Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you Madam Chair. Firstly the member says Well we need to identify the places of national importance so that there's certainty in the system." I agree with that and I agree that we also need to make sure that we're not having the bar so low for what's of importance that we gum the system up by calling everything important. And there have been instances in New Zealand where landscapes for example have been identified all to be of natural importance around something. The example that's most often used is around Queenstown where the planning code in respect of significant landscapes essentially makes it very very complicated to bring a new transmission line into Queenstown even though you need it. So I agree that the system needs to identify those places.The statute covers that off by making reference to this having to be done—and in clause 3A(h) it says "the attributes of places of national importance and highly vulnerable bio‐diversity areas must be recognised … (see subpart 5 of Part 6)". And then if you go to the index you'll see that that takes you to clause 427C on page 291 of the bill that says that they must be identified. So you know that will flow through.In respect of the property rights argument I would make two points. The private property right to the use of land has never enabled you to do anything on your land. In a residential area you can't put in a freezing works you can't build a tannery—and I don't understand the member to be in favour of that—so you've got to have planning rules that actually say what you can do on the land. You can't be so simple as to say "Oh look just because the property rights owner owns the fee simple then that fee simple right includes the right to build anything on the land." That has never been the law in New Zealand—under the Town and Country Planning Act under the Resource Management Act or under this. So the idea that you can just rely upon nuisance or the rights of neighbours is just incorrect because we have codes in New Zealand which say: well this area is basically for residential and allied services this area here is mainly commercial. In respect of modern ways of living in commercial as opposed to industrial we often merge the two together and have retail and businesses and things in some residential—in the same area. But it has always been the right of the planning system to control those issues. In respect—Simon Court: Well that's all that we're supposed to do.Hon DAVID PARKER: I would also make the point that I find the ACT Party's protestations on these issues simplistic given that they've been so opposed to the intensification work that we've done in New Zealand to bring down the effect of cost of land prices. [Interruption] Well I see Chris Bishop with a smile on his face there laconically saying "Well you might be right there Minister." Because it's hard to reconcile the ACT Party voting against some of the intensification provisions that we as a Government brought forward in order to make housing more affordable by enabling more and that more enabling planning provision to enable well-serviced landmarks—so there's plenty of opportunities to build a house or an apartment whatever it is to bring down land prices; it's implemented through the system.Final point on the member's question about "Can we have a takeover of Māori on regional planning committees?" It was dressed up in slightly different language but that was effectively the question. Now the answer is no because in order to in part avoid all of the complications that we have through all of these bespoke Treaty settlements continuing to proliferate throughout the country we've said "Look there should be some Māori participation on the regional planning committee." We did think "Well should that be one? Should it be half and half?" We didn't think it should be half and half. We thought that one could be a bit lonely so we actually came up with the number two but it will be up to the region to decide. And if the region can't decide it's set by the Local Government Commission. It's not set by the courts; it's set by the Local Government Commission. I can't conceive of a situation where they would say that you know councils don't have the majority voice.So the member's quite right to say that the smallest of these regional planning committees is likely to be in the Southland region where there are four councils including the regional council. If you have two Māori participants on that regional planning committee there will be two Māori participants and four council representatives. The councillors might say "We want two each." Invercargill might say "Most of the people live here; we need two." The regional council might convince people down there that they need a couple of voices for the regional council. That's for the region to set out. We don't need to predetermine—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! I call on Tama Potaka."