Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well thank you Madam Speaker. It's interesting to follow Paul Eagle a man who we could tell as a House didn't really have his heart in it. He's far more interested I think in thinking and planning about his urban development which is ultimately to become the mayor of Wellington City and he'll be doing it I'm sure as soon as he can extricate himself from the Labour Party caucus which won't be very far away.We heard earlier on from the Minister the Hon Phil Twyford in this debate a sort of apologetic justification a rationale for the establishment of this urban development State agency that he wants to establish under this piece of legislation. The apology that he made was that he didn't have faith in his colleague the environment Minister the Hon David Parker in achieving the kinds of reforms necessary to the Resource Management Act that would facilitate sensible long-term intergenerational urban development planning in New Zealand and that has been lacking. That planning has been lacking.In fact the last National-led Government had established a process to develop a range of urban development authorities but no true to form in their standard old-fashioned socialist ways a Labour-led Government instead of giving free enterprise and the private sector an opportunity to thrive and grow and develop urban environments of the sort that this country desperately needs they've reverted to type and have developed a good old-fashioned 1960s-style centralised Government agency—a huge Government agency and a bureaucracy—to actually squeeze out the role of the private sector in urban development to squeeze them out because ultimately in their heart this Labour-led Government doesn't have any faith in the private sector. They want to be like most socialist Governments all around the world who seem to relish the opportunity to tell people how to live their lives how to spend their money and how to make decisions and they want that to be done from here centrally from Parliament issuing proclamations and decrees from Parliament from the Beehive and a State-run agency to do the job that actually the private sector given half the chance and the right kind of regulatory and legislative framework can do very very well indeed.If we look around the world to examples of where urban developments have been done in a way that is refreshing vibrant new and going to create improved lifestyles for people we look to places like—I don't know—the Darling Harbour in Sydney or to Docklands in London or to the developments that have occurred in Melbourne. What is the common feature there? Well the common feature there is not that you have a centralised bureaucratic State-run monopoly on good ideas but actually you let the private sector have a go have a crack and you smooth the pathway to allow that to occur in a way that is not bureaucratic that is not State-run by a huge army of civil servants who actually in the end probably slow the process down. For the Minister the Hon Phil Twyford to stand up in his second reading speech and essentially give an apology as a rationale for this piece of legislation is an incredibly sad indictment on this Government.You know on this side of the House we do have confidence in the private sector in private entrepreneurs and in business to do what they can do best to do it profitably to do it well and to do it efficiently. But we have to make sure that the regulatory and environmental legislative framework is sufficient to enable them to do it. What really is at the nub of this issue is what's required is some wholesale reform of our planning and environmental legislation. My colleague and friend the Hon Jacqui Dean made passing reference to it in her very good contribution in this debate in that really at the root of the problem here is the Resource Management Act. We on this side understand and know that this piece of legislation actually wouldn't be required if our primary planning legislative statute was doing the job that it was designed to do.What we've decided to do on this side of the House is to take a very appropriate approach to it. Our leader Judith Collins has announced only a few days ago on the back of the largest infrastructure plan and spend in this country's history—she tacked on the end a very good piece of policy which is to get rid of the Resource Management Act actually to get rid of it because its time has been and gone. Our opportunity now is to do one of the suggestions that the Environmental Defence Society has put up and this is ahead of the report of Tony Randerson QC whose report is sitting on the Minister for the Environment's desk awaiting eventual publication. We want to see what that does but in the meantime we take the view that actually our primary planning statute is not serving properly the role and objective that we need it to as New Zealanders and it's certainly not serving us in our environmental protection as well. So we think that the best thing to do is to start again. It's run its course. It's the subject now sadly of scorn derision and ridicule by almost every single New Zealander and it's time to start again. What actually we need is a proper planning statute a proper planning Act—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Mr Simpson you've got four minutes left. You don't have to take the whole four minutes but in that time—Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Oh why not Madam Speaker? I think members—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): —would you mind talking to the bill and not talking over me. Thank you.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): It's the Urban Development Bill third reading.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Yeah I know—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Excellent.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —and the Urban Development Bill is only necessary because our primary planning statute isn't working. If it was working we wouldn't need this piece of legislation. If it was working in the way that it was designed to we wouldn't need this. Actually what we do need is some urban development and we need it soon and we need it quickly and we need it rapidly. But using this methodology of a big cumbersome State agency to do it is not in our view the way to do it. We think that there's a more nimble nuanced flexible approach to it and that's why we're going to be voting against this piece of legislation: because it won't do what the Hon Phil Twyford thinks it will do unless there is proper and sensible radical reform of our resource and planning legislation. We oppose this legislation.