Twyford Phil: Resource Management Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Resource Management Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12830. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—TeAtatū): I want to make some comments about Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill which amends the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Act 2010. It puts in place a framework for the development of the first combined plan for Auckland Council known publicly I think as the draft Auckland Unitary Plan. Specifically what it does is it establishes a fast-track process for the unitary plan with the establishment of a hearings panel—a kind of one-stop shop hearings panel—which takes the place of the normal Resource Management Act Environment Court appeals process. Labour supports this provision and we have made it very clear publicly since the Auckland Council asked the Government to consider this back in December last year that we give qualified support to the proposal for the fast tracking. I will tell the Committee why.The Auckland Unitary Plan is a very significant development in the life of the new amalgamated Auckland super-city. The unitary plan is the successor to all the old district and regional plans and people will remember that having one plan for Auckland was one of the great selling points for the amalgamation which led to the Auckland super-city being set up. It allows for an integrated approach to managing land use and managing growth in Auckland for the first time ever. I think it is widely accepted certainly on this side of the Chamber that this is one of the significant benefits of the amalgamation of all the old local territorial authorities in Auckland.The unitary plan is significant because it is the first time that Auckland has had a concerted comprehensive and considered effort to manage its growth. The growth of Auckland and the poor regulatory framework that has existed until now is really at the heart of many of the big problems that are affecting Auckland particularly around housing affordability which is probably one of the worst.The unitary plan contains a raft of measures for tackling affordable housing and importantly it deals with the problem of the constraints on land supply which lie beneath the very high prices for residential property in Auckland. The history of that I think is the old metropolitan urban limit which was a fixed limit a boundary around the city and that together with a failure over many years to intensify and build a sufficient quantity of new houses in Auckland and given the forces of supply anddemand was a recipe unfortunately for the very high residential property prices that are plaguing Aucklanders to this day.So the big innovation in the unitary plan gets rid of the old metropolitan urban limit which Nick Smith has been railing against for months and months as such a terrible thing without mentioning that the old metropolitan urban limit is gone. It is a dead duck. It is supplanted in the unitary plan. It is Nick Smith’s convenient straw man to attack and try to blame Auckland Council for the current housing crisis when in fact the draft unitary plan which is the first major kind of planning instrument of the new Auckland Council gets rid of the metropolitan urban limits and replaces them with what the plan describes as the Rural Urban Boundary.The important innovation here is that the Rural Urban Boundary really is a staged shifting of the city limits that successively introduces large volumes of greenfield land in a planned staged fashion over the life of the 30-year plan which will bring quantities of greenfield land—Andrew Little: Sounds sensible.PHIL TWYFORD: —that is right—and provide the land that is necessary for Auckland’s growth and development.So that is a really important piece of the puzzle to understand—that the unitary plan delivers in a staged careful fashion the new greenfield land that Auckland needs for its growth and development. This is not what National Party members including Nick Smith the current Minister of Housing have called for which is a kind of wholesale destruction of the city limits a deregulation of the planning process the effect of which would simply be to allow suburban sprawl to rip across the countryside to Whangarei in the north and down to Hamilton in the south. That is the last thing that Aucklanders want to see. So that is a really important feature of the unitary plan.The essence of the proposal that Auckland Council brought to the Government at the end of last year was a streamlining of the process around this plan. Under the existing law the Auckland Unitary Plan could take between 7 and 10 years to bed in given the scale and complexity of the plan and given all the rights of appeal under the Resource Management Act it could be a decade before that bedding-in process is complete. It is my submission that that is unacceptable for a number of reasons that I want to spell out.The Auckland Council has undertaken a big public process of consultation and engagement. Part of the trade-off for limiting appeal rights to the Environment Court under the Resource Management Act was to front end the plan-making process with an array of public meetings and online consultation. I attended some of those meetings and certainly there was a genuine concerted effort to engage with communities to engage with stakeholders and to really democratise those early stages of the plan-making process.It has been really interesting in that we have seen with the Auckland Unitary Plan the first ever major public conversation in our country’s biggest city about the future shape of the city. You may not agree with the details of the plan you may not like the way the town centres are categorised you may not like the new proposed rules on intensification and you may not like the proposal for high-rise development in some town centres and so on but there is no doubt that this has been a groundbreaking process for Auckland and the first time there has been a major public debate.It is worth noting I think that on the pages of theNew Zealand Heraldevery day and on the major television networks we see these issues. The issues of urban development housing affordability sprawl versus intensification and the relationship between transport and urban development are on the front pages of the newspaper and on our television and radio news bulletins almost every day. They are such a major feature of public debate and I think that Len Brown and the Auckland Council deservesignificant credit for opening up this conversation and leading in a way that frankly we have not seen in Auckland ever before in our lifetimes.One of the things that is most important and that I think justifies the fast tracking is that we have a housing crisis in Auckland right now. There is no doubt about it. We have some of the most unaffordable housing in the Western World. The unitary plan as I said has a raft of measures for dealing with housing affordability and Auckland needs those now. So that is the first reason. What I would say is that it has been rather amusing to see the National Party’s apparatchiks in east Auckland and the North Shore amongst local government circles throwing themselves in front of the metaphorical bulldozer to try to stop and slow down the unitary plan process when in Parliament the National Party has been wanting to speed it up and has been threatening Auckland Council with legislative intervention every day almost and urging Auckland Council to speed up the very provisions that exist in this unitary plan because the Government is so scared about the macroeconomic impacts of the Auckland housing crisis.That was by way of a digression. But Labour does support the fast tracking because firstly the housing crisis deserves extraordinary measures and secondly Auckland has already been through an election campaign. An extensive public process went into the making of the Auckland plan and as I said also with another process around the unitary plan it could take 7 to 10 years—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Are you seeking another call?PHIL TWYFORD: I am seeking another call Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): In the absence of a challenge I will give you another call.PHIL TWYFORD: That is very charitable of you Mr Chairman. As I said it could take between 7 and 10 years for this plan to be finally bedded-down under the Resource Management Act and that is just too long for Aucklanders to have to put up with. That is why we support the fast tracking.There are two issues on which the National Government baulked in terms of Auckland Council’s proposals. The first is that Auckland Council proposed that the unitary plan be given legal weight from notification. The plan has been through all its processes and it is going to be notified next month I understand. It goes out for people to consider and then respond to to the hearings panel and ultimately goes to the Environment Court.But under the Resource Management Act prior to 2009 the plan would have had legal weight from notification. That does not mean it is operative it does not mean that it has legal effect; it means that it will be taken into account along with other operative plans when consenting decisions are being made. That is critical particularly for the considering of consents for housing developments for affordable housing in light of the Auckland Council’s urgent need to respond to the housing affordability crisis.It would have been the case pre-2009 before National changed the law that the plan would have had legal weight. And that is why and it is worth noting that we had all the theatrics from Nick Smith earlier in the year when he went rampaging around the place accusing Len Brown of crushing and destroying the dreams of Aucklanders to have affordable housing. He was trying to shift the blame for the housing crisis on to Auckland Council because he was so desperate to try to have something to show that the Government was doing something about housing affordability. Well if it had not changed the law in 2009 this plan would have had legal weight from notification.Secondly the other thing is that Auckland Council proposed that it should appoint the members of the hearings panel—after all it is Auckland’s plan; after all Aucklanders through their rates will pay for this plan and everything that the plan entails. But no this Government in its centralising nanny State way insisted on havingsole prerogative to appoint the members of the hearings panel. And instead of Aucklanders being able to make that crucial decision Amy Adams and Nick Smith two South Island Ministers from the comfort of their ministerial offices in Wellington have hijacked this process by insisting that they have the exclusive right to appoint the members of the hearings panel.I just think that that is a real shame and it is symptomatic of this Government’s troubled relationship with Auckland that it did not trust Auckland Council to appoint the members of the hearings panel and in fact spurned Auckland Council’s proposal that the appointment of the hearings panel should be done jointly by the Government and by Auckland Council. I think that is a real shame. It is Aucklanders’ plan. They are paying for it. Why should the democratically elected Auckland Council not be able to make that vital decision? It is typical of this Government’s arrogant and interfering approach not only to local government generally but to Auckland particularly that they have insisted on keeping those powers to themselves.Labour supports the fast tracking of the plan but we do think it is a shame that this Government could not see its way to share the process of appointing the members of the hearings panel. We think it is a shame that on the crucial issue of allowing the plan to have legal weight from notification the Government did not go along with Auckland Council’s proposal. In fact because of that we have had to go through this whole palaver around the Government’s Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Bill which itself would not have been necessary.This whole fuss that Nick Smith has taken us all through is because the Government did not agree to the draft unitary plan having legal weight from notification. Now we have to go through this whole special housing areas bill that Nick Smith has before the House currently and all it does is cherry-pick aspects of the unitary plan i.e. bringing in more greenfield land—