Garrett David: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Garrett David: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6144] 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the second reading of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill. In years gone by—or perhaps one should say centuries—a man’s land as well as his home was his castle. [ 
Interruption 
] Or a woman’s land indeed although I do not know whether many castles were owned by women centuries ago. 
Nicky Wagner 
: They just did all the work. 
DAVID GARRETT 
: They did all the work yes or some of it. There was a breakthrough in the 19th century. I say “a breakthrough” because I am a member of the ACT Party not of the Libertarianz. I do not believe that I should be able to put up a chemical factory on my lifestyle block because it suits me. I do not support the idea that anyone can do anything on their land. The first breakthrough in curbing the idea that a person’s land was his or her castle and therefore that a person could do anything on it was a case called  
Rylands v Fletcher 
 in the 19th century. Simply put it was ruled that people who I think I can remember from law school brought filth privies or stenches on to their land were not permitted to do so if the natural course of events would see that material flow on to others’ land. 
But that principle has gone far too far. The Resource Management Act originally written by Sir Geoffrey Palmer then superseded a year later by an amendment Act that was twice as long as the original Act has been inhibiting people for far too long. For far too long the Resource Management Act has been misused by too many people in order to get the results that they want regardless of the costs to those who simply want to enjoy their property as they see fit. Those who designed the Act could not—well let us charitably hope they could not—have envisaged that it would be hijacked by those who see any kind of economic development as taking us one giant leap towards extinction. Were those people around in the 19th century they would have thought our ancestors were mass murderers. The reality is that without the hard work of our ancestors we would not have an economy or a nation of any worth whatsoever. We would have lots of trees but not much else—and I will talk about trees in a moment. If we fast-forward from the 19th century to 2009 we can see that the Act is doing its best to choke out our entrepreneurial spirit. Every council and MP has encountered people who want to abuse the Act for their own ends. 
Like I imagine all other members of this House I have been besieged by a buzzing BlackBerry in the last few days with emails from people who wish to see clause 52 be deleted from the bill. 
Phil Twyford 
: It was a chainsaw not a BlackBerry. 
DAVID GARRETT 
: They all think that there will be some kind of chainsaw massacre as Mr Twyford has just suggested. I will give members an illustration of why that is silly erroneous thinking. I live on a lifestyle block out in the country and the very first thing we did when we moved in there after we whacked down all the 4-foot high weeds was to plant trees. Now I am a right-winger. I am a supposed mad right-wing maniac but the first thing I did was to plant trees. I was not unusual in doing that. When my neighbour Nick bought his house down the road the first thing he did was to buy 400 trees and plant them around his boundary. Now he has so many trees that one can hardly see his house. A bloke has just built a house down the road. I have not met him yet; he has been there only a short time. There are great piles of rubbish from the construction outside the house but what was he doing on Sunday? Planting trees! The very first thing he has done before his wife has even hung the curtains—I am not allowed to say that; before they have hung the curtains—was to get out there and plant trees. The idea that everyone will go mad with a chainsaw is just silly like so much that comes from the party on the other side of the House. 
This amendment bill achieves a number of things. It gives the courts more power to punish those who misuse the Act’s processes and it gives people greater control over their own land without giving them carte blanche to do anything. 
I wish to talk for a short time about the removal of the blanket protection of trees. It has been very interesting that among the avalanche of emails some of them relatively pro forma in nature that I have received regarding clause 52 of the bill there are one or two little currants in the pudding that have said what a good idea it is. One that struck me in particular was from a person in the North Shore of Auckland who has a large pohutukawa tree on her land. It is well past its best; an arborist says it is diseased. Various branches fall off it from time to time and they have not killed anyone yet but they have damaged a car. The tree does not even have much greenery on it any more because it is too old. But because it is a large pohutukawa that homeowner has to go through God knows how many hoops in order to try to remove or even trim it. She is still fighting that battle now. She is delighted at the inclusion of clause 52 in the bill because she can finally remove an old diseased tree that is doing absolutely no one any good and that is not a feature or an enhancement of either her environment or ours. 
Another example I think coincidentally on the North Shore is a tree that is poisonous. I think it was mentioned again in the paper this morning. It has taken a resource consent application several hearings 13 written submissions and a number of reports to gain consent to remove a palm tree that was injuring people and a shrub that has leaves that are lethal when eaten by children. If a city council’s parks department has to jump through as many hoops as that where does that leave the individual landowner? 
Some people out there worry that everyone will as I say go wild with their chainsaws and chop down all the trees. In the eyes of what most people would refer to as the extreme green movement trees have greater rights to live on the Earth than we do. Well I am afraid I do not subscribe to that view although my house is surrounded by trees and will eventually be obscured from view by them I hope like Nick’s house down the road is. To the extreme greenie it does not matter much what sort of tree it is—perhaps it is a native tree and it looks pretty—because the rights of the property owner are trumped by others who remain unaffected if the tree blocks the owner’s light or falls on his or her house. Mr Twyford’s speech gave an example of that when he said that no matter what the circumstances were a pohutukawa should be preserved because it was a pohutukawa. The example I have just given illustrates that that should not always be the case. 
In Auckland if a tree becomes tall enough the council effectively becomes the owner or custodian of it. Property owners cannot remove such a tree unless they get permission no matter what damage the tree is causing to pipes views or physical safety. This bill thank goodness will remove that stupid law from the books. 
Here is one further example. It is the case of a lady called Alice Presley who had a 14-metre high liquidambar tree—which to the best of my knowledge is not a native—on her property. For 10 years it caused no end of problems. Falling leaves made her driveway slippery she had to spend $600 to keep branches away from power lines—there was no choice in that matter; she was forced to do so—and the tree was contaminating her water supply. Alice applied twice to the Auckland City Council for permission to remove the tree and twice she was declined. As the landowner she knew better than anyone the dangers that the tree posed to her property and health. So she cut it down. Good on her! As a result of doing that she was prosecuted and sentenced to 180 hours’ community work as though she was some thug. 
In removing the blanket protection of trees this bill gives property owners a small level of trust and a small level of responsibility which is something they should have always been allowed to have in the first place. Most people contrary to Mr Twyford’s opinion are not mad axemen or mad chainsaw wielders; they like trees. Much more still needs to be done in order to restore some sanity to the issue of private property rights and the ACT Party looks forward to the next round of reforms to the Act to deliver on that. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.