Dean JacquiHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. As with previous readings it is for me to indicate that National opposes this Resource Management Amendment Bill at its second reading and really to note that what this bill in effect does is largely to reverse the changes made to the Resource Management Act (RMA) by the previous Government under National's Resource Legislation Amendment Act 2017 which was all about reducing the bureaucracy that simply gets in the way of creating jobs of building houses and also of providing for good environmental protection. It is ironic that at the very time we are in this House debating yet another RMA amendment bill the Environment Committee is at the very same time considering the Urban Development Bill which does exactly the opposite of—I'm looking behind me for my colleague Erica Stanford who sits on the committee with me and who shares I'm sure the same dismay at the fact that on the one hand the RMA is loading up bureaucracy and proudly doing so if the last speaker was anything to go back yet at the same time the Urban Development Bill is doing exactly the opposite. So which way is it for this Government?Hon Member: It's incoherent.Hon JACQUI DEAN: Well it is; thank you for that. It is an incoherent approach to planning in New Zealand. And what I guess makes it even more incoherent is the fact that last November the Government appointed an expert Resource Management Review Panel to review the RMA and to produce reform proposals. So not only do we have an RMA amendment bill in the House today which is proposing more bureaucracy we have an Urban Development Bill cutting down on consultation quite severely. But the third leg to this unfortunate stool is that the Government has a Resource Management Review Panel and something like 300 working groups which this Government is churning through—they call that work. It's called working groups.So this Resource Management Review Panel is going to produce a report this month. So that report from the expert panel was due at the end of May. It's now June. I believe that the chair of the panel is a gentleman with timely habits; so I'm very interested to know where that report is. But I'm also even more interested to know why we are tinkering around the edges of the RMA—and that's all this is; it's just reversing changes and it was acknowledged by the Hon Eugenie Sage. Why is it that the Government is spending this House's time reversing those changes—it's mere tinkering—when there is a substantive report due? It defies logic. I would assume that in doing so this delay this confusion will be causing further disruption to the current users of the Resource Management Act at the very time in this post-COVID world when one would hope that a certain amount of certainty and planning were to be desirable.At the select committee stage there were a couple of things. One of those reversals of previous decisions made by the previous Government that is occurring in this bill is on the power of councils to consider climate change in RMA decisions with neither public consultation involved nor any degree of costing involved. That provision around climate change provisions has been reinstated into this bill. So the power over emissions is now in the hands of councils the Environment Court and boards of inquiry with no consultations and there's no costings around that. The previous Minister who spoke did signal national guidance but in the absence of that are councils now to make up their own standards and their own policies around climate change? I think we know the answer to that.So the National Party believes very strongly that any substantial changes to the RMA should be made with a full consideration of the expert panel's recommendations and I am at a loss my colleagues are at a loss to know why we are ploughing through with I think the 19th iteration of the RMA when in fact both Labour and National have signalled a complete rewrite of the Resource Management Act is in fact what is required. So this is a mystifying piece of legislation but none the less we are obliged to plough on with it albeit that we are opposing it all the way through.I just want to raise one other point which is that there is significant change around fresh water and if one believes Eugenie Sage much progress is being made in this regard. But actually it's a switch in power and it's a switch in power to the centre which we have seen several times by this Government one of them being polytech reforms—and there is some work going on in reticulated three waters which signals to be yet another switch in power to the centre. So watch that space. But a significant change in the bill is that the new freshwater commissioners will be appointed by the Minister for the Environment rather than the regional council. Now this is a significant move and it shouldn't be underestimated that this removes decision making and the power to appoint from a regional council to the Minister of the day. Are we comfortable with that? Regional councils weren't very comfortable with that. I'm not very comfortable with that.The irony is huge here because the Government parties so strongly opposed the appointment of commissioners to Environment Canterbury a decade ago when Environment Canterbury failed to notify a water plan but are now creating legislation which allows the Government to do that and to appoint commissioners all through New Zealand. So the irony and the policy muddle prevail all through this bill—mostly through this House. The Opposition party is the largest party in Parliament and so we oppose this bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Dr Liz Craig.