Norman Russel William: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Norman Russel William: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6166] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I want to start in this debate by making some general comments because I think in all the detail we do miss some of the general points about the Resource Management Act. I think the Resource Management Act is one of the most maligned misunderstood and misrepresented Acts in our country. It has been attacked repeatedly over and over by vested interests. It has been subjected to absolutely vitriolic attack by those who want to advance the interests of developers and so forth yet the Resource Management Act exists to protect our environment. 
There are two fundamental principles of the Resource Management Act. One is protection of the environment and the other is public participation in decision making. Those are the two fundamental planks of the Resource Management Act. In the midst of the debate around red tape cost and so forth I think we forget that the Resource Management Act is one of the primary bulwarks to protect the New Zealand environment on which we all depend. It is about protecting our land our water and our wildlife. 
I think we also take it for granted that this is New Zealand—clean green and 100 percent pure. We forget that the reason why we have any kind of protection in our country is that community groups have been able to use the Resource Management Act to protect their local environment. As I travel around Aotearoa New Zealand time after time it is community groups it is hapu and it is iwi who find themselves in front of consent panels and in front of the Environment Court doing the hard yards to protect the environment of our country. Yet we have an Act that changes the balance. It changes the balance against the community so that it is harder for the community groups the people the not-for-profit groups and the volunteers who do the work to protect New Zealand’s environment day in day out and year in year out. These are the people who come before the Environment Court and get vilified often by National and others because they dare to stand up for the environment. They dare to clog up the courts as it is told because they dare to stand up for this country. 
The Government of the day has now decided it needs to tilt the balance against the volunteers the iwi and the hapu of our country who constantly stand up to protect the environment. The Government wants to change the balance against those voluntary groups in favour of those who want to destroy the environment. That is what the Government is trying to do with this legislation. It is undermining the fundamental purpose of the legislation which is environmental protection and community participation. 
When we look at New Zealand and at our economy we see that it is highly dependent on being clean green and 100 percent pure—more than most other places. In fact it is built on the work that all of those not-for-profit groups and volunteers have done. We have built our economy on their backs. The people who have protected our environment are the people who underwrite and have formed the foundation for the New Zealand economy—the environment. This applies to every economy in the world because every economy of course is entirely dependent on the environment. But it applies to New Zealand in particular because we have decided to build our entire brand—as the Prime Minister calls it the “master brand” of New Zealand—on being 100 percent pure clean and green. 
Those people who protect the environment now have a much harder job doing what they do best which is looking after our country. This bill changes the balance against them. As the Minister quite rightly said it is restricting community participation. Yeah; that is exactly right. It will make it harder for the non-governmental organisation sector and harder for community groups to do their job. In the Green Party we think that is disgraceful. 
I think we need to appreciate as well that if we were working against a backdrop of dramatically improving environmental performance if we had biodiversity that was going through the roof and if we had a background of environmental performance whereby we were getting better and better year after year then we might have some argument. But the reality of Aotearoa New Zealand is that we are seeing a decline in biodiversity. We are seeing a decline in the quality of our rivers and lakes we are seeing a decline in the environment that underpins everything else and here we are weakening the law that is designed to protect the environment. We are seeing a decline in the environmental standards the biodiversity on which we all depend and that underpins the New Zealand economy. National ACT and the Maori Party so far and Labour are all voting for a law that weakens environmental protection. 
Why would we weaken environmental protection when the reality in our country is that we already have a declining and degrading environment? Why would we vote for a law that weakens the power of community groups to protect the environment? Why would we do that when we already have declining environmental standards? 
We need to address the broader picture which is the ideology that says New Zealand is bound up in red tape; that somehow our country is completely bound up in red tape. I have in front of me the World Bank Group’s report  
Doing Business 
. This report ranks economies all around the world on the ease of doing business. The most recent report  
Doing Business 2010: Reforming through Difficult Times 
 put out by the World Bank Group covers June 2008 through to May 2009. The easiest country in the world to do business in and the one that has the least red tape is Singapore which I am not sure we really want to model ourselves on in all respects. The second easiest country in the world to do business in is New Zealand. 
When we look at the international comparisons done by international bodies looking at the ease of doing business in the world New Zealand is the second easiest place to do business. So all this rhetoric about how it is really impossible for New Zealand business to get ahead because of all the red tape falls flat when we look at an independent report—rather than just an ideological position statement as comes out from the Government so often—done by the World Bank Group where New Zealand comes out as the second easiest place on the planet to do business. 
If we dig into the report a little bit deeper and look at some of the detail we see a section called “Dealing with Construction Permits” which looks in particular at obtaining a resource consent obtaining a water consent obtaining a building consent and getting an inspection from the district council. If we look at those categories they all go to inform the overall rating that New Zealand has as the second easiest place on the planet to do business. New Zealand ranks fifth on the planet for dealing with construction permits which includes all of the resource consent permits and the water consent permits. When the ideological position is put forward that New Zealand is bound up from top to tail in red tape I ask people to look at the evidence rather than listen to the ideological positions that are coming out of the Government. 
In fact when we look at New Zealand’s performance one of the reasons we perform so poorly in terms of protecting the environment is that we are not using regulations properly. Where are the national environmental standards? Where are the national policy statements that were always supposed to be part of the Resource Management Act and that were a key part of protecting the environment? If we put up those “terrible” national policy statements and national environmental standards we would be told that we are generating more red tape and more regulation. Those kinds of regulations provide consistency for business and protect the environment and they were always assumed to be an essential part of the Resource Management Act framework. 
If the Government wants to put energy into developing national policy statements and national environmental standards then the Green Party will stand alongside them as long as they improve environmental standards rather than set a maximum more of which we will talk about later. At this stage we have this so-called streamlining bill which seems only to be reducing environmental standards thereby making it harder for community groups to protect the environment. It will make it harder for community groups to do their job and to do what non-governmental organisations have done for years in our country which is protect the environment on which our economy and our quality of life depend. 
Why is it that we have this ideological position around red tape and all the evils of red tape? Where are the Bluegreens in all of this? The member for Auckland Central is voting for a bill that will result in the loss of tree cover in Auckland. Why are the Bluegreens standing behind a bill that will weaken the Resource Management Act? Fundamentally that is what this law does and what it is designed to do—weaken the Resource Management Act. 
I also ask the Bluegreens to look at the membership of the technical advisory group that formed this bill to start with. There was one—at least one—environmentalist on the technical advisory group; I give you that. But the technical advisory group membership was dominated by those who were not out to promote environmental protections; they were there to do the opposite.