Franks Stephen: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
Franks Stephen: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
[Volume:627;Page:22340] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party on the third reading of this legislation and confirm that our vote will be a regretted vote. We will vote against the legislation regretfully because some parts of it are long overdue. But we also will vote against it regretfully because of such a wasted opportunity. We will vote against it because it is a patch and perhaps it is the kind of patch that makes a very poor vehicle last slightly longer. It is a patch that only just touches on many of the things that are wrong. One of them which the Hon Jim Peters— 
Jim Peters 
: Thank you. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: The member can share his brother’s honours! One of them which Mr Jim Peters has just talked about is the fudge that is left after this legislation of the position of Maori under the Resource Management Act. The Rt Hon Winston Peters has made a feature of going around the country declaring his discovery that so-called principles of the treaty do not mean anything—that no one can tell him what they mean. At his recent conference he made a real feature of declaring in ringing terms that he would dump them—he would get rid of them. But he has not told us what theory he does work on. We got a glimmering of it just now from Mr Jim Peters that it is a theory based on the fact that Maori were here first and that the treaty was a deal that enabled Pakeha to settle peacefully in Maori territory. 
 But that does not deal with the problem of race privilege under the Resource Management Act. What this legislation does is state that the worst feature of it namely the consultation processes that have made a misery for so many people including Maori who are loathed because of it will be limited to the planning stage instead of being on every application for a resource consent. But both Mr Winston Peters and Mr Jim Peters have said that they are not tackling the really big myth the really big fake in this whole treaty industry. The big myth is the so-called partnership. The big myth is that the partnership that was invented in the mid-1980s entitles Maori in perpetuity to some kind of trump card that overcomes electoral democracy some kind of eternal privilege that means they get a power which is called consultation but that delay can often veto in the Resource Management Act. 
All we have heard from the New Zealand First Party is that it will look at developing the role of Maori consistent with the original concept in the treaty. Partnership does not appear anywhere. The role of consultative power does not appear anywhere. It was all invented at the same time as the so-called principles. I tell Mr Peters that if we take out the principles what is left is no better. It is the fake partnership. 
Jim Peters 
: Justice Cooke stuff. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: It is Justice Cooke stuff exactly. I know that at least Mr Peters is well aware of the problem. But it does not deal with the problems that this legislation leaves in place. For example who is Maori for this purpose? Is it tangata whenua local iwi? Possibly it is but the Local Government Act does not say that. The Local Government Act requires that local authorities involve Maori in decision making not tangata whenua not the people whose rohe it is. So what do we do about that? There is nothing in this legislation. 
It does not tell us how long this will go on. Will this privilege still pertain to the third generation that has been living in Sydney? Is it a race privilege or is it some kind of privilege that comes from still living in the area—the kind of respect that any community would want to give to those who have been there for a very long time and whom one would ask about a land-use proposal because we might assume that they knew a bit more about the area and had a stronger feeling for it than the more recent arrivals? 
That kind of consultation we can understand but instead it is cast as a race privilege. It is cast as an inherited aristocratic power—the inherited status of lord of the manor whom the other tenants must approach and obtain consent for the way they use their land. 
The real problem with this is that the New Zealand First Party has not identified the essence of the property rights promised by article 2 and the property rights that have been trashed by the Resource Management Act. This legislation does nothing to reinstate full exclusive and undisturbed possession—the right to use and enjoyment that was promised in article 2. That has been trashed. 
This legislation does everything that Mr Baldock says it will do which is maintain the communalisation of New Zealanders’ property. Instead of property being a glory to us instead of property rights protecting every ordinary New Zealander—[ 
Interruption 
] The rangatiratanga is exactly what it is I say to Mr Baldock. It is what Gordon Copeland’s bill should do. But why then does United Future vote for a Resource Management Act that simply undermines all those rights? 
United Future members tell me that their bill to insert property rights back into the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act where they should be will fix the problems that they are about to vote for in the Resource Management Act. Why not cut out the middle man? Why not face the fact that that bill will vanish with the closing of this Parliament and there is no right on the part of New Zealand First to insist that it be revived in the new Parliament? 
In fact the bill to protect property rights—which was picked up from Owen Jennings of ACT and I commended Mr Copeland for that—will be gone when this Parliament is dissolved. [ 
Interruption 
] They dissolve. They are picked up only if the new Parliament decides to pick them up. United Future is counting on the fact that it will have the same pulling power with the new Government. I think it is being pretty hopeful. I think there might be a Green Party that says: “We don’t think we want that one.” The Green Party trashes property rights. The Green Party will not allow that one. 
So we have a United Future vote for this legislation but it does not believe in important parts of it; and we have a New Zealand First vote against this legislation because it has concerns that we did not exactly hear. National and ACT are voting against it for the simple reason that they are looking after the interests of the New Zealanders whose costs have been elevated whose power costs have gone up whose water rates are going up who are stuck in traffic jams and the young workers who can see the price of a house moving out of their reach now that land prices in many areas because of the obligations imposed on developers have gone out to three or four times their annual pre-tax income. 
No wonder so many young New Zealanders are looking at property rights that they cannot cope with! It is not the free market. I say to Mr Baldock that this is the market that is created when a developer takes 4 or 5 years to do a simple subdivision when everyone’s neighbour is enticed into objecting to try to preserve the status quo to stop infill housing to stop anything going over two or three storeys in the centre of a city. Then at the same time they are begging for public transport. 
We can have effective public transport only when we have high-density housing. But we have created a Resource Management Act that means that anyone can say: “I don’t want high density on my neighbour’s land. I don’t want high density until I decide that I too want to sell out and see it.” We have a completely constipated property market because of the Resource Management Act. We have constipated traffic in Auckland. They have money and land but they cannot get permission to put the bulldozers in and build the roads. 
The Labour Party is panicking. and promising to throw billions of dollars at Auckland traffic but here it is passing legislation that does not fix the Resource Management Act. I would say that in 3 years’ time we will still see people wasting hours of the only life they have sitting in cars wishing that they had even the traffic flows of Sydney. 
This legislation should be rejected as a disgrace. For 6 years the Minister for the Environment has been telling us that it is perfect legislation. Then today we had dumped on us 35 pages of fine print which are now embodied in the legislation we are being asked to vote on. I would guarantee that there is not a member in this House at the moment who could say exactly what that fine print does. There would not be a person in the Chamber who could read 35 pages of fine print dumped on us without any kind of red-lining assistance and know what it does for the Resource Management Act. Yet this House is about to vote on it at the last minute. 
It is being rushed through under urgency because they are too ashamed of the nonsense that has been spun by the Minister for the Environment and the nonsense that has been spun by Cabinet in charge of this legislation. Now they are trying to undo some of the damage at the very last minute with rushed legislation. It would be much easier if we were able to vote for the bits we thought were sensible. I have said there are one or two. 
Phil Heatley 
: There are now because you changed them at the select committee. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: There are one or two exactly! A few changes in the select committee brought some common sense into this legislation and there has been some redrafting at the last minute which I trust has further improved it. But when $10 million of power goes whooshing down the Whanganui River because not to send it down might offend the Maori of the water because going through turbines somehow offends the spirit of the water when we have oil and coal being burnt because New Zealanders cannot put in small-scale hydro because it is simply too expensive to go through the Resource Management Act process and then we get trifling legislation like this that says that it is time for this Government to go. 
Debate interrupted.