Cunliffe David: Resource Management Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCunliffe David: Resource Management Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11245. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):I very much welcome the opportunity to take a call on this bill which stinks. The Resource Management Reform Bill is the bill that is going to allow the developers’ lobby to put another death by a thousand cuts through the Waitakere Ranges. It should never have got here. It should have been fixed in the Local Government and Environment Committee and it was not and the only good thing about this bill is that it will—I repeat will—cost Paula Bennett the seat of Waitakere unless she stands up and co-sponsors the local bill that will be brought to this House by Auckland Council to overturn the egregious blanket tree-trimming regulation-axing clauses of this bill. This is part of a broad agenda to undermine local democracy. It is vested here in measures that please the bulldozer brigade. They override through the Resource Management Act the legitimate and hard-fought provisions of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act which requires conservation values and cumulative effects to be considered in every resource consent issued for the Waitakere Ranges area.The Government tried making changes to the Resource Management Act in 2009 that would have overridden that and would have removed blanket tree protection from west Auckland. The Environment Court effectively overruled the interpretation that the Government might have been seeking to pursue by upholding the ability of the council to schedule or regulate groups of trees. So in a fetish of retribution the Government and its developer mates the bulldozer brigade have got the blanket tree-felling provisions back in this bill. It means that any tree can be trimmed off at ground level with a chainsaw—down to zero—and the only way to protect it would be to schedule every individual tree. It took 4 days of hearings in the Waitakere Ranges to schedule 190 trees. There are 150000 vulnerable trees in my electorate in New Lynn alone in the areas of Langholm Titirangi and Woodlands Park 150000.Give or take a little bit National is creating a bureaucratic nightmare: a mountain of red tape requiring the council to schedule each individual tree. “But no” those members say “out of the goodness of our developers’ hearts we have introduced amendments at the select committee that will allow us to schedule eeny-weeny bitsy groups of trees on every individual property.” Sorry not good enough. The people of west Auckland are going to rise up and throw that out.The evidence for that is that the Titirangi Residents and Ratepayers Association and the Waitakere Ranges Local Board have already held public meetings that have unanimously passed resolutions calling on Auckland Council to bring to this House local legislation that will overturn the provisions of this bill. I would like to say now to this House that if that council brings forward such a bill I will challenge the member for Waitakere to co-sponsor it with me. The Hon Paula Bennett would have the opportunity to stand up for the overwhelming views of her constituents rise above petty party politics and be the kind of greener type of MP that she tells her electorate she is.I make this prediction: if the Hon Paula Bennett declines the opportunity to co-sponsor this local legislation she will soon be the former MP for Waitakere. She will deserve it because she is responsible along with her colleagues for bringing legislation to this House that trashes the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act—which she did not vote for—and that undermines local democracy.It is part of a broader agenda that is absolutely undermining our community values and undermining civil liberties. Whether it is the Resource Management Reform Bill whether it is the housing bill or whether it is the spy bill New Zealanders are about sick of it. They are going to stand up and fight back and the fight back is going to be big fast and strong on the tree-trimming provisions of this bill.