Simpson Scott; O'Connor GregHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. Listening to the Minister who's just resumed her seat I'm mindful of the fact that we are a small nation at the bottom of the South Pacific. We are a nation of 5 million people about the same size as metropolitan Melbourne in terms of population but we have a landmass that is about the same size as Japan or the United Kingdom. Yet we insist on making things so difficult for ourselves and we have done for years. This legislation does nothing to make it easier for ourselves—for our built environment for our natural environment or indeed for those people who are vested with the responsibility of trying to plan for the future needs and demands and opportunities for citizens and for our built and natural environment. So I have to disagree with the Hon Rachel Brooking and her view.She comes to this debate not only as a member of the Government but as a former practitioner in this area and let me tell the House that the only people who are going to benefit from this legislation from the natural built environment legislation and the spatial planning legislation—and I suspect the adaptation piece that we have yet to see—are lawyers. This is going to be a lawyer's gravy train. To my colleague Tama Potaka: if the politics doesn't work out Tama you're going to be going back and being a resource spatial planning lawyer because there's going to be tonnes of opportunity and huge opportunity for vast fortunes to be made in the legal profession. There will be years—years—of judicial interpretation around these statutes and this one just because it is smaller and less numeric in volume than its traveling mate the Natural and Built Environment Bill doesn't mean that it's any less complicated.The Environment Committee ran these two bills alongside each other and it would be remiss of me not to join with other colleagues in congratulating and thanking the chair of the select committee who I think did a particularly good job and was across the detail. The Hon Eugenie Sage I think did a job that is not only a credit to her personally but a credit to the select committee process because we were working under very tight time frames. The legislation was introduced to the Parliament just before the Christmas break last year and then submissions were called for until early February over the summer break. Notwithstanding that truncated and shortened period over a time when most New Zealanders are on holiday the select committee received something in the order of more than 600—I think 610—submissions and ultimately we heard from about 365 submitters.This piece of legislation the Spatial Planning Bill is the one that actually creates effectively another layer of local government and it's a layer of local government that will be non-democratic will have no democratic accountability but will have enormous power and enormous influence over the lives the property rights and the wellbeing of people for decades and decades to come. These regional planning committees that will be established won't have democratic accountability. That was probably the issue that was raised most regularly by people who were concerned about this piece of legislation. These people will be largely faceless they will not be accountable at the ballot box and they will have enormous power to create plans that will have an impact on the lives and the wellbeing of people businesses and communities up and down the country.My colleague Chris Bishop made it very clear: we are up for discussion and debate and for a rational approach to the reforming of our resource management legislation and regime. But this is not the way to do it. We didn't hear for instance a very effective answer as to why this bill is actually needed at all. What we could have had was—as we have now essentially—the planning portion of the regime included in one bill. A number of submitters made that point and we didn't ever really get a satisfactory answer either from the Minister or from the officials who were advising. Now just on that note I do want to thank the officials because they were absolutely burning the midnight oil on this legislation and the other piece of legislation as well the natural built environment legislation. But it was clear as we worked our way through the select committee hearings and advice from officials that much of it was literally being made up as we went through it. There were words that were being changed phrases that were being changed. Questions that were being asked by laypeople who are members of the select committee who were just asking simple basic questions like What does this mean in practical terms?" were unable to be answered by officials. They literally had no idea what the practical implications would be.We hear from advocates for these two pieces of legislation that a lot of work has gone into it a lot of effort has gone into it a lot of thought has gone into it—therefore we must proceed. Well I don't buy that at all. If the work and the effort and the energy that has gone into it has produced something that will ultimately be worse than the status quo and worse than what we have now that surely is a good reason to halt it and not proceed any further. The argument that says "Oh well we've invested so much time and energy into it; therefore we must proceed." simply doesn't wash with me or my National Party colleagues. We don't think on this side of the House that just because we've come this far we should just keep going. We don't think that is a sufficiently robust or clear rationale for keeping going.I want to take just a minute or two to have a talk about what I think a previous member mentioned was the "intellectual grunt". I think it was the Hon Stuart Nash who mentioned that an enormous amount of intellectual grunt had gone into this; that there was an enormous amount of intellectual grunt in the Minister's office. Now that may well or may not be the case but that of itself is not sufficient basis to proceed with something that is clearly going to be more complicated more costly and more complex than we currently have. The bill hands over planning and decision making to groups of elites that are in my view going to be enormously powerful. They're going to be unaccountable by way of the ballot box and those regional planning committees—yes they are less numeric than the situation we currently have but they replicate the same essential challenges.I want to just give an example of my own electorate. The Coromandel is nominally included in the Waikato and we already think that much of what happens in the Coromandel is already too Hamilton-centric because what happens in Hamilton doesn't necessarily reflect the thinking and the views of what happens in the beautiful Coromandel. We're not convinced remotely that decisions made by a geographically physically distant group of people is necessarily going to represent the best interests long or short term of people in my part of the country. That's one of the basic flaws in the Minister's assumption that just having a smaller number of planning organisations or planning committees is going to make for more effective planning in spatial planning. Again I remain unconvinced of that argument and I'd be happy to hear from speakers on the Government benches as to why they think that it will be better for regions like mine that will end up having planning foisted upon them from an area that is geographically remote and culturally physically politically different from the area that is being planned for. So I'm very worried about those sorts of things.I want to follow up just lastly on the potential for I think judicial uncertainty around not only the creation of these regional planning committees but what job they will do. Again we heard from submitters about a lack of clarity about appointees—how they would be appointed; who would make the decisions; what accountability there would be; what qualifications what backgrounds what experience would be needed. So we think that there are a lot of unanswered questions from this legislation. We don't support it. We don't think it is the right way to go. Just because there is some intellectual grunt or otherwise in the Minister's office is not sufficient reason in our view to proceed with this legislation. We don't support it. We won't support it. And what's more if we are given the opportunity to form a new Government before the end of the year we will repeal this and its partner legislation before Christmas.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.Sitting suspended from 5.58 p.m. to 7.30 p.m."