Donnelly Brian: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — Procedure First Reading 
Donnelly Brian: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — Procedure First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1393] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First thoroughly supports the intentions behind this legislation. I lived and taught in that area for a number of years and I even played league for Glenora. As a result of that I reckon I can claim to be a real westie. It is a lovely area not just the bush-clad hills but also the rolling orchards and vineyards in the foothills. 
However many areas of New Zealand are of stunning beauty and we have legislation that is supposed to provide the sort of protection this legislation sets out to achieve. It is called the Resource Management Act. It is supposed to allow for development in a planned and calculated manner that takes into consideration the views of communities and that protects the very elements this legislation seeks to protect. 
If this legislation is not working to protect the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area there are two possible reasons. The first is that the current legislation for protecting areas on a national basis is flawed. The second is that the Auckland Regional Council the Waitakere City Council and the Rodney District Council are not utilising the legislation appropriately—that they are making bad decisions or inappropriate decisions. 
The explanatory note states: “There is also a lack of long-term assurance about resource management standards. At present notwithstanding robust rules in district plans there is no certainty that inappropriate activities will not be granted consent and that the district plan’s provisions will not be reviewed and undermined through the 10-yearly reviews required under the Resource Management Act or through Council and privately initiated plan changes.” However the legislation we are discussing today in fact depends also upon the Auckland Regional Council the Rodney District Council and the Waitakere City Council to make it work. 
I suggest to the House that it is an absolute absurdity to suggest that the way to fix up failings in the planning processes of those councils is by putting them through a new piece of legislation that requires exactly the same councils to meet its objectives. 
However the problem could lie elsewhere; it could lie in the legislation. Once again I go back to the explanatory notes which state: “A key concern about the Resource Management Act in practice is that individual applications for development consent tend to be considered on a site by site basis and the cumulative effects and precedent effects of incremental development are difficult to assess and manage. Most notably there is a lack of guidance about the thresholds that might trigger the cumulative effects test and a focus on testing applications for their effects on the present environment rather than the desired future environment (including amenity).” 
New Zealand First holds to the view that if the problem lies with the principal Act then that is what we should fix in order to address the issue. We should not put through ad hoc legislation to cover specific situations. In that sense New Zealand First is consistent with the position it took regarding the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act 2000. I live in Ngunguru which is on the coast and there are very real concerns about what is happening to the coastline all the way up the eastern coastline of Northland because the Resource Management Act does not adequately deal with cumulative effects. New Zealand First says that if this is the case then we should fix up the Resource Management Act. 
A number of other considerations lead us to reject the bill. The first is the potential impact on the value of landowners’ property and whether that will be reflected in decreased valuations. If that is the case it could be an inadvertent theft of property rights. An argument has been put forward that within the Waitakere foothills there is a heritage landscape of orchards and vineyards. I hope the promoters of the bill are able to see the irony of trying to legislate for the protection of landscapes that have been created through the deliberate destruction of the natural landscape that existed earlier. 
Finally the bill requires regular monitoring and reporting on progress towards the objectives—in fact on a 5-year basis—and on the funding impact of activities within the heritage area. We all know what that means: more bureaucracy and more costs to ratepayers. Although we applaud the intentions of the bill we do not believe that that will affect its purpose. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Because these are 5-minute speeches I will do members the courtesy of ringing the bell with 1 minute to go so that members know.