Guy NathanHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you Mr Speaker. We've had a good discussion this afternoon about the Resource Management Amendment Bill and I just want to take a moment and acknowledge David Parker who was the Minister in the chair in the committee stage. We had a good discussion with him about aspects of this bill but importantly I think it's worthwhile just going back in history a bit. The Resource Management Act (RMA) is about 30 years old. It's had 18-odd changes or 19 I think now—Dan Bidois: This is the 19th. Hon NATHAN GUY: —this is the 19th Dan Bidois rightly points out—and it's 800 pages long. It's complex and when we think about what the RMA is about it's about fundamentally environment planning and also overall planning as well and those two butt up because you have an economic aspect of that as well. We've heard quite a lot of discussion about the Randerson report from retired judge Justice Tony Randerson. I asked the Minister last week whether he had received a copy and he said no. I asked him earlier on today and he said he's seen a draft so no doubt the Minister is busy reviewing that and maybe changing a few words to make sure it lines up with his aspirations for RMA changes. I thought it would have been appropriate for the Minister to reach out across the Parliament and work with the Opposition on this but there's been as far as I know very little consultation. I think zero—I'm looking around at colleagues who nod their heads—consultation with us in terms of the wider review of the RMA. We made changes when we're in Government and we couldn't get all of the changes that we necessarily wanted because of our coalition partners. United Future and Peter Dunne wouldn't support us to make the necessary changes that we wanted and the Māori Party had concerns. But the one that really has made a difference that I like to talk about is the call-in process. Nick Smith made the changes. Projects of national significance can be called in within nine months and done—not years and years and years of appeals heading off to the Environment Court which is costly and bureaucratic and now we are driving up in my electorate on the Kāpiti Expressway which was indeed called in through a nine-month process. So we know that the National Government did make a difference. Now talking about this specific bill we received 385 submissions in the Environment Committee and we heard 59 of those and they were all actually pretty good contributions. But what we heard was there's some support for this and we heard from other submitters who weren't that supportive. We have spent a bit of time this afternoon debating about the freshwater commissioner's role and the panel's role and I'm still not convinced that this aspect is going to be less costly than what we currently have. The Minister and his officials seem to think it is and the proof of the pudding will indeed be in the eating. What I don't want to see is more bureaucracy and more cost on ratepayers and at a point when we are focused across the whole of the Parliament—and we'll debate the merits of policy direction and so forth—we lose focus on creating jobs when our economy most needs them. But we know that fresh water has been a debate in this Parliament for a long period of time and if the panel are going to help do a better job than what is currently in place with the planning and so forth then I think ultimately that may end up being a better thing but we'll wait and see. The jury is out at the moment. The other important aspect of this is also stock exclusions. It's covered on page 15—I'm just going to find that if you'll bear with me. It's all about the water body with the amendment in clause 70 to section 360 Regulations" of the RMA where the water body can be fenced but not the margin. So presumably that's if a drain or a stream at certain times of the year flows beyond its normal route then that will be included in the stock exclusion aspect that's included in this bill this afternoon. We know that about 96 percent of the farms in New Zealand have already fenced to exclude livestock. That's about here—in Wellington—to Chicago and back again. So we need to acknowledge the good work that our farmers have done and now we have a further debate on stock exclusion because the Government in another policy change came out with a discussion document and said they wanted a 5-metre setback. Now that is pruned back to 3 metres but I'm heartened to hear from the Minister who was in front of the Environment Committee earlier today that those existing permanent fences won't need to be removed and set back to that distance. The other one is Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 519 which was dropped on the Table this afternoon and I would have liked this SOP and the other SOP 517 to have come to the select committee but unfortunately it didn't. It does two things this SOP in my hand. It's about freshwater farm plans. It's reasonably new. We've had discussions in this Parliament about farm plans and farmers are aware that they are going to need to do more in this aspect. But my challenge back to the Minister and the Government is that what farmers don't want to see is more duplication and bureaucracy because there are a lot of farm plans already in existence with regional councils Fonterra and Beef and Lamb working on their ones. In effect you have OVERSEER your fertiliser plan—so there are a huge amount of plans that are already in existence and I'm concerned that this freshwater farm plan is going to be another one on top of the others that are living documents right now. So that needs to be well-thought-through on how practically that is going to be implemented. The other aspect of this SOP is basically a requirement for fertiliser companies to report annually how much fertiliser they're selling. This is code for—and I hope I'm wrong—potentially a fertiliser tax in the future. We know when we look back there was the capital gains tax that was raging there was a water tax and a nitrogen tax and the Government backed away from those. So I'm just wondering whether this is a sneaky opportunity for—Hon Damien O'Connor: You put GST up. Hon NATHAN GUY: And Damien O'Connor has woken up. He can answer the question: is this a sneaky opportunity that your Government wishes to bring in a nitrogen fertiliser tax? He's nodding so I think it's right. So he can go and campaign on the West Coast that he wants to bring in a nitrogen fertiliser tax for all those dairy farmers on the West Coast because he's nodded in agreement that that's what this SOP is all about which is so disappointing to hear. But in summary we don't support this bill because we don't think that it actually does the things that are really going to stimulate growth and jobs in the New Zealand economy. We're worried about the cost. We're worried about the bureaucracy. We do however support the other bill which is a fast-track one on the back of COVID-19. That's going to streamline some important projects to do with getting development in our economy going on the back of COVID-19. That has a sunset clause of two years so we think there's an opportunity for more projects to be included in that one but we'll have another point in time where we can discuss that further in this House. But we don't support the bill that we are debating this afternoon."