Brownlee Gerry: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1490] 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 This afternoon I begin by congratulating my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith on the considerable amount of work he has done in a very short time bringing together the expertise of the technical advisory committee the officials in his own department and indeed all the political forces that tend to rally around when a big bit of work like the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill is being done. The technical advisory committee has done a great job in getting the bill before us today into a shape that answers some of the frustrations that have been experienced by New Zealanders dealing with the Resource Management Act over a large number of years. Dr Smith has waited a long time to put a bill like this before the House and to be able to do it so quickly after attaining the post of the Minister for the Environment is a great tribute to him. 
The speech we just heard from the Hon Nanaia Mahuta expressing Labour’s desire to work constructively on the bill in the Local Government and Environment Committee really reflects in a fulsome way the level of frustration that all MPs have felt over a large number of years about the way the Resource Management Act has developed. There is no question that simply being able to do the things that we want to do without damaging the environment—in a way that requires us to take steps that mitigate the worst effects that our activity could have on the environment—was the essential driving force for the bill’s being put in place some 18 years ago. It is very evident that since that time the layers of uncertainty that have developed as various parties traversed the courts meant that a risk-averse attitude developed among many of the consenting authorities—and quite justifiably so because as the last hurdle they carry some responsibility for their decisions. 
Through the select committee process we should see a great deal of clarification about the matters that have been causing so much angst. It is interesting to note in the explanatory note of the bill the staggering statistic gathered by the Ministry for the Environment that “only 74% of non-notified consents”—that is small matters relating to Resource Management Act issues where there is no need to go for a wide public consultation—“… are processed within statutory time frames”. In other words as things stand a large chunk of people going for resource consents have no expectation that they may be dealt with in a timely manner. 
It gets worse if we look at notified consents where almost half of the people making those applications know from the start that there is no time line to which they can pin their expectations for an outcome. I think that getting that sort of thing sorted out through a good select committee process—measured against the provisions in this bill which we believe will be achieved—will be welcomed by New Zealanders. The very ambitious target that Dr Smith has set for the House is one that all MPs should embrace and get stuck into. 
I am also very encouraged by the comments from our honourable friend across the House. I noted the comments that that speaker made about the ministerial veto. All I can say is that the select committee should consider those matters very very carefully. But the expression of change in this bill was born out of the fact that if we have a good process there is surely no need for that process to be derailed on the whim of a Minister of the Crown. That is not how other aspects of our law are treated nor should they be in this case. 
In my own portfolio as Minister of Energy and Resources I am particularly pleased to see this bill develop. Over the past decade we have seen too little investment in the right sort of electricity generation in New Zealand. The environment of resource management has encouraged the use of thermal fuels often at the expense of renewable sources of generation. This is quite a perverse outcome of the way in which the world is starting to deal with climate change issues. Although we do not want to confuse that issue with the Resource Management Act the reality is that some of the outcomes from those proposed projects or from their decline can have an adverse effect on how we present ourselves internationally. 
Let us take for example the big Project Aqua which was on the books a couple of years ago. Whether members liked that project or not I ask them to set that opinion aside for one moment. The fact is that under the old system there was a need to gain in excess of 350 individual consents in order for that project to go ahead. It was a massive undertaking—a bonanza for the lawyers and resource consultants but no comfort at all to the electricity consumers who ultimately would have paid for that process. Under the new arrangement that sort of project will be most likely to go to a board of inquiry where a former Environment Court judge or sitting Environment Court judge will chair a process—superintend the entire consent process—inside a time frame of just 9 months. That sort of process will see growth in New Zealand’s infrastructure and growth in the right sort of generating assets in the electricity sector and will be very very good for the country. 
As a bit of a precursor to the future the other thing this bill offers is the statutory office of the Environmental Protection Authority inside the Ministry for the Environment. The board of inquiry will make many references to that organisation; it will effectively provide support to the board of inquiry. 
There is little doubt that we live in a fast-moving world where there is a lot of change. We have a large territorial sea around New Zealand and while in the area of resources—for which I am also responsible—there is a great deal of activity onshore there is also enormous potential for activity offshore. We do not want some sort of Wild West developing in New Zealand where for resource recovery offshore New Zealand is seen as the world’s new Klondike—everybody just going hammer and tongs without consideration of the environmental effect. Over time some of that policy is likely to devolve into the orbit of responsibility of the expanded authority which will be developed in the second part of this particular set of requirements. That means that we can quite confidently say to the resource industry that it can plan to do things in this country but it must also ensure that what it is doing protects the environment it is working in. I am very very encouraged by that. 
I will talk for a little bit about doing away with frivolous and anti-competitive objections. They can cause a great deal of angst not only for small operators but also for large ones. Sometimes their worst effect on projects is felt or seen at the re-consent stage. I point to two outstanding examples in my own portfolio area. First there was the re-consent of Contact Energy’s Clyde Dam scheme. It took about 6 years through various stages just to get a re-consent. I think that that is an unreasonable amount of time; most certainly it was an unreasonable cost for consumers of electricity simply to ensure the continued operation of an asset that was already part of the system. The same is true of the Wairakei geothermal field and the Wairakei Power Station on the central volcanic plateau. In that case it took 8 years of to-ing and fro-ing just to be able to continue an activity that had to be re-consented after 40 years of operation. 
Those sorts of things will be largely set aside should the select committee bring a bill back to the House that reflects much of the intention of the current bill. I have no doubt that there will be some changes; some of them might be considerable. As the Government we are very open to the involvement of all parties that participate in the select committee process. From stage one of the Resource Management Act reform process we want to get a robust Act of Parliament.