Wagner Nicky: Resource Management Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWagner Nicky: Resource Management Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:12180. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central):This bill the Resource Management Reform Bill is part of the Government’s two-phase programme of reform of the resource management system. Phase one involved the simplification and streamlining of the Resource Management Act legislation which has improved the processing and has been well received by everybody who is using the Act. This second-phase bill deals with the more complex issues. And there will be a further bill later this year.This bill has three parts. Part 1 amends the Resource Management Act Part 2 amends the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act and Part 3 makes minor and technical changes to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. In Part 1 we deal with a series of issues concerning Resource Management Act legislation and the two most debated changes were those to section 32 reports and the tree protection rules. I want to start by talking about the section 32 amendments. Everybody agrees that it is important to have high-quality analysis underpinning local authority decision-making when it comes to section 32 reports and that is because section 32 reports are the basis of good environmental decision-making. Everybody agrees also that the quality of reports is inconsistent across the country. There are plenty of examples of good reports but there are even more examples of poor-quality reports. This new legislation will provide greater guidance and greater specificity for councils around what councils require in section 32 reports.The main debate focused on how influential the economic impacts of any proposal should be. Those who supported the change saw benefits in providing more rigorous cost-benefit analysis and those who opposed the change felt that it moved the balance of decision making away from environmental social and cultural effects and put too much emphasis on economics. There was also concern that the new requirements could increase costs and this may be the case for councils that are not usually involved in doing comprehensive economic analysis. But we have attempted to mitigate this issue by requiring a level of detail that corresponds to the scale and the significance of the effects. This was widely supported by submitters. We have also made amendments to require the reports to consider both the positive and the negative effects of economic growth.Another issue that was very robustly debated was that of the tree protection rules. The intent of these amendments concerning trees was to reduce the high numbers of resource consents and therefore the high cost to homeowners under the blanket tree protection rules in urban environments. However the bill does provide for councils to identify notable trees for protection in a schedule to the district plan either as individuals or as a group of trees. This issue was particularly controversial in Auckland but this is the type of protection that is used in most cities across New Zealand and itworks successfully in those cities. I have to give a good example of Christchurch which does not have blanket tree protection—it is known as the Garden City and is very green and very leafy—and this works well. However because of the concern expressed by Auckland citizens we have made some amendments to make the identification of trees easier. We have clarified that bush areas can be protected and that the definition of a group of trees may include trees within the bush areas and also that trees on a single block can be identified together even if they are not officially a cluster or a grove. The key for tree protection is that protected trees must be identified by street address and there is a good reason for that. It means that the trees and their identification will be noted on the land information memorandum so it is absolutely transparent everybody knows which trees are protected and everybody understands the status of those trees going forward. The Local Government and Environment Committee and the officials have worked very hard to try to get a process that would be easily understood and effective and we believe that the bill is better for this attention to detail.Other issues that came up in Part 1 are the new processing time frames and the direct referral process. The new processing time frames are to do with resource consent applications that are either notified or limited notification. These are the consents that include public participation. The bill does not change the tests that determine whether a consent is notified or not. It merely introduces a revised time frame around the ongoing decision-making process giving more certainty to applicants and to the people involved. These time frames are 130 working days approximately 6 months for a notified consent and 100 working days approximately 4.5 months for limited notified consents. The new process requires completeness of information before an application can be formally received in order to improve the quality of decision making and avoid subsequent delays. There will now be only one opportunity for councils to suspend processing for further information requests. Submitters generally supported the intent of these amendments and they suggested a variety of improvements to the process many of which have been incorporated and adopted into the bill.The direct referral process in the bill allows for a direct referral for certain major projects above an investment threshold set out in regulations. Some councils were concerned that this would reduce their decision-making roles and responsibilities and there was uncertainty about the general regulation-making powers. To increase certainty we have introduced a criterion that the Minister for the Environment must have regard to when establishing that investment threshold.The last issue I want to discuss is the collection of environmental monitoring data. The Government is keen to improve the state of the nation environmental reporting. Currently local authorities collect a lot of useful environmental information but that information needs to be standardised and consistent across the country to be useful. This bill proposes regulations to specify what needs to be collected and how. Although councils are very aware and they want consistency of data they were concerned that the regulations may increase costs for them. But this is not the intention and we have amended the bill to make it clear that any regulations will be developed only in consultation with councils and the aim is to collect information as efficiently and as effectively as possible. You can manage only what you measure so we are keen to get really good information so that we can manage the environment more effectively. Thank you.