Williams Andrew: Resource Management Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Resource Management Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12837. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on Part 2 of the Resource Management Reform Bill. I want to speak in terms of some of the comments that have been made in relation to the Auckland Unitary Plan compared with the seven local authority plans and also the regional council plans that it replaces.Many people would say that Auckland was not functioning under the former plans. That statement is incorrect. Each of the local authorities had robust district plans that had been brought into place over many many years which were a result of widespread consultation with their individual communities. The plans of Manukau of Waitakere of Auckland City of North Shore City of Franklin and of Rodney were all in their own right substantial plans that suited their particular communities but now under one Auckland Council there is a requirement to merge those into one plan and as a result this is what we are seeing before us today.However there are concerns—widespread in Auckland. When sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee we heard from many many submitters including submitters with extensive and lengthy experience in local government and in resource management including Queen’s Counsel including some of the brightest legal minds in terms of New Zealand in terms of planning and in terms of the background to local government who submitted that there were quite a few concerns about theAuckland Unitary Plan as it stood and that in many instances it certainly fell well short of what was a robust document that would withstand scrutiny.In that regard we do support the situation that when the plan gets notified in the next few months it is not then in effect given the greater operative weight—to become the overarching document—until the hearings are fully completed. We heard that from many sources who said that the existing rules that are in place around Auckland would otherwise just be completely trodden on and the safeguards that communities currently have would literally be pushed aside if this plan took greater weight than from when it was notified.In that respect there has been huge push-back from the people of Auckland from communities all across Auckland who have said that the first drafts of the plan had some grave errors. The errors included that something in the order of 47 percent of the properties across Auckland had the potential to have intensive development up to potentially 10 metres high on urban properties and on suburban properties. Also without notification to any property owners the property right next door to you could be purchased by a developer and could be intensified and structures could be put up up to 10 metres high under the proposed plan without you being aware until literally the day the bulldozers moved in and started work.It is unacceptable to any community whether you are in Auckland or whether you are anywhere in New Zealand to have a situation where you are not given the opportunity to at least have some input into what is being proposed next to your property if it is outside what has been established standards in all these areas of Auckland over many many years. Sure Auckland is going to grow and it is going to have an increasing population and there does need to be some intensification in areas. We agree that around many of the town centres and many of the urban centres there will be greater intensification and there will be higher buildings built closer to those transport hubs in those urban centres. But it does not mean in the same breath that people who have been used to living in their suburban homes should suddenly be subject to apartments going up next door without any due process being in place.Therefore in terms of this Auckland Unitary Plan—going through this process with the hearings which will take in the order of 2 to 3 years to complete—it will mean that at the end of that process everyone will have had their full opportunity to have their day before the court effectively to put their submissions properly to the plan as the plan is notified and for that document to then be properly thrashed out so that the final operative plan that is put in place does have total and full scrutiny.It is somewhat concerning and people have said this that areas involving heritage aspects areas involving trees and areas involving intensification around town centres have not necessarily been identified to a suitable level. It is also concerning that some existing structure plans which have taken an awful lot of work to get to where they are today have the potential of being trodden on. I give as an example the Long Bay structure plan which has 2500 homes being built at Long Bay one of the largest subdivisions in the country. More than 6000 people potentially will be living there. It took close to 7 or 8 years of negotiations with the developers to finalise that plan so that there was a totally modern practice in terms of how that significant tract of land would be developed to include all modes of transport to include parks to include reserves to include view shafts out to the Hauraki Gulf islands and to ensure that it ended up as a modern 21st century development.That proposal also included a very significant court case through the Environment Court with the North Shore City Council and the Todd Property Group which ended up with a very very good result for all parties which saw the whole community buy into itin the end and that resolved a situation for the community—not just the North Shore community but people from all over Auckland—who loved Long Bay.Long Bay is the busiest regional park in the Auckland area. More than a million people a year go to that particular regional park and they wanted to ensure that the urban intensification around that park was certainly kept to the best it could be in terms of the effects on the coastline on the marine reserve nearby and on the environment of that part of the northern part of Auckland and of the North Shore.Under this unitary plan and what was proposed all that work over 6 or 7 years was basically going to be thrown out the window and this unitary plan was simply going to be put in its place. The whole area of Long Bay was going to be just swallowed into the unitary plan and the standards and the rules of the unitary plan would have been trodden on in terms of the Long Bay situation—7 or 8 years of hard work would have been literally for naught.As a result of this I am sure that when this process goes through the proper hearings process and goes before the commissioners that will be revisited as will all the very good aspects of the likes of Long Bay. There are many other similar structure plans of new developments around Auckland that will similarly see their opportunity to be readdressed in terms of what those communities expected from those particular developments. We will not have just a one-stamp-meets-all approach to Auckland. They will still recognise the fact that different parts of Auckland do have different requirements their communities have different expectations and as a result we hope that there is a good outcome from that.We have some reservations about the fact that the Government has not allowed the appointment of local commissioners as well as central government - appointed commissioners on this. We feel it would have been advantageous to have a mixture of commissioners so that there was both local input and central government input into this very very important plan of what is our largest city. Time will tell whether the decision of the Government to not include locally appointed commissioners is the right one. Aucklanders certainly will not appreciate commissioners being appointed from other parts of the country who will not necessarily have the full understanding of the implications of the plan on the local communities of Auckland if it is not treated with respect in relation to local situations. We certainly hope that the commissioners who are appointed have a very very high level of understanding.