Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise to speak on the second reading of this repeal bill and I want to start just by saying as someone who studied urban planning and is a qualified planner that the Green Party has long been the voice for having a better approach to planning—one that gets better outcomes for our natural environment for our people for our towns and cities and that is entirely possible. However it is not what is being achieved by this repeal bill.The current Government has a pretty incoherent position when it comes to solid planning to achieve the outcomes that we need. The reality is that many of the outcomes that were frustrating people are not linked to the fundamental planning legislation itself but to the planning rules that sit underneath it. That was a problem that I long brought up about the Resource Management Act (RMA). In fact the Minister who gave the first speech in this debate—before either of us were members of Parliament we talked at length about some of the harmful impacts of planning rules that had been adopted from North America that didn't have evidence behind them that were causing large compliance costs but also creating environments where it was harder for people to walk cycle take public transport; higher land costs because it forced car-dependent urban areas through planning rules that required large off-street car parks rather than managing parking appropriately. This unintentionally subsidised single-occupant vehicle trips but also spread our cities out in a way that makes them—well it's worse for the environment it's worse for the climate it's worse for health it's worse for our communities.So there's huge opportunities to do things better in a way that reduces costs but also most importantly recognises that the most important fundamental aspect of everything we do is the natural environment. That is the fundamental basis of life on this planet. It is clean air it is clean water it is healthy soil and if we don't have those things—if we don't have forests if we don't have native indigenous biodiversity then we are going to be in trouble as a species and we are in trouble right now as a species. So fundamentally we need to recognise that we can't live on money. Money is just a symbol of value and you know it is a useful symbol of value in some cases but fundamentally it's not the basis of life and we have to have environmental and planning law that protects the fundamental basis of life or we will have nothing; we will have nothing in the future.So when it comes to this repeal bill I just want to very quickly lay out some opportunities for better policies that would achieve the outcomes we want in our towns and cities and with renewable energy and the climate. The Greens campaigned on some of these policies like our climate resilient cities policy which would have laid out the funding tools and rules that would be necessary to ensure that we had nature-based solutions for water management; that we had better public transport and active transport to connect our towns and cities; that we enabled more housing in our cities where it makes sense along with more green spaces. Those things are fundamental; they're easy to achieve with most cities. There's heaps of cities around the world doing a good job of that. New Zealand is still not doing that and fundamentally the Greens are the only ones I think who have the practical solutions for that.The clean power payment also would have addressed issues in our electricity market in a way that would have directly affected people's cost of living; it would have reduced their power bills while massively increasing distributed solar energy and energy efficiency in our buildings. That's something that Government could do that has nothing to do with resource management law.This current National - ACT - New Zealand First Government is fundamentally incoherent and confused on these issues. They say that they care about renewable electricity but they aren't willing to take on the vested interests in the market and the four large players to address those issues. All they will do is say Remove red tape remove red tape remove red tape." What is that a code for? It's not for smarter regulation which we would like it to be; we would love that. The Greens have been campaigning for better rules around renewable energy since National was last in Government and they did nothing to develop a national policy statement last time they were in Government that would have made it easier for more generation. Why not? Because fundamentally there's a lot of vested interests that profit from high marginal cost of electricity that come from the coal-fired power station that that last National Government last time they were in did absolutely nothing about. So it's totally empty rhetoric from the Minister and from National ACT and New Zealand First when they say they care about renewable electricity. It is rubbish they don't understand what the barriers are and they're not going to actually address them.That's the same when it comes to the farming sector and water standards. We have communities right across New Zealand being affected by high nitrate levels in the water serious health concerns and they will not do anything about it because—remember what happened last time they were in Government? They disestablished Environment Canterbury—elected people—because they wanted to make it easier for a few vested interests to continue getting permission to take water at a rate that is totally unsustainable; water they don't even pay for. You've got private interests taking water diminishing our aquifers polluting the water to the point that there's higher levels of colon cancer and bowel cancer.Simon Court: Absolute rubbish; misinformation. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Simon Court says this is misinformation. So that tells you everything you need to know about this Government which is they will not listen to evidence they will not prioritise the health of our communities. They will prioritise the bottom lines of companies corporates at the expense of the environment and the health of our people because that's fundamentally the people who put them in power.So what we had with the RMA and I've long been a critic of the RMA is a permitting regime not a planning regime. The effects-based regime—and again this was something that initially was started under the neo-liberal fourth Labour Government and brought into law under the National Government that came afterwards. Ultimately it says "If you have enough money and power you can do whatever you want." Because you can hire the lawyers and the experts and in the meantime councils are snowed under with high costs and high requirements around plan making but they aren't really given the tools to do proactive planning about what should go where and respecting environmental bottom lines. Look at the jurisdictions in the world which have by the way thriving economies high levels of employment high levels of manufacturing—particularly I'm thinking of Germany—and really well-connected urban transport networks.You know in some parts of the Germany they've managed to achieve relatively high levels of renewable electricity; high standards for energy efficiency and building and planning which enables homes and neighbourhoods to be completely planned around public transport and cycleways. We get in those cities lower transport costs lower land costs healthier environments healthier people healthier communities that can't be delivered under our current planning regime because local councils do not have the ability to do that proactive planning to the same extent. Rather it's private landowners. The interests that these people in Government are representing are able to do private plan changes to maximise the profit and return on greenfield development to be subsidised by central Government with motorways here and there that they don't have to pay for that directly results in their land increasing in value but ultimately puts more traffic on our road networks creates towns and cities that are expensive and expensive to live in. So ultimately while our position is nuanced because we didn't think everything was perfect in the Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Acts—there were improvements and there was opportunity to do things much better. This repeal bill is basically throwing away six years of work a quarter of a billion dollars on something that might have gotten better outcomes which should have gotten definitely would have gotten better outcomes for the things that matter most: people and our planet. Ultimately this National - New Zealand First—Hon Member: And ACT.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —whoever they are—ACT Government are simply here to represent vested interests to make it easier for people to profit—small groups of people to profit—while destroying our environment. They don't even believe in public health is what I've heard from Simon Court. They don't even believe the evidence around the relationship between nitrates in the water and bowel cancer. This is the Government that we have to live with for now but the Greens will continue to campaign because we know that the values of New Zealanders align with the values of the Green Party and we're the ones who truly understand the challenges and have the solutions."