Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. The shortness of the contribution of the member Jan Tinetti who's just resumed her seat gives insight to people who are watching and listening to this debate into the shallowness of the detail around this bill. At the select committee that I had the opportunity to sit on—the Environment Committee did consider this bill—there were lots of submissions and the bill that has come back to the House as a result of the report of the select committee as the Minister has acknowledged is a much improved bill. It needed to be a much improved bill because there were remarkable failings in the bill that was presented to us at first reading. We wanted to support it. In fact we did at first reading. We wanted to because the concept of an urban development plan is a good one. It's a good concept. It's something that other countries have done very well. They've adopted different models but this particular model is one that comes from a Minister who has a reputation that precedes him. That reputation is not a good reputation for actually achieving things getting things done or actually delivering on the PR statements that go out with commentary on bills like this. Indeed my colleague Nicola Willis has correctly and clearly identified the three main issues that the National Party Opposition has with this bill. They are essentially around the context of the bill the detail of the bill and thirdly the balance between State power and private property rights. I want to spend a minute or two addressing a couple of those issues that Nicola Willis addressed in her speech a few minutes ago because at the root of the issue that we have with this bill on this side of the House is essentially that it defaults to the hardy annual of most left-leaning Governments around the world and certainly those with a socialist bent of the sort that we have in this Government and that is that Government knows best that big Government is best that big central authority is best. Actually that's not the way that we see it on this side of the House. We don't take the view that actually it's always Government that knows best. We actually do think that there is a very good and proper role for the State to have a guiding principle approach to urban development. That's what we would support the concept that we support but we don't support the centralisation and issuing of big Government proclamations really that will see the challenges between private property interests and those of the State balanced unevenly in terms of big Government State control. For that reason alone let alone the others that we have problems with that's a good reason to oppose this bill. Now the State agency Kāinga Ora is a Crown agent and it has two main purposes and that is to be a public housing landlord and to lead and coordinate housing and urban development projects. Those by definition are projects that would normally have difficulty getting off the ground under standard planning and development rules. That's really the nub of the problem and that goes to this issue of context that Nicola Willis was talking about. The real issue here is root and branch reform required of our planning legislation in the form of the Resource Management Act. Just last night we passed legislation that related to—I think it was the 19th significant amendment to that piece of legislation in its near 30-year history. The RMA the Resource Management Act our primary statute for planning and environmental protection sadly—and it does pain me as a New Zealander that our primary environmental statute and our planning legislation should be treated with such derision and ridicule by New Zealanders of pretty much both sides. I think Nicola Willis made that point in her speech—the derision that occurs from both the left and the right. Sadly now the initials RMA" may have entered the lexicon of KiwiBuild and light rail as being largely considered by New Zealanders as something of a joke and something not to be taken seriously. And I don't think that our planning platform legislation or our environmental protection legislation deserves to be the subject of ridicule and contempt by ordinary New Zealanders up and down the countryside. We can surely do better than that.So I want to just refer to a couple of comments that were made by worthy credible submitters at the select committee who actually went to a lot of trouble to point out the complexities and the issues and the challenges that this legislation presents. One of them was Auckland Council and Auckland Council submitted that the bill actually undermined the network planning that already existed. Auckland is an area where actually we do need some new urban development planning rules and probably in no other urban environment in the country more so do we need sensible legislation in this area than in Auckland. But they said and I think that as a House we need to respect and understand their position that the bill undermined network planning and may confuse and complicate existing planning arrangements. So they're effectively saying that this piece of legislation is going to make it harder for them rather than easier that it's not going to help that it's not going to have the desired outcomes that the Minister wants to see. And I think that's a sad thing. So when the country's largest urban local government indicates that they find this piece of legislation potentially undermining existing situations and then making things more complicated then that's not a very good position. But there is more. The New Zealand Law Society made the point that they were concerned that the list of principles was long too long and without an explicit hierarchy and that they could be difficult to apply. Now I respect the wisdom and the knowledge of the New Zealand Law Society and I think they made good points. I think that they made valid points in terms of criticising this bill. There isn't an explicit hierarchy of decision making and it's going to be largely left to central government the Minister and again it comes back to that issue of big Government: Government knows best. The Law Society went on to say that given the number of Acts that the bill is intended to interface with the potential for conflicts between Acts is high and it would be useful for the bill to clarify how it relates to provisions of the Local Government Act especially as to the settings of development contribution and rating issues. These are important points. These are not small matters that are—Andrew Bayly: Trivial.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —trivial as my friend and colleague Andrew Bayly says. These are not small matters. These are important matters that I would have thought a Minister bringing a piece of legislation like this to the House would have considered would have taken into account would have had his officials say "Look haven't we got a bit of a problem here? The Law Society is saying there is an issue here. Wouldn't it be good to actually get officials to do a little bit of work on it?". And even though the select committee did work on it did make some changes did make some recommendations that has not been taken up by the Minister and there are still issues with this bill. So that also goes to the reason that we will be opposing this legislation. Finally I want to just go back in time a wee way because as this Government draws to the end of its term in office and prepares to pack up their offices and bundle up their papers and documents and move back into this side of the House it doesn't seem too long ago—well actually it was; it was nearly three years ago—that the Speech from the Throne was given after the 2017 election. And in the Speech from the Throne it says this amongst other things—and there are so many things in the Speech from the Throne that haven't been delivered on that haven't been fulfilled that haven't been achieved in terms of the promises made the lofty ambitions and the aspirations of the speech are undelivered. But one of them was and I quote "This Government will remove the Auckland urban growth boundary and free up density controls." So do we still have an Auckland urban growth boundary? Has there been a removal of the Auckland growth boundary? No absolutely nothing has happened. So again another example of non-delivery non-ability to actually do what they said they would do in a way that New Zealanders now find so sadly disappointing because effectively they thought things were going to happen. The delivery hasn't happened and what we've had is now a record as I said earlier that precedes the Minister's reputation for non-delivery not doing anything and failing to achieve the results.We oppose this bill."