Sage Eugenie: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12858. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): We should not be debating changes to our most important environmental law the Resource Management Act under urgency. We should not be having Government members moving premature closure motions to shut down the debate on Part 1 of the Resource Management Reform Bill given that it makes so many substantive changes to the Act.The Green Party continues to oppose this legislation the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. We agree with the Greater Wellington Regional Council when it said in its submission: “The Bill in trying to streamline the process seems to be making things more prescriptive less accessible to public participation and more costly for councils with no provision for additional funding support.” In this third reading speech on the legislation I would like to comment on two of the proposals in it clause 69 around cost-benefit analysis and the changes to state of the environment reporting because they highlight the anti-environment anti-regulation ideology and agenda that are at the heart of this legislation.Section 32 of the Resource Management Act currently requires councils when they are developing a plan or a policy and the Minister for the Environment when she is developing a national policy or a national environmental standard to consider the benefits and the costs of those rules or regulations and other methods and the risks of acting or not acting if there is uncertain or insufficient information. This evaluation is to ensure that the proposal is the best way to achieve the desired objective. The Green Party does not oppose these cost-benefit evaluations if they are done under the existing Act because under the Act as it stands there is no focus on the evaluation being largely an economic evaluation. But the amending legislation through the changes it makesthrough clause 69 singles out two economic effects that must be included in this cost-benefit evaluation and they are the opportunities for economic growth and the opportunities for employment that are anticipated to be either provided or reduced. There is no mention of opportunities for environmental enhancement. As the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said in her submission on the amending legislation: “This does not in itself say that economic effects are to be given more weight than environmental social and cultural effects. But the result will be that it will. Simply specifying these two economic effects while failing to specify other effects will unbalance a section 32 evaluation.”That is what this bill is all about. It is about evaluating short-term economic growth above other Part 2 matters. That is what the whole tranche of changes that the Government is making piece by piece to the Resource Management Act is about. It is about unbalancing the Act so that it becomes law that promotes short-term economic development at nature’s expense rather than promoting sustainable management. With this legislation and the upcoming legislation the Resource Management Act will no longer be an Act that safeguards the environment and the needs of future generations. It will be all about economic development now.What the John Key Government is doing is making the Resource Management Act into a national development Act much like Sir Robert Muldoon did with the National Development Act at the time. That is because the decision-making criteria in the Resource Management Act are being substantially changed to promote economic growth. They fail to recognise that a healthy economy is based on a healthy environment. The changes increase ministerial powers they centralise decision making and they erode local democracy. They will have more decisions being made behind closed doors in the Beehive rather than in the open around the council table. We see that with decisions like appointing the Auckland hearings panel and with the changes to state of the environment monitoring where it will be the Minister who tells councils what they have to do in terms of environment monitoring.These changes to section 32 and the whole cost-benefit analysis around plan making are really important because if a regional council for example is considering new plan rules to limit nutrient losses from dairy farming in order to protect water quality it is going to have to analyse and quantify the economic opportunities and costs of doing this but it will not have to specifically consider the environmental benefits such as improving the health of a river and making it safer to swim in. It is much easier to quantify those economic costs and benefits than it is to quantify the benefits of sustaining wildlife allowing people to go rafting down a river or ensuring that the river is healthy to swim in. That means there will be much more of a focus on what is easily quantifiable and much more of a reluctance for councils to introduce rules because they know that they risk being challenged in the Environment Court if they have not done this economic analysis and if they have not quantified the costs and benefits.These changes will also impose extra costs on councils. We heard at the Local Government and Environment Committee that it costs councils between $3000 and $50000 to do a section 32 evaluation. Because this legislation is making the economic analysis mandatory it means that that will get first call on council funding rather than one that evaluates the environment or cultural benefits. If the Minister was genuinely interested in improving practice under the Resource Management Act she would get her ministry to do some generic analysis of the costs and benefits of subdivision controls and of land-use controls to protect water quality. But the interest is not in doing that; it is all about speeding up short-term decision-making in favour of development interests. It is all about making an easier ride for miners for irrigators for agribusinessfor dam builders and for property developers and that means undermining the capacity of councils to regulate and have sound rules that protect environmental quality.I would like to follow up Nicky Wagner’s comments about state of the environment reporting. Certainly we want consistent measures around doing that but this legislation is about offloading on to councils the costs of doing state of the environment monitoring rather than funding a robust and independent process through the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment estimated that it would cost her office about $1.6 million to employ the extra staff to do that. What does the legislation do? It allows the Minister to direct through regulation which this Parliament will have no opportunity to scrutinise and for the Minister to say what environmental indicators councils should use and what standards and methods they should use but it is not about providing the funding for councils to do that. What will that mean? This will be another cost to councils without central government providing any revenue to do that. So once again the Government is beating up on local authorities but it is not providing them with the revenue to do the job when it shifts extra costs on to them.We want robust state of the environment monitoring particularly when the Government is promoting more irrigation which is likely to reduce water quality. But what the Government is doing is making sure that we will get lesser-quality less robust and less independent monitoring because the Minister is breaching the promises her predecessor made that it would be done by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and that it would be independent. Instead she will through this legislation be telling councils what they have to do without providing them with the funding that allows them to do that properly. There is a whole lack of robustness there and councils were quick to point out in their submissions that that will as the Palmerston North City Council said “increase the costs associated with monitoring at a time when many councils are struggling to meet their existing monitoring requirements due to resourcing limitations”.Once again this legislation is anti-environment and anti-regulation here and with the provisions around urban trees which will make it so much more cumbersome for councils to protect urban trees by requiring them to legally identify every single tree or group of trees that they want to apply resource consent controls to. That is the thrust of this legislation and of the other legislation that the Government is going to introduce later this year. It is all about short-term economic thinking not about a smart green economy that recognises that the environment is the basis of that economy.