Twyford Phil: Resource Management Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Resource Management Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11242. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū):Labour opposes this bill the Resource Management Reform Bill not because we are against more efficient consenting processes and not because we are against reforming the regulatory framework to encourage economic development but because it seeks to do those things at the expense of the environment and at the expense of the community. That is why we are opposed to this bill. It takes away the right of communities to have a say and it weakens environmental standards. That is the bottom line.I want to focus my comments on the two aspects of this bill that I think illustrate the Government’s particularly tortured relationship with Auckland. I am going to talk about the Auckland Unitary Plan provisions and the tree protection provisions in this bill because both of those sections in the bill show what a conflicted and difficult relationship the National Government has with Auckland. They show this tendency that it has which we have seen every year since John Key became the Prime Minister to chip away at the powers and the freedoms of local government and hand over those powers to central government. This is a centralising power-hungry National Government.The Auckland Unitary Plan—in fact Labour supports the provisions in this bill that fast track the Auckland Unitary Plan. I want to just say briefly what a significant development the draft unitary plan in Auckland is. It is the first time our country’s biggest city has ever had a comprehensive public debate about the future shape of the city. It is the first time it has happened. It is because we have a fine Labour mayor Len Brown in office providing the right kind of leadership. It would not even occur to this National Government to promote the kind of progressive forward-looking agenda like funding the City Rail Link for example or supporting a quality compact city which are the things that Auckland Council has provided strong leadership on. It has had the courage to open up a process that is not without its flaws and there are plenty of critics but it is at least a process where people are having a chance to have a say about the future of their city.It is good that in this bill there is a provision to fast track the unitary plan. It puts the National Government in an interesting position because members on that side of the House are not averse to the odd bit of fast tracking of legislation. In fact they have got strong tendencies in that direction—a bit of the old streamlining here a bit of fast tracking there. But Labour agreed with Auckland Council’s request for fast tracking the unitary plan because we did not believe that it was tenable with the new unitary plan—with all the rezoning involved and a raft of measures to promote housing affordability—to expect Aucklanders to wait the 7 or 8 years that it could have taken for the plan to go through the Resource Management Act processes and get bedded down. So we supported in principle the fast tracking.As I said National is not averse to a bit of fast tracking but in this case those members found themselves very conflicted and the reason for that is that they have a problem with Len Brown. They have a problem with the fact that their guy lost the mayoralty in 2010. They do not like that they have never got over it and their mission in life is to make life as difficult as possible for Mayor Len Brown and the Auckland Council.The Government agreed to much of the request for a fast-tracked unitary plan but it could not stomach two aspects of it and it knocked back Auckland Council on these twoelements. Instead of allowing Auckland Council to appoint the members of the hearings panel which will be a kind of one-stop shop decision-making forum for the unitary plan the Government has insisted on appointing people who inevitably will be its cronies to the Auckland Unitary Plan hearings panel. It could not bring itself even to share joint responsibility with Auckland Council for appointing that panel. It had to seize control of Auckland’s decision-making process by insisting on the Minister of Local Government and the Minister for the Environment having exclusive power to appoint that panel. That says a lot about this Government and the fact that it does not trust Auckland Council and it does not trust Aucklanders. It prefers to make the decisions from its ministerial offices here in Wellington. It is not willing to allow Aucklanders and their democratically elected representatives to have responsibility to appoint the panel that will make the decisions about the future shape of Auckland City and that I think is a sad reflection on this Government.It also rejected Auckland Council’s request that the unitary plan have legal weight from notification. The whole process of the drafting the consultation and the amendments will be completed by about September this year. The plan will then be notified and it will be put out to the public for the Resource Management Act appeal processes to commence. Under the law as it was prior to 2009 the plan would then have had legal weight. That does not mean that the plan would be fully operational and that all decisions made would be made on the basis of that plan; it simply means that the plan would be taken into account. It would be considered by decision makers when they are ruling on consents and new developments and so on. I think in light of the fact that until 2009 the plan would have had legal weight from notification that was not an unreasonable request by Auckland Council in those circumstances if you accept the fact that there are urgent things like housing affordability that need to be dealt with and the unitary plan offers a comprehensive package of measures to deal with the housing affordability crisis.Having refused those two very reasonable requests from Len Brown and the Auckland Council—first that Auckland Council be allowed to appoint the hearings panel and second that the unitary plan have legal weight from notification—Nick Smith the Minister of Housing then found himself in a very interesting situation. The polls were clearly telling Steven Joyce that housing affordability had become a red-hot political issue and that the Government was vulnerable in Auckland. Secondly the overheating Auckland housing market was posing a threat to the overall economy because of the inflationary pressures it was generating. That advice was coming from Treasury and the Reserve Bank to the Minister of Finance.Nick Smith was spurred into action but his ability to actually make a difference was totally hamstrung by the fact that Amy Adams has refused to allow the Auckland plan to take legal effect from notification. So we then saw this dance of the seven veils from Nick Smith in the following 2 months rampaging around Auckland accusing Len Brown of having killed the dreams of Aucklanders and threatening to legislate to override the Resource Management Act powers of the Auckland Council all because the Government had already decided that the plan would not be given early legal effect. So the upshot was that Nick Smith was forced to bring in the hastily cobbled together Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill which simply fast-tracked two elements of the Auckland draft unitary plan: streamlined consenting and greenfields land being brought in sooner than otherwise would be the case. What a ridiculous wild goose chase Amy Adams and Nick Smith have led Aucklanders on for the last few months.This is just the latest bit of evidence of National’s tortured relationship with Auckland. The Government created a super-city that it could not easily kick around andfor the last 3 years it has been paying the price of that. To be quite honest it is a pain for Aucklanders to have to put up with and the sooner the National Party gets over itself in relation to Auckland the better.I want to make brief mention of the tree protection provisions which Nick Smith tried to extinguish in 2009. It was one of the first debates that I took ever took part in in this House and David Cunliffe and I took the fight to the Government on behalf of west Aucklanders who wanted to retain the right to protect the Waitakere Ranges and protect the trees. In fact all Aucklanders appreciate the social environmental and cultural amenity value of our urban forest. There are huge environmental reasons to protect the urban forest particularly in Waitakere: high rainfall and a high erosion environment where trees make a critical difference. The effect of this bill is to make it virtually impossible for councils to efficiently cost-efficiently protect the urban forest in Auckland. That is the point of it—