Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a real pleasure to stand up and talk just a little bit about this bill the Spatial Planning Bill. It always comes as a surprise to me when the National Party stand up and have done nothing in this area in their entire time of Government whilst Minister Parker has worked tirelessly to overhaul this entire system and now has a comprehensive package of reforms to bring to this House. And what do they say? No. It's no good. It's not right." Well it is right and one of the things that this bill does which is really important is take a long-term approach—30 years and beyond—because we know that the short-sightedness of what goes on in planning now has caused us real problems.Certainly in terms of regional planning—and I heard Stuart Smith get up and talk about Hurunui and the wider Canterbury area and say that we had nothing in common with each of the relative districts. Well Canterbury is actually a really good example of where there are some massive gains that could be made in things like residential and urban planning transport networks transport corridors for industrial developments and so on but because we have a number of local councils they're competing against each other. There's a race to the bottom for rates. They're not investing in infrastructure. What we need is good thoughtful long-term regional planning and that's what we've got going on here. This is absolutely the cure for a system which is clearly broken. We need to overhaul our system which is expensive and time-consuming.It came as a huge surprise to me to hear the ACT Party dissing this bill when what we've got now is a brake on the kind of enterprise that they pretend to be champions of but we actually want wise well-planned and profitable development that is good for the whole community. This is the way towards it not by some strange process that they'll cook up—the cauldron is going to be opened on Tuesday morning by all reports! The work is being done. We know that the business case around this material has shown that this will have real and substantial economic benefits. So I think that in terms of a framework to restore and protect the environment from further degradation this is absolutely what we need to recognise that development in the right place is right and to be encouraged but within our biophysical limits—that we can't continually chip away at our environment.And as for those on the other side of the House who say Te Oranga o te Taiao is some kind of strange thing that no one can understand it's pretty simple. An underlying principle that the health of our environment is a bottom line isn't hard to understand and if you struggle with the concept that we should put the health of the environment front and centre when we make environmental decisions you have got a real problem—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Don't bring the Speaker into the debate.Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Sorry Madam Speaker. This is a very good piece of legislation which puts the environment front and centre which thereby will enhance and encourage development and will do it in a more cost-effective way that's better for all New Zealanders. This is a great bill. I commend it to the House."