Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): This bill is a clear example of how this Government operates which is to say it talks big and it delivers very little. Because here in the Resource Management Act (RMA) we have a piece of legislation that is acknowledged—now on both sides of the House—to be a key impediment to the delivery of affordable housing in New Zealand to good development and to good environmental management. And such is the agreement on that argument that members opposite have agreed that there should be a specialist panel looking at how the Resource Management Act be reviewed and improved so that it can deliver better results for New Zealanders in the future.So we have an expert panel; it's been established to go about improving the RMA and then what do we have here? You would think if there was this expert panel going about looking at this issue in thoroughness and with due process that perhaps we would be in this House awaiting the outcomes from that panel. But no; instead what we have is this piecemeal piece of legislation which does a couple of bespoke amendments to the Resource Management Act without any reference to the wider reform that needs to occur. And we on this side of the House think that sort of thing is a distraction and will only create more cost more delay and more uncertainty for those who need to operate under this Act.So we have a problem with the process. We also see very clearly that this is a step backwards. It's a Back to the Future series of amendments because what it largely does is reverse good improvements made to the Resource Management Act by National in 2017. Those changes in 2017 were made in order to accelerate house building to improve environmental management to ensure more national consistency to simplify consenting to make planning more responsive and to align with other laws. But Labour didn't like those changes at the time for whatever reason and so in an act of as our earlier speaker Scott Simpson said vindictiveness have gone through and reversed these changes. And it makes no rhyme or reason because as I said at the beginning of my speech we on both sides of the House agree that in New Zealand right now we have a major challenge with a lack of housing supply. So you would think in amending the Resource Management Act members opposite would have a mind to How can we improve this piece of legislation in such a way that more houses are built?" But instead let's look at what this bill actually does.So the first thing it does is it says "Actually the rules that National changed to allow for some more subdivision we'll turn over." In 2017 National saw that we wanted more subdivisions to be able to occur so that we could have more housing brought on and we made it that subdivisions could occur unless they were specifically restricted by a district plan so that—on the margin—more subdivision would occur. And of course this is very significant because if we think about the housing challenge in New Zealand well yes there's probably a role for the Government in building houses. The members opposite haven't been very successful in that for sure—only 395 KiwiBuild houses have actually been built—but even if you were to take into account all of the State houses that have been built around 1400 have been built. The much bigger picture of housing supply in New Zealand is private development—the 37000 or so residential new dwelling consents that are issued each year. That is where the bulk of new housing comes from in New Zealand.So when we think about how to improve our housing supply over time that private sector development is really important. So where does it happen? Well of course some of it happens in major large developments on a huge scale but actually a huge amount of it happens incrementally subdivision by subdivision. So it is an absolute mystery to us on this side of the House as to why that Government who says it cares about housing supply would come in and change the Resource Management Act to mean that people can't do subdivision unless specifically allowed to. That seems a step backwards.But that's not the only thing that this bill does to get in the way of housing supply. The second thing that it does is it re-introduces appeals to the Environment Court for activities to subdivide. So what we can foresee happening is an increase in delays and an increase in appeals—hundreds and hundreds of appeals—adding cost adding complexity putting developers off the potential to subdivide and increase housing supply in New Zealand. And again these were changes made in 2017 to this Act because National recognised some real impediments within our resource management laws stopping new housing coming on. And Labour in what can only be seen as an act of spite because there is no better public policy rationale have overturned that change.The bill then goes further and it reintroduces financial contributions. Of course at the moment local government can have contributions required as development contributions under the Local Government Act and National takes no issue with that but what we did do in 2017 was we streamlined the pieces of law so that you couldn't require a financial contribution under the RMA as well as under the Local Government Act. Again the Government comes in overturns that and we now have a situation where developers can be required to provide financial contributions under both pieces of legislation. But mind there is an exception here a convenient little exception that the Government's own entities the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Defence are not required to make these financial contributions. Again these amendments do not make good sense. It is hard to see in any way that they align with the goal of bringing on more housing development.So taken as a whole this bill is a corruption of process and it introduces bespoke amendments ahead of a wholesale review. It shows a rejection of what has actually become a bipartisan agreement that the Resource Management Act is failing New Zealanders and must be reformed. Instead of taking up that agreement with members opposite and working with us on sensible reforms we've seen a petty act of spite overturning good amendments made in the past. And finally it steps us backwards in terms of some of the things—some of the small but meaningful changes—that have been made to reduce cost uncertainty and delay in our resource management laws.So we in National oppose this bill. We do not hold out hope that the members opposite have it in them to provide the kind of wholesale Resource Management Act reform that is required to improve housing supply and improve environmental management in New Zealand. We can see that the delay in the panel until later this year is very symbolic of the approach of that side of the House which is talk big don't deliver don't deal with the gritty issues don't get to the nub of the problem. And if we are elected in this election in September we will repeal this Act we will improve this Act and we will do so in a way that ensures the provision of more housing for New Zealanders and actually gets to the nub of problems that members opposite are only interested in window dressing about."