Smith Stuart; Parker DavidSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Oh Thank you Madam Chair.Matt Doocey: Tell us about your car Stewie!STUART SMITH: Well my car is made of steel as well.Hon Member: Oh is it?STUART SMITH: Well it's got rubber as well. A bit of plastic—glass of course.It is actually fantastic to see that the Minister has been woken up by the member from ACT Simon Court and got him quite active actually which is quite good.Now to the point about the number of pages all I would like—I would like one more page at least which had the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in it which they do not have. There's no principles. The Minister gave an explanation before which actually made things worse because he said Well it all went along with what the Waitangi Tribunal—they agree with it." Well that's hardly a ringing endorsement. And then the Randerson review—well that was his own commissioned review. He's getting his own team to judge him really and I think that's not good enough.He still hasn't answered for us: what are the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi? He listed everything else; they're all everywhere—no principles for the Treaty. How can we have bill that does not—that refers to some principles that are not included in the bill. So I'd like to see that. He talked about the Supreme Court and tikanga. Well that was a 3:2 decision so it was hardly a ringing endorsement either. I think we want more details on that the Minister and I think you have not answered the questions that I gave you earlier.He's also said that it was all in the Resource Management Act (RMA) anyway. Well that's why we've got the problems with it: nobody likes the RMA—except for the legal profession perhaps and even they don't like it because they have clients that want to get stuff done.Look we don't want certainty of outcome from these pieces of legislation; we want certainty of process. And actually what the problem is with the RMA is there is no certainty of the process. It's a long-winded overly bureaucratic exercise that could be carried out with much less bureaucracy than we have today. That's one of the greatest sources of issues that come in around councils that I get in through my office every week. It's about the RMA it's about the extra costs and the inefficiencies in it and the waste quite frankly. It is a waste and yet we've got no improvement; in fact this is going to make it so much worse than we have at the moment.So I'm looking forward to—the Minister's taking advice there so I'm looking forward to having that list and my pen is waiting ready to note down those principles. Thank you Minister.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): There are two forms of Treaty clause—or two main groups of Treaty clauses across the statute book.One lists the way in which the Treaty is to be given effect to—saying essentially "the way in which this legislation gives effect to the Treaty is by doing that that that and that" and it's effectively code and a list. The other is to refer to general obligations to take into account or to give effect to the principles of the Treaty. When that latter form is used and it is the most common form of the statute book the practice is not to define it; it is to rely on the principles that have been developed by the court. Were we to move to another articulation of that—really this just changes from "to take into account" to "to give effect to". That's the change of this compared with the Resource Management Act. It doesn't change the underlying principles and it would be very very—in my opinion—difficult to do so.In respect of the member's question about tikanga Māori I believe I've already addressed that in the earlier answer. You know it's defined to mean "Māori customary law customary values and customary practices" and I covered the Supreme Court jurisprudence.I take the member's point to it being a split division in the Supreme Court but I don't have a particular difficulty with the idea that customary law can include Māori customary law. In our common law jurisprudence in New Zealand customary law from the English tradition was always possible to be part of the law and customary law whether it is Māori customary law or English customary law that we inherited can always be modified by statute and in many ways is by this litigation. But I can accept the principle that there is the possibility of residual law that is not overridden by the Resource Management Act or in the future by the Natural and Built Environment Bill that still has a place."