Jones Dail: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Jones Dail: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5494] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First had an influx of new members after the last election and we moved up from 5 to 13 members. 
Hon John Tamihere 
: Worse for it. 
DAIL JONES 
: Worthwhile? I thank Mr Tamihere very much. That is the first time I have agreed with him since I have come back to the House. Sometimes he can say the right thing though it is a pity that when he does say the right thing he does not follow it up as often as he might. The eight new members of New Zealand First have taken some considerable time to find out what is going on in the House. We have familiarised ourselves with the legislation and we have been trying to come to grips with this resource management legislation. 
There was a resource management bill before the House before the election and we have heard much about it today. We heard about it before when this bill was introduced and I am sure we have all gained the clear impression that what we have here on the part of the Government in terms of the way in which it is ramming this Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) through the House is an absolute breach of what we would call the rule of law. This bill should really be called the “Resource Management Act (Abuse of the Rule of Law) Bill”. When one is in doubt one tends to say something is a breach of the rule of law but the ultimate principle of the rule of law is that Governments should not act arbitrarily. 
If there is a better example of the Government acting arbitrarily than the manner in which the Government is acting on this bill then I would like to know it. This Government has arbitrarily rejected all 400 submissions on the first resource management bill and has arbitrarily introduced the No. 2 bill. It has arbitrarily given no select committee time for the consideration of that bill and now it is arbitrarily ramming it through the House over the best intentions of all the members of the Opposition. There is no better example of the breach of the rule of law and its requirements for a Government not to act arbitrarily than the way in which the Government is acting on this bill. 
The person who protects Parliament from that sort of behaviour is the Attorney-General. Yet I have not heard the Attorney-General say anything about that on this particular bill or for that matter on any other piece of legislation. It is that person’s role to protect Parliament and to act as the supreme law officer of the country in a way and to advise Cabinet as to when it is breaching things like the rule of law. But that Attorney-General the Hon Margaret Wilson deafens us with her silence. She has no concern for the principles that the Westminster system the New Zealand constitution and suchlike would require an Attorney-General to follow. One can hardly in a way blame the members of this Labour Government if they are not receiving that advice from the Hon Margaret Wilson. She is so busy ramming through her “republic of New Zealand”—her Privy Council bill—and all those other things that she is not interested in anything else. Perhaps there is a pay-off. Perhaps she takes the view that if she keeps quiet on the resource management bill then other members of the Labour Party will keep quiet on her wish to make this country a republic. 
But this bill is clearly an abuse of the rule of law. Does this minority Labour Government not have any regard for the fundamental principles on which this country was based—the rule of law? It has none whatsoever and this bill is a classic example of that from this Minister Marian Hobbs. I understood that once upon a time Marian Hobbs was one of those protester types and that she earned her stripes at one of those places down in the South Island to prove how much she supported democracy the rights of the individual and all those things—and perhaps even the principle of the rule of law if she understood that. But here she is today—[ 
Interruption 
] Strangely enough I saw that station being built in Washington in about 1982 when I happened to be there but that is a separate story. But there was Marian Hobbs opposing all that sort of thing and giving the impression that she stood up for the rights of New Zealanders and here she is now with the Resource Management Act which affects every New Zealander. 
The Resource Management Act affects the ownership of land so any New Zealander who owns or rents any property is affected by this bill. This bill affects the way in which a person’s current property and any future property of that person can be developed. This bill affects every New Zealander whether an owner a renter a tenant a future owner or whatever he or she is. This minority Labour Government supported by United Future is ramming this legislation through the House without any regard for the views of the public of New Zealand. There has been no select committee hearing on this bill; it is just being rammed through. 
Something that upsets lawyers considerably when they read this type of legislation and see a bill in two parts is that they wonder why there are all those subparts. I had to speak to a member of the New Zealand Law Society the other day and explain the reason for that to him.