Goudie Sandra: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Goudie Sandra: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22307] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I would like to take up some of the comments that have been made in regard to this bill. I am also appalled at the substantial Supplementary Order Paper 389 in the name of the Hon David Benson-Pope which has been put to the Committee without any public consultative process whatsoever and without any parliamentary scrutiny at all. I just reiterate that the purpose of the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill is to address problems with delays costs inconsistencies uncertainty and leadership. On the question of leadership I refer to the purpose of this bill. In clause 4 one of the stated purposes is: “(v) consultation with iwi and resource planning by iwi;”. I take exception to the fact that the Government says that that purpose will improve the Resource Management Act in any way whatsoever. In fact I think that it shows a continued disgrace in terms of the leadership provided by the current Government in that it continues to promote increase and exacerbate the separatist environment that we live in today. This should be a nation where we stand alongside one another and together rather than apart from each other. In my view when one group of people is identified separately stands apart and is consulted separately from the rest of the community that is separatism. That is being promulgated through this amendment bill and is also supported by Supplementary Order Paper 389. 
That sort of leadership filters down into our communities and is the sort of leadership that means that when given an inch people take a mile. We have talked in this Chamber about bureaucrats and planners running amok with the sort of largesse that has been given by this Government particularly with regard to consultation with iwi etc. Now iwi will have a pre-eminent position in the planning process outside the resource consent process. In the planning environment iwi management plans must now be taken into account. But the problem with doing that is that nobody has a chance to have any say on those iwi management plans apart from the iwi itself. What is the public input into those plans and how will councils adjudicate on those plans in terms of the public interest when all the weighting is given to the iwi or hapu that puts forward the management plan? 
I can give members a classic example in terms of the Draft Wairoa River Valley Strategy a combined draft strategy of Tauranga City Council and Western Bay of Plenty District Council. It is a draft strategy but it gives major cause for concern when we look at the costs involved and see the fact that the councils actually identify that funds will be put towards iwi management plans. Those are ratepayer funds. Do ratepayers have the opportunity to say they do not want to fund management plans from iwi and that they will fund only management plans for the community as a whole recognising that iwi are a part of the community? 
I would hope that more and more of our communities make those statements because when we look at that particular strategy we see it not only talks about councils funding some of the iwi management plans but also identifies some matters that the councils state should be included in the iwi management plans. It states the councils will: “Recognise in decision-making the home or kainga of Ngati Kahu and Ngati Pango including the Pa cultural and spiritual sites within the LMA”. Now the reference to “cultural” is fine. There is more than one culture in this country so I wonder whether the councils will recognise only one culture. But the other aspect is that of the “spiritual sites within the LMA”. Spiritual sites could be anything. How does one prove that something could come under those spiritual parameters? There is absolutely no way on God’s earth—in God’s heaven maybe— that we can do that. In terms of how that clause will be interpreted people could actually dance on a site or say they have sung a song on it and it will become “of spiritual value” to those individuals. 
I just find it extraordinary that we are giving such incredible largesse and we are doing it through putting this bill through the House aided and abetted by Supplementary Order Paper 389. We are exacerbating the problem we already have of identifying people in a separatist way separating them out from the community and standing them apart from the community instead of including them within the definition of “community”.