Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on the Natural and Built Environment Bill. The bill has certainly been a very long time coming and I congratulate Minister Parker and the legion of officials in the Ministry for the Environment and other agencies on all of the mahi that they have put into it drawing on a plethora of reports the very substantive review by the Randerson team the Hon Tony Randerson and that report published in 2020—because it does deal with that problem that we've got: urban areas which have been struggling to keep pace with population growth. There's been a lack of coordination between infrastructure investment and development. We've got increasing car congestion reduced housing affordability and a lack of protection for the environment.But sometimes I think it is too easy to blame the law and to blame the Resource Management Act (RMA) because it's partly a mind-set. It's a very frontier colonial mind-set of taking taking taking from nature and not recognising the dependence that we have on infrastructure—green infrastructure that nature provides in terms of soil sunlight air fresh water and our oceans. So I'm really pleased that te Oranga o te Taiao is a key concept embedded for the first time in the bill because with Te Ao Māori perspectives it recognises that humans depend on nature and that we are connected. We need a resource management system that delivers better and there's a very big ambition in this bill in moving away from the focus on managing adverse effects to focusing on outcomes environmental outcomes and human activities occurring in a way that promotes those environmental outcomes: development happens within limits and it meets targets. There are quite major changes to the whole planning process with regional planning committees the two members representing iwi and other representatives from councils being involved in those. It sounds easy to take more than a hundred plans and make them 15. That is a huge exercise and the devil will certainly be in the detail in this bill both in the detail and in the way in which the bill is implemented over the next decade. It will be Labour and Minister Parker's legacy.Some of the concerns that the Greens have: a bill of over 800 pages would get the normal six-month select committee process but for such a large bill that is actually a limited amount of time. I apologise in advance to submitters who will be having to come to grips with this complicated legislation over the Christmas break and make submissions and I do wish to point out to the Minister that there could be a significant improvement in the information that the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) has on its website.We've had the release of the supplementary analysis report. That refers to a lot of ministerial oversight group Cabinet papers. They are not available on the MFE website. There's a lot of aesthetic white space on that website but real gaps in information unlike three waters for which at least the Department of Internal Affairs had a comprehensive list of all of its reports and they were very easy to access. It's important for the public to be able to understand the consideration of options that went in to developing the bill and why certain provisions were arrived at.In terms of the Green Party's position it's certainly to support it at first reading so that it goes to select committee for that public scrutiny but our support beyond that does depend on achieving some significant changes. I was pleased to hear Minister Twyford talk about urban trees because it was really disappointing to see in the bill that it just perpetuates the status quo. It requires councils to schedule individual trees and small groups of trees to identify them before they can achieve any protection. It makes no improvement on the status quo but what I heard was there's the potential for changes through that select committee process. So that's one of the things we are concerned about. It's interesting that National is saying that the bill potentially constrains development. From the Greens' perspective we see it as potentially expediting development. There are a number of exceptions to meeting the outcomes and some of the targets. There is the ability for the Minister to create exceptions through the National Planning Framework the wider ability for designations and more agencies being able to be requiring authorities and I think back to the huge community concern when Central Plains Water was given requiring authority status and was able to have a big designation over farmland with farmers unable to undertake some of their activities because that would have conflicted with the proposed reservoir. But there are things in it too like the notification notice that consent authorities won't be required to hold a hearing even if a consent is notified. I'm still grappling with the detail of that. Does that mean that there's less opportunity for the public to get engaged? I would note the experience of people in Christchurch with the Christchurch district plan post-earthquake where with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority in particular there weren't hearings. People felt alienated when decisions were made behind closed doors without an opportunity to talk directly to those decision makers.Around aquaculture coastal sea space is a public asset. It is the commons. There is in the rhetoric around the bill a lot of talk about promoting aquaculture promoting investor confidence providing new opportunities accelerating aquaculture but at the same time we have a handbrake on marine protection. So there may be some tensions to work through there. One of the things I do like is the compliance and enforcement provisions. There's a huge gap in the current compliance system under the Resource Management Act; the Environmental Defence Society and Marie Brown highlighted that in their report Last Line of Defence. You've got a lack of staff resources a lack of funding and a lack of serious intent to actually enforce plan rules so there's no advantage then for industries and for landholders to do the right thing if those that are doing the wrong thing always get away with it. So there are provisions in the bill where councils have to have an up-to-date compliance monitoring and enforcement strategy. They can cost-recover from monitoring permitted activities. Consent authorities can consider an applicant's compliance history when assessing a consent application. There is the increase in financial penalties and the fact that companies can't use insurance to pay fines. Those are all significant improvements to the compliance and enforcement system and that is likely to provide better for nature. I think we'll have interesting discussions in the select committee and from submitters about the allocation tools that are in the legislation. We've got a number of issues particularly in regions like Canterbury and Otago where catchments are over-allocated and where councils have agreed for too much water to be taken for irrigation agricultural use with too long a terms on those consents and not adequately providing for the river and the aquifer needs or for the future needs of communities. So there is the recognition in the bill that the current system of first in first served" doesn't always work.Providing—taken from the Randerson review—principles of equity sustainability and—there's another one—Hon David Parker: Efficiency. Hon EUGENIE SAGE: —efficiency to drive new allocation mechanisms is something I think we'll really look forward to getting submissions on. An ability to have more short-term consents as the Natural and Built Environment Bill transitions over from the RMA and to have some market mechanisms like auctions and tenders but not for fresh water takes—some of those conversations through submissions I really look forward to to see whether we can improve the bill there.Also one of the other areas other than te Oranga o te Taiao is the mechanisms to better ensure that the principles of the Treaty are given effect to and upheld. The decision to establish a new national Māori entity to monitor Te Tiriti performance of the whole system to provide input into the development of the National Planning Framework to provide advice and to nominate members for the boards of inquiry will certainly give Māori more influence in the way in which we do resource management as well as those positions around the table on the regional planning committees. It is a big bill. There is an awful lot of detail in it. I hope that the select committee process is constructive and we really do need all of the parties in the House to work to improve the bill so that it endures. Just having an oppositional stance—I was pleased that Chris Bishop said he was going to be constructive. This bill is too important to fail. It needs to endure so we all need to work on ensuring that it is as good as possible when it is reported back. Kia ora."