Brooking RachelHon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): Thank you Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak on this bill the Spatial Planning Bill. As we discussed in the committee stage it's not the Strategic Planning Bill" but the spatial plans do have to be strategic. It's a really good bill and it's a really important thing that we do by making these statutory spatial plans at the regional level. As the Minister for the Environment just mentioned there are a lot of spatial plans that have already been developed around New Zealand. Some of them are with central government and local government and mana whenua working together: some with different combinations some focused on roads some focused on housing and some focused on both but certainly none of them are focused on all the matters that are in clause 17 of the bill which is "Contents of regional spatial strategies: key matters". But before I draw some attention to those key matters in clause 17—which for me is really the heart of the bill—of course I want to again reference the fact that the word "map" is now in the bill and I say thank you to the select committee for that work. This is because of course when we're thinking about these spatial plans and a lot of the layers of data that will be involved in them they will need to have a visual component to them—in fact I would say that that's the main component to them for the users—to be able to see how these key matters play out by the people who are making this spatial strategy. Some of those key matters include things like areas that are appropriate to be reserved for rural use because for example they contain highly productive land; areas in the coastal marine area that are appropriate for development or change in use; matters relating to infrastructure including existing planned or potential infrastructure that is or may be required to meet current and future needs; opportunities to make better use of existing infrastructure—that's something that's often forgotten about. We have a lot of existing infrastructure that may be able to be used in a more effective way and we shouldn't just always be thinking about building new things. Also there is climate change mitigation at clause 17(1)(ja): "matters relating to climate change mitigation including—(i) indicative locations for infrastructure that is or may be required to support the production of renewable energy or other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:". That is very specific and important for doing the energy transformation that we need to do in New Zealand by electrifying the country. Also at clause 17(1)(ja)(ii): "areas that are suitable for land use change that would support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions:" and we've talked a lot today over the debates on the two bills about natural hazards as well. Paragraph (jb) has "matters relating to risks arising from natural hazards and the effects of climate change including—(i) areas that are or will be vulnerable to those risks:". It's very important that in the spatial strategies we're identifying those areas that people shouldn't be building new houses on for instance. I also want to note going back to those spatial strategies or spatial plans that already exist that they don't have a legislative standing at the moment so it's been very difficult for—well some of them have a little bit of legislative standing but a lot of them don't. So it's been difficult for people doing their Resource Management Act plans to really make those spatial strategies inform those resource management plans. By having this Act work with the Natural and Built Environment Act that relationship is clear and that is very important. We heard in the last speech there about "Where's this other piece of legislation regarding the climate adaptation?" and that is a difficult piece of legislation to do because the idea or the intent of that is to deal with areas where people already have existing activities and there needs to be some change to those. Part of the problem or part of the complexity of that issue is of course the expense. It's expensive to move and to change and there are questions about who pays and how much. Those are all difficult and important questions that do need to be answered and in my opinion they need to be bipartisan as well. So James Shaw the Minister of Climate Change has just announced I think yesterday that he's inviting the Environment Committee—a very good select committee and we've heard about them a lot today—to look at that issue and report back obviously after the election. I note also that the previous speaker mentioned the difference between "take into account" and "give effect to" when talking about the Treaty principles and in an unusual admission I do agree with Chris Bishop on that point. It is an important change. It's a big change to go from "take into account" to "give effect to" and it's done on purpose. My last point I think I'll make on this bill is the importance of the central government person or representative that is going to be on the planning committee. So when the planning committees are making the natural and built environment regulatory plans they don't have a central government person on them but when they are making these spatial plans they do have a central government person on them and the point of that central government person is not to tell everybody what to do because they're from central government but to try and coordinate what is often a very siloed environment. I've been involved in many plans being made over the years and often you'll have very different voices from central government representing quite different ideas. So as to the idea that central government can be cajoled they have a coherent message and can be clear about what plans are there for various different types of infrastructure—and by "infrastructure" I of course do not just mean roads but the schools hospitals and the stormwater that I was talking about earlier in the previous debate. So again this is great to see this here at a third reading. Like the other speakers have also said I do want to thank the select committee for their hard work on it and thank all of the officials and always obviously the Parliamentary Counsel Office but also the officials of the select committee as well. The select committee has spent a long time on these bills. It has listened to a lot of submissions and had a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the advisers and that meant that the clerks on the committee had a lot of work to do. They of course did a great job and I'm very grateful for that work. I commend the bill to the House."