Sage Eugenie: Resource Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Resource Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8565. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. It is interesting that the Minister said he was looking forward to a genuine process of engagement and dialogue. I would have been very pleased to have been standing in the House to support this bill if there had been that genuine process and if there had been an exposure draft as at one stage with the great conflict around the changes to Part 2—the Prime Minister I think suggested that there be a draft that go out to the public. But instead we have had it dropped in the House for a week for the Opposition to actually review it.We have had one law firm this week describe the bill as one of the most fundamental changes to the Resource Management Act since it was passed in 1991 and that is because it is not just changing the Resource Management Act; it is also changing the exclusive economic zone legislation the Conservation Act and the Reserves Act.The Green Party could have supported it if it had been about reform to improve our environmental management and there are certainly aspects in the bill that we do support. One of those is adding the management of natural hazards to the list of matters of importance in section 6 in order to elevate this but I do note that there has long been a power to issue national policy statements and the Government has declined to provide that clear national guidance in relation to one of the biggest natural hazards that we are facing—sea level rise—as a result of climate change. The Government has objected to providing that direction even though there have been calls from Local Government New Zealand the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and others to provide guidance to local authorities on how they deal with sea level rise—how they make the hard decisions around planning and managing that issue.The Greens support the provisions for national planning templates but we would point out that this is a quarter of a century too late. It would have been much better to have had those templates when the Act was introduced and passed in 1991 in terms of providing that consistency.The Greens support things like the better engagement processes for iwi authorities and the online filing provisions—bringing those filing processes into the 21st century—but we are opposing the bill because there are a number of provisions in it that undermine the public’s ability to engage in how decision making about the environment in their area should occur and because a number of provisions actually weaken environmental safeguards and compromise the ability of councils to regulate. We are opposing the bill because a lot of the changes appear to be driven by ideology rather than robust analysis and evidence. As Treasury’s regulatory impact assessment team says there has been no consultation on some of the most significant components of the reform package and if I could quote: “This means there is little evidence as to how stakeholders are likely to respond to new incentives and opportunities. It is therefore unclear how far the reform package is likely to deliver its objective of robust and durable resource management decisions.”That departmental disclosure statement several times notes the absence of empirical evidence to justify the proposals in the bill. It notes that the benefits and the costs of each option are not systematically weighed and therefore it is difficult to determine whether the most suitable changes have been proposed. So when you have not got that evidence—when the changes seem to be driven by ideology—we are suspicious.We believe that the bill is much more than tinkering and that it is making some quite significant changes which will continue to centralise power with the Minister and significantly increase his power at the expense of local authorities and their ability to represent and consult their communities on how they as councils develop the planning framework for their regions and districts and how they develop the policies and the rules that determine how air coasts land rivers and groundwater are managed what sort of environmental effects are acceptable when use and development happens and what sort of effects are unacceptable. That is because this bill significantly increases the regulation-making powers of the Minister and centralises environmental management. That has been a hallmark of this Government: giving more power to Ministers at the expense of local councils. It is giving the Minister the power to make regulations to permit certain land-use activities. What will those activities be? How arbitrary will those decisions be? It gives the Minister and the executive the power to impose plan changes where councils have maybe imposed unnecessary restrictions on residential development.Those sorts of powers are quite arbitrary and they will cut across the ability of councils to consult and represent their communities. They are also going to be potentially ad hoc which cuts across the stated desire of more national consistency because the regulation-making powers may apply only to certain districts or regions. They do not have to apply across the country.The Greens are opposing the bill because it restricts the ability for the public to get involved in key resource management decisions. Not only does the bill narrow the scope for submissions on resource consents but it also reduces the ability of the public to have input on plan changes which change the policy provisions that govern environmental management. Councils can limit the ability to make submissions to affected parties. Those affected parties are generally considered to be landholders. That means it undermines the ability of community organisations and environmental organisations to have standing in front of councils to make submissions and promote the community interest and the changes that they seek.We oppose the bill because we think there will be much less accountability in the way in which councils develop and make decisions on district and regional plans through this new “streamlined” plan-making process that the bill provides for. In this process there is no ability for submitters to front up to a hearing panel to present further evidence to the hearing panel and to see who is actually making the decisions on the plan. That whole hearing process does not exist in the fast-track plan-making process. Potentially it also means that there is the opportunity there for the Minister and the council to agree on this fast-track process if there is a sort of convenient mutual interest there and to shut out the public from being involved in hearings. In Christchurch where we have had the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority developing plans without a hearing process we have had faceless decision makers making critical decisions behind closed doors.The bill provides for collaborative planning processes. That is something that the Green Party has supported but there increasingly are problems with collaborative processes. In Canterbury with the Canterbury Water Management Strategy and the 10 zone committees environmental organisations have walked away from that because they see the zone committees as increasingly dominated by agribusiness and irrigation interests. The Mackenzie Shared Vision Forum the collaborative process that was supposed to decide the future of the high country has virtually collapsed. Fish and Game has recently left the national Land and Water Forum. So those collaborative processes which showed so much promise do not seem to be delivering on that.We oppose the legislation because of the politicisation of decision making in the exclusive economic zone. There the Government has caved in to lobbying by the petroleum industry and seabed miners and it is having the Minister appoint the decision-making panels for applications for marine consents in the exclusive economic zone when officials advised that it should be the Environmental Protection Authority that continues to do that and that the Resource Management Act should be made consistent with the process the Environmental Protection Authority uses in the exclusive economic zone. So that is politicising decision making in the exclusive economic zone. It is giving the Minister too much power and it is very pertinent that the only people whom the Ministry for the Environment consulted with were PEPANZ the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand and mining interests. It did not consult with community organisations to make that change. Once again it shows that this Government is captured by corporate interests. It is not passing these changes to benefit all of New Zealanders to ensure that we have protection that safeguards the places that Kiwis love; it is making changes to our environmental law to benefit special interests that are interested in exploitation rather than protection. So there has been absolutely no public consultation on that change and it is being shunted through in an ad hoc way because the exclusive economic zone legislation has been in force only since 2013.Others have seen the fact that this bill does not make those changes that were initially proposed to Part 2 pancaking the matters of national importance to becoming a grab bag of matters and stripping out things like recognition of amenity values intrinsic values and the quality of the environment as a major victory. It is certainly a victory and we thank the Māori Party and the Hon Peter Dunne for their advocacy there. But we should not have even been having that debate about stripping out those environmental safeguards. It shows how much of an attack this Government has wanted to make on the Resource Management Act.The environmental safeguards in the bill should be strengthened. The Government has missed the opportunity in terms of improving the prospects for our indigenous biodiversity by strengthening private property rights in this bill which risks having a chilling effect on councils and their ability to regulate by allowing the Environment Court potentially to require councils—