Shirley Ken: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Shirley Ken: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5568] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 There are three key points I wish to make. The first is in response to the issue of the courts awarding security. In fact our courts are more sensible than that. I am critical of many decisions that our courts make—we know we should not criticise them in Parliament—but they have been shown to be very sensible in terms of awarding security. I would challenge the member who has just resumed her chair to name one case where an injustice has been committed on that issue because I cannot think of one. There is not one instance so to create it as the bogeyman and to do away on that basis with the measures that were there is very very foolish. 
The other aspect I would like to address is clause 10 “Functions of territorial authorities under this Act”. A new requirement for local bodies in subparagraph (iii) of section 31(b) is “the maintenance of indigenous biological diversity:”. That is a bumper sticker. Nobody knows what it means. By way of background the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was all about national reporting. It started out with a general concern in UN forums that we were losing biodiversity and that nations should report on that. It was intended for things like the Bengal tiger and the white rhino and maintaining the Amazon rainforest the Congo and the Sumatran rainforest and so on and so forth. It was never intended to be acre-by-acre or hectare-by-hectare maintenance of biodiversity. 
Unfortunately in this country our zealotry and our public institutions have picked up a UN convention on biodiversity and imported it into our planning laws to the point where we are now giving instructions to local bodies that every time there is a planning consent or an application they have to consider biodiversity on a hectare-by-hectare basis. That was never intended. We have gone right off the rails in this country. This is a nice warm fuzzy bumper sticker. It is only sensible when it is kept in the context of each jurisdiction at a national level annually reporting on its efforts to maintain significant biodiversity. Importing it into legislation in the way that we do in this bill is just a bizarre concept. It can only create further problems for us. We know the sorts of problems that the “significant natural areas” concept got into as it was applied to the Northland district scheme. Members should think of this concept being applied under the Resource Management Act. 
The Minister in the chair thinks that importing phrases terms and provisions like this is somehow streamlining the process. Let me assure her it is just introducing more uncertainty more nebulous concepts that no one knows the meaning of and is a recipe for endless litigation through the courts. 
There are several other aspects in this bill that concern me. I go back to the diversity aspect. Members should just think of Card Creek of applying that aspect to a power scheme like the Dobson one. There only needs to be a wee bit of native flax or whatever on the valley floor and one would never do anything. Local authorities now have a clear instruction whenever there is a proposal. It is bad enough the Department of Conservation influencing this Government to the extent it does—prohibiting access to sites like that prohibiting access to Pike River coal and all the rest of it—but now local government in applying its district schemes and planning applications will have to virtually block any development that might in any way compromise biological diversity. 
At the end of the day it is a bumper sticker. No one knows what it means. The convention was never intended to be applied in this way. It was only ever intended to be applied as a national reporting tool. 
The second aspect of real concern is the heritage order provisions. I would like to raise with the Committee a submission from Federated Farmers. It is unfortunate that the Government members did not participate in the select committee because some very good submissions were made. Federated Farmers had grave concern about this provision but one check that they did propose was that the heritage order provisions be amended so that where land-use restrictions for heritage or conservation values were of such significance one was actually paid compensation.