Goldsmith Paul; Parker David; Salesa JennyHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. This is my first occasion to speak on this committee stage for the entire bill. I want to make a couple of general remarks about the widespread agreement across the House that the current Resource Management Act is no longer fit for purpose and needs improvement. Our general consensus looking at this very large piece of legislation is that rather than fixing it it will make it worse in many respects and we're now working our way through the mountain of detail and questions. I don't know what hour we're up to: 20th hour or 10th hour or 12th hour—we're halfway through.I've got some specific questions I could ask here about Subpart 2 of Part 8 which may or may not shed any light on it. I suppose—where it sort of becomes interesting; I look at clause 541(1) for example. It says that any [iwi authority] with interest in relation to a place may apply to the Minister in the prescribed form for approval as a heritage protection authority".I'd just be interested to know from the Minister what "interest in relation to a place" means. Does that mean that they own the place or that they may claim to have some kaitiaki role in respect of the place? What are the boundaries of that in the sense that it could be an individual's house for example totally unrelated to that particular group but the group claims to have some broader interest in the land? I don't know; take for example if somebody owned a house on the waterfront in Whangamatā or Coromandel and there was a group that claimed to have a connection with that area of the Coromandel would that mean that they could apply to have a heritage protection authority over an individual's property and if so what would that mean from a heritage point of view? So I suppose the starting point just to clarify that is: what are the boundaries around the interest and how tightly is that defined?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I did address this previously in respect to an earlier question. The only authorities or organisations that can be heritage protection authorities in respect to private land are Ministers of the Crown or local authorities or Heritage New Zealand. In respect to Māori land some Māori groupings can sometimes apply to be a heritage protection authority in respect to that Māori land but not other private land.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I call on the Hon Paul Goldsmith but before I do this particular area has been addressed by the Minister before and yes it's your first call on this bill but it doesn't mean that we will trapeze it. It's begun to be a bit repetitive.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you for your indulgence Madam Chair. I suppose I accept the answer from the Minister in relation to private land. I'll be interested to know what it means when it comes in relation to public land or council land or even disputed lands. I'm thinking in terms of council-owned land or Government lands. So what interest would a particular iwi authority or group have to have in relation to some sort of structure on council land in an area that there might be interest in? What are the boundaries around whether they could apply to be a heritage protection authority for that place?Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Well they couldn't if it wasn't Māori land."