Ardern Shane: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Ardern Shane: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5580] 
SHANE ARDERN (NZ National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 Here we are again with an 18-part bill that has been condensed to two parts and we are now debating Part 2. Never before in the history of this Parliament has there been such an abuse of the parliamentary process as we are experiencing in this Chamber today. This bill has had 18 parts brought down to two parts. There were 400 submissions on the Resource Management Amendment Bill and 80 hours of work in the Local Government and Environment Committee on it including visits to seven cities throughout New Zealand where many people submitted their views. Yet all those 400 submissions have been totally ignored. There is not one single acknowledgement that the concerns brought forward by those people during that process are represented in this part. 
In fact none of the recommendations of the Government’s own compliance cost committee which came back and recommended substantial changes be made to Part 2—I note there is a section in this part that refers to that—has been upheld. At this point in time it would be very useful if the Minister in the chair the Hon Marian Hobbs could take a call and explain to the people out there in radioland and to others who are— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No. The member must not refer to radio listeners according to Speaker’s ruling 39/1. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: OK; I hear what the Chairman is saying. I would like the Minister to take a call and explain to those nearby—and not so nearby—who are taking a close interest in this legislation why the concerns of the committee that this Government put in place in the forty-sixth Parliament have not been upheld by that same Government in this forty-seventh Parliament and are not reflected in this legislation. That is an issue to which hundreds maybe thousands of people would like to know the answer. Certainly there are millions of dollars tied up in knowing the answer to that question. So the Minister could take a call and help us with that. 
The Minister could also help us by telling us why in the amendments earlier we have seen placed in this legislation cost overruns such as I have not seen in legislation before. As I said in an earlier speech the title of this bill—and certainly its connection to Part 2—should have reflected the bill’s emphasis: if something moves we should tax it and regulate it if it keeps moving we should tax it and regulate it a bit more and if it stops moving we should subsidise it and regulate it in order to get it moving again. Perhaps the Minister could take a call and tell us why that suggestion was rejected in earlier debates as well. Clearly a lot of people have an interest in this legislation and they would want to know why that suggestion was rejected out of hand. 
Maybe the Minister could take a call and tell us why contestable consents and the process concerning those were changed in the way that they have been and explain why they are no longer in the form they had in the original bill that the select committee looked at. Maybe the Minister could take a call and tell us why the clarification of the roles of district and regional councils has been overlooked in the way that it has and why the ambiguity that exists in terms of development on the question of who is in charge of what between regional and district councils has not been rectified. A large number of the 400 submitters to the select committee said that that was an increasing concern and there was a major cost involved in that. Certainly there have been huge delays in development when district and regional councils had different standards or rules between themselves when it came to developments within their areas. Why was that issue not cleared up when there was an opportunity like no other I would suggest to the Minister to rectify that? 
Why has the Minister not taken into account some of the concerns raised by a particularly large business in the country with regard to vexatious objectors involving themselves in the process? Why was that not attended to in this amendment when the Minister had an opportunity to fix up some of the concerns about the Act with regard to that? Certainly there are many examples of where that has happened under the Act thus far. Once again I remind the Committee of the example of highway 3 in north Taranaki where the major route out of Taranaki was threatened by a landslide. For 6 months that situation was allowed to continue.