Dunne Peter: Resource Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDunne Peter: Resource Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8569. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): When the original Resource Management Act came before this House in the late 1980s I was the Associate Minister for the Environment. When the bill passed into law in 1991 I was the Opposition spokesperson on the environment and worked closely with the then Minister to get a bill that could be adopted unanimously by this House because of its significance. I contrast that with the situation we now face which is the reason I will be voting against this bill.The process that has led to the introduction of this bill today could at best most charitably be described as quixotic. First of all you had the announcement by the National Party at its conference of September 2013 in Nelson about its reforms but it had not bothered to check with its support partners whether it had support to even introduce them. It was all then about promoting affordable housing. Over the intervening couple of years the debate has waxed and waned and when I see this bill it is not entirely clear now what its purpose is going to be.In January of this year I had a telephone conversation with the Minister for the Environment where he indicated that he wanted to consult with support parties about the nature of the bill. But he made a slightly ominous comment at the end of the conversation that he was not going to waste his time talking to support parties unless he was sure he had their support. I wryly observed that that was what you talked about and waited for what was to happen next.In May I received from his office 39 headline proposals for changes to the Resource Management Act mainly around process. Having had a look at them I wrote to him indicating that some of them seemed to be unobjectionable some I had real reservations about and some I wanted further information about. And I did not actually get—Hon Dr Nick Smith: But you couldn’t tell me which.Hon PETER DUNNE: I was not going to reveal my hand at that point Dr Smith. We were in a negotiating process for goodness’ sake. I waited for some response. None came. I then raised the matter at the end of June with the Prime Minister and said that in the letter to Dr Smith I had said I thought the way forward was to issue an exposure draft. I raised that matter with the Prime Minister. He said: “Well it makes sense to me. We can hardly expect you to vote for something you haven’t seen.” The Minister for Economic Development was quoted a few days later in the National Business Reviewas saying an exposure draft would be released. I patiently waited to receive the document that I had indicated in June that I was interested in seeing. Nothing happened.On 5 November during a rather testy text exchange with the Minister I said to him “Well the ball’s in your court. Give us an exposure draft.” or words to that effect. He came back and said: “I never promised you an exposure draft.” Yet at that point I knew that discussions were under way with my colleagues to my right the Māori Party and that they had seen drafting that was clearly available. I then advised the Prime Minister that on the basis of that there had clearly been a conclusion reached—for reasons that I do not understand but I do not contest—that my support was unexpected and therefore that it would not be forthcoming.When I look at the bill that has been produced to the House I think it actually raises more questions than it answers because there are provisions in here—I mean I find it ironic for instance that we are going to see by the time this process is completed the Resource Management Act being 300-odd pages longer than it was when it started all in the aid of simplification. But there are measures proposed in this bill that I think have quite sinister potential impacts. For example there is a provision in the bill under the new proposed section 360(d) that would allow the Minister effectively to make regulations that would prohibit a local authority from making specified rules or types of rules or effectively overriding or prohibiting specified types of rules etc. What that would mean in effect is that something like the Manawatū council’s Horizons One Plan which was the subject of a great deal of debate in recent years could in effect be overridden by a ministerial directive by regulation. Having gone through a process of widespread local consultation and development regulation could be passed to override that if it did not meet the Minister’s requirements. Similarly if you take a contemporary situation proposals by the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council to make that region GE-free could be overridden by the Minister under these provisions. They are not just process changes; they are very significant potential changes to the way in which the whole decision-making framework that the Resource Management Act sought to introduce will be carried out in future.I think that they would have benefited from a substantial period of public consultation through an exposure draft as indicated and promised before the bill came before this Parliament. The question that therefore needs to be asked is: why this bill at this time? I think there is a very simple answer. The word “frustration” comes to mind. I think that the Government got to a position where having negotiated with partners or having attempted to negotiate it felt it was not making sufficient progress and simply decided to proceed with something that on the face of it looks a little incoherent and disjointed so that at least it can say: “We have done something.” I think it was getting pressure from people who heard—and I understand this—the argument advanced in September 2013 that how come over 2 years later nothing had eventuated and I think this is the opportunity.Be that as it may the bill will go to a select committee. The select committee will have to take a considerable amount of time in my view to work its way through all of the issues that are contained in this because at the end of the day we cannot afford to have certainly a weakened Act. I think the decision not to amend sections 6 and 7 is a positive step in that direction. We have got to have an Act that is coherent and workable.The argument that the Minister raises with his rather dramatic pile of regulations—the 80000 pages or whatever—is a consequence of the current Act. It is a consequence of 20-something years of case law that has built up under that Act. We cannot afford to effectively destroy that and then be forced to start from scratch all over again in a climate of uncertainty expecting lawyers and planners and everyone else—and the member opposite referred to the fact that these things always have astronomical eye-watering costs associated with them. We cannot afford to go back to a situation where we encourage more of that to try to interpret what the latest set of amendments mean.I think that this bill will go down as a lost opportunity. I understand the political dynamics that drive it; I appreciate and I respect those. But they are not sufficient as a reason for good quality decision-making. If I go back to 1991 where there was a lot of debate about the Resource Management Bill as it then was because it was new it was unproven it was untried. I remember the rhetoric that we were abolishing 54 separate pieces of statute and bringing them into one. It was bold. There was a real determination to steadily work through all the issues to make sure we got it right. I do not think that has been evident in this case and I think that is a great pity.With considerable heavy heartedness and reluctance I will vote against this measure today not because there are not some provisions in here that are worthwhile but more because the whole process by which the legislation has been brought together this year has been extraordinarily unsatisfactory. On something as important as resource management legislation where we are setting a fundamental environmental benchmark we cannot afford that sort of cavalier approach. I hope that the select committee takes its proper time to consider all the issues carefully and if need be comes back to the Government and says that we cannot proceed with this legislation in this form and that it needs to be rewritten more consistently and thoroughly. At the end of the day it will not be just this Parliament that wears the consequence; it is the people of New Zealand it is the people who do care about our environment the people who do seek to achieve a reasonable balance between development and sustainability and the people whom in the interests of greater accessibility to affordable housing this legislation says it is trying to help. They will not thank this Parliament and certainly not this Minister if the House gets it wrong.