Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): The ACT Party is proud to support the repeal of the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act and the maintenance of a fast-track opportunity for businesses and organisations that want to get on get a consent and start building things that produce value. Because unless we do that in New Zealand we will continue the economic and social decline that the previous Labour Government perpetuated. There's nothing that signals more clearly the confusion between the need for economic and social growth and environmental protection—the failure to identify a suitable balance—than the Acts we're repealing here today.It's true that resource management reform is long overdue and much delayed. In the early 1990s I studied resource management law. I proposed to a lecturer that a property development model's consent conditions would fly through a hearing and that my development would be given a tick by the commissioners and that my contractors would be able to start work within a few short weeks. Well my lecturer told me back in the 1990s That's not how it works Sonny Jim. You'll just have to spend a bit more time spending money on resource management lawyers and arguing with commissioners about consent conditions."But it turns out all the things that we've learnt how to do well whether it's erosion and sediment control whether it's identifying where threatened bat species are roosting in trees and when is the best time to fell the trees because the bats have moved on—we know all that information. We don't need the Natural and Built Environment Act or the Spatial Planning Act to send us back 30 years to have a bit of a navel-gazing exercise for further decades on how to resolve the conflict between developing land economic growth and environmental protection.Now I've heard from some members of the Opposition that because the former Minister David Parker spent a quarter of a billion dollars in developing the Natural and Built Environment Act and Spatial Planning Act we should just let it go and we should just accept that. Well the ACT Party does not believe in the sunk cost fallacy that has led to the sinking of the Interislander proposal and will no doubt lead to the sinking of many more Labour sunk cost fallacies. Time to pull the handbrake on. Let's turn this four-wheel drive New Zealand around.Now I want to describe what a future resource management reform might look like. There was a gentleman who participated in founding one of the world's modern and greatest States George Washington. He said that freedom and property rights are inseparable. You can't have one without the other. Freedom to build means reducing the number of people who can object to the things you want to build whether you're a land developer whether you're a public asset owner or whether you're somebody who just wants to build a distribution warehouse so that your goods can find their way to customers and not have to argue about the colour of it or whether it sticks up a little bit higher than your neighbour's building. We need to focus on trade-offs. Land development and economic development lead to social development and social uplift. Protecting things just for the sake of it or because some members of this House some political parties believe we can return to some kind of year zero pre-human environmental state—completely unrealistic—completely unrealistic. Future resource management reform must focus on the benefits of development while protecting the places that New Zealanders value and regard as special.That is what this coalition Government will be bringing in 2024. ACT supports this bill. I commend it to the House. Let's go New Zealand."