Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. Oh look the fascinating insight to the thinking of the Minister behind the bill. He's demonstrated it is possible to balance the needs of indigenous creatures—the banded kōkopu the giant kōkopu who occupy the same habitat potentially as those colonising fish trout and salmon. So there is hope for tangata trout" and "tangata kōkopu" in our future. That's wonderful!But it doesn't resolve some of the other tensions Minister. Because you mentioned in your reply to one of my earlier questions that we do need to resolve the issue of how to build a motorway across a wetland. Well of course we do but the technology is available to do that. Either we move the wetland we divert the wetland we build the bridge on piers over the wetland; many many ways to resolve it.But if you don't have a series of criteria that identify the special place in the first place then you're still going to be stuck in litigation between the applicants who want to build the infrastructure the regulators who have to make a decision about whether they should be allowed to even apply for a consent and of course all of those activists who will insist that nothing should ever be done to damage the three bulrushes in a paddock which currently passes as definition of a wetland under the national policy statement for freshwater management. So Minister we don't understand how these tensions are going to be resolved. It's not clear from this bill or from the Supplementary Order Papers. Minister you mentioned that plans take 10 years to resolve. Well I thought I should check that because that's not what we heard in the evidence that was given to the Environment Committee. If you just look at what the New Zealand Planning Institute suggests for a complex complete plan change: six years. For a private plan change between one and three years—depending if it's complex. So people might ask "Why would you need a private plan change if council does all the planning?"Well it's because sometimes an individual might want to use their land in a way that a council planner doesn't agree with. They might say "I've got a novel use for my land. Instead of a farm or a paddock instead of growing I don't know some bulrushes or some cows I might want to build a distribution centre and I might want to connect my distribution centre or warehouse to the closest motorway so I can deliver goods to my customers in a timely way." So that is why private plan changes—and also for housing developments and so on—are required.It's because central government and local government—even though we'd like to trust our councils and their planning functions whether it's under the Resource Management Act or some other kind of Act—don't have all the answers; they don't know. That's why ACT proposes something quite different which is a resource management reform focused on property rights.So rather than having to ask for permission—to beg for the ability to get consents—or to hope fingers crossed that the thing I want to do is some kind of permitted activity ACT would say "Look you should be able to use your land for however you wish and the only people you should have to satisfy about mitigating the effects of your development are your neighbours whether it's noise or traffic or dust or whatever it is if it's a temporary effect or a long-term effect of a big extractive activity like quarrying and of course if you're making discharges to the receiving environment—in other words if it's something washing off your property or leaving your property in a pipe that's going to the receiving environment—then of course you must pay attention to the effect on the commons and mitigate those to the bare minimum."But Minister I also just want to come back to what you described as the Waitangi Tribunal insisting on a 50:50 partnership on the regional planning bodies—but you stated that had been rejected by Cabinet and instead this bill proposes for regional planning that there would only be two iwi Māori representatives required out of a potential six. But Minister isn't it correct that a judge might decide—because that's the minimum required—that in fact on appeal if iwi Māori feel they weren't represented on a planning tribunal that in fact they could require a planning tribunal to have 50:50 iwi representation along with any local government representative? [Time expired]CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order!SIMON COURT: Madam Chair?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call on Simon Court.SIMON COURT: Well I'll let the Minister answer."