Stanford Erica; Twyford PhilERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you for that answer. I think that in his answer the Minister has put a huge amount of fear into so many local community groups conservation groups and residents and ratepayers associations around the country who have fought for decades and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars that they've raised themselves to get decisions to protect local land that is now as the Minister has pointed out under threat. This concerns me greatly. I know that the people who have fought for so long to protect Ōkura are going to be shaking in their boots. I guess firstly I'd like to ask the Minister if he took advice or would consider putting some extra checks and balances or requirements for the panel to consider relatively recent Environment Court decisions potentially or whether the Minister puts himself in the shoes of a community who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their time and energy and thought that they won a great battle like they did in Ōkura—and this will be replicated throughout the land—who are now sitting there with that answer going Everything we worked for—all of that blood sweat tears—is now under threat." Is there not something—has the Minister considered anything that would ameliorate that by perhaps making the panel take into account relatively recent Environment Court decisions?I guess the other thing that the Minister has to consider is that he himself has said in the past that he wants to see the removal of the rural urban boundary. People in these communities are already feeling under threat by comments like that and now this bill and the Minister has just said that the land that they've had protected is now under threat. They are feeling very very vulnerable. I want to know what potentially the Minister might agree to in terms of additional checks and balances or things that can be put in place to make sure that recent decisions that have been put in place in protected areas or Environment Court decisions that have ruled in favour of protecting land could not be considered by the panel.Further to that has the Minister had any feedback or has he considered ruling out any greenfield development? Because if that was in the bill—I mean we could put that in the bill today as an amendment. Is that something that the Minister would consider? Because that would then make all of those community groups and all of those people around the country feel a lot more safe and secure after all of the hard effort that they have put into winning many battles. I note that there is a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table for protection of some land stock. Hell I'm not familiar with it—I just picked it up—but obviously I'm not the only member in this committee concerned about this. I think there are potentially some ways around this whether or not we put into the bill some requirements to take into account those Environment Court decisions or we preclude greenfield developments. I just want to know if the Minister would consider any of those or has considered them and taken any advice.Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Urban Development): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm interested in why the member would want to exclude greenfield developments from the provisions of this bill.ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): The thing to the Minister is that brownfield developments are the obvious reason to develop—a good place to develop. Greenfield if it was excluded from this bill would stop the concerns of many people in communities around New Zealand who are worried about a process that goes around the Resource Management Act (RMA) that has limited consultation limited right of being able to fight it to the Environment Court in areas that could be of extreme significant value and under normal circumstances would have the protection of that consultation and that process of being able to take it to the Environment Court. A greenfield development is very different than a brownfield development.Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Urban Development): The Government wouldn't consider that as a possibility. It's our strong view that our towns and cities need to be able to grow up and grow out. Actually greenfield development is as long as it's well supported by infrastructure and is well planned and has good transport links one of the main ways that our communities grow. This legislation is designed to cut through the red tape to speed up development and allow our towns and cities to grow. We need to build more houses. We need to build strong communities up and down this country. That's what this bill is trying to do. It's pro-growth. It's pro-development. Now we want to build high-quality developments urban intensification in our towns and cities but that's not the only kind of growth we want. We need our cities to grow up and grow out. So we would not contemplate the idea of excluding greenfield developments. You know the development at Drury in Auckland southern suburbs is exactly the kind of development. A town the size of Napier built around two new railway stations and a town centre with great roading connections would be exactly the kind of candidate that could benefit from this legislation and that is a greenfield development. The member asked whether or not we would consider requiring in the bill that the independent hearings panel take into account things like recent Environment Court decisions. That would be the ultimate in telling Environment Court judges how to suck eggs. It would be an obvious and logical thing to do. They operate under the RMA. They will operate under this legislation and they will be setting out to make good urban planning decisions. And taking into account the intrinsic biodiversity or ecological qualities of a reserve and taking into account recent Environment Court decisions would be exactly the kind of thing they would do when they make their decisions."