Court Simon; Parker DavidSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. Minister I want to come to Subpart 3 Rules in plans". That's on page 160 clause 117 "Purpose and effect of rules": "(1) The purpose of including rules in a plan is to enable a local authority—(a) to carry out its functions under [this] Act;". So as the member Chris Bishop rightly pointed out before this legislation is intimately related to the functions of local authorities and "(b) to provide for … directions given by … [the] national planning framework; and (c) … [for] policies specified in the plan to be achieved."Now Minister if we can come to clause 117(6) the plan has to identify activities as permitted anticipated discretionary or prohibited. And what we saw Minister with the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management that was originally proposed—or was it the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater management? It's all very confusing all of this red tape and regulation particularly as it applies to farmers and particularly as it applies to resource developers and those organisations wanting to stand up quarries to provide building materials for construction. If a national policy statement or some kind of national direction prohibits an activity on certain land whether it's by applying a significant natural area overlay based on an aerial photographs of somebody's back paddock which someone somewhere sees might have some kind of significant indigenous biodiversity on it or whether it's three bulrushes in a paddock which was the issue that tripped up so many organisations and property owners looking to develop quarries or develop land for housing when the freshwater rules were first put out because three bulrushes in a paddock pretty much amounted to a wetland. So Minister how are communities businesses and property owners meant to get ahead in their area in their district if a national instrument that's then incorporated in a natural and built environment plan actually prohibits something that they need to do for the economic benefit of their community? Now I heard yesterday from a contractor that in the Wellington region there is no suitable place for contractors to dump clean fill. That is soil material that comes from a construction project and in winter it's more than likely that it's saturated material. You can't recycle it and take it somewhere and use it for another development; you've just got to get rid of it. In construction we call it "cut to waste" and that material is defined as engineering-unsuitable. Well it certainly was in Transit New Zealand's definitions when I studied highway engineering. But in the Wellington region there are no clean-fill sites so contractors are hauling to Marton to tip at a landfill there. That's because even though clean fills aren't prohibited in the Wellington region it's become very very difficult to consent things under the current regional council because of the freshwater rules and the prohibition on disturbing these things called wetlands which you know was corrected by the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) with three bulrushes in a paddock. Minister how are communities how are businesses how are infrastructure operators supposed to actually get on with building and building in a cost-effective way when activities that might be prohibited mean that you can't even apply for a consent for it. We know that happened in Auckland. There was a clean-fill operator north of Auckland in the East Coast Bays that sought to extend their clean-fill operation for a period of additional years and additional hectares on their existing site and when those freshwater rules prohibiting disturbing any wetlands came in they were told "You can't do it." They were told by the Auckland Council "Don't apply because it's prohibited now and we can't even accept your application across the counter." That was clearly wrong because MFE came back and changed that to modify that rule to allow for some developments—extremely limited developments—where they might impact a wetland even though the wetland in that property owner's case was a constructed wetland by a former landowner. Of course we know that every time you build a new road a new motorway there are wetlands built all along the corridor.Minister how are we supposed to get ahead when if an activity is defined as prohibited at a national level but it turns out we need to do it at a local level we won't be able to do it?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I agree that there is a level of discretion required in respect of those activities. The member will be aware that I was responsible for the regulation intended to protect wetlands from desecration because we've already lost more than 90 percent of our wetlands even including those in national parks. We introduced strict rules to stop the balance of 10 percent being lost because in the prior 10 years a 20th of the remaining 10 percent had been lost. We went a bit far and therefore we did have to modify the rule to make it permissible for quarries and landfills. So the member is right that care is necessary around those issues. How does the new system guard against those sorts of mistakes being made again? In part through the spatial planning legislation requiring spatial plans to identify where infrastructure is likely to be needed. It could be partly achieved through that and in part through the pro-infrastructure provisions of the national planning framework and in part through the provisions of the Act that give a leg up to necessary infrastructure."