Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): ACT opposes this bill. We believe the Government is putting in place a regulatory regime that will empower the forces that currently frustrate development and restrict progress. Given a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the laws that cover environmental management and land use planning this Government has squandered that opportunity. This bill—this enormous bill—is sweeping in its scope. It covers everything from geo heritage—I'm a big fan of that by the way; I studied geology at uni—supply of land greenhouse gas emissions that are already covered by the emissions trading scheme coastal areas and cultural heritage. In short just about every aspect that affects people's lives is covered by a rule or provision in this bill.At its highest level this bill proposes to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao". Well it gives that term some vague definitions but it fails to create any kind of hierarchy for decision makers while throwing in vague and puzzling terms like "te Oranga o te Taiao". How courts will interpret such statements is unknown. This piece of legislation is a recipe for a decade or more of judicial mayhem Minister. The bill will centralise planning and direction-setting powers under the Minister through a national planning framework with few if any checks and balances. This bill is creating an apparatus of sweeping State power. It fails to balance the legitimate concerns that people have about the natural environment with the rights of individuals to use their property as they see fit. This bill has a list of different targets limits outcomes and principles that the national planning framework will have to make sense of. It's likely that courts will just end up in a logjam as a result of this bad law.Now the unworkable environmental limits that this reform introduces and the rules that will result will lead to more prohibitions and endless bureaucratic consenting processes rather than more freedom for the range of urban and rural activities essential to New Zealanders' economic and social wellbeing—social wellbeing. Federated Farmers told the committee that the Natural and Built Environment Bill would strip away local decision-making in favour of centralisation and that a bill filled with amorphous terms and principles would make it impossible for the courts to define what this legislation really means. Projects will be held up for years in hearings appeals consultants' reports and of course iwi consultations. As a result the Government is squandering an opportunity to create meaningful change that could improve the lives of New Zealanders and restore the ideal of a property-owning democracy and respect for self-determination and property rights.ACT engaged with the select committee in the hope—the forlorn hope it turns out—that this bill could be beaten into shape and that the feedback from submitters would result in a workable piece of legislation. But the regional planning aspects and the devolving of planning to unelected undemocratic entities with of course the inevitable co-government aspect—the iwi appointees unelected like the others—to make decisions about where and how you can apply for consents and where you'll never be allowed to risks sterilising resources sterilising development opportunities sterilising the most efficient use of land which should always be up to the landowner not an unelected undemocratic co-governed planning bureau which is what this bill puts in place.The proposed reforms will deliver less certainty less accountability—even less than the Resource Management Act (RMA) does today—and that's at a time when more localised more adaptive and agile means are needed so that we can build our cities up as well as out and accommodate for example where I live in Auckland a projected half a million to a million new people between now and 2050. Unless we liberalise land use planning rules we won't be able to fit them in they won't be able to find affordable homes and we certainly won't be able to deliver the infrastructure that we need to so that people can get around cities at a decent clip. Instead of progressing this approach this over 1000-page approach ACT has a far simpler solution. Minister this is ACT's solution for building New Zealand and conserving nature. We've developed this not over five years but over 18 months of consultation and engagement with the same people who came to the Environment Committee and submitted on the Minister's bill. But instead of pretending to listen instead of ignoring their urging to develop far more streamlined legislation ACT has listened.We propose instead of continuing with this integrated approach of land use planning and environmental management we separate them into environmental management under a separate Environmental Protection Act from urban development under an Urban Development Act. Separating them is critical to recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach will never work. Clearly it will never work; it's far too complicated. A shift in principle on resource management to a property rights basis where people can do anything that doesn't harm others' enjoyment of property is fundamental to ACT's policy for resource management and land use. ACT would dramatically reduce the number of people who have an interest in someone else's use of their property and who could object such as all of those who turn up at hearings now claiming they have a cultural interest or proprietary interest in somebody's land or their business and how they choose to operate it.A new Environmental Protection Authority would allow people to do what they like on their land unless specifically prohibited under the Act. Discharges to common property like water bodies would be forbidden unless specifically allowed under the Act and such discharges would be managed under one of two regimes: freshwater or other discharges—noting the special importance of freshwater. And the freshwater regime would involve local councils deciding on acceptable environmental limits in consultation with their community not handed down from the Ministry for the Environment or central government officials. This decision making would be based on clearly demarcated scientifically measurable parameters. We would eliminate the metaphysical—those concepts under the current RMA—which will be enshrined in this new document: like Te Mana o te Wai concepts of Māori and spiritual matters which should have absolutely no bearing on decision making about how people use their land and private property. Urban development would be managed under ACT under a separate Urban Development Act which sets out processes for streets and neighbourhoods to upvote their density in an organic way so that neighbourhoods—citizens—can decide if they want to build up and if so come to an agreement with their neighbours and not have to ask councils for permission.If we want to get cheaper goods to market and more houses built in an affordable way for the next generation we need to reduce Government interference in our lives and in the way we use our land. We need to allow Kiwis to maintain their property rights—their tino rangatiratanga over their land. That's the only way we will realise our collective economic potential as a nation. All parties agree resource management reform is necessary but this bill Minister is not it. It's not the reform we need. We do not believe in the ACT Party that it improves the status quo. We do not support the further progress of this bill. We set out our alternative here: ACT's solutions for building New Zealand and conserving nature."