Parker David: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
Parker David: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 5) Electricity Amendment Bill (No 3) — Third Readings 
[Volume:627;Page:22336] 
DAVID PARKER (Labour—Otago) 
: 
 After listening to that last member one would think that even the present Resource Management Act has stopped any progress on the development of new electricity generation facilities. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It has. 
DAVID PARKER 
: Well let me give members a list of some of the things that have recently been approved under the Resource Management Act without undue delay. There was the re-consenting of schemes on the Waitaki River and the Clutha River in my area. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Those are old schemes. They’re not new. 
DAVID PARKER 
: That is quite right. They account for more than a third of New Zealand’s power output but they are old schemes and they have been re-consented. What about new schemes? I will give the member a list. There was the extension of Manapouri power station. Improvements to that scheme—actually in the middle of a national park—gained resource consent under the Resource Management Act. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: That was under National. 
DAVID PARKER 
: No I am sorry I say to Dr Smith but the Manapouri scheme has just been completed within the last year. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: The resource consent was under National. 
DAVID PARKER 
: Oh zip up! The Te Apiti wind farm near Palmerston North was granted resource consent under the Resource Management Act and extensions to Te Apiti were consented under the Resource Management Act. Gas and coal-fired plants in the central North Island were consented under the Resource Management Act and the oil-fired backup facility at Whirinaki was consented under the Resource Management Act. So it is not as dire as Dr Smith would have members believe. 
It is true that there were very considerable delays in appeals being heard in the Environment Court and that provided fertile ground for stand-over tactics by unreasonable objectors. I agree that that was a problem. That was a problem when National had conduct of the Resource Management Act. Appeal periods were normally around 2 years. There was a 2-year period in which people had to wait before they could get a decision from the Environment Court on their appeal. So at times people were persuaded that to avoid 2 years’ delay they should come to a compromise with objectors on terms. There were some stand-over tactics. 
We have remedied that. The simple remedy was to bring appeal periods down to a more reasonable period. Now the norm is 6 months rather than 2 years or more. Most of those blackmail tactics have already dropped out of the system. We have gone further in this bill. We have made it clear that no applicant has to consult anyone prior to making his or her application and having that application heard and that is the way the law should be. So in this bill we have fixed the extent to which there was a grey area as to whether some groups—in particular Maori groups—had to be consulted prior to an application being made. But members would not believe that if they were listening to Dr Smith. 
In relation to requests for information one of the complaints we have had from some groups is that requests for information can be made ad nauseam by councils and sometimes those requests are unreasonable. Of course some of the accusations that the council’s requests are unreasonable are themselves wrong and reasonable requests from councils for further information as to adverse environmental effects have been wrongly refused by applicants. 
How does central government deal with that in a fair way? The solution this bill comes up with is quite good. It states that if an applicant is asked for further information the applicant can call the bluff of the council and say no and proceed to a hearing. The council then can either grant the consent or it can turn it down on the grounds that it needed that further information and the applicant would not provide it. The applicants or objectors can then appeal against the decision to the Environment Court if they are dissatisfied with that decision. But if the Environment Court finds that the information requested by the council and refused by the applicant was in fact properly requested then the Environment Court has to turn down the appeal and it goes back to the start. That is quite a nice way of managing the tension so that applicants cannot be unreasonably forced to provide additional information but councils can turn down applicants who refuse to comply with reasonable requests. 
I turn also to a question raised by Dr Smith about trees not being logged in New Zealand at the moment. The main reason trees are not being logged in the volumes that might have been contemplated a decade ago is that prices are very low and landowners or tree owners—if they just own the trees on the land—are taking a rational economic decision to leave their trees in the ground where they continue to grow while they wait for prices in forestry to recover. Given the cyclical nature of the timber industry those prices are expected to increase again in the future and at that time the tree owners will log and process their trees. 
I refer also to the question of appeals. It is true that in the initial draft of the bill that came to the select committee some pretty radical surgery was proposed to appeal rights—that is to limit appeals to a rehearing on the evidence that had been given in the council hearing with some limited exceptions for additional evidence to be given. 
At the start of that process I was in favour of that as a suggestion. But I was wrong. What I am pleased about is that it flushed out the somewhat irrational criticism we had heard at times of the Resource Management Act. The vast bulk of submitters to the select committee be they councils—local or regional authorities—developers environmental groups or the Law Society all said: “Hey look it’s not that bad. Please don’t gut the Resource Management Act of the protections that citizens and the environment need.” They told us that we need to be a bit careful given that only one in 10 cases—or even fewer than that—does go to appeal. We would not want to load costs on the process for the nine cases that do not go to appeal just to save costs on the one in 10 cases that did go to appeal. 
They pointed out that had we not changed the provisions to the form in which they now appear in the bill today the effect would have been to create additional formality in all council hearings. Everyone would have had to cross every “t” and dot every “i” in the first hearing. As a consequence initial council hearings would have become more formalised and longer. There would have been more expense of expert evidence and it would have been more costly for the councils applicants and objectors. So cost would have been added in all 10 cases even though cost savings were being saved only by shortening appeal times on the one case that went to appeal. 
So what did we do about that? The Government came up through the ministry with a very neat solution. It said that it was not good enough that at the moment the Environment Court could completely ignore what happened at council. At the moment under the present law the Environment Court can absolutely disregard what happened at the council hearing and conduct its de novo hearing on appeal. We said that that was not good enough if the council had made a reasonable decision. They are people who are empowered to make decisions for their local people and they should not be overruled unless there is good reason to overrule them. 
So the proposal that the Government through the ministry officials recommended to the select committee and that the select committee adopted was that the Environment Court must now have regard to the original decision. It must have regard to the council’s decision. The effect is that for the Environment Court to overrule a council decision it will have to give reasons—and so it should. If the Environment Court does not have good reasons to overturn an original council decision why should it overturn it? I think that is a very good amendment. This legislation will improve the function of the Resource Management Act. 
I make one further reference. I am very comfortable with what is happening on the Waitaki River. It is a very fair process where an independent board of inquiry with considerable expertise chaired by an Environment Court judge independent of political interference applies Resource Management Act principles to the writing of a plan. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Do you support the draft? 
DAVID PARKER 
: Dr Smith asked whether I support the draft plan they produced. I support large parts of it but of course it is only a draft. If it were not just a draft there would not be a need to have a draft and neither would there be a need to have submissions. Obviously a draft is not perfect. That is why a draft is produced and that is why there are submissions so that one can perfect a plan following an inquiry. 
In my opinion the criticisms of those independent judicial officers on that board have been reprehensible. The critics have been unprincipled and the people now on the Opposition benches who say that if they were in central government they would know best and they would overrule a decision of an independent board really showed the National Party for what it is and what it has always been. It is “think big” and the Clyde Dam. To hell with principles just do what is necessary in order to scratch the itch that they need to on the day. This is the response they also give in relation to Maori issues in this bill.