Worth Richard: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Worth Richard: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22293] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
: 
 What a splendid 30 seconds of nonsense. Just in case people have been listening on the radio to those comments they need to know that the last Labour Party speaker had 10 minutes’ speaking time and instead chose to rant for 30 seconds. It is not an original comment to make—that this is a Government characterised by flip-flops and foolishness. Nowhere is that more exemplified than in this legislation the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill. It is small wonder therefore that National strongly opposes this legislation. 
We see another execrable trait of this Government in the late tabling today while this Parliament is in urgency of Supplementary Order Paper 389. Unsurprisingly it contains 35 pages of densely written turgid amendments. What has happened here of course is that as a matter of deliberate policy the Government has chosen to circumvent the select committee process. That process exists for the careful evaluation with public input of the provisions of a Government bill. What has the Government done? It has gone through a select committee process sure but then it has subverted that process by the amendments that come to Parliament today. That is wholly unsatisfactory lawmaking. That is stuff that any reasonable Government should be utterly ashamed of. That is why I say that this is a Government characterised by the flip-flops that are contained in this Supplementary Order Paper and by the flip-flops that have occurred in the select committee process as dramatic reversal decisions have been made. 
I just remind members that the history of town planning legislation in New Zealand is quite old. We had the first Town and Country Planning Act in 1926 we had another statute in 1953 another statute in 1977 and then of course the Resource Management Act came in 1991. If one looks at that legislation in its various historic forms it is to be seen that it has become steadily more and more complex. 
But that is only one aspect of the dynamic of complexity because sitting in behind the Resource Management Act and the subordinate legislation that comprises regulations and rules is a raft of other materials. I am referring to district scheme and district plan documents. I will take the case of the Auckland City Council as an example. There are literally volumes and volumes of material that seek to exemplify and explain the provisions of the Resource Management Act as they relate to the city of Auckland. It is an absolute disgrace that this legislation passed in 1991 with an obligation to provide operative district plans has seen an outcome where in many parts of the districts in New Zealand that work has not been completed. So local authorities and those who come to local authorities to seek planning consents are forced to grapple with a plan that is in the process of being made operative and the need to give effect to the current operative plan. 
National is committed to the substantial reform of the Resource Management Act because we believe that such reforms are critical to addressing New Zealand’s roading and electricity infrastructure crisis. They are also important in attracting investment in industries like forestry and reducing compliance costs for farms small business and homeowners. Surely the objective must be to reduce the costs the delays and the uncertainties of the Act while maintaining high environmental standards. 
That is not to say we do not support the underpinning principles of the Act. We do. We support the commitment to sustainability. We support an integrated approach to environment management. We support a focus on environmental effects. Our major concern is that the Act has become too complex and cumbersome. 
Let me give just one illustration. There are 15000 pages of district and regional plans. There are 50000 consents required each year and a 7-year average time is required for a council to process a plan change. Just by way of comparison in earlier legislation there were simple identified circumstances where consent was required. There were predominant uses conditional uses and uses neither predominant nor conditional that required a specified departure planning consent. That has now been made incredibly much more complicated by new classes of activity and by subtle wording of different tests for each class of activity. 
So what we want to do is to rebalance several key aspects of the Act. The Act is too idealistic about public consultation. People talk about consultation fatigue: the circumstance where so great is the consultation obligation that both the parties and those being consulted are simply worn out by a process that is itself incredibly time enduring and incredibly costly. We have the situation—and Mr Heatley has spoken about this—that because of the wide-ranging ability to object minority interests can impose huge costs or delays on communities. Dr Nick Smith who knows a substantial amount about this legislation will cite the illustration of how these days it takes longer to get the necessary planning consent to build the road than to actually build the road itself. 
Hon David Benson-Pope 
: Rubbish! 
Dr RICHARD WORTH 
: I hear Mr Benson-Pope whose ignorance of town planning legislation is manifest. He is a Minister who struggles with his portfolio in even its most simple aspects and he is groaning that what I am saying is incorrect. He is a man who should focus for the short period of time that remains in this Parliament on his portfolio responsibilities. He is a man who should seek to gain some greater insight as to why this legislation is not working. He should heed the public concern which is manifestly out there in connection with delays in connection with costs and in connection with the unsatisfactory nature of this legislation. 
I have said that the Act is too idealistic about public consultation. A second point is that it gives insufficient weighting to the rights of property owners about how their land is used. A simple illustration of this is that some councils have zones that impact on rural areas where substantial tracts of forest in private ownership are preserved in effect in a park-like setting for the benefit of the public at large. It should be no part of the plan that it is for private landowners to retain land effectively as a public reserve. 
Thirdly the Act is too devolved. It results in councils in every part of the country having to reinvent the wheel. Let me give an illustration of that. In the noise area with the number of local authorities in New Zealand there are separate noise standards for each local authority district. So as we traverse the country seeking to establish a particular activity we need to look at the specific noise standards in each particular district. Those standards are quite arbitrary and they should be constant. Another illustration is in the area of air quality controls where there is huge variation from regional council to regional council. 
Mr Heatley has said what our plan is which is to reform the Resource Management Act in two phases. The first phase involves process issues which have been extensively debated. As Mr Heatley has said the bill will be introduced within 3 months of the election and passed into law within 9 months. That drafting work is well advanced. The second phase of the reform will deal with the more complex issues of resource allocation and infrastructure provision.