Baldock Larry: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Baldock Larry: Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:22287] 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak on behalf of United Future in the second reading debate of the Resource Management and Electricity Legislation Amendment Bill. This bill as often seems to be the case on bills I have had the pleasure of working on during the last 3 years is not the same bill that was referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee earlier this year. It has undergone considerable change and one of the good parts of the parliamentary process is the fact that we are able to listen to submissions and make amendments that respond to input from the public. 
I put on record my thanks to the officials for their hard work and assistance over the gruelling submission process. We had to work to a very tight time frame and the officials were very helpful through that process and through the consideration and deliberation phase. I also thank the committee’s advisers for their assistance and advice. Over the past year we have had a lot of discussions with the Government and in particular the Associate Minister for the Environment and officials from the Ministry for the Environment on how we could work to make the Resource Management Act more effective and more efficient. We concluded that it was the process provisions in the Act that this next reform bill needed to focus on rather than amendments to Part II in the bill—the major foundation of the principal Act itself. That is still our view—that we do not need to touch those provisions but that we need to work on making the Act work more efficiently and work on the local council processes and on their handling of this Act. 
It is true that some of the proposals contained in the original bill were soundly rejected by a broad cross-section of the community that presented submissions to the committee. It is to the Minister’s credit supported by Cabinet and the officials of the Ministry for the Environment that these concerns were listened to and responded to. I think that part of the process of amending legislation—the select committee process—is the strength of our parliamentary democracy. 
I also want to thank the committee clerks who worked so long and hard to serve us and the people of New Zealand in the work surrounding submissions to the select committee and the drafting of our reports. Thanks also go to the staff from the Parliamentary Counsel Office who draft and redraft our suggested changes. As I said some major parts of this bill were rejected by a broad cross-section of the community that presented submissions to the committee particularly the plans to shift away from de novo hearing processes in the Environment Court but that does not mean that this bill does not still contain many useful amendments that have been welcomed supported and endorsed by many. The suggestion from the Green Party that this bill is just a little bit of tinkering is far short of the mark. The amendments in this bill once adopted will result in more workable proposals and more workable implementation of the Resource Management Act across the nation. 
To our surprise a very interesting by-product came from this process. I once suggested to the committee that it might have even been a clever plan of the Government to have engineered it this way but I have since discarded that possibility. It was that we had representatives from the business community the development community and sector local government and environmental groups all coming to the committee to assure us that the operation of the Resource Management Act was not as bad as some were continuing to make out and that in fact the Environment Court in particular was now operating on a much more efficient and timely basis. They begged us really not to make too many radical changes to the Resource Management Act because they believe that the amendments passed in the past 3 years and the efficiencies gained in the Environment Court were making major changes and major improvements to the way the Act was operating. 
Certainly much of the credit for that must go to Judge Bollard and I thank him for the time he gave to the committee and for the insight we gained from his advice and his comments. The planning system the management file case tracking system which he has implemented has made huge improvements to the operation of the Environment Court so much so that many of the submitters said that it had taken only 6 months for them to have their appeals go through the Environment Court and that is making everything work much better. 
Based on all the feedback we received I think it is a little out of date to be blaming the Resource Management Act for all the problems in the country and to be calling for a major overhaul. In my opinion that is no longer the way forward. We hear the speech from Ken Shirley and the ACT party frequently but never do we find any real policy from the ACT party on what it would do if it did abolish the Resource Management Act or on what it would replace it with. 
I note that National is intending some further changes in its election policies and I think that some of those changes would have United Future’s support. Certainly three of National’s proposed changes are already accomplished in this bill—namely enabling resource consent applicants to refuse further information requests from councils and to have their consent accepted or rejected on the information provided. In fact it was Nick Smith who helped us find the way forward with this and I thank him for that so that in practice it did not become a back-door way for applicants to bypass the local authority processes and go direct to the Environment Court—something all the committee wanted to avoid. 
The bill also expands the capacity of councils to reject vexatious and frivolous objectors. That is another part of National’s policy though we may find that that new capacity is very seldom used. The new power although given to the councils may not be useful on many occasions because the amendments we have had to make in order to safeguard any abuse of that power make it almost potentially more of a risk to ever strike out a submission that is frivolous or vexatious. In many cases it is simply better to let it sit there and be ignored. Then there is the direct referral to the Environment Court which is something else National is calling for and something certainly that United Future has been urging the Government to consider since our time here in this Parliament. In 2002 we began to call on it to do this and we are very pleased to see that although it is in a slightly different form than we first envisaged and certainly slightly different from what National is proposing it is adopted in this legislation and is given to the Minister as one of the very useful tools he or she may have when exercising his or her powers under the call-in provisions of the Resource Management Act. With those proposals addressed from National’s own policies one can only hope for its support for the bill as we proceed through all stages of the passage of this amendment into law this week hopefully today. 
In United Future we acknowledge that there are some changes that we have been unable to convince the Government to make as yet. One of those would have been the reintroduction of the ability of the Environment Court to require security for costs which we always felt should not have been taken from the court but we are pleased with the progress we have been able to achieve in the last 3 years which culminates in this bill before the House this week. It is United Future’s intention to ensure that future Governments conduct a biannual review of the Resource Management Act to ensure that ongoing improvements are achieved for all concerned. Legislation such as the Resource Management Act will always be somewhat of a work in progress and will need ongoing monitoring and improvement so that we can make it work as best as possible. 
In this bill we have deleted the words “national interest” mentioned in it. United Future was keen to see that go because the concept of national interest is not defined and many submitters considered its use ambiguous and we agreed with them. Also there was a need to make much clearer what the new ministerial powers were because many submitters thought they would be Godlike powers and we were pleased to see that corrected. We understand though that the Minister needs adequate tools to monitor the performance of local authorities particularly our regional councils for they are the first level of Government that are supposed to be our environmental watchdogs. The Minister must be able to give them advice and ask them to do certain things and that is what has been accomplished by the amendments. 
United Future was very happy to see the deletion of “urban form”—something that we lobbied for—and we are happy to have the Minister agree to that because it was introducing new terms that were not easily understood and not necessary. Councils already have sufficient tools to be able to address issues of urban form. In fact many are beginning to do so. In that regard I of course refer to the excellent work done by Smart Growth in the Bay of Plenty. It has not needed this new amendment in order to proceed with its proposals. 
United Future will be supporting this second reading and we look forward to further debate through the Committee stage and the passage of the bill later in the day. 
Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) 
: 
 I shall take a very short call to support this bill. I had the opportunity and privilege to be on the Local Government and Environment Committee that heard the many many submissions and we had the opportunity to travel around the country to listen to many and varied submitters. This bill is a good bill. It shows that this competent Government is providing strong sound leadership and effective services. This bill amends the Resource Management Act 1991 to improve the quality of decisions and processes by creating certainty and reducing costs and delays while not compromising environmental outcomes nor sacrificing public participation. We do not apologise for making the Resource Management Act work better. The Act can and should be made to work better for all New Zealanders. We have identified a series of issues and have come up with timely sensible and well-thought-out solutions. We are committed to protecting and preserving the unique aspects of New Zealand’s natural environment. That means striking the right balance between our desire for a clean healthy environment and our expectations of growth and opportunity. I support this bill.