Brooking Rachel; Bishop ChrisHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Mr Chair. Now I would like to go back to some questions that weren't answered and I'll just reflect on those very quickly. That is what the Minister responsible for RMA Reform thinks that the regional council's role would be under the Natural and Built Environment Act. Also whether or not there was any consideration of keeping bits of the Natural and Built Environment Act that are clearly much more efficient than the Resource Management Act (RMA). So that's regarding section 32 of the RMA and the consent categories were what I referred to earlier.I'm interested also—we've had some discussion about good urban density and phrases like sponge city" may have come up and of course one of the changes in the Natural and Built Environment Act that came quite late in the process was in response to a lot of the hazard events that occurred at the start of the year and this real focus on green infrastructure. Now my colleague the Hon Dr Megan Woods has been referring to section 58 of the Natural and Built Environment Act—apologies if that is the wrong section we're working off my copy of the bill as it was reported back from the select committee stage. But clearly the Minister realises that we're talking about the "National planning framework must provide direction on certain matters". This is a catch-all section. Another question that goes to the efficiencies that could be gained by doing some of the things in the Natural and Built Environment Act—I would say all of the things but being specific here—is that a lot of national policy directions at the moment can be inconsistent with each other. So on the one hand you might have the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry saying basically grow pine trees wherever you like but then you will have other national policy directions—there's the Essential Freshwater package which is saying no we need to be really careful about what is going into our waterways. So having one national planning framework that puts all of those different national instruments together and makes sure that they are not inconsistent goes a long way in terms of efficiency. So I asked the Minister if he had considered that; had the Minister also said that he is going to keep the Spatial Planning Board and given that there will be no Spatial Planning Act or no Natural and Built Environment Act I wonder what that Spatial Planning Board will be doing?Also we have the Mana Whakahono ā Rohe. They are much more strengthened in the Natural and Built Environment Act than they are in the Resource Management Act and if there was any consideration to keeping those strengthened provisions they could have stood alone as well. That's one series of questions.Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform): I'll just answer those questions briefly. I mean we've been through this. Yes the Government went through a process about what changes made through the Natural and Built Environment Act they wish to keep as part of this. Time pressures meant we couldn't go through all of it.Hon Rachel Brooking: Self-inflicted time pressures.Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well but—yeah sure. But also unless we just wait another year everyone subject to this 900-page monster—councils and all the rest of it have to go through that start a 10-year transition—everyone knows the law is going to be repealed anyway. It introduces even more uncertainty so we took the view—and I think it's a legitimate and reasonable view—better to get it off the statute books as quickly as possible so that people know where they stand. So that's what we're doing.As I've said—again for the third or fourth time—we are going to go through a process in the new year about some of the more sensible technical changes that were advanced through the Natural and Built Environment Act. Ms Williams has made a spirited case for allowing a select committee to do that through legislative amendment to this legislative amendment.Arena Williams: Give me one amendment come on!Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I'll have a look at that. I'm more minded to just instruct a select committee chaired by my good colleague David MacLeod—potentially the Environment Committee a very hard-working committee—but we can have a look at the tabled amendment.On the Spatial Planning Board the Spatial Planning Board is staying. In relation to what it will do well we'll be working our way through that but as the member knows as a former Minister getting departments to work together is going to be a good thing."