I think that is absolutely appropriate.The Local Government and Environment Committee did hear a lot of submissions on this and we have made some significant changes around some of the opportunities for reviewing some of the hearings panel’s decisions. So if the hearings panel is making a recommendation outside the scope of submissions then it has to make it very clear that it is. Then we recommended changes to section 150 inserted by clause 125 which I think are important to provide a clear right of appeal to the Environment Court where the Auckland Council has amended a provision recommended by the hearings panel. We also recommended enabling a merit-based appeal to the Environment Court where the hearings panel makes a recommendation identified as out of scope because people were concerned that in the original plan if the hearings panel just dreamed up something new and there had not been debate and suddenly the panel passed it and the council agreed then we would have a lack of appeal rights. So we have made those changes. We are also aware of the concern about the combined effects of section 139 inserted by clause 125. We have made significant changes and on that basis I commend this bill.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to speak to Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill. There are two parts of this bill that Labour has been particularly concerned about. One we have addressed and addressed unsuccessfully in Part 1 of the bill and that was around protection of trees. The second part that concerns us is actually the swipe at local democracy that is contained in Part 2 which is the bit under discussion at the moment and which covers Auckland transitional provisions. Before I get on to clause 125 which I want to deal with in some detail I want to firstaddress clause 124 which talks about transitional regulations. Transitional regulations are always problematic and it is my great hope that one day the National members of the Regulations Review Committee will allow us to do an inquiry into transitional regulations because they are the place where the devil lies. In other words they do contain the detail of a bill. We are all familiar with that expression that the devil is in the detail.Transitional provisions do allow Governments to put in by regulation something that does not come before this House for scrutiny. This was one of our concerns originally. It caused us to draw attention to this in the Local Government and Environment Committee minority report in the commentary at the beginning of the amended Resource Management Reform Bill as it now sits in front of the Committee. In that minority report we said that we originally had concerns over this bill because it vested in the Minister the power to make regulations that could conceivably pervert the original intention of the Resource Management Act in one of these “Henry VIII” provisions. But that power was amended by the Local Government and Environment Committee so some change was achieved by the select committee. In particular clause 124 inserts subsection (6A) in section 5 which states: “In addition the Minister for the Environment must not recommend the making of regulations under subsection (4) unless he or she has first consulted the Auckland Council and the hearings panel (if it exists then) on the proposed regulations.” That is an improvement but we are still left puzzled as to why legislation to turn other transitional provisions into primary legislation such as the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2) which was introduced to the House for its first reading on 5 June of this year before this report—the report on the Resource Management Reform Bill—had even been submitted to the House. So that legislation I have just referred to—the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill (No 2)—should be blended with the work in this bill in order to ensure that unnecessary amendment is not required later.My particular concerns lie with clause 125 which is very substantial. Clause 125 goes on for page after page after page because it inserts a new Part 4. So while we debate today Parts 1 2 and 3 of the bill this is in Part 2 the addition or the insertion of a new Part 4. This is where some of our concerns become obvious because they are about the role of the Auckland Council—a democratically elected body—to have some say in the process for development of the first combined plan for Auckland Council. Of course the Auckland Council has had a very robust and quite profound public consultation process over the development of its plan. That is to be commended.What I want to do is speak in favour of Eugenie Sage’s Supplementary Order Paper 281. Quite simply and yet quite profoundly she seeks to insert the words “and Auckland Council” into every part of this clause which is clause 125 section 115 but also the new section 155 of the Resource Management Act where the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation have powers. She has recommended in the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 281 that at every point where the Minister of Conservation and the Minister for the Environment have powers the Auckland Council be included in those powers and that there be some sharing of power in the decisions that pertain to both of these clauses.So first of all in clause 125 section 115 there is the ability for Auckland Council to forward all relevant information to a specialist hearings panel appointed by the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation. This is the first moment in this part of the bill where Eugenie Sage’s Supplementary Order Paper seeks to insert “and Auckland Council” so that a specialist hearings panel would be appointed by the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation and the Auckland Council. This Supplementary Order Paper really begins to find its feet beyond thatmention when we get to clause 125 section 155 which is all about the setting up of a hearings panel. It seems to me at every point to be absolutely not just a matter of right for the people of Auckland but a matter of common sense that a body as large as the Auckland Council representing a population as large as that ought to be involved in the appointment of hearings panels that are going to determine whether an application is able to go ahead. So at every point in that section and in section 157 as well and in section 162 which involves consultation the member Eugenie Sage simply seeks to reinforce democracy. Her Supplementary Order Paper has our support in that regard.Finally I would also like to talk to the member Eugenie Sage’s Supplementary Order Paper 283. This is the one that talks about the scope of the hearings panel. Currently in the bill as it is it says that the hearings panel is not limited to making recommendations only within the scope of the submissions made on any proposed plan but it may also make recommendations on any other matters relating to the proposed plan identified by the panel or any other person during the hearing. So in other words people can come and present a hearings panel with ideas that have never been considered previously and there is the ability of the hearings panel to consider things that are outside the scope of the plan. So this could be taken to mean any number of things—for example let us add a residential development block here when we are actually talking about a park or a green area. This really opens a floodgate and that is closed if we can see our way clear to supporting the member’s Supplementary Order Paper 283 which requires that the hearings panel considers only things that are within scope and not outside of it. That is a common sense and legitimate amendment to make. The bill as it stands in that respect—Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): I just want to take a call on Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill to respond to the last few speakers we have had on this issue of the appointment to the hearings panel because I do think it is an important process and it is worth taking some time to respond to. I think that when you look at this you have to start off by acknowledging that the process that we are developing in this legislation and through this part began because the Auckland Council came to the Government and asked us to develop an expedited process. It was the Auckland Council that wanted the Government to work with it to come up with a legislative framework that would mean that this plan would not take 10 years to be in place but could be delivered much more quickly. We agreed that that was an important objective so we worked with the council to deliver this process.Effectively what it does is take what would have been a two-stage hearing process of a full round of submissions mediations hearings and decisions at a council level and then have all of that replicated once more at the Environment Court level and combine it into one process. I do not think there is anyone who has sensibly suggested that the Auckland Unitary Plan if it had progressed under the normal schedule 1 process would not have gone off to the Environment Court. So what you have to consider in actual fact is that without this the decisions under the unitary plan would have been made by the Environment Court. Of course it is trite to point out that the Auckland Council does not get to appoint who sits on the Environment Court to hear the decisions. So in that respect the fact that the Auckland Council is not the appointer of the final decision-makers is absolutely consistent with the normal schedule 1 processes.In fact I would go so far as to say that the Auckland Council and the independent Māori Statutory Board have a greater ability to be involved in the appointment of the decision makers in this process because there is a statutory requirement that the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation must consult with both the Auckland Council and the independent Māori Statutory Board on making those appointments. So what we had to do was balance the desire of Auckland Council to be fully in charge of this process versus what we saw was about protecting the rights ofAucklanders to have confidence that the final decision-makers were independent as they would be at the Environment Court stage. So I do not think it is a fair comparison to look at this appointment process versus an Auckland Council process. It is a far better comparison to consider how this process works versus an Environment Court process which would have been the final decision-maker. Just to repeat: of course in that process Auckland Council would have had no say at all as to who the decision makers were and in the plan process. I do not think that it can be fairly suggested that it would be appropriate for the Auckland Council to have the say on who is the judge and jury on what is also its plan.So if we are going to combine a council plan process and an Environment Court process into one in my view the independent oversight that the Environment Court hearing represented was a critical component of what had to be maintained. That is why the decision was reached by Cabinet and believe me this was a process of ongoing discussions with the council around these very issues. So this is not something we have not considered; this was something that we worked through very carefully with the council. We listened in great detail to its representations but it was our strong view that it was important that that independence that you would have had at the Environment Court was replicated in this process.Can I just point out to members of the Committee that while this legislation is making its way through the House and without making any presumption on its progress we have already begun some initial preliminary consultations with the council. Obviously there is an awareness that the council is very keen to get its plan under way and we certainly do not want to be a barrier to that so we have begun a process of discussing with the council whom it would want to suggest for that board. Those processes are working very well. I have great confidence that we will come up with a board that has the support of all parties and that is certainly my intention. But I did want to make the point that we absolutely considered this issue. We talked extensively with the council around it and there are very good reasons why we made the decision that it is more appropriate that the council not be an appointer of decision makers on its plan.DENISE ROCHE (Green): Thank you Mr Chair and thank you for that contribution from the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment. I think there is still room for this plan to be appealed to the Environment Court and that is in the bill. It is where the council does not agree with the decision of the hearings panel or where the hearings panel makes a decision that is outside the scope of the submissions.I would like to say that this bill the Resource Management Reform Bill and how it impacts on the Auckland Unitary Plan is basically another classic example of Auckland being discriminated against. We have seen this time and time and time again with this Government. We have seen it with the Auckland Housing Accord we have seen it with the Land Transport Management Act and we are seeing it now with the unitary plan.The hearings panel will be appointed by this Government. I acknowledge the Minister’s comments that there will be consultation with the council but at the end of the day the panel will be appointed by the Government. In every other council and with every other unitary plan it is the council that determines those who will hear it. This is Auckland being discriminated against. The hearings panel can make recommendations on issues that are outside the scope of submissions which is not terribly democratic given that no one will have commented on those issues that are being raised by them. On the other hand the bill explicitly prevents the council from doing the same. It is not allowed to make decisions on evidence that has not been through the hearings panel so it is pretty clear where the Government places its faith. It places its faith in the appointees whom it has appointed to hear the Auckland plan.I would also suggest that this Government is seeking to undermine local government in Auckland through the recommendations that it is making and it has actually stated them pretty clearly in the Local Government and Environment Committee’s report. The recommendations say that “… section 139 [makes] it clear that the hearings panel must specify where it is making a recommendation outside the scope of submissions” and later on in that same paragraph it says: “[We] recommend amending section 143 to prohibit the council in making its decisions from considering new evidence or any other material that was not available to the hearings panel. This is intended to reduce the likelihood of the council making decisions based on inappropriate political lobbying and ensure that it follows fair process …”. This is really interesting. I will just read it again. It is to not make decisions “based on inappropriate political lobbying”.This is the same Government that is making a law on the International Convention Centre with a process that was fairly truncated as well—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!DENISE ROCHE: I am coming back to the bill in a second. I was using that as an example of inappropriate lobbying—the sort that this Government seeks to avoid by restricting Auckland Council in its decision making.The hearings panel is able to have extended decision-making powers and my colleague Eugenie Sage spoke about this as well. The ability for the hearings panel to make decisions on things that may not be included in the submissions basically comes down to its plan making rather than it blurring the division between plan making and interfering. I think we need to take into account the fact that these panel members will not be appointed by the city council and they will be making decisions based on their own judgment. It is not something that happens in other areas when they are considering their own unitary plans.The other area that I want to comment on is the fact that this bill does not actually take any real notice of the Auckland Spatial Plan. The Auckland Spatial Plan the 30-year plan that was developed with huge input from people right across Auckland and with enormous effort—and actually at huge cost as well to the Auckland Council because it was directed under the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act—determines and gives a broad outline of where and how our city should develop over 30 years. Under the previous Act which said that Auckland had to do this we were given a time frame that was incredibly tight. At the start of that process when I was actually a Waiheke local board member we were told the time frame and we were also told that in other cities like Vancouver this took 8 years to get it right.Auckland Council has done an amazing job to deliver as required by the Government an incredibly useful and sensible plan which we should be giving weight to. We should be having a unitary plan that is consistent with it. All it says in this bill is that the Government will give regard to it and I guess that is actually something that again undermines democracy in Auckland.There is one part of this bill that I do agree with and that is leaving the Hauraki Gulf islands unitary plan out of it. And yes of course I am slightly biased being a resident of the Hauraki Gulf. The Hauraki Gulf islands are actually in a much better position because we went through a democratic process to get our plan. It was quite a painful process I have to admit. There were thousands and thousands of submissions. The hearings took over 2½ years. I would like to acknowledge in this Committee Mr RayEricson who was on that hearings panel. He was the chair of our community board and then our local board. He was an elected representative hearing from his community what the issues were and how we wanted to develop our island communities for the future. It strikes me as incredibly unfair that Auckland—this new super-city which wascreated by this Government through its legislation requiring Auckland to jump through so many hoops—and its people do not get the same access to democracy. Thank you.Su’aWILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): Thank you for this opportunity. I am happy to take a short call on Part 2 “Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010” of the Resource Management Reform Bill. My colleague Maryan Street identified that the theme that seems to be emanating in our debate here on Part 2 is the need to protect local democracy and also the need for central government or this Government to recognise that local government has a significant role to play—that local government does have a viable role to play in the development of our communities. I think that when talking about Part 2 it is fair that we need to reflect on how Auckland came to be a super-city. It was from this Government imposing upon Auckland a structure that many Aucklanders did not feel comfortable with. It was rushed at the time and really it was designed according to many of the communities to flock off the assets that the Auckland community has.Chris Hipkins: Flog off.Su’aWILLIAM SIO: Flog off. It is fair to say that the community rejected the proposal by this Government and elected Len Brown as mayor. I think it is important to acknowledge the significant work that the mayor and Auckland Council including its chief executive officer have had to go through and undergo particularly when you consider they brought together eight local territorial authorities—significant units in themselves—and tried to make that work despite the difficult situation that they were in.I highlight two things—the need to protect local democracy and the need to recognise local government as a significant and viable partner in the development of our community—because I listened to the response of the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment and that gives away the focus of this particular Government. It does not at all want to recognise that communities have a right to make their local decisions. I think that we are recognising the importance of local government as a viable partner in development so I would ask the Minister whether she would be prepared to respond with regard to the submission made by Local Government New Zealand and say whether she considered any of the recommendations that were put to her in that submission and whether any parts of that submission were included in Part 2. The submission of Local Government New Zealand highlighted five key matters with reference to clause 122 in Part 2: the moratorium on variations under the proposed section 121; the hearings panel not being limited to making recommendations within the scope of submissions under proposed section 139; the weight the hearings panel must give to the Auckland Plan for its recommendations under proposed section 140; what rules in the Auckland combined plan will have immediate legal effect under proposed section 147 and the related question of what weight the plan is to have on and from notification; and the members of the hearings panel under proposed section 155. Those are what Local Government New Zealand in its submission highlighted as key factors pertaining to Part 2. I ask the Minister whether she would be prepared to respond as to whether any of those recommendations were considered in her papers to Cabinet and whether any of those recommendations have been implemented as part of the amendments to the Resource Management Act.With the proposed section 121 “Restrictions on amendments or variations to Auckland combined plan”—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): That is in Part 1. Clause 121 is in Part 1.Su’aWILLIAM SIO: Oh sorry. Yes. I suppose what I am referring to is that although the 3-year notification that has been given to Auckland is I understand accepted by the Auckland Council the moratorium removes the tool which means “thatAuckland Council is unable to address the material information or a change in circumstances that arise after the plan is notified.”Let me go to proposed section 139 then given that that is in Part 2. The submission of Local Government New Zealand says: “These sections provide that the hearings panel is not limited to making recommendations within the scope of submissions and that Auckland Council may accept such recommendations. This is a significant departure from the existing law—clause 10(1) of Schedule 1 requires that a consent authority give a decision on the provisions and matters raised in submissions. There is established case law on this specific provision.” That is a significant matter that Local Government New Zealand is recommending and its recommendation is to delete proposed sections 139(2) and 143(3). Again I would ask whether the Minister considered any of the recommendations made by Local Government New Zealand in the papers.My colleague Eugenie Sage has a Supplementary Order Paper about the make-up of the hearings panel. I think the proposal in the bill is a significant departure. If the Government refuses to accept the recommendation made by Local Government New Zealand which is that Ministers and the Auckland Council jointly establish the hearings panel that in itself sends a message that this Government despite what it might say about partnership continues to refuse to recognise that local councils—Auckland Council in this case—have a significant role to play and that they have a right to be able to be part of this decision making.So what we are saying is that the Government and Auckland Council should partner in appointing the hearings panel. I have often heard this Government talk about partnering with local government but from what I have heard the Minister say tonight—if she is saying that none of the recommendations made by Local Government New Zealand has been adopted and that none of the recommendations by Local Government New Zealand has been considered or included in any of the papers that she has tabled to Cabinet then that sends a very powerful message indeed that the Government is only talking about partnership but in reality the theme of this is that it is going to gut local government. It aims to not recognise at all that local government is a viable partner in the development in our communities.RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill “Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010” includes a number of provisions to fast track the Auckland Unitary Plan process which we support in principle. Minister Amy Adams was correct in saying that it was the Auckland Council that came to the Government and requested that the Government consider a legislative amendment to enable the unitary plan to become operative in a shorter time.I totally agree with what my Green colleague Denise Roche said and with what MrSu’a William Sio just said which was that we find it difficult to follow the logic in provisions that allow the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation rather than the Auckland Council to appoint the hearing commissioner and set their terms of reference. This is undemocratic and it is an insult to the mandate given to the elected city councillors.I would like to focus on the submissions because it is very important for us to reflect on the concerns of those submitters across the board. Overall we have received 97 submissions relating to the Auckland combined plan. Of the 97 submissions only 9.3 percent were in support and 14.4 percent were in support with amendments but overall 66 percent were in opposition. The predominant concern held by submitters was whether the broad scope of the regulation-making power included the ability to override parts of the Resource Management Act and a number of submitters had expressed thatconcern. The provision is outside good legislation principles and may be unconstitutional.Submissions also raised concerns that the provision would generate uncertainty and could open the Government or Minister to lobbying to change the process for preparing the plan midway through the hearing. Several submitters made suggestions as to how to further narrow the scope of the regulation-making power including for instance a recommendation from Vector to insert a new subsection restricting that power to addressing only unforeseen situations or issues that arise during the preparation of the first Auckland combined plan. So it is not about how the National Government introduces legislative changes or about how important or desirable those changes are; it is more about the submitters and how to help the National Government to remedy the situation everybody is in courtesy of the unconstitutional practice.I would like to bring to the attention of the Committee a legal opinion by Sir Geoffrey Palmer. The New Zealand Fish and Game Council made available a copy of the very well-researched legal opinion by Sir Geoffrey Palmer. Basically he summarises that firstly “Many of the “process-oriented” proposals will deliver improvements to the current process under the RMA with limited impacts on environmental protection.” That is a very balanced view. Secondly he advises that “The proposed changes to Part 2 will significantly and seriously undermine environmental protection under the RMA. These changes are largely unnecessary and will lead to greater uncertainty and cost in the application and interpretation of the RMA.”More important I think it is very important for everybody to remember that the Resource Management Act underpins all Kiwi values. The changes in the current bill destabilise our social perception of what it means to be a Kiwi and puts at risk an economy progressively built on the foundation of the $14 billion “100% Pure New Zealand” and “clean green” brands. Thank you.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Papers 285 and 324 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to Part 2 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes98New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes23Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Amendments agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 281 in the name of Eugenie Sage to clause 125 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendments not agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 283 in the name of Eugenie Sage to clause 125 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Noes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendments not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 2 as amended be agreed to.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Part 3 Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 3 be agreed to.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 3 agreed to.Schedule 1agreed to.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Schedule 2The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 285 in the name of the Hon Amy Adams to schedule 2 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Amendments agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat schedule 2 as amended be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Schedule 2 as amended agreed to.Schedule 3A party vote was called for on the questionThat schedule 3 be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Schedule 3 agreed to.Clauses 1 and 2EUGENIE SAGE (Green): This is the title and commencement clauses stage. Much of the Resource Management Reform Bill is focused on addressing perceived problems with the Resource Management Act in terms of timeliness and costs associated with processes under the Act but when the Ministry for the Environment survey of local authorities showed that 95 percent of resource consent applications were processed on time and only 6 percent were notified the bill is a solution looking for a problem. This bill in my submission should be called the “Resource Management (Implement Ideology and Ignore the Evidence) Amendment Bill”.Councils in making submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee were concerned that the bill introduced a number of measures that would increase the cost and complexity of decision making under the Act with both resource consents and policy and plan making. As the Hamilton City Council said: “Many of the changes proposed by the Bill would result in more complex processes which appear to contradict the ‘streamlining’ that is the purpose of the changes. Many of the proposed changes [in the bill] are too complicated too prescriptive and will involve substantially more administration by council staff.” Of course it is the councils that will bear the additional cost of administering these processes and it will be the councils that will get blamed for that not the Minister for the Environment. The bill is making it much more complex through things like the 6-month deadline for submissions on medium-sized consents to be decided and the very complex system of deadlines that is now part of the bill. It ignores the fact that in the existing Act we already have penalty provisions for councils where they have to repay a portion of the application fees to the applicants if certain time frames are not met. It is going to mean that this bill ignores that. It means that council processes by getting more complicated potentially impose extra costs on ratepayers.It will also be ignoring the evidence because the select committee heard that it is often the applicants who are responsible for the delays not the council. Councils like the Palmerston North City Council looked at and compared the processes for considering an application to the board of inquiry—in that case theTuritea wind farmwhere the board was called in. That took well over the 9-month deadline that the Act provides for. It became a very legalistic adversarial and expensive formal hearing process. When you get hearings happening at the council level that is more informal. The community can be more involved. TheMotorimu wind farm which was considered by the Palmerston North City Council rather than a board of inquiry took about the same length of time but it was much less legalistic less stressful for the community less intimidatory and a better result was reached. It is provisions like clause 88 which impose these time-management provisions that make the bill unduly complex and cumbersome which is why we think it should be called the “Resource Management (More Prescription Cost and Complexity for Councils) Amendment Bill”.As Sir Geoffrey Palmer has noted the Resource Management Act at 796 pages is already twice the length of the Act when it was introduced in 1991. The additional provisions in this bill which is a very thick bill will actually add to that complexity. They are not about simplifying and streamlining. They are anti-environment anti-community and anti-democratic. That is why it is a bill that is about ideology rather than the smoke screen that the Minister and the Government have put up around it being about simplicity. It is tilting the playing field in favour of development. It is making it more complex. Two titles for the bill would be the “Resource Management (Implement Ideology and Ignore the Evidence) Amendment Bill” or the “Resource Management (More Prescription Cost and Complexity for Councils) Amendment Bill”.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 1 agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 2 be agreed to.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 2 agreed to.The Committee divided the bill into the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 284.Bill reported with amendment.Report adopted.Resource Management Amendment BillLocal Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2)Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment BillThird ReadingsHon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): I moveThat the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This legislation makes a number of changes to the Resource Management Act that are designed to improve efficiency enable growth provide good environmental outcomes and ensure decisions about resource management are reached in a timely and cost-effective way. The proposals in this legislation build on the positive results that have already been achieved by the Government’s resource management reforms to date.When National became the Government in 2008 we began a programme of reform to ensure that our planning law was about the sustainable management of our resources and timely high-quality decisions for New Zealanders and our job-creating businesses. The first stage of reform in 2009 involved 150 amendments to simplify and streamline the Resource Management Act in order to reduce costs uncertainties and delays. This has improved outcomes for the environment supported business investment and encouraged stronger economic growth. These reforms reduced late consents from 31 percent in 2008 to just 5 percent in 2011. That is a great achievement.The 2009 reforms created the Environmental Protection Authority which enables the efficient processing of major urban and infrastructure projects that are crucially important to New Zealanders. This process has led to theWaterview and Transmission Gully projects both being consented within 9 months. Previously these critical transport projects could have been deadlocked for years. The trade protection provisions introduced by the 2009 reforms have also helped tackle the so-called supermarket wars where supermarket groups and other big retailers spent years and years and millions of dollars fighting each other in the courts over their respective expansion plans.This legislation builds on those successes and makes several new and important contributions to improving the resource management system in a number of key areas. Firstly the legislation enacts a 6-month time limit for the processing of resource consent applications for medium-sized projects. This policy is an election manifesto commitment and will mean that applicants and communities will have greater certainty about the development of regionally significant projects. Currently it takes an average of 9 months to process applications for medium-sized projects and there is no prescribed time limit at the moment for the overall process under the Resource Management Act. These sorts of applications are typically for new industrial developments subdivisions retail developments and regional infrastructure. Collectively annual investment in these sorts of projects represents hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure and capital costs. Reducing the time it takes to process these consents by about a third will provide increased certainty and economic benefits to communities and applicants.The legislation also contains provisions to develop a one-off hearings process for Auckland’s first unitary plan. This streamlined process is essential for developing and implementing a consistent planning framework for New Zealand’s largest city. Thanks to this process it is estimated that the Auckland Unitary Plan will be in place within 3 years from notification rather than the 10 years it would take without theseimprovements. Auckland’s economy is simply too important to wait 10 years for the plan to become operational. Ensuring that a high-quality plan is delivered swiftly will allow work on pressing Auckland issues such as housing affordability to take place sooner rather than later. These significant time savings will provide certainty and have real benefits for both Aucklanders and the country as a whole.Another significant change introduced in this bill is a specific requirement for local decision makers to undertake more robust cost-benefit analyses under section 32 of the Resource Management Act when considering plan changes and proposals. A requirement for decision makers to consider both the positive and negative impacts on employment and economic growth reflects the far-reaching impact that plan changes and proposals can have on the wider economy. The scale and scope of the analyses will depend on the size of the plan change or proposal which will mean that although changes of significant impact will require in-depth scrutiny decision makers will not have to spend large amounts of time on minor requests and proposals.The legislation also makes important changes to facilitate the Government’s programme to deliver high-quality independent environmental reporting in New Zealand. This change will ensure that decision makers and the public will have access to high-quality environmental monitoring and data. This is an important first step for improving the quality of local government planning and decision making. At present our councils collect their data independently of each other and use their own methodologies to collect the data. There is no common national framework for best practice in how environmental data should be collected either in terms of methodologies or standards. The Government is currently working collaboratively with councils to develop a consistent framework so that the results of environmental monitoring can be accurately compared across different areas and provide a true representative picture of our core environmental domains. If this voluntary approach is not adequately implemented on a collaborative basis the legislation provides a new regulation-making power for the Minister for the Environment to develop a common monitoring framework across the country.The overall purpose of the changes in this legislation is for decisions about resource management to be processed more swiftly providing certainty for applicants and communities as opposed to necessarily changing what the final outcome will be. The legislation also makes changes that will help make our system more workable fair and accountable in order to facilitate better economic outcomes for our communities.The legislation in turn also clarifies how councils may make rules in relation to tree protection. A rule in a district plan may only restrict the felling trimming removal or damaging of trees on private property in an urban environment if the allotments have been identified by street address or legal description of the land and the trees are described in a schedule to the plan. Groups of trees that cover adjacent allotments may be identified if they form a cluster grove or line. Let me be clear: this does not affect the ability for regional councils or district councils to identify areas of significant vegetation or to create and use bush protection zones. However if the trees within these areas in urban environment allotments are identified in a district plan the rules will need to comply with the requirements of this amendment. Most councils around New Zealand already operate in this way but for those that do not the provision will come into force after 2 years to allow those that have used blanket rules to update their schedules if they wish.In addition to the changes outlined in this legislation I intend to introduce a further resource management reform bill later this year. This next bill will make our planning system much more efficient and effective. Making our planning system more proactive instead of reactive is also a key goal of the next stage of resource management reform.Ensuring that more planning decisions are made up front in the plan-making stage as opposed to being continually relitigated through the consenting process will make our planning system more efficient and provide greater certainty to communities and to applicants. Reforming our freshwater management system will also bring positive environmental and community benefits. Introducing collaborative freshwater planning will mean that communities resource users and councils can work together to set limits and objectives for their local freshwater resources that will be more durable and less likely to be prone to expensive untimely litigation. In the meantime however the current legislation before the House will make discreet and welcome improvements to the Resource Management Act.The Government’s comprehensive Resource Management Act reforms will deliver a system that meets the needs of our communities and our regions by enabling jobs and growth while also providing for the strong environmental protections that we expect in a timely and cost-effective way. The reforms are about breaking the cycle of delay after delay and delivering timely decisions that provide greater certainty to all those involved.Despite what our opponents say these reforms are not about growth at any cost. I have always said that we have to balance our economic opportunities along with our environmental responsibilities. That is at the heart of our Government’s approach to planning law. It gives me great pleasure to commend the bills to the House.Debate interrupted.Business of the HouseHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I seek leave for there to be a question time at 2 p.m. on Wednesday 28 August and on Thursday 29 August 2013 and for questions to be lodged in the normal manner pursuant to Standing Order 378.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there anyone opposed to that course of action? There is no opposition. Leave is granted.Resource Management Amendment BillLocal Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2)Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment BillThird ReadingsDebate resumed.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): The Minister who has just resumed her seat the Minister for the Environment is not wrong. This collection of bills arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill now before the House for third reading is part of a grand plan. Be in no doubt that this Government does have a plan for the environment and for all of those pieces of legislation that impede in its view economic development and so must be undermined or cut away or diluted or defused in some way. What we have seen is this legislation take its place alongside reforms of the Local Government Act for example which strip local government responsibilities back basically to roads rubbish and rates and takes away responsibility to deal with social and economic and cultural and environmental well-being in local communities.That is not too distant from this legislation the Resource Management Reform Bill in its three composite parts because all of these things are of a piece. In fact I commend the Government for being so coherent about it. Although it has been trying to get one piece of ideology through at a time there is no doubt it has been working to a plan. Some of the things that it considers to be the stumbling blocks to progress anddevelopment in our country are some of the things that New Zealanders hold most dear. What we see in this piece of legislation is a movement that builds on the previous amendments to which the Minister referred in her speech and will be followed by an additional piece of legislation again to which the Minister referred in her speech which we might expect to see in the House in October of this year. All of these things piece by piece little by little are having a cumulative effect on our environmental protections and on the things that New Zealanders hold dear.I want to begin the main part of my rebuttal of this legislation by going back to the kind of—I want to say urban mythology but it is also rural—mythology on which the presumptions of this Government in changing the Resource Management Act have been based. There is a mythology out there and the Minister uses it quite readily when it suits her that it is very hard to get anything done under the Resource Management Act—it is really prohibitively ponderous expensive and slow. The example that she uses frequently is the example of somebody building a deck on their house. That is held up as one of the main blocks to progress. That is not what this Government is about. It is not about the deck on the house; it is about very substantial economic development whether it is construction or extraction or any other kind of industry which in its view should not be impeded by the intrinsic the inherent worth of the physical environment that we so enjoy.It is as if the Government has not quite worked out that our environment in New Zealand is our economy. The environment is the economy. It does not matter which way you slice and dice it our environment is our economic well-being. It does not matter whether it is just vegetables grown in gardens or it is comprehensive plans for development of renewable energies. These things contribute to our economic and our social well-being. I just wanted to draw out the mythology that this is based on.Some of the telling facts from the Minister’s own ministry are not often referred to in the Minister’s discussion or the discussion of Government members opposite of the bill and these changes to it. They ignore the fact that under the Resource Management Act in 2010 and 2011 36154 resource consent applications were processed through to a decision. Of these 0.56 percent that is 203 of resource consent applications were declined—so 0.5 percent. Four percent 1414 of resource consent applications were publicly notified allowing third parties to comment on them. Four percent were publicly notified which meant that people could make comment on them. Two percent 849 of resource consent applications were notified to only affected parties for their comments. Two percent of resource consent applications were notified to only affected parties for their comments. One percent that is 357 of resource consent decisions were appealed. Local authority officers acting under delegated authority made 91 percent of decisions on resource consent applications and 95 percent of resource consent applications were processed on time—within the 21 working days that the Resource Management Act allowed. These are the facts that the Ministry for the Environment itself declares are the facts around the application of the Resource Management Act.So why is there the perpetuation of this mythology that the Resource Management Act gets in the way of development? Yes there are cases. The supermarket on the North Shore is certainly a case in point and I am pleased that that has been resolved satisfactorily. But that is not the Resource Management Act’s fault actually. There were some malcontents on both sides of that argument who were keen to see the matter drawn out—certainly on one side of the argument they were keen to see that project drawn out.It seems to me that although there may be room to improve and streamline the Resource Management Act—and we have no objection to improvements to the process—a wholesale staged implementation of a plan against the ResourceManagement Act is not justified. There is no justification and this will become even more obvious when the Minister’s third attempt at undermining the Resource Management Act comes to this House later this year. This is all of a part. This is all of a pattern and the thing that the National Government cannot tolerate is that New Zealanders have come to appreciate even more than they have previously the intrinsic and amenity values of our environment. It is not satisfactory now to put a tunnel through from the Dart River to Milford so the Minister of Conservation chose not to. The basis on which the Minister for the Environment proceeds with these wholesale onslaughts on the Resource Management Act is not proven is not demonstrated and is based simply on ideology over environmental protection.This will be another weakening of our environmental protections in New Zealand. People are aware now of what the Government is doing and its intentions with the Resource Management Act. Turning it into an economic development Act is not what most New Zealanders want to have happen. The Government needs to think—if it is committed only to jobs it needs to think of the jobs that can be created in clean technology and ways that preserve and enhance our environment rather than constantly running over it and asphalting it. These are not pieces of legislation that are going protect our environment and enhance it.NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): The purpose of the Resource Management Act is to promote the sustainable management of our natural and physical resources. It is also our major planning tool so it is important that it works well. It is important that it supports the environment it safeguards the environment and it provides the rules that underpin the well-being and the future of all New Zealanders.The Resource Management Amendment Bill is focused on improving the functioning of this legislation so that we can get the best possible outcomes for the environment and support economic growth. There is an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied and that is relevant here because long drawn-out clumsy decision-making processes add absolutely no value to the environmental outcome. They stymie economic growth they stop development and most important they hamper the creation of jobs. When it comes to planning and consenting we all want consistent good-quality timely decisions and this bill will encourage that. It will encourage time-effective and efficient decision-making.The bill requires better-quality analysis in section 32 reports. These reports underpin important local government decision-making on plan changes and projects but they tend to be inconsistent in quality. The new bill requires much more careful consideration and more robust cost-benefit analysis. In particular analysts must consider how their decision will affect economic growth and the creation of jobs. Some submitters were concerned about the time and expense this sort of work may take for councils but we made it very clear that the analysis should match the size and the scale of the projects. The Local Government and Environment Committee also amended the legislation to ensure that both the positives and the negatives of the economy in economic growth must be considered.The bill also provides for a 6-month time limit on consents for medium-sized projects. When you look at consents presently most of them get through in about 9 months but some take many many more months—a lot longer. We believe that a quality decision can be produced within those 6 months. The quality means that there is no loss to the environment but a consistent 6-month timetable will provide significant cost savings and again will help increase job opportunities.Under this legislation major regional projects will have the option of direct referral to the Environment Court. They may still choose to go through the local government process but unless they are in exceptional circumstances councils must support theirapplications to go directly to the Environment Court. This will avoid the time and the costs of duplication of processes. Overall the changes in Part 1 of the Resource Management Amendment Bill will provide better new mechanisms to deliver better-quality environmental outcomes in a timely cost-effective way.The second bill arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill provides a streamlined process for making operational the Auckland Unitary Plan. These changes will mean that the Auckland Council will be able to deliver its plan within 3 years as opposed to up to 10 years which would have been done under business-as-usual processes. This plan will have a huge significance for Auckland. It is the largest and most complex planning exercise ever undertaken in the country and is expected to involve over 10000 submissions so the Auckland Council requested a new legislative framework. This framework will combine the normal two-tier process of council hearings for consenting and planning with appeals to the Environment Court. It will combine them in a one-step process but it still allows for all the opportunities for mediation and negotiation. It will deliver good outcomes in a faster and more efficient way. It will be good for Auckland to get its plan in place within the next 3 years.I would finally like to just comment on the amendments to section 360 of the Resource Management Act in the Resource Management Amendment Bill. This Government is particularly interested in facilitating better environmental reporting. At present regional and local councils do significant environmental testing and monitoring and they collect a lot of environmental information but there is no consistent framework around that information and how that information should be presented. The amendments in this bill allow for the introduction of regulations. These regulations will be agreed in consultation with the councils and require local authorities to monitor according to specific priorities and methods. This will provide us with the data so that we will be able to deliver much-improved environmental reporting and I strongly support that.This legislation is designed to safeguard the environment but provides rules that work better for all New Zealanders. I commend these bills to the House.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): I carry on where the Hon Maryan Street left off in I think usefully characterising this legislation—the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill—and locating it in an agenda that this National Government has pursued for several years now through a number of different pieces of legislation. It is part of an agenda to undermine and strip away regulations that are designed to both protect the natural environment in this country and to manage the trade-offs and decisions that we make as a nation and as communities around development processes that guarantee the right of individuals and communities to have a say in development processes. The rationale of this Government for that whole agenda is to promote economic growth—never mind that the Resource Management Act is built on the very notion of sustainability and never mind that the Resource Management Act recognises that the protection of the natural environment is a higher good that we are all entrusted with for the sake of future generations.I think Maryan Street was quite right to place this legislation in the context of that very deliberate campaign over the last few years to undermine the environmental bottom lines in the Resource Management Act and to undermine the public’s right to have a say. There are now many many pieces of legislation that can be characterised in that way. She was right also to point out that the Government’s claims about theprocessing times of consents under the Resource Management Act by councils while not perfect are far from the bogey that National has made them out to be.I suppose the thing that really irks me about this is that the so-called Business Growth Agenda of this Government is reduced here to trimming away and undermining environmental regulation supposedly as a way of spurring economic growth—of trading off economic growth against our natural environment. Instead of doing the hard work instead of adopting policies that would genuinely promote innovation by New Zealand firms and would genuinely encourage and support New Zealand’s firms to export and sell our ideas and our goods and services on global markets instead of looking at ways that we can add value to an export economy that is so dominated by primary production instead of looking at ways that we can build a modern manufacturing sector in this country that would reverse the structural imbalance that we have in the economy instead of seriously and proactively investing in a much more skilled workforce that would raise the productivity that we desperately need and instead of looking for all those kinds of smart ways that would allow the State to enable high-value economic development—instead of doing those things—this kind of obsessive tinkering with the Resource Management Act and weakening the protections that have been so much a part of the fabric of this country seem to be pretty much all we can expect from the Government these days. I think it is a little depressing that that is what it comes down to.I want to touch on two specific parts of this legislation: the Auckland Unitary Plan provisions and the tree provisions. I think the Auckland Unitary Plan in the context of local government and planning in this country is a very very significant development. In fact it is an advance. It has allowed Auckland for the first time in a generation or more to have a serious public conversation about the future shape of the city and to tackle some of the problems that are associated with the significant population growth that Auckland continues to experience. The unitary plan and the zone changes—dramatic changes of zoning—right across the region will enable the intensification that Auckland desperately needs.Unless that intensified urban development takes place then there are only two other options. One is sprawling endlessly into the countryside where low-income families and workers are forced into cheap housing on the fringes of the city where the costs of commuting to work every day are so prohibitive that it drives people into poverty—a completely unsustainable urban development model—or secondly urban containment no intensification and then astronomical increases in the price of land and the price of housing which is what we currently see in Auckland. The unitary plan offers a way out of that. It allows Auckland to go up and out and find a new development pattern and that is extremely significant. Because of that because it could take up to a decade to bed in the new unitary plan under the current resource management law and because the challenges—not least in affordable housing—are so acute in Auckland we support the fast tracking of the unitary plan that is included in this legislation.But there are two key elements that we again need to put on the record that we are disappointed the Government has not taken up. One is that the Government has refused to allow the Auckland Unitary Plan to have legal weight on notification. The plan will be notified in September very shortly and Auckland Council as well as requesting this fast tracking of the plan asked that the Government on a one-off basis allow the pre-2009 Resource Management Act rules to apply which would have meant the plan had legal weight from notification—not to be operative but simply to have legal weight. This means that the unitary plan would be taken into account by decision makers when making consenting decisions alongside all of the other plans and statutory considerations. If the Government had just allowed that to happen the unitary planwith all its zoning changes and a whole raft of provisions designed to tackle affordable housing would have taken effect almost immediately. There would have been no need for the ridiculous Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill which the House will be debating and all of the armoury in the unitary plan designed to deal with managing Auckland’s growth—bringing in new greenfield land encouraging intensification—would have taken effect immediately and Auckland would not have to wait another 3 years and have the National Government holding back its prosperity its development its jobs and its growth when dealing with affordable housing. All of that could have been avoided and it could have taken effect from September. So that is a real lost opportunity.Again I want to put on the record how disappointed we are that the Government has insisted on it having the sole prerogative to appoint the hearings panel that will administer this fast-tracked process for the unitary plan. It is Auckland’s plan. Aucklanders will live with the consequences. Aucklanders pay the bills. Why should the democratically elected Auckland Council not at least share the responsibility for appointing the personnel on that hearings panel?We have made it very clear that we protest vigorously against this legislation putting handcuffs on councils in terms of their ability to use effective tree protection rules. This is again a deliberate move by the National Government to make the rules so cumbersome to wrap councils up in red tape to add costs to ratepayers and to make the rules so impossible and unwieldy that it will be very difficult for councils like Auckland Council to protect the urban forest in Auckland to protect thepōhutukawa forest on the east coast of Auckland and particularly to protect the Waitakere Ranges trees. What this legislation does is make tree protection rules unworkable and even though there have been some small improvements we protest against that. Labour will not be supporting this legislation.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): We should not be debating changes to our most important environmental law the Resource Management Act under urgency. We should not be having Government members moving premature closure motions to shut down the debate on Part 1 of the Resource Management Reform Bill given that it makes so many substantive changes to the Act.The Green Party continues to oppose this legislation the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. We agree with the Greater Wellington Regional Council when it said in its submission: “The Bill in trying to streamline the process seems to be making things more prescriptive less accessible to public participation and more costly for councils with no provision for additional funding support.” In this third reading speech on the legislation I would like to comment on two of the proposals in it clause 69 around cost-benefit analysis and the changes to state of the environment reporting because they highlight the anti-environment anti-regulation ideology and agenda that are at the heart of this legislation.Section 32 of the Resource Management Act currently requires councils when they are developing a plan or a policy and the Minister for the Environment when she is developing a national policy or a national environmental standard to consider the benefits and the costs of those rules or regulations and other methods and the risks of acting or not acting if there is uncertain or insufficient information. This evaluation is to ensure that the proposal is the best way to achieve the desired objective. The Green Party does not oppose these cost-benefit evaluations if they are done under the existing Act because under the Act as it stands there is no focus on the evaluation being largely an economic evaluation. But the amending legislation through the changes it makesthrough clause 69 singles out two economic effects that must be included in this cost-benefit evaluation and they are the opportunities for economic growth and the opportunities for employment that are anticipated to be either provided or reduced. There is no mention of opportunities for environmental enhancement. As the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said in her submission on the amending legislation: “This does not in itself say that economic effects are to be given more weight than environmental social and cultural effects. But the result will be that it will. Simply specifying these two economic effects while failing to specify other effects will unbalance a section 32 evaluation.”That is what this bill is all about. It is about evaluating short-term economic growth above other Part 2 matters. That is what the whole tranche of changes that the Government is making piece by piece to the Resource Management Act is about. It is about unbalancing the Act so that it becomes law that promotes short-term economic development at nature’s expense rather than promoting sustainable management. With this legislation and the upcoming legislation the Resource Management Act will no longer be an Act that safeguards the environment and the needs of future generations. It will be all about economic development now.What the John Key Government is doing is making the Resource Management Act into a national development Act much like Sir Robert Muldoon did with the National Development Act at the time. That is because the decision-making criteria in the Resource Management Act are being substantially changed to promote economic growth. They fail to recognise that a healthy economy is based on a healthy environment. The changes increase ministerial powers they centralise decision making and they erode local democracy. They will have more decisions being made behind closed doors in the Beehive rather than in the open around the council table. We see that with decisions like appointing the Auckland hearings panel and with the changes to state of the environment monitoring where it will be the Minister who tells councils what they have to do in terms of environment monitoring.These changes to section 32 and the whole cost-benefit analysis around plan making are really important because if a regional council for example is considering new plan rules to limit nutrient losses from dairy farming in order to protect water quality it is going to have to analyse and quantify the economic opportunities and costs of doing this but it will not have to specifically consider the environmental benefits such as improving the health of a river and making it safer to swim in. It is much easier to quantify those economic costs and benefits than it is to quantify the benefits of sustaining wildlife allowing people to go rafting down a river or ensuring that the river is healthy to swim in. That means there will be much more of a focus on what is easily quantifiable and much more of a reluctance for councils to introduce rules because they know that they risk being challenged in the Environment Court if they have not done this economic analysis and if they have not quantified the costs and benefits.These changes will also impose extra costs on councils. We heard at the Local Government and Environment Committee that it costs councils between $3000 and $50000 to do a section 32 evaluation. Because this legislation is making the economic analysis mandatory it means that that will get first call on council funding rather than one that evaluates the environment or cultural benefits. If the Minister was genuinely interested in improving practice under the Resource Management Act she would get her ministry to do some generic analysis of the costs and benefits of subdivision controls and of land-use controls to protect water quality. But the interest is not in doing that; it is all about speeding up short-term decision-making in favour of development interests. It is all about making an easier ride for miners for irrigators for agribusinessfor dam builders and for property developers and that means undermining the capacity of councils to regulate and have sound rules that protect environmental quality.I would like to follow up Nicky Wagner’s comments about state of the environment reporting. Certainly we want consistent measures around doing that but this legislation is about offloading on to councils the costs of doing state of the environment monitoring rather than funding a robust and independent process through the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment estimated that it would cost her office about $1.6 million to employ the extra staff to do that. What does the legislation do? It allows the Minister to direct through regulation which this Parliament will have no opportunity to scrutinise and for the Minister to say what environmental indicators councils should use and what standards and methods they should use but it is not about providing the funding for councils to do that. What will that mean? This will be another cost to councils without central government providing any revenue to do that. So once again the Government is beating up on local authorities but it is not providing them with the revenue to do the job when it shifts extra costs on to them.We want robust state of the environment monitoring particularly when the Government is promoting more irrigation which is likely to reduce water quality. But what the Government is doing is making sure that we will get lesser-quality less robust and less independent monitoring because the Minister is breaching the promises her predecessor made that it would be done by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and that it would be independent. Instead she will through this legislation be telling councils what they have to do without providing them with the funding that allows them to do that properly. There is a whole lack of robustness there and councils were quick to point out in their submissions that that will as the Palmerston North City Council said “increase the costs associated with monitoring at a time when many councils are struggling to meet their existing monitoring requirements due to resourcing limitations”.Once again this legislation is anti-environment and anti-regulation here and with the provisions around urban trees which will make it so much more cumbersome for councils to protect urban trees by requiring them to legally identify every single tree or group of trees that they want to apply resource consent controls to. That is the thrust of this legislation and of the other legislation that the Government is going to introduce later this year. It is all about short-term economic thinking not about a smart green economy that recognises that the environment is the basis of that economy.Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): I rise to support the third reading of the Resource Management Reform Bill which has been divided into three parts: the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and of course the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. This legislation makes four or five significant changes to what we have grown to know as the Resource Management Act. In fact I remember a member of the Labour Party saying some 6 or 7 years ago Marian—oh what was her surname? Minister—Hon Member: Hobbs.Hon PHIL HEATLEY: That is the one. She said it was a beautifully crafted piece of legislation. She was in love with it ignoring the fact that it had stopped so much legitimate development in this country. What this bill does is a number of things as I said. First of all the direct referral process allows notified resource consent applications to be decided by the Environment Court bypassing the local council. The reason is that so many of these consents if not all that go to the council go through a process that is elongated painful and expensive and ends up in the Environment Court anyway.The 6-month consenting provision in this bill allows medium-sized projects to fall under a category where the consent needs to be granted within a 6-month period. There are about 1600 medium-sized projects on average throughout New Zealand each year. We are saying that they should be consented within the 6-month process. We have seen projects of national significance done in a 9-month process and now we are doing a 6-month consenting process here.Also we have got the section 32 amendments where councils have to ensure that the economic consequences of any decision they make are fully examined and reported on. Of course there are the amendments to do with trees as well which members from the other side of the House have talked about ad infinitum as if a tree is the most significant issue on New Zealanders’ minds at this time.Parts 2 and 3 deal with the Auckland Unitary Plan. This legislation as I commit to the House in the third reading does again underpin National’s environmental successes. We have got improved air quality. We have passed effective legislation in the exclusive economic zone which the previous Government ignored even though it was backed by the Greens. There was no legislation out in the exclusive economic zone. The Greens never thought of it. We put some legislation and regulation out in the exclusive economic zone and the Greens opposed it saying it was not good enough—it was not as good as the nil that they did. We passed legislation dealing with climate change and we are seeing more renewable energy. I commend this legislation to the House. I thank the Hon Amy Adams for all the work she has done with her Cabinet colleagues and for her support. Thank you very much.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to address the reforms of legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. The National Government would have us believe that the current Resource Management Act is the current blockage in the road to economic development and prosperity. The philistines over there on the Government benches would say that the Resource Management Act is a barrier. National says: “Take out the teeth from the Resource Management Act and suddenly all will be transformed. Suddenly there will be economic growth with a surge. Suddenly there will be a new golden age in New Zealand. Suddenly there will be a dawning of a whole new economic growth because the Resource Management Act has been reformed.” As theTui billboards go: “Yeah right.”The bonfire of the Resource Management Act regulations causes serious damage to our environment and massive unintended consequences. It will impose potential costs in the manner of the leaky homes fiasco which the National Government brought about back in the 1990s. Yes we did require some efficiency and streamlining processes to be brought about in the Resource Management Act and everyone would agree that there were areas for fine-tuning. But it did not require complete gutting as this National Government has moved to do.This Government does not really want to solve problems. It wants to use problems to pursue its own ideological agenda. It now claims that changing the Resource Management Act is somehow about solving the problems of first-home buyers. What a massive leap of logic. How absurd that it has used the Resource Management Act and says that by gutting the Act suddenly tens of thousands of new homes will be built all as a result of taking away the rules around the Act. It is breathtaking. How a bonfire of the regulations is going to translate into more affordable houses is never explained. Only a National Government would have the gall the temerity and the sheer effrontery to pull this sort of stunt.National has not adequately justified this legislation. It is in a world of assertion. It is all claim and spin with nothing to back it up. The facts are there before you in theregulatory impact statement—2 percent of resource consents were notified and 98 percent of resource consents were not notified. Yet the Government would have New Zealanders believe that a large chunk of resource consents were having to be notified when only 2 percent were. Of those 2 percent only 1 percent ended up being appealed and going through to the Environment Court—1 percent. That is such a low percentage. It is hardly something that means that the country is being held to ransom when such a low percentage is being appealed.We have also heard that a large percentage was being processed on time. Only 5 percent of resource consents were not actually being processed on time. The vast bulk of those consents were actually being handled by council officers—over 90 percent by council officers—not by commissioners and not by elected representatives. They were being done through the council processes and 95 percent were being processed on time.We did have the odd exception and I will agree that there were some exceptions. It was mentioned by the Minister for the Environment that Pak ’N Save in Wairau Road was one example of the Resource Management Act being used to hold up a supermarket for 17 years. That is true. The two supermarket chains were using the Resource Management Act vexatious litigation and trade competition to hold each other out. Basically it was a situation where for every month that one supermarket chain could hold the other supermarket chain off from building its supermarket its other five supermarkets in the greater area of about a 7 or 8 kilometre radius were making significant revenues by stopping the competitor from being there.There happened to be a certain mayor on the North Shore who became the mayor and said “We are going to stop this and we are going to move on this very quickly.” and who knocked their heads together and also brought the staff together. Many of the council officers themselves had very fixed positions on this. It basically became a situation of the leadership moving in talking to all the various parties sorting it out and bringing them together. Within 12 to 18 months it was done and I cut the ribbon to open that supermarket within 2 years of that. So 17 years of grief was brought to a head within 18 months during my mayoralty simply because we saw fit to use logic the Resource Management Act was put aside and we came to a common-sense position and got it sorted out.We have heard also that as a result of these Resource Management Act reforms there will be many other instances where things will be improved. But what we are seeing here are things such as the trees issue. Again I can tell you from a North Shore perspective that it prided itself on having very very good vegetation on the North Shore and a very very good governance of our trees on the North Shore. The North Shore was seen as being the jewel in the crown of the Auckland area in terms of our tree coverage and our rules around trees and ensuring that the communities were brought into this.During our Local Government and Environment Committee hearings we heard from many many groups a large percentage of which came from the North Shore who talked about areas like LeRoys Bush in Northcote the electorate of Jonathan Coleman. Jonathan Coleman will agree with this. There under our former situation we ensured that it was not just the bush in the public reserve but all adjoining properties around that in a global sense that were impacted. If somebody started cutting down all the trees bordering on to the public reserve the public reserve amenity would be greatly reduced as a result. The community accepted that and they all agreed that if you buy a property bordering on to LeRoys Bush you do not start chopping all the trees down.Under this legislation and as a result of this what the council will have to do is go andGazette every single property and ensure that every single property bordering LeRoys Bush—and you are talking probably a couple of hundred—will all have to be gazetted in terms of bordering on to LeRoys Bush. They will all have to go through aprocess. It will all be council time. It will all be council staff time. It will be very very time-consuming and it will be costly. At the end of the day this Government talks about reducing compliance costs reducing costs to councils and reducing costs to local authorities but there is one example of one reserve on the North Shore of Auckland that will tie up a considerable amount of council staff time in simply gazetting all the properties that border on to LeRoys Bush to ensure that the properties adjoining there continue to be protected. Because what—Maggie Barry: Money well spent.ANDREW WILLIAMS: —we are seeing in Auckland and the member for North Shore Maggie Barry might realise this is unscrupulous developers moving in who have no affinity and no connection to the areas. They are a bit like the member for the North Shore who moved to the North Shore just recently. They come into the areas buy out properties and chop down the trees. Somebody who has lived in a property for many years who has been used to trees on their property or on the border of their property with the adjoining property suddenly finds a bare barren section next door. We are seeing it happening increasingly in the last 1 year to 2 years as a result of the National Government. It is a great shame that you will not see Auckland the same in 10 years’ time as it is today.By contrast the city of Melbourne is actually increasing its tree coverage from something like 20 percent tree coverage—they actually have a 10 to 15-year target—to go up to something like 60 or 70 percent canopy coverage in the Melbourne area because of the improvement to the environment and improvement to the climatic conditions as a result. So there in Melbourne they are trying to increase the coverage but here this Government is impacting on it.The Resource Management Act has been an Act that has been seen globally—around the world—by many many other parliaments and many other countries as being a fine example of some of the best legislation in the world in the sense of environmental protection. This National Government is gutting the Resource Management Act. It is taking it down to the lowest possible level that it can get away with. It is doing this so it can help its friends its mates its developers—the people with the money. This is another case of the National Government getting in behind the developers the financiers and all those with money to develop properties. They will have an easy road as a result of this. This legislation weakens the Resource Management Act it weakens our democracy it weakens our local government structure in New Zealand and it weakens the protection of the environment. New Zealand First does not support this and it thinks this is a very retrograde step in terms of the history of New Zealand.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I am very happy to rise to speak in the third reading of this legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. I am a little dismayed as always at the contributions of some of the members across the House who use inflammatory language such as “unscrupulous developers” “rich developers” and “National’s rich mates”. I find that language a little bit offensive.Chris Auchinvole: A bit old-fashioned?JACQUI DEAN: It is slightly old-fashioned and it brings to mind a development just north of Christchurch. It is called Pegasus Town and it is a development just north of Christchurch. It is in fact yes the project of a developer. I would argue not that that developer was unscrupulous or rich but in fact I would argue exactly the opposite. But I would say that that developer is one of a group of companies that are providing housing for people in Christchurch after the earthquake.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No no. The Todd Corporation took over after he went bust.JACQUI DEAN: Please over the other side of the House tell me that that kind of development is bad for New Zealand. Please tell me that the Pegasus Towndevelopment which has happened just north of Christchurch—I do not know how many sections there are and let us widen it out to some of the developments that are happening around Rolleston all around Christchurch. These are the so-called rich the so-called unscrupulous mates of the National Party who are providing housing for people in Christchurch. So I ask those Christchurch-based MPs who are railing against this Resource Management Act reform to please tell me how that can be bad. These people are taking a punt providing housing and providing sections and providing the infrastructure for people in—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Oh a punt in Christchurch—building a house in Christchurch isn’t taking a punt.JACQUI DEAN: I see that the ex-member for Waimakariri whose name escapes me at the moment cannot accept the fact that here are some developers doing exactly what is needed in New Zealand—that is providing housing providing sections and providing homes for New Zealanders. So please stand up I ask the ex-member for Waimakariri. Stand up and give me the rationale behind why that can be a bad thing.The member for New Zealand First gave us a salutary story—a very self-congratulatory story—about how he managed to fix what was a 13-year impasse—Andrew Williams: 17-year.JACQUI DEAN: It was a 17-year impasse between two supermarket chains. One was vexatiously preventing the development of the other. He managed to fix it within 18 months and in fact he even cut the ribbon. What a guy—18 months. Well I have got good news for that member from New Zealand First the failed mayor from—Maggie Barry: The clown ofCampbells Bay.JACQUI DEAN: —thank you very much—Campbells Bay. I have got good news for that ex-mayor and now New Zealand First list member. This legislation which is shortly to become the law and thank goodness for it is going to cut that consenting time down to 6 months. So that member fromCampbells Bay can rest assured. He can rest assured that although he might have toiled away under the previous regime of the Resource Management Act under this legislation that consenting regime will be cut down to 6 months. So let us hear that member or somebody else from his party get up on their feet and say “That’s a good job Hon Amy Adams. Actually you’ve done a good job with the Resource Management Act.” because that is what I believe. Far from the fantasy that is expounded throughout this House that developers are rich and unscrupulous—and I wrote down other notes that I will not bother this House with—this kind of legislation is about getting good decision-making. It is not about affecting the nature of the decision; it is about coming to a good decision in a timely cost-effective manner. Why? Because we can build houses and because we can build supermarkets.I just want to finish my contribution on the other old saw—the old 20th century saw—that the National Party does not care about the environment. I will not go through the environmental gains that this Government has put into effect—oh more money has been spent on water rehabilitation in the 5 years that we have been the Government than under any other previous Government. I just want to pick out a couple of small examples about how the environment does benefit from development and they are theŌpuha dam in South Canterbury and theWaiareka Stream in North Otago. Both of those water catchments have been affected by irrigation development and guess what? Both have benefited in terms of water quality. This is good legislation. This is a good Government. Amy Adams is a very good Minister for the Environment. I commend this legislation to the House.Su’aWILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I will take a short call on this third reading of the legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. JacquiDean the member who just sat down has argued that for the sake of economic growth the destruction of the environment is justified. She claimed that there have been houses built and said that for the sake of creating jobs it is OK to put our environment at risk. Yet there is a shortage of houses throughout New Zealand and there are now 153000 people still unemployed all under this Government’s watch so I am not sure whether that member understands what this legislation puts at risk—Hon Judith Collins: Patronising.Su’aWILLIAM SIO: No no no it is not patronising Miss Collins. That is the claim made by that particular member and I am saying that she is wrong. She is totally wrong.As my colleague Maryan Street has said the changes in this legislation and past and planned legislative changes by this Government are part of a package by this Government that does four things in my view: it puts at risk New Zealand’s environment it destroys the ability of local communities to participate in local democracy it undermines local government’s ability to function properly and to deliver for its constituents and it undermines the fact that local government has a critical role to play in local development. It is the Government’s argument that we should be destroying local government and removing local democracy all for the sake of economic growth. Let us ask it for the proof. Let us ask it for the proof. It has had 5 years in Government and all we get for the rest of New Zealand is 153000 unemployed people low-income people and people who do not have a house to get into and it is becoming harder and harder to get into a home. That is the legacy of this particular Government and if it goes ahead with these changes now and with further changes it will continue to undermine the ability of New Zealanders and ratepayers to participate in local decision-making.I say that that has not gone unnoticed by local government. That has not gone unnoticed by councillors and mayors throughout this country. They would have noted—or maybe not because most local government people sat through the local government conference recently and did not say a word but they were murmuring behind when the Prime Minister spoke and they were grumbling behind when the Minister of Local Government spoke because they have had enough of this. They have had enough of the bullying tactics of this Government. They have had enough of the local government Ministers from this Government going about prancing along and telling local people that they know best and they know better and therefore they can go ahead. It is just unbelievable that this Government believes that it is doing something good for New Zealand. By the time those members leave office they will have left this country in a mess. Shame on them.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): It is quite difficult to keep awake actually after a tedious dissertation like that one. That memberSu’a William Sio has not—not to my knowledge anyway—sat in on any of these reforms. He has not actually sat in on any of the submissions and seems to have a particularly poor grasp of the legislation which is let me say out loud just in case you would benefit from this at the last moment the Resource Management Act reform legislation in its third reading. When we talk about the track record of Governments let us look a little bit at what Labour contributed to the Government propped up by its pals the Greens.Tracey Martin: You’ve got to speak about the bill. You don’t know what you’re talking about.MAGGIE BARRY: This is in those long dark years—the 9 years in the wilderness. There is achihuahua yapping somewhere in the Chamber Mr Assistant Speaker. Is that allowable? Anyway.In the exclusive economic zone legislation which is a piece of legislation that we passed late last year it was very important that that very important piece of water be protected. Under 9 years of Labour and the Greens what happened? There were 46 mining consents in our precious oceans. Those parties did nothing to protect them. There was not a single regulation and there was not a single protection put down. That is bad enough. That is appalling—46 consents granted. They made it worse though. They compounded the problem because they then stood against what we put through. They voted against the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill. So not only did they not protect it when they were in a position to but also they stood against the actual protections that this Government put in place. I am very proud of what we did there. It was important.A lot of stuff and nonsense and mythology has been spun by those on the opposite benches about the Resource Management Act. It is a fabulous piece of legislation according to “Planet Labour”—22 years old nothing wrong with it. That is not actually what Sir Geoffrey Palmer said a few weeks ago. He actually agrees with a lot of the things and a lot of the reforms that our Minister for the Environment Amy Adams has put through.Hon Ruth Dyson: Ha ha!MAGGIE BARRY: It would pay to pay attention to this particularly that member who guffaws up the back ruddy faced and paying little attention. When we looked at the 234 submissions on the Resource Management Act and listened to 147 of them in Wellington and Auckland a lot became clear. For example Statistics New Zealand’s Business Operations Survey maintained that the Act was expensive that it was time-consuming and that it was having a significantly bad effect on business performance. The business survey cited the Act specifically saying that it had led to an uncertainty that in the past 2 years had led to the cancellation of projects potentially worth more than $800 million. The uncertainty had led to the cancellation of about two-thirds of those projects. Another 430 businesses cancelled projects each worth more than $100000. Again they blamed the Act’s processes.So “lies damned lies and statistics” were quoted by the member with her head down over there Maryan Street a little bit earlier in the evening. She very selectively looked at the statistics. She did not consider the lost opportunities and the people who were defeated by the Act. Some businesses—can you believe it; it almost does beggar belief—have spent up to 25 percent a quarter of their total expenditure just on applying for resource consents. The lost opportunity costs of the Act are truly appalling. To dispel some of that nonsense and mythology that we have been hearing I say that more than half of the resource consent applications are cancelled in the pre-application stage due to uncertainty and time delays. These are the sorts of problems that we were being confronted with as a nation so we addressed them. We looked at them and we did something about them. Perhaps the most damning thing of all is that only 3 percent of the businesses surveyed said that the current Act enhanced their businesses. The others pointed to it as a roadblock and a problem that caused delays. That is something that needs to be addressed.In 2007 there was an example that estimated that for a $10 million project the cost of the delay per day was $2200 which if you extrapolate that over 3 months—I know you are not too crash hot at the maths over there but bear with me—means an additional $140000. If that delay extended out into 9 months which is about the average time of delays around consents those costs blew out to nearly $600000. So who is the winner there?There is not time to go into the issue of the Environment Court. People say it has been diminished; it continues to have a very important role in interpreting and applyingpolicy and safeguarding the rigour of planning and consenting processes and the quality of incomes. What it does not need to do is determine values or policy which is the role of communities and their elected representatives—namely the council and the Government. I commend these bills to the House wholeheartedly.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand that the next call is a split call. The Hon Ruth Dyson 5 minutes.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): That is correct. It is very hard after you hear that member Maggie Barry to think why on earth she would be so poorly liked not only within her own caucus but within her own party and in her own electorate. Let me give myself a minute to figure out why that might be. It does not take long. I love watching the faces of her colleagues as she makes a contribution to the House. They all start wincing and whingeing.I am very pleased to speak to the third reading of the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill to make sure that it is on the record that not only I personally but also the Labour Party opposes this legislation. My colleague the Hon Maryan Street quite correctly pointed out that these bills are not one-off amendments to do anything that the members opposite purport them to do but actually they are part of a series of measures to undermine the principles of the Resource Management Act. The reason that the Resource Management Act was developed over both National and Labour Governments was actually to move from a centralised planning perspective to an effects-based piece of legislation. Around the world that process is envied. It has done New Zealand very well.I also want to put on record that this process is not perfect and that where councils are underperforming they should be called to account and given proper support to improve their processes. This should not be about delaying; this should be about have a regime that looks at the effects of a proposal and ensures that the founding principle of that consideration is the protection of the environment. It should have at its heart consideration of the rights of our citizens to have a say in what is happening in their communities their cities and their regions and indeed in our country. So ensuring that we have environmental protection and the voice of our community is critical to the success of this process. This legislation weakens both of those provisions.My colleagueSu’a William Sio also mentioned two other important provisions. They are to support rather than tie up local authorities and give them the respect and the recognition that they deserve to get on and do their mandated work as efficiently as possible. This legislation pushes aside our democratically elected councillors’ rights to carry out those functions. It is just another reduction in our respect for local authorities. It also fails to recognise and in fact works in the opposite direction of central government recognising the role in local development of a local authority. So there is no logical rationale to these pieces of legislation. They are some of the more ideological pieces of legislation that we have seen in this House for some time.A strong advocate for the environment and indeed often a strong advocate for the National Party Guy Salmon said on national television that this process of reforming the Resource Management Act was the first time we had had a Minister for the Environment in New Zealand since the very first Minister for the Environment who moved away from protecting the standards for the environment and reduced protection and standards for the environment. I do not think that Guy Salmon will be promoting let alone voting for National next year.This is a sad time for this House. This is legislation that is not supported in the way that it should be and in the way that the Resource Management Act was originallydeveloped for across both National and Labour—it was before other parties were in Parliament. I regret that it looks like it will be progressed through this House.DENISE ROCHE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker.Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Greens will be opposing this legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. It is ironic that it is seeing its passage through the House at this time. It is ironic because it may have escaped the notice of some members’ attention but we are in the throes of local government elections at the moment. Up in Auckland they will be electing councillors local board members and a mayor—probably the mayor whom the National Government does not want again.Why should we bother? Why should we bother with local government elections when we have got bills like these coming through the House and legislation like this? Why bother with the democratic rights of people to be involved in developments in their areas and their neighbourhoods? Why should we bother? Why bother when we have got a Government that will determine the make-up of the hearings panel that will hear the Auckland Unitary Plan? Why should we bother with local government at all? Why should we bother when the hearings panel can if it likes make recommendations around the Auckland Unitary Plan—the one plan for Auckland—that are completely outside the scope of what the submissions have been? Why should we bother with local government? Why should we bother when it is not being listened to by this Government and when we have a Government that actually insists that we do not include our communities in shaping the future of our cities? The example here is Auckland again where the Auckland Spatial Plan the 30-year plan which communities across the city worked on is not given the same legal weight or any legal weight. It will simply be given a bit of regard when it comes to the unitary plan.We have real concerns that this legislation undermines local participation not just in these examples that I have just specified but also when it comes to the referral of medium-sized applications straight to the Environment Court. We note that in the legislation there is no clear definition of what a medium-sized development is and there is no real definition of what the threshold is that has to be maintained before it gets fast tracked to the Environment Court. But we note that when that happens communities are locked out of the process. We have already heard from other speakers about how the Resource Management Act is currently working in terms of consents. We have heard about the numbers that are notified and there are very few. We have also heard about the numbers that are actually granted which are more than 90 percent.This legislation is a solution looking for a problem in most cases. I agree with some of the former speakers that this is about ideology. It is already possible under the current law under the current Resource Management Act to go directly to the Environment Court without a council hearing the submitters or hearing from the local community. We see this time and time again. In my local community we have currently had our Auckland Council refer a consent for a marina right through to the Environment Court without it being heard in the local area despite the fact that it was originally notified despite the fact that there were over 500 submissions and despite the fact that it goes against all sorts of democracy to send it straight to the Environment Court when our local people want to have a say. The Resource Management Act is already working in favour of developers.What about Māori in all this? Where do Māori sit when there is a direct referral? We know that under the existing Act Māori are entitled to be consulted on any type of consent that comes through. What we do not know with this legislation because it is silent is what happens to iwi in that consultation. What happens when a consent is fast tracked when the time has been restricted? We already know that some iwi frequently lack capacity to participate fully and that the time constraints that are already placed onthem by councils can be debilitating. This Government clearly does not care about that. I do note that it is consulting further on freshwater management with iwi and that is the next round of legislation that will be coming through.We will be opposing this legislation. We see that it does more harm than good. It does nothing to assist our damaged reputation.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It does grieve me to hear that the Greens are not supporting the legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. We have heard a lot of overblown rhetoric in this debate that this legislation is anti-regulations and anti-environment. This is a Government that has done plenty for the environment over the last 4 or 5 years—more than has been done in a very long time. We passed the exclusive economic zone bill. We have actually done something about that area which is so important to the country. We are working hard on the Land and Water Forum and we have much to be proud of. I do not have any time for Opposition members who represent very small parties and have contributed not much to this country over the last 15 years saying that this Government is not one that cares about the environment.The Resource Management Act is not just about the environment; it is also a critical piece of planning legislation. It is important and it has a huge influence on the development and growth of the economy. Is it not obvious to the people on the other side of the House that countries with the best environment tend to be the wealthiest countries in the world? The best way to look after the environment is to do well as a country and that is why it is so important that we get this Resource Management Act working well and effectively for businesses in this country.Section 32 of the Act is about proper analysis of costs and benefits. Why on earth would we not want to do that? Why on earth would we not want to make sure before we pass regulations that they are going to be effective and cost-effective? We also talk about trees in this legislation. Let the sunshine in. We cannot have people living without ever seeing the sunlight in their houses every day. This piece of legislation is practical sensible and it strikes a decent balance. The people of Christchurch have not had blanketing legislation and as far as I am aware that is quite a pretty city. There is no reason why we need to be living in the shade and people should be able to make their own decisions.Finally this bill brings in a sensible way forward for the Auckland Unitary Plan. I do hope the Auckland Council comes up with a good unitary plan but it is important that we have independent hearing commissioners and this legislation ensures that that happens. On that basis I commend it to the House. I am sure it will make a great difference to this country building a brighter future. Thank you.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill be now read a third time.Ayes63New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bills read a third time.Bail Amendment BillIn CommitteeCHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I seek leave for all stages of the Bail Amendment Bill to be debated as one question with all questions to be put to the vote at the end of the debate.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Separately?CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there anyone opposed to that course? There is none. Leave is agreed.Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 to 3ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): I rise to speak at this very important phase of the passage of the Bail Amendment Bill. As will be apparent from the earlier stages of the bill Labour supports this bill but with considerable concern and reservations about some aspects of it. We understand of course the growing community concern about the number of offenders who having been granted bail continue to commit offences while on bail and in particular those offenders who have previous convictions for serious offences who find themselves offending again and facing a bail application. So the legislation in response to community concerns now reverses the onus for an applicant for bail and requires in some circumstances the applicant for bail to establish that they should be granted bail or that they are not a risk should bail be granted.There are important principles that need to be balanced the least of which is the fundamental principle in criminal justice which is that a person charged with an offence is considered innocent until proven guilty. Next is the principle that the courts have responsibility in managing offenders both pre-conviction and post-conviction to protect public safety. One of the balancing factors that combines or draws those two together is that the minimum restraint necessary that is consistent with those two principles should be applied to a person so that a person who is charged with an offence yet to be established but who poses a risk to public safety should face the minimum restraint necessary to ensure public safety. Another very important principle in my view is that judges with the best information available to them must be regarded as being in the best position to judge the appropriate course of action. It has become increasingly common and popular for there to be widespread commentary on the decisions that judges take but the reality is we seldom see in the public arena all of the information that a judge has before himself or herself in making that decision. All those factors need to be balanced to determine what is an appropriate course of action to take in the contemporary or latter-day circumstances of the administration of criminal justice.On those grounds and on that basis we accept that there are grounds for reversing the burden of proof in an application for bail in some cases. One clause in this legislation refers specifically to the onus of proof being reversed in relation to charges of murder. The starting point is that bail will not be granted but that a judge may grant bail. Then there is the clause that deals with a range of very serious offences. There is a heightened burden for those offences as well. It needs to be made clear we accept that this bill should it be passed does not deny bail—it certainly does not deny bail automatically—to any offender but it does increase the threshold that has to be met by an offender before bail is granted where there is an obvious risk. That risk is usually established by looking at their past track record and reoffending while on bail certainly increases the risk which a judge is entitled to take into account. So we understand that and we accept that.We understand also that the bill ensures that police bail is now to be managed and treated in largely the same way as court-managed bail. So we accept those provisions. They strike a good balance of the principles that I set out earlier.There are three particular areas where we are concerned. They are the Supplementary Order Papers—one from the Minister of Justice and two from the member Richard Prosser. There are many technical changes in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 339. There is one that causes me particular concern and that is the proposed new section 30E in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. Whereas at the moment the police are responsible for monitoring those who are given electronic bail while on remand this Supplementary Order Paper says that the Minister of Justice can give the authority to manage electronic bail to either the Commissioner of Police or the Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections. It is not clear why both should be given this responsibility. But even if we were convinced that it was a good idea that it should be shared between those two departments who lie at the heart of our criminal justice system the next question is on what basis that discretion to grant authority for monitoring electronic bail should be given.There is no signal given in the legislation as to how the Minister would exercise that discretion. Is the discretion going to be exercised in relation to different regions of New Zealand? Is it simply going to be that the police can monitor electronic bail and the Department of Corrections can as well and they just sort it out amongst themselves? Is there going to be a memorandum of understanding between the two departments? What is the story going to be? What is the basis on which the Minister will exercise the discretion to give the authority for monitoring electronic bail to either department or both? I think it is fair that we hear what those grounds might be and what the distinction might be between the two departments. We might hear from the Minister what she considers would be the most effective arrangement and get a clear steer on how that discretion might be exercised. Is it going to be the police for some situations and the Department of Corrections for others and if so what? That signal is often given in the primary legislation and in fact it should be there in the primary legislation.In relation to Supplementary Order Papers 334 and 335 I simply want to record that we are opposed to those Supplementary Order Papers. They are Draconian. They do not achieve any sort of balance in the administration of justice when it comes to bail applications. They reduce the threshold against which bail might be granted. Supplementary Order Paper 334 deals specifically with the situation where somebody is charged with an offence but not yet convicted. The bill as it is at the moment says that if an offender has a conviction for the particular offence for which they are now facing another charge and are seeking bail then it is a relevant factor for the judge to say the onus starts with them and the starting point is that they do not get bail. Mr Prosser’s Supplementary Order Paper 334 however would say it does not matter whether or not the offender has a conviction; simply being charged is enough. That is so far contrary to the principle of innocent before proven guilty that in our view we simply cannot abide by that Supplementary Order Paper and we will not be supporting it.The second Supplementary Order Paper in Mr Prosser’s name Supplementary Order Paper 335 deals with younger offenders and the situation in which in terms of assessment of being a risk an offender has not been imprisoned for an offence but has a conviction for an offence for which imprisonment is a possible sentence. So they may not have been in prison at all which suggests that their offending would be at the lower end of the offending and does not suggest a greater risk if that offender is facing a subsequent bail application for a similar offence. We say that that simply draws the bow way too long and gets the balance way out of kilter so we will not be supporting those Supplementary Order Papers.On the whole bearing in mind the principles that we have articulated we support this bill but do simply remind the Committee that when it comes to criminal justice our job is to make sure that the law ensures not only that the guilty are convicted and are dealt with but that the innocent are treated properly and appropriately and their rights are properly protected.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a short call in this the first part of the Committee of the whole House as we give consideration to the Bail Amendment Bill. New Zealand First supports this bill. We support the broad aims of the bill and we welcome its passage through the House and into law. As I have alluded to in the earlier debates on this bill if New Zealand First has any reservations they would be to say only that in some certain key areas we do not believe that it goes far enough.We accept that there were and are some misconceptions surrounding the bill in the eyes of the public and that some of this may have come about because of a gap in understanding between what the public might rightly expect from such a bill as this and what this bill is able to actually deliver. Some of that gap may have come about because of publicity surrounding the tragic events of the ChristieMarceau case. As we know there are elements of the Christie’s Law petition that the select committee on which I sit the Law and Order Committee was not able to consider because the appeal in the case was still before the courts. Because of that and for other reasons it remains our hope that the Government will see a need to revisit the matter of court bail again as soon as is possible in order to address these concerns and others that have been raised during the submissions process. We would look forward to working with the Government again on any such revisited bill.In the meantime however I have introduced two Supplementary Order Papers to the bill and I want to take a few minutes to speak about these. The first is Supplementary Order Paper 334 which seeks to amend clause 8. I quote from the explanatory note: “This Supplementary Order Paper amends the Bail Amendment Bill. The Bill added 6 more offences including kidnapping and aggravated burglary to the list of now 18 offences that are subject to a reverse onus of proof (all strike offences). But the threshold for that is still too high as it requires the accused to have been previously convicted of one of those specified offences. This Supplementary Order Paper proposes the bail application should not require a previous conviction. The reverse onus of proof should apply upon being charged with one of the 18 specified offences.”This Supplementary Order Paper also dovetails with my second Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 335 in that it specifies an applicability to persons aged 17 years and over. Supplementary Order Paper 335 seeks to amend clause 9 by replacing in clause 9(1) the words “sentenced to imprisonment.” with “convicted of an offence punishable by 3 years imprisonment or more.” It states: “The Bill proposes that the strong presumption in favour of bail remains in place for 17 year olds unless they have previously been imprisoned. 18 and 19 year olds will now be subject to the standard adult tests … This Supplementary Order Paper proposes the threshold should be lowered and based on the seriousness of the offence of the conviction …”—rather than being based on the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment for that conviction which may not necessarily always have been the case—“A 17 yearold’s application for bail should stand or fall on its merits rather than being strongly presumed.” It is our contention that a 17-year-old having been convicted of such serious offences would indicate that that person was no stranger to the court system and the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment is too high a bar in terms of their assessment for bail given that a conviction has already in fact been entered.New Zealand First hopes that all members particularly those from the Government side will give consideration to supporting these two Supplementary Order Papers in my name as we believe that they will strengthen and improve the bill. New Zealand First supports this bill. Thank you.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): The Labour Party supports the Bail Amendment Bill. It supports it because the net effect of the bill is really to toughen the provisions for giving bail on the margins where people have the greatest likelihood of reoffending while on bail. This bill does not make a huge difference to be absolutely frank about it. What we found in the Law and Order Committee particularly with the reverse burden of proof being placed on the defendant was that this bill might result in another 50 prison beds being required. Something like 350 people a year I think might be affected by this. If you take that 350 people in the context of how many people are granted bail it is in excess of 91000 people getting bail a year based on the 2009 figures.So we have a bill here that will make it more likely for a relatively small number of people not to be granted bail when they are accused of a serious offence. I guess we should acknowledge that the Minister of Justice’s bill makes some difference as against that of her predecessor Simon Power who in the last Parliament brought in a bill that had the net effect of influencing the imprisonment of 10 people a year. That bill was as a well-known professor of criminal law said simply window dressing.But I want to say to the Minister that it is a fairly soft measure. If you compare this with the legislation that came inin 2000 which I as the then Minister of Justice was responsible for you will see that that saw a 200 percent increase in the number of people who were remanded in custody rather than being granted bail. So that Bail Act 2000 made a huge difference. Before that the level of offending on bail was pretty rampant. There needed to be a toughening-up and that toughening-up occurred.But I want to say I am not being particularly critical of the Minister because if you look at the figures for the number of people who have been charged with an offence whom we remand in custody you will see that in New Zealand it is 43 per 100000. That compares with Australia where it is only 30 per 100000 the United Kingdom where it is 25 and Finland where it is 10. So in relative terms our bail laws are reasonably tough.Having said that why would Parliament want to support a further toughening at the margins? Well the reason why we support a toughening at the margins is that there is still too much offending by people who are out on bail. Judged over the period of time from 2006 to 2010 the number of those who offended again while on bail added up to about 17 percent. That is nearly one in five. A lot of those offences were relatively minor offences but some were not. For example if I look at the figures during that 5-year period I see that 23 people committed murder while they were on bail and were subsequently convicted of murder 21 committed homicide 763 were found guilty of sexual offending at the time they were on bail and quite a large number 7140 were convicted of acts that were intended to cause injury. If you take those figures as a proportion of the 450000 people who were bailed over that 5-year period they do not seem to be a lot. But if you are the victim of that offending or a member of the family of the victim then that is very serious.We heard cases before the select committee where families came along to the committee absolutely aggrieved and understandably so that somebody who was out on bail for allegedly committing a relatively serious crime again offended in a serious way while they were out on bail. When you look at those figures you see that New Zealand still has to do better. Seventeen percent of those who are out on bail still committing offences is a figure that is too high.So this bill works on a number of different areas. The first point that I want to make is an important point and that is that there is nothing in this bill at all that removes the discretion of a judge to grant bail. That is important because every case is different and there has to be flexibility for the judge to look at all aspects of the case to make a decision rather than the law being too prescriptive. So there is nothing in this bill that takes away the discretion of the judge.But what the bill does do is reverse the onus of proof. Normally there is a presumption of bail and that is important. For centuries our British system of justice has said you are innocent until proven guilty and if you are innocent until proven guilty then there has to be a presumption of bail. But of course nobody in this House and certainly nobody on the bench is naive about that. If a person has allegedly committed an offence and one they might present a serious risk of reoffending or two there is a serious risk that they may abscond or three there is a serious risk they might interfere with witnesses then judges use their discretion to say that that person will be remanded in custody and they will not be released on bail. So that does not change. That is the main reason why judges under the existing law and under the future law will make a decision either to grant bail or to remand in custody or rule that the defendant spend some time on bail and maybe some time in custody.But there are six areas where changes are made. Firstly if you are alleged to have committed murder the most serious offence you can commit there will be a reversal of the burden of proof. That will not actually change things a lot on the ground. If you look at the statistics for those who are alleged to have committed murder two-thirds of them are remanded in custody anyway. But what this bill requires is that the judges look a little bit more carefully at those who they might release on bail albeit charged with the serious offence of murder.The second thing the bill does is build on the list of repeat violent and sexual offences that I put in the legislation in 2000 where there will be a reverse burden of proof—a burden on the defendant to prove that he or she is not likely to offend rather than the burden being on the police to persuade the court that he or she is likely to offend. Previously for murder attempted murder manslaughter sexual violation wounding with intent aggravated wounding or use of a firearm in a crime then you had the reverse burden of proof. This list is added to by including other serious offences: sexual conduct with a child kidnapping or abduction aggravated burglary and assault with the intent to rob. If you have been previously convicted of those offences and you are charged again with a similar serious offence the reverse burden of proof makes sense. I have no objection to that at all.The second key area that it changes is in regard to serious drug charges. We are talking here about class A drugs. The alarming thing about the statistics here is that of those charged with committing a class A drug offence 34 percent of them are subsequently convicted of another serious drug offence while on bail and that is simply too high. More than one-third are convicted of a further drug offence and that is another reason why in this area the reverse burden of proof can be justified.The third area relates to young defendants. There has been a strong presumption in the past of bail for those who are 17 18 and 19. When we considered the 18 and 19-year-olds we considered that since they were adults in every other facet of the law there was not a strong case for treating 18 and 19-year-olds differently from any other age group. In fact the offending by 18 and 19-year-olds tended to be higher than in other age categories. So that strong presumption in favour of bail is removed in that area and likewise for 17-year-olds who have been previously imprisoned. Just to finish off I say that I would not want to see 17-year-olds normally placed in jail if there is any alternative because they are young and impressionable. But the statistics also say that ifthey are 17 and they have previously been imprisoned then there is a very very high chance that they will reoffend and therefore that presumption of automatic granting of bail should be removed.The other things are relatively minor. There are changes in terms of police bail to bring it in line with court bail. That is supported by us. The bill gives a statutory basis to electronically monitored bail. Electronic monitoring has proven very effective in reducing offending by people while on bail. This gives a statutory basis to it. There is no problem with that. And there are some relatively small amendments made in relation to bailable offences that are bailable as of right removing from that category offences for a false declaration and providing the necessaries of life.The thing I want to finish on is to say that this is a piece of legislation that is not radical. It has a relatively minor effect. I think it will be helpful. But if we really want to deal with the much wider problem of offending on bail then we need to look at the delay in people actually having their cases heard in court because if you are on bail for a longer period of time obviously the offending on bail will go up. That absolutely has to be looked at. I think you Mr Chair and I both sat in at the District Court in Auckland and watched the production-line nature of bail applications being heard. Any assistance we can give to judges in terms of risk assessment tools will be important.The other thing that I think is particularly important is that where decisions to grant bail are in hindsight wrongly made we need to have a better system of reviewing those decisions that the judges have got wrong. I am not proposing here an interference in judicial independence. I am saying that the head of bench should probably have a better way of reviewing cases where wrongful decisions are made to see what we can learn from those decisions to stop mistakes happening again. With those comments I say that we support this bill.DAVID CLENDON (Green): As we go through what I suspect will be quite a brief Committee stage of this Bail Amendment Bill it is worth just reflecting on the progress of the bill overall through the House which has been rather a stop-start hurry up and wait affair. It was introduced in May last year and 3 days later we found ourselves in the midst of the first reading having had very little time to look at a bill that does affect quite a range of primary legislation. Some quite elaborate and some quite important changes are being proposed here and we had 3 days before the first reading. It then went off to the Law and Order Committee of course and that was a 6-month process which is as it should be. I will make some more comments about that process later. Then we sat on it for some 8 months. Nothing happened. And now here we are entering urgency—this bill is named in the urgency motion—and we will be doing the third reading tomorrow I suspect in urgency. So I just reflect on the fact that it has been a very strange process of getting this bill through the House and one does wonder why it has been such a disjointed affair. As I say it was a great rush to start then a considerable period of nothing going on and now here we are entering urgency to get through the remaining stages of this bill.Our major objection to this bill is as Mr Goff has just said that it will not actually do a great deal. It will have some effect around the margin but it will not make any substantive or substantial change to the outcomes of bail hearings although there will be one or two decisions that may be swayed by it. That in a sense is unfortunate because we probably do need to have a hard look at some of the admitted shortcomings of some bail decisions—a very very small number it must be said in the context of some tens of thousands of decisions that are made each year by our judiciary. But nevertheless some of the consequences have been severe and tragic.This bill is a meddling bill. It is a fiddling around the edges sort of an approach and one has to look only at the way in which it has laid out the provisions of the bill. Theyare very bitsy—a tweak here a shift here—none of them actually contributing much to the stated aims of the bill the stated objectives of the bill. But nevertheless there we are and that is what we are confronted with.We had a large number of submissions on this bill—something in excess of 280 and a large number of oral submissions on the bill. I have to say that sitting on that select committee we heard some very painful stories some genuinely tragic stories of people who had lost loved ones. But it has to be said that in amongst the very real hurt and the very real sadness of some of those contributions we also saw a great deal of political theatre carried out with submitters basically being shepherded through handed their script and sent on their way at the completion. It was not a happy way to see a select committee being treated in fact. As I say the political theatre that surrounded some of the processes particularly the submission process around this bill almost belittled the very genuine hurt and the tragedy of those people who were genuinely and directly affected by some of the bail decisions that had very bad consequences in the long run. I think it has to be acknowledged that a lot of those people who did make submissions in a genuine way will actually be disappointed when in a year or two they see that this bill will not actually make a great deal of difference. I will say more about some of the alternative approaches we might take in a later reading which of course will be tomorrow morning.In terms of some of the specifics of the bill our primary objection to it is that it extends the reverse onus of proof. No longer will people necessarily be deemed innocent until proven guilty. It expands and extends the situations where the so-called reverse onus of proof can be used where effectively people are obliged to prove that they will not reoffend if they are allowed bail. That is quite a peculiar notion when you think it through. How does one prove what one will or will not do in the future? I disagree with some of the Labour spokespeople. I think this does reduce judicial discretion. Not only will the pressure be on the judges to think long and hard because I am sure they do that anyway but I think it does reduce the range of options available to them in a number of ways. I think that is unfortunate.I think there were some improvements made in the select committee and I compliment the select committee which actually worked very hard on this bill—I know that. There were some useful changes made such as the business about youth and the removal of the class B provisions. It is a better bill but the bill is not yet at a place where we could even contemplate supporting it because as I said the reverse burden of proof is a significant shift. It contravenes our own New Zealand Bill of Rights Act section 24(b) from memory. It puts us in a very tenuous position in relation to our having signed a number of international agreements and conventions and in return for very little positive result. We cannot expect much at all of this bill in terms of eliminating or even reducing some of the real tragedies that can occur if the outcomes of a bail decision go horribly wrong.I will comment briefly on a couple of the proposed Supplementary Order Papers the amendments. Regrettably for Mr Prosser we certainly will not be supporting either of his amendments which we think look at a bad bill and proceed to make it worse or endeavour to make it worse. We see no benefit in those no value in them—quite the contrary; we think that they are very regressive and that they actually add nothing to the bill.We see value in common sense in fact in some of the changes around electronic monitoring for bail. Clearly that is a technology whose time has come. We see it as a means where bail actually can be in a sense less restrictive enabling people a degree of freedom of movement. No doubt those technology changes over time will allow us to take a somewhat different approach and expand the range of options I guess availableto us to ensure that people’s movements are constrained but also to allow perhaps a greater level of freedom. It is no small matter to be holding people on bail for longer. That is one of the key issues that this bill fails to address that in part our objection to toughening the bail law is recognising that court processes are now so slow that very often it is not uncommon for people to be sitting in custody for 18 months at a time. Twelve to 18 months is by no means unusual for a drug case. We have to remember that a large number of those people actually are then found not guilty. They are not convicted and yet they have spent a year or more in custody. They have probably lost their employment they have probably lost their place in society and there have been all sorts of negative effects on their families and on their friends with significant social personal and indeed financial effects to no good end. We think that is really not a particularly helpful or a positive way to go. It is clear that the provisions of this bill are almost in a sense wanting to treat bail as part of the punishment using bail as a punitive mechanism. Bail should never be that. Bail should be allowed unless there are compelling reasons not to.This bill tightens the bail provisions but not in a helpful way not in a strategic way. It is a very piecemeal approach. It is a very reactive approach and one that we think will not actually make significant difference will not dramatically affect outcomes and will not achieve the stated goals of making society safer. It will not serve the integrity of the judicial system or the bail system because you cannot improve the integrity of anything by taking this piecemeal incremental approach that really is reactive. We do not believe that it will do any good. It does do some harm. For those reasons we will not be supporting this bill.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): There have been six Bail Amendment Acts in less than 10 years with the most recent in 2011. We had the Bail Amendment Act 2002 Bail Amendment Act 2003 Bail Amendment Act 2007 2008 2009 2011 and now we have this Bail Amendment Bill. Surely we are better than having these knee-jerk bills and legislation. We should do it once and do it right.Laws are based on anticipated consequences that are sometimes never seen. We see horrific crime but judges can go on only what they are given. We do not need more knee-jerk populist laws; what we do need is proper resourcing. These knee-jerk laws need to be tempered. We have seen the police gasping for air if you like being under-resourced. We have got now a situation where more police than ever are leaving—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This is not to do with the police. This is on bail not the police.BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you. I would say that this bill is funded to fail. I spoke with one of New Zealand’s top barristers today and he told me of a 17-year-old girl charged with the possession of a class A drug. The police said it was a class A—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!BRENDAN HORAN: I am talking—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! What you need to focus on in this bill in the Committee stage is the bail amendments—nothing to do with the police. Just get back to the substance of the Committee stage.BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you. I would like to say that the reverse onus of proof is wrong. It is against natural justice. It is against our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We need to be tough on crime but equally we need to be tough on bad legislation.Speaking on the reverse onus of proof I can say that I was told today of a case where a 17-year-old girl was charged with possession of a class A drug. The judge said to the police: “Well why do you not just do what they do at the airports and test it?”. But the police do not have the resources for that so they sent it to the Institute of Environmental Science and Research. That could have been a hold-up of over 7 weeks and a 17-year-old girl would have been in jail for 7 weeks. It turns out that it was not a class A drug at all; it was a party drug.This is just one example of why we should vote against this bill. It is populist and it is knee-jerk. We need good laws in this country. We need good legislation not something that is just pulled out of a hat and is against natural justice. Thank you.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members we move to the votes on the Committee stage. Although the parts and the clauses were taken as one question I intend to put the questions on the parts and the clauses separately.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of the Hon Judith Collins to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 339 in her name to clause 19(2) be agreed to:in new section 33(1A) insert “a” before “District”; andin new section 33(1B) insert “a” before “District”.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments to the amendments be agreed to.Ayes68New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes52New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Amendments to the amendments agreed to.The question was put that the amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 339 in the name of the Hon Judith Collins to Part 1 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments as amended be agreed to.Ayes68New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes52New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Amendments as amended agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 334 in the name of Richard Prosser to clause 8 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes7New Zealand First 7.Noes113New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 335 in the name of Richard Prosser to clause 9 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes7New Zealand First 7.Noes113New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Amendment not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 1 as amended be agreed to.Ayes104New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes16Green Party 14; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 1 as amended agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 339 in the name of the Hon Judith Collins to Part 2 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes70New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes50New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Amendments agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 2 as amended be agreed to.Ayes102New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes18Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Part 2 as amended agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes102New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes18Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 1 agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 339 in the name of the Hon Judith Collins to clause 2 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes68New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes52New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Amendment agreed to.Clause 2 as amended agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 3 be agreed to.Ayes102New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes18Green Party 14; Māori Party 2; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Clause 3 agreed to.Bill reported with amendment.Report adopted.Third ReadingHon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): I moveThat the Bail Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill will make it harder for those accused of serious offences to get bail. It will improve public safety and ensure the overall integrity of New Zealand’s bail system. The Government is confident that the bill strikes the right balance between upholding public safety and maintaining fundamental rights such as the presumption of innocence and freedom from arbitrary detention. The bill improves public safety by reversing the burden of proof in bail decisions for defendants charged with very serious offences such as murder and class A drug offences.The bill also expands the list of offences where a defendant faces a reverse burden of proof when they are being considered for bail if they have been convicted of one of these offences before. The new offences include kidnapping aggravated burglary assault with intent to rob and sexual conduct with a child under 12 years or a young person under 16 years. All of these changes will make perfect sense for most New Zealanders.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)