Smith Nick: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Smith Nick: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:622;Page:17967] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 This bill is another sorry chapter in the Government’s book of failures in respect of resource management law. Anybody who believes that this bill will solve the serious and significant problems with the Resource Management Act either lives in fairyland or in David Benson-Pope’s office—or perhaps those are one and the same place. When we look at the history of shonky process we see that it is no wonder this Government keeps messing up this important area of law. 
National in 1999 with Simon Upton as Minister for the Environment introduced a comprehensive and well-thought-through reform bill. Labour rejected that bill yet 5 years later it is regurgitating those same ideas and effectively pleading guilty and saying that it got it wrong. The select committee toiled away diligently for months on the bill but it sat on the Order Paper for 22 months without the Government doing anything. Then in a mad rush the Government introduced another bill and passed it under urgency. 
Again today we are sitting under urgency and we have had to suspend the Standing Orders to allow this bill even to be introduced. It is a shonky bill that has been advanced under a shonky process. 
Let us not underestimate how serious the problems are of the Resource Management Act. Back in 2001 the Government set up the business compliance cost panel which came out and said that the No. 1 concern for business was the Resource Management Act. What did the Government do about that? Sweet nothing. It ignored the panel’s report until this year when Marian Hobbs was sacked and the polls changed. Earlier this year in April the results of an international competitiveness study on New Zealand came out. It was disgraceful that in terms of environmental law New Zealand ranked No. 60 out of 60 places. We were dunce of the class for the quality of our environmental regulation. 
Everybody in this country knows that we need to engineer more roads—not engineer people as this Government wants to do—yet Transit New Zealand says it will take up to 7 years to get consent for a new road. 
Larry Baldock 
: Oh! 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: That is what it said. I say that Mr Baldock should take responsibility and listen to what Transit is saying. Then in only December of last year Transpower stated in its annual report that there was no way New Zealand could address its substantial electricity supply issues unless there were changes to the Resource Management Act. 
Darren Hughes 
: Is that accurate? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Members opposite are chipping in because they know they are guilty. They know they have failed desperately in respect of issues to do with the Resource Management Act. 
Let me give some other examples just in case members opposite are unaware of them. The Auckland City Council has to deal with 3000 consent applications a year—applications to just one council—for people to be able to trim a tree. That is right—3000 consent applications a year from poor old homeowners in Auckland who simply want to trim a tree. 
Then we have the disgraceful position that has occurred in the Queenstown lakes district whereby if people want to rent out their homes for any period less than 3 months they have to get a resource consent from their council. Will this bill fix those problems? Not on one’s nelly. It does absolutely nothing to address those substantive issues. 
We need look no further than the reactions to this bill. Let me read what the New Zealand Law Society said about the bill: “Far from being a set of proposals that will reduce costs and delays being incurred under the Resource Management Act the net result from our collective experience we have no doubt will be worse for everyone—for councils for industry for community groups and ordinary members of the public.” How can the Government stand up today and say that this is the solution when the Law Society says those things about the bill? 
Let us look at what the Government’s friends say about the bill. The newly elected Mayor of Auckland and bosom buddy of Helen Clark Dick Hubbard said that this bill goes nowhere near far enough in changing the Act in order for Auckland to be able to deal with its infrastructure issues. So I say to the Government that even its friends say this bill is a lemon. 
Then we come to some of the detailed issues. Why is it that members opposite are going to amend the Resource Management Act to make Maori iwi authorities into public bodies? That is a revolutionary constitutional change. I am sure that Clayton Cosgrove has not been telling his constituents in Waimakariri that he is off in Parliament saying that Ngai Tahu is no longer a private body but a public body that will have regulatory powers normally restricted to publicly elected bodies—and that is a step backwards that takes us further down the road to having two standards of citizenship in this country. 
Then there is the dopey idea that we will make all notification decisions by councils appealable to the Environment Court. If ever there were a stupid idea that would clog up the Environment Court and make it a nightmare for ordinary New Zealanders to try to get consents for doing very minor things then that is it. 
In no area has National been so detailed in its proposals for reform of the Act and in the sorts of ideas we think would make a material difference. In respect of direct Environment Court referrals we have said let us send major projects straight to the Environment Court rather than go through all the process of a resource consent hearing. Is that in this bill? No it is not and the bill will not fix the substantial problem of major projects being subject to years of delay. 
Nor do we see anything in this bill that will enable us to address the huge and growing problem of iwi holding communities to ransom and effectively asking for “brownmail” in order for projects to proceed. It is a tragedy that in a country that prides itself on a lack of corruption the Resource Management Act unreformed will result in substantial problems with people asking for payment or alternatively holding consents up for years. 
There are a few ideas in this bill that National supports. In fact three of them come straight out of our bill that Labour rejected back in 1999. But the idea that if we have accredited training for a few councillors then the huge problems with the Resource Management Act will somehow be solved is simply foolish. 
This bill is a big disappointment. It says that Labour does not understand the importance of wealth creation or the importance of the clear systems that will both ensure high environmental standards and reduce the costs delays and uncertainties so prevalent within the resource management industry of this Government. 
The last point I want to make is that it is a failure that this bill makes no changes to Part 2 of the Resource Management Act. The Government believes those provisions are somehow sacrosanct yet the Government itself has amended them twice. It did so in making national heritage a matter of national importance and in protecting customary values. Until we amend Part 2 of the Act New Zealand will continue to have problems our economy will be held back and our environment will not live up to the standards New Zealanders expect.