Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4302] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) is effectively the No. 1 bill as reported from the select committee in 2001 plus the Government’s changes of policy since that time. The introduction of this bill is an abuse of process because when a Government plans to introduce just two policy changes—both of which were to do with matters discussed extensively by the select committee—when it has changed its mind from the way it voted on the select committee and decided to do something differently the way to do that is through a Supplementary Order Paper. It is not normally done by introducing a whole new bill that is largely the same as the old bill. That of course would have allowed us to have a proper debate on the report back of the select committee as well as debates on the changes. 
I concur with Opposition members who have said that 5 minutes at the Committee stage is not sufficient to discuss the 57 pages of complex and controversial legislation that is now all in one part. Admittedly it would be challenging to get through 18 parts in the Committee of the whole House. The Greens actually offered the Government extra sitting hours to enable it to do that but the Government did not choose to avail itself of that opportunity. I do not know why the bill sat there for 100 weeks. It certainly was not because we were impeding progress. Everyone knew that we would vote against the reintroduction of limited notification but plenty of other people in the House would have supported it so it is still a mystery to me why it had to take so long. It is very much a slight to the select committee and it has been worsened by the reference back of this bill. What are we expected to do with it in the very short time available? We have other hearings planned on other bills and we are travelling outside Wellington. Are we supposed to just give a rubber stamp to somehow legitimise that process? 
I am very puzzled as to what United Future thinks it has got out of this process. Both of the policy changes that are accomplished by the No. 2 bill compared with the No. 1 bill were announced by the Government well before the new United Future members came to Parliament. They have not achieved any policy change whatsoever in the bill. They have simply allowed themselves to be used as a tool to prevent parliamentary debate on the many important matters that are now all rolled together in one part—subparts 1 to 16. The House needs to debate the decisions of the select committee on the Upton bill. It needs to debate the Government’s changes to those committee decisions in this bill and it needs to debate any amendments that are introduced in the Committee stage of this bill—and I am sure that amendments will be introduced in the Committee stage. 
Today I will confine myself mainly to talking about the select committee’s work because as the chair of that committee which spent more than a year travelling around the country hearing 400 submissions and considering those submissions very carefully I feel that our work has been undervalued. 
The Resource Management Act controversy reflects a divergence of interests and therefore a divergence of views in society. No amount of talking will reach agreement between those divergent views but at least we should ensure that the drafting of the bill carries out the policy intentions. Developers see the bill as an obstacle as a compliance cost and as a source of delay. They oppose public participation and they want the right to do what they like on their own land and with the public commons as well because this bill deals with matters like air and water which are not anybody’s property. Developers are calling for a reduction in the rights of the public to bring evidence on their proposals to hearings. 
On the other hand many members of the public see that the Act is not protecting the environment as it was intended to do. Councils are constantly permitting things that are contrary to Part 2. Just one example of that is the inappropriate subdivision use and development of the coastal environment. In how many places around New Zealand do we see councils giving permission for inappropriate subdivision use and development of the coastal environment which under section 6 of the Act they are not supposed to do? The public want a say in how the areas where they live develop. It is not just about personal property rights and whether our land and buildings are affected. It is about our rights as citizens to help shape our living environment. 
The Act relies on contestable evidence at a hearing to establish whether the environmental effects of an application are acceptable to the community and whether what is planned might be better remedied mitigated or avoided. There is no inquiry function at the Environment Court. There is no independent authority protecting the environment. It is left to the community and to those who care to put up the evidence—which the developers themselves will not provide—on the likely effects of the proposal. Therefore those hearings and those things called objections are vital for the proper functioning of the Act. 
The community has often been right and the developer wrong. I think of the Golden Cross mine at Waitekauri near Waihi where people got up and said that they had lived there for generations they knew that land was unstable and that it slipped. The developer brought in expert witnesses to say that it was quite stable and so the resource consent went through. What happened? The land started slipping. At last count they had spent $30 million trying to stabilise it but still have not completely succeeded so we should not just dismiss the evidence that the community can bring to the hearings. Public participation is at the very heart of the structure and the philosophy of the Act. It cannot work without it. 
Simon Upton’s bill planned further restrictions than the current Act. The select committee including the Government members voted to remove those restrictions but they are being put back in this No. 2 bill. I hope United Future members will explain to families who will lose their rights to affect the way their neighbourhood develops why they have voted for this limitation on notification. I hope they will be able to explain to the families who find their property being undermined when the bulldozer suddenly moves in next door—as has actually happened—that they voted for those families not to have a right to object in those cases. 
The approach of the select committee was that it would support anything that would reduce compliance costs and delays without reducing environmental standards or the public’s right to participate—but only those things. We were also very mindful that case law had established a lot of precedent under the Act and that changing definitions and the wording of clauses without very good reason was going to impose huge compliance costs and delays on applicants and everybody else while people rushed off to the courts to get new case law. So we tended to be conservative in changing wording unless there was good reason for it. 
The Opposition is fond of saying that the bill has been gutted or that compliance costs have been increased. Let me run through the positive things that came out of the committee’s deliberations. First we got rid of some silly over-the-top proposals like allowing developers to choose their own consultants to process their applications; like bypassing the council altogether and going straight to the court if the developer wants immediately putting the hearing right out of reach for many of the public; like mandatory use of commissioners to hear cases for councils—people who have no accountability to the district and no long-term association with it. Those omissions enraged the Opposition. But the Chapman Tripp people quoted by another member have clearly not read the bill. There is a lot in the bill that will reduce delays and costs and could have been doing so for the last 2 years if the Government had been prepared to give it legislative time. 
A major criticism of the operation of the Act has been that no effort has been put into the central government part of the deal. The decisions are devolved to councils but those decisions are meant to be guided by national policy statements and standards and training and guidance and for nearly a decade none of that happened. The national policy statement process in the Act is too long and unwieldy and there are too many stages of consultation. We worked hard to improve that without losing public participation and the new process is workable. I hope we will get some national policy statements because that will make things easier faster and cheaper for councils. 
Environmental standards can be developed under the Act but there is no mechanism to make them operational through plans. The bill provides that mechanism. That will save a lot of duplication of effort and costs for councils. There is a lot of extra cost if an application has to be heard under both an operative and a proposed plan at the same time.