Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1494] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Once again under this Government’s urgency sadly I received a copy of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill late last night. It is a long and technical bill and obviously it takes a long time when one is in select committee meetings all morning to get to grips with it. I also notice that the Minister intends to give the Local Government and Environment Committee a little over 4 months rather than the usual 6 months to deal with a long complicated bill that is of great public interest. I think that will be a very tight time frame and so far the Minister has not suggested that he intends to give the select committee any additional sitting hours to deal with that. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Yes I did. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: I missed that in the initial statement from the Minister—OK. 
The Resource Management Act is designed to allow economic development that does not compromise the quality of the environment and it is designed to ensure that natural resources are used sustainably. Nobody could possibly argue that it has done that over the last 18 years. We have had piecemeal incremental damage done to the environment for 18 years from inappropriate coastal development from discharges from native species and ecosystems being at risk and from the quality of life of New Zealanders being eroded constantly by the nature of economic development. Yet the Act which is not being changed in this respect says that economic development is OK provided it safeguards the life-supporting capacity of air water soil and ecosystems among some other things. It has not done that. The improvements we need to make to the Resource Management Act are to ensure greater environmental protection rather than to ensure even less. 
The bill also creates a process whereby the community decides collectively through plans how its local area is to develop. That plan-making process is crucial. Unfortunately where the processes of the Act have often fallen down in the past is that so many people do not realise that their time to have an input is when the plan is being developed rather than to wait until the 10-storey building goes up next door to them. It is quite hard to get people to get involved in that theoretical level of plan making but to reduce appeals against plans will make it even harder for the community to have that say about how its community should develop. 
This all sets up pitched battles under the Act between applicants who want to do something that may cause environmental damage or have amenity effects on neighbours and objectors who want them not to. The applicants almost always win. I think we have a figure that in 99 percent of cases applications are approved. But the applicants are still not happy because the process has become cumbersome bureaucratic and expensive and I think we would all agree with that. The applicants want to be able to win without going through all that which is understandable from their perspective. They can see that that can best be achieved by limiting the rights of others in the community to scrutinise and object to their proposals. The National Government is seeking to achieve that with the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill which changes the balance of rights and influence away from the community and towards the developers. 
The key question is about who speaks for the environment. Trees have no standing as an important legal paper argued back in the 1970s. Snails have no standing. Who speaks for endangered species for water quality for climate change for wetlands for forests and for the sea? Who under the Resource Management Act speaks for future generations and for their right to unpolluted water public open spaces and the right to see Hochstetter’s frogs and  
Powelliphanta 
 snails? Future generations have no standing under the Act either. Therefore it is absolutely crucial that somebody is allowed to speak on their behalf. 
We would expect that in terms of the environment the Department of Conservation would speak for them. After all the Department of Conservation has the specialist information to know what the effects on endangered ecosystems and species might be like. But repeatedly the Department of Conservation under successive Governments—and this is not a new issue—has not been allowed to have a voice at the Environment Court when its voice is different from the views of more powerful Government departments like the Ministry of Economic Development and Treasury. So we cannot rely on the Department of Conservation to bring to the table the evidence that the court needs in order to make a balanced decision. I think it would be a wonderful thing if the Minister would change that and if this Government would allow the Department of Conservation the freedom to bring its information to the table even when it disagrees with the Ministry of Economic Development. 
There is a long-held view which is being given its head in this bill that only immediate neighbours and those with personal and corporate property rights should be deemed affected by developers and should therefore be entitled to participate in the process. It is only organisations like the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society Greenpeace Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand Environmental Defence Society and a host of local environmental protection groups that bring evidence to councils and the Environment Court about the irreversible environmental impacts of developments. If that evidence is not brought then the court cannot consider it and make a balanced decision. 
In this Parliament it is only the Green Party that speaks constantly for the environment and for future generations so it is not surprising that we oppose many of the measures in this bill because they restrict the right of people and groups in the community to speak up for their grandchildren and for nature. We are sad that even the Labour Party is voting for this bill rather than saying what we say to the Minister which is to take out the more objectionable bits and we will be delighted to join with the Government and support the good bits. 
Ministry of Justice officials told Cabinet that they were concerned about fundamental rights to justice being restricted by this bill. The Minister of Justice told the House that their concerns had been addressed but the Minister for the Environment told Radio New Zealand National that he disagreed with the concerns of those officials and had ignored them. That is not the same as addressing them. 
This bill skews the balance of the Resource Management Act away from the environment and communities in favour of big developers. That is not surprising. The technical advisory group comprises mainly developers and their lawyers and consultants with only a single member of that advisory group coming from an environmental background. 
The Green Party has always supported streamlining and simplifying the Resource Management Act to reduce time and costs provided that can be done without compromising environmental quality and the rights of the public to participate in decisions. There are things in this bill that we support. Fines for breaches of the Act are now so ludicrously low that the most cost-effective course is to break the law and then pay up. We welcome that being addressed. Efforts to prevent trade competition being used as a ground for appeal are also welcome but they are possibly hollow. Trade competition is already outlawed as a ground for objection under the Act and has been for many years. The only substantive move in this bill is the disclosure of funding of front organisations but that is very hard to detect and enforce and bizarrely it applies only to objectors. What about front organisations that applicants fund? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: No. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: I ask the Minister do I have that wrong? I am glad to hear that. Right; so it works both ways. Everyone agrees that frivolous and vexatious objections should be dealt to but they already were dealt to by the Resource Management Amendment Act 2005. I chaired the Local Government and Environment Committee that worked on the bill that became that Act and there are now powers to strike those objections out. 
One thing we strongly support is binding Crown agencies. It is high time that that provision was brought in and I thank the Minister for doing so. Progress has been made in the bill on the issue of the timing of implementation of environmental standards which was confused. Some of the bill’s streamlining around plan development will help but the presumption against appeals is dangerous especially where it is combined with the removal of the second round of submissions.