Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Very pleased to take a call on the Natural and Built Environment Bill. Some people have said that the Labour Government has not been transformative yet this area of resource management law has required tremendous leadership by the Minister the Hon David Parker—and supported by the Associate Minister for the Environment Rachel Brooking—to actually initiate this reform and to pursue it because of the huge complexity. As the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said and I quote Complexity in legislation of this nature is inevitable. The environment we live in is not simple. It intersects with everyone's property rights. There are many interdependencies between property owners as well as many spillovers from their use of environmental resources. The natural environment also goes to the core of Māori identity. Any attempt to manage these frictions or conflicts whether through regulations or markets will involve complexity and demand high levels of specialist expertise."—and that's what we've had in terms of the Minister's leadership of this reform. Others—National and ACT—say that they're just going to jettison it but they do not provide any detail of what they're going to put in its place and I would contrast the tub-thumping bluster of Mr Bishop's speech with the much more measured contribution of Barbara Kuriger who sat on many many days of submissions and hearings on the select committee and who was recognising that there is a need for change and some of the ways that change would improve things. So we have on the one hand what could have been cross-party agreement around this bill—there was the kernel of that in Barbara Kuriger's speech—and yet we have the political positioning we have seen from National and ACT in opposing the bill from its first reading and not being prepared to engage in the changes that were needed in response to submissions. Can I record again thanks to all of those individuals organisations councils iwi hapū environmental organisations and others who made submissions. The bill was substantially changed through the parliamentary select committee process because of those submissions. I acknowledge other members of the Environment Committee the secretariat Parliamentary Counsel Office and everyone else in the Ministry for the Environment and all of the mahi that was put into that process. I think it's easy to say "We'll repeal the bill" but why turn one's back on all of that effort? The bill in the time that it's been available in Parliament is the best that it could be. Land users councils and others all need certainty. Passing this bill and making it clear what the new legislation is the best course from here. The bill certainly still has shortcomings from the Greens' perspective. We think the infrastructure override provisions in relation to places of national importance and areas of highly vulnerable biodiversity value are too broad. We think that the Minister has too many powers and they are still not adequately constrained. The fast-track provisions endure despite the legislation purporting to be a more efficient process and there's inadequate recognition and protection of regionally and locally important landscapes. But it is the best that could be done in the time available. I think it's the debate over the purpose clause—clause 3—to uphold te Oranga o Te Taiao which "enables the use and development of the environment in a way that promotes the wellbeing of present and future generations." subject to this being achieved "in a way that—(a) protects the health of the natural environment;". It's that debate which has really been the nub of the issue because we've seen from ACT that it just wants to get rid of any planning process and any consenting process and we've seen from National that they do not recognise that the economy is a subset of the environment. To National the environment is just something to exploit to promote more revenue generation. So this bill with its focus on that purpose and with the 18 outcomes beneath that purpose is about driving towards more positive outcomes. It is with the recognition as the Randerson review did that the Resource Management Act (RMA) has really failed the natural environment. We've seen that with increasing loss of indigenous vegetation cover the indigenous biodiversity crisis and the declining quality of our waterways. So yes there will be litigation around clarifying the purpose. It does incorporate a Te Ao Māori perspective. That I think is really important in this place of Aotearoa because Māori have recognised for generations that humans are part of nature not separate from it; we have an intrinsic relationship with it and that all parts of the environment—te taiao—are interconnected. For the first time we are trying to put that into the purpose of legislation. It is fundamental to who we are in Aotearoa and to our environmental management law and it also is the basis for much improved participation by Māori in the way our environmental law works particularly through the representation of mana whenua on the regional planning committees.The 18 outcomes: there were a lot of submissions about the lack of priority here. There is potentially still a concern that the lack of priority in the legislation and the competition between the outcomes could go back to that overall broad judgment approach which has been problematic under the RMA but the national planning framework has a critical role here in doing that prioritisation and giving recognition to key outcomes. Some of those new outcomes are absolutely fundamentally important particularly in relation to climate change. We're seeing severe weather events happening at an unprecedented rate and having to contend with those so the outcomes in clause 5 around reducing greenhouse gas emissions so that we meet our targets in the Climate Change Response Act and to reduce the risks arising from natural hazards and the effects of climate change are really important particularly as the bill does enable some encroachment on existing use rights where there are provisions in regional plans to ensure that we meet those outcomes.There will be a lot of work done on environmental limits and targets. We hope to see quite a few of those in the national planning framework including those in the current national policy statement for freshwater management. It's been the lack of targets and limits that has been problematic under the RMA until last term Minister Parker strengthened the national policy statement on freshwater and it was no longer the tissue-paper document that it had been under National. There are new provisions that will be in the national planning framework—and the Green Party pushed hard for these—around urban trees. I heard Chris Bishop talking about the bill being far too pro-environment yet it has been incredibly hard to get recognition of urban trees in the legislation despite that being a major public concern. We finally did and through a very late Supplementary Order Paper we ensured that the first national planning framework will provide guidance on urban trees because urban trees and green spaces and the whole concept of "spongy cities" and using nature and green infrastructure as part of the solution to climate change is increasingly important. It is very cost-effective it adds to urban amenity and now that there's this reference to urban trees and green spaces there will be direction in the national planning framework around that.I totally agree with the comments by the Hon Phil Twyford about planning the need for a very effective planning process and the value of planning but there does need to be a major change in planning culture to get rid of the turgid waffly very lengthy plans that we have where people have to get consultants in to actually understand them. There is a requirement around succinctness and plain English in the bill and I really hope that this occurs in the cost-benefit analysis and the evaluation report and that this also is driven through into the plans. This has been a massive exercise and it is now going through its final stages in the Parliament. I hope that it delivers improved outcomes for te taiao as the basis for a healthy society and a healthy economy and congratulate all of those—particularly the Minister officials in the ministry submitters Parliamentary Counsel Office and the select committee staff and members for the mahi that has gone into this. Kia ora."