Delahunty CatherineCATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Kia ora koutou katoa. Ngā mihi nui i tēnei pō. Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call on the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. Part 1 takes me back. For the young and innocent who were not born pre-1990 I and others were part of the original resource management law reform consultation process. It was such a different story from what we see today.During that process not only was it about the processes of Parliament but there was also a genuine and deep conversation across this country about what really needs to happen. How are we going to create the most effective resource management legislation the world has ever seen? As a much younger person it was very interesting that the Ministry for the Environment invited us to come to Wellington with our kuia from Ngāti Whanaunga from Manaia and from the unashamed anti-mining organisation that was currently blocking roads at the time and it actually thought that those of us who were deeply concerned enough about the environment and were prepared to stand our ground in non-violent direct action also might have a view on better law.Can anyone imagine that happening now? There is no way now that the conversation is being held with the people who are the most passionate not only about law but about standing their ground in communities. What is disturbing about Part 1 is that this is so far from the original spirit of the Resource Management Act. It is about limiting and restricting citizen rights. It is extraordinary because our communities rely heavily on the ability to participate in this stuff. They already struggle with the increasing limitation that has been imposed through the many amendments to the Act since the 1990s and now it is going to get worse.What the Government has done is shoehorn into Part 1—alongside the agenda which is supposedly about housing—a whole lot of other things. It has been a great opportunity to further restrict the rights of people to participate in planning issues and consenting processes. For those of us who for example are working at the moment on water which is incredibly important and a contested space this law not only is confusing but is actually stripping us of the opportunities we need for some very very major issues and very specific issues to be addressed.I do have some questions for the Minister about the content of the national planning standards and how on earth they relate to the national policy statements how on earth they relate to the clean water plan that has just been released and how on earth all of that is supposed to fit together into a coherent statement that regional councils communities and tangata whenua could possibly interpret. More words does not mean better protection of the environment if the underlying agenda is restricting the right of people to participate in the concept of fast tracking. Deeply embedded in Part 1 of this bill is the idea of fast tracking both planning and consenting processes that actually prevent people from having a say on critical matters.I was just going to talk about water. For example this is not theoretical all around the motu. This is a live issue—for example for the Ruataniwha Dam. So there is not only the court case associated with the land swap but also incredible court cases that have gone on to talk about the nitrate issues in the Tukituki River. If the rights of the national environment groups amongst others are restricted as they could be under this legislation as not being directly affected"—depending on how that is chosen to be defined—people cannot participate in their responsibilities as citizens for a major issue like the Ruataniwha Dam.Then there are issues like the Tarawera River where a company has a consent for another 20 years to pollute a river and the only thing that stands in the way of that being an ongoing situation is the activity of citizens who are trying to get review clauses into the consent. Then next time in the 2030s when the company still wants to use the river as a drain then and it has got no plans to get out of that river how will the citizens participate if they are not directly affected parties?My partner and I have spent 30 years working on that river—30 years of his life and I came in a bit later. We participate in all the processes as much as we can. We are not going to be seen as affected parties because we do not live next to the pulp mills. We do not live next to the river.Another example is Waikoropupū Springs where the water allocation issues upstream of that wāhi tapu—the important issue there is the ability of communities to participate in deciding how those springs are going to be protected. If you go through the clauses around the restriction of powers that are being imposed through Part 1 you can see that the ability of those people if they are not the farmers affected and if they are not living next to the springs—you can see how much more difficult it is going to be.Mount Aspiring National Park—the water-bottling debacle from taking the most pristine water from Tuning Fork Creek and pumping it through Jackson Bay and into a ship. Already the Resource Management Act has been restricted to the point where very few parties locally knew this was going on and very few could participate. But the point is that this bill will make that worse. It will restrict participation in the planning processes that create the frameworks for participation and then in the actual ability if those planning processes fail the communities fail the environment to actually participate in the consenting processes. The bill as our minority view says gives the Minister sweeping powers to go against the community's will and impose his decisions on our cities towns and countryside.Water is just one example. There are many others. We have seen in the news just in the last day that the One Plan which was a good piece of planning that was undermined by implementation could be taken to court by national environment groups. Will that still be the case if the restrictions for participation are narrowed down? These are really important questions. The expertise that has been created through hard work and precedent and practice by national groups—if that is restricted from participating in these apparently just local decisions that only affected parties under narrowly defined criteria can participate in we have serious problems. We do not support the idea of the fast tracking of restricting participation in any of these issues. If it takes a bit longer let us get it right. We have only one planet. We have only one country. Whatungarongaro he tangata toitū he whenua.[Each generation passes in its turn but the land remains.]There is actually no future without the environment and this bill undermines the kaupapa of the Resource Management Act which was designed originally as I was saying earlier to create the opportunity for the environment to have a really strong voice. We lost section 5 in Part 2. We did not want to see at the time in the 1990s the myth of balance because there is no balance if you destroy the environment. That is our major concern about this bill.Then it comes to the biggest environmental issue of our entire planet being acted out may I say right across the world right now with horrifically destabilised weather conditions including events in our own country which must make people question what our part in this is and what we can do rather than just throw our hands up and say: "It's the weather." It is the climate but we cannot discuss it in the Resource Management Act.If this bill goes through it continues to exclude the most important issue that everyone in this House believes or most of them do—hopefully everyone by now; I have not really done a tally lately—is real even if they are not prepared to act on it. We are supporting Eugenie Sage's Supplementary Order Paper 283 because all of these issues—climate water as well as the housing debate the urban debate and the article 2 issues which do need to be strengthened in the right way—are important. But if we are going to shut out the voices of people including those of us who helped to write the original legislation because the Government of the day was welcoming and open to the public voice what have we done in this Parliament?We are no longer going to be at the forefront of resource management legislation in the world. We are now going to be right back down at the bottom of the heap where anything goes so long as there is money in it and so long as development can go ahead. We can have all of these labels and all of this complicated rhetoric such as there is but basically it is a fast track to nowhere and the Green Party cannot support that. Kia ora tātou katoa."