O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Madam Chair. Look an introductory comment and then a series of questions obviously in Part 1. Look the good people of Tāmaki already find the Resource Management Act (RMA) a huge mess and I don't think anyone in the committee here would disagree that the current RMA is a massive massive mess. It could be best described as slowing everything down and I think of everyone from neighbours friends locals constituents developers across Tāmaki—they find the RMA majorly problematic. The issue I have is that these 900-plus pages are going to make things much worse. In fact from where the current RMA stifles things this one is going to stop progress in its entirety. And one of the things that concerns me is how few New Zealanders know what the Government is doing in this space. As I say this new Natural and Built Environment Bill along with its secondary cousin is going to basically stop development in New Zealand and the primary reason for that is it is introducing enormous uncertainty into the system and in particular into the legal system. I understand and the Minister can correct me on this but even the Chief Justice has come out and indicated in a submission I think to the Environment Committee that this is going to grind the courts down because there are so many concepts in here that no one knows what they mean. Let's be really clear; I want to be very clear: new concepts ideas and principles are welcome but when it comes to law they need to be clearly spelt out. And yep we can if you want to take on you know the fancifulness of the American model and others to allow the courts to decide—well that takes time and money. The Minister should know already particularly in Auckland and certainly in my electorate that it already takes too long to build things let alone what this is going to do. So I can't say it's a pleasure to rise to speak on this because trying to lift 900-plus pages is quite a work-out.The purpose of the Act: the first purpose Minister is to uphold the te Oranga o te Taiao. My translation of Taiao" can be land or it can also be "world". Why I'm asking that is: does this bill need to take in the concepts of the world? Does the world or do the people in the world get to have a say? So obviously we are all interconnected but words are important. And he's been stressing the importance of law and the word. So the purpose of this Act is to "uphold the health of the world" is one interpretation. In other words are events overseas going to affect what decisions are being made here in New Zealand? Then ultimately who gets to decide what is healthy or not? What are the qualifications? This is the second set of questions for judges because as I go through clause 3 particularly subclause 3 on what te Oranga o te Taiao means—the healthy environment the relationships in the environment and so forth the interconnectedness—I'm wondering whether we need theologians and philosophers to be our judges. I say it somewhat tongue in cheek because I'm both of them. But as I read these words I'm thinking of concepts like Gaiaism animism pantheism panentheism—for those who are interested in these things—vitalism. So many of the concepts that are already being articulated here are quite actually philosophical and to some of us are quite theological. So at one level it's a facetious question Minister but there's a serious edge to it: are judges going to be required to be theologians to try and work through what are effectively spiritual concepts? Then the next section is in clause 6 around decision-making processes. I know others have already raised the place of tikanga. Now I want to be really clear and on the record: there is a place for tikanga. There are different customary approaches but my question is: how is this going to operate in the process of law? The Minister rightly pointed out English common law and so forth but it's written down. It's in black and white. It's clearly defined. My experience dealing with tikanga is that it can be amazing but tikanga is remarkably flexible when it's wanted to be and then it's enormously rigid when it also suits. How are we going to navigate this as a country and where is it written? I think even in my own electorate there are multiple iwi let alone hapū and yet your bill here says that we have to look not only to be responsible to each iwi but to every hapū. Again that's not a problem—to want to engage them—it's just how do we do this Minister in a way that's going to be timely and helpful? Locals already know the difficulties there are to deal with iwi—and I want to stress again from a matter of process not in terms of the respect and engagement but it's incredibly time-consuming. And the ultimate question is: where is this tikanga written down? Because I fear the Minister and perhaps even the Supreme Court are conflating the notions of law—that written law that we're used to is the same as tikanga and the two are not the same."