Twyford Phil: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12856. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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.