Wong Pansy: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5582] 
PANSY WONG (NZ National) 
: 
 How can we come to Part 2 so quickly when Part 1 has 61 pages? Part 2 has only five pages and is titled “Amendments and repeals of other enactments transitional provisions and savings”. The public would have been astounded at that. This bill was hailed by United Future party MP Larry Baldock when he said this “significant reform” of the Resource Management Act needed to be passed through the House under urgency. That was in October 2002. 
Brian Connell 
: When? 
PANSY WONG 
: In 2002. 
Brian Connell 
: That’s a year ago! 
PANSY WONG 
: A year ago! One year ago United Future thought this bill would be passed under urgency and that was wrong. But the point I want to make is that although United Future thought this was a significant reform the bill has only two parts. So how can it be a significant bill? We would call something like that a little bill—like a Statutes Amendment Bill—containing technical amendments. That is the type of issue that the public would expect a bill with only two parts to deal with. They would think it was going to amend only some technical inaccuracies in the principal Act. 
How can a “significant” piece of legislation have only two parts? In fact Part 2 of this bill only amends and repeals other enactments. [ 
Interruption 
] I see that Murray Smith from United Future wants to make a contribution. I look forward to his taking a call and explaining to us why this legislation was not passed under urgency in October 2002. His colleague Larry Baldock announced in the Chamber yesterday that when he came to Parliament he learnt something: he learnt how to horse-trade. That is interesting. He said he learnt to convince Labour it should trade a Green vote for a United Future vote—that it was give and take. I invite his colleague Murray Smith to take a call and explain to us what sort of horse-trading United Future managed to achieve in this legislation. We know United Future lost out on the issue of timing because the bill was not passed in October 2002. 
I am really concerned about this issue because Peter Dunne who was leader of United NZ in 1999 cautiously voted for the referral of the original Resource Management Amendment Bill 1999 to the Local Government and Environment Committee but on one condition. He said the legislation was not supposed to be gutted. That bill had 18 parts. This one has only two parts. It has gone from 18 parts to two parts. How else can one read it other than that this bill has been gutted? So the Opposition really looks forward to hearing a contribution from United Future MP Murray Smith to explain how a bill of 18 parts could become a bill of two parts and not be described as having been gutted. 
It was a great disappointment to us that the minority Labour Government chose to rush this bill through the Committee stage by condensing an 18-part bill into a two-part bill. I think the public has come to expect certain things under an MMP Government. The Prime Minister Helen Clark said that her Government would be a transparent Government where the democratic process of the Parliament would be respected yet our ability to question the Minister and also to debate each part of this bill in full has been condensed. So how can we do justification to this legislation?