Brooking RachelHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Well on the line of thought from the previous speaker the Hon Scott Simpson can I say I'm very pleased to be standing here as the member for Dunedin a new role for me. I'm very pleased to have that. And of course Dunedin did have the best summer in the country last year; I'm hoping that it will have it again. It's another fine place to come and visit. But of course Dunedin is most lively when the students are in town because both the university and the polytechnic are so important for Dunedin. So one of the things I'll be working on in this term with my colleague Dr Deborah Russell is the funding of that tertiary sector.Also of course if you were driving through Dunedin any time recently you will have seen both the out-patients and the in-patients buildings of the new hospital rising out of the ground. They are giant giant structures and are so important for this city and the region. Again that is something that I will be working on: making sure that that build continues and does not in any way become a public-private partnership.Now of course like many places Dunedin has a number of social issues but it is a very creative and wonderful city. So I'm very pleased to be the representative for it and to work with people on all those local issues.But here really talking in the Address in Reply about the Speech from the Throne I can tell you that I am worried—very very worried.Hon Chris Bishop: Oh cheer up.Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I say that as the spokesperson for the environment—and I'll be talking to that Minister soon no doubt about his drastic and unnecessary and backwards legislation.But in the Speech from the Throne and statements that we've had from various Ministers—we've heard statements about blind frogs and the need for more mining from Ministers—we got awarded the Fossil of the Day" on the first day at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP)—on the first day—Hon Chris Bishop: You guys got it too!Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —and it was for a brand-new policy. It was suggested in the Hon Melissa Lee's speech that it was because of something that the previous Government had done but it was very specific to this Government: reversing the oil and gas ban. It was very specific for that and that is not something that I am proud of. Nor am I happy about last week—that we were sitting in urgency to do three stages of a bill on a clean car discount that is set by regulations. Could have been changed by those regulations but no: we spent all of last week debating that.Of course what a terrible thing that is. We have signed up to emissions reductions. We have emissions reductions plans and there was one thing that was working: the Clean Car Discount. Now as of 31 December it's scrapped. We heard today the Minister of Transport could not answer the questions put to him about how we are actually going to reduce emissions. We've already decided the next Budget; what is the emissions reduction plan going to include if you just scrap everything to do with active transport and public transport and clean car discounts? It's very disappointing.Then of course we hear today in question time and also in the Speech from the Throne that the national policy statement on fresh water—"Oh we don't want water to be swimmable any more." That's all I can take from the answers that we got today "We have no aim for water to be swimmable; we just want people to use that water as much as they want." Now it'll be interesting to see what changes are made but they were very disappointing answers from the Minister today.Then we're going to have today legislation up to repeal both the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act. This is very interesting because both sides of this House have been talking about for many years how the RMA—the Resource Management Act—has been failing and it's been failing on both the big fronts: and that is the environmental outcomes they have degraded; but also the efficiency of the system that has got worse as well. The way the RMA has worked is that everything really comes down to fights over resource consents and that is inefficient.So we know that in any planning laws there's always going to be some trade-offs in that planning space. People are going to have different points of view about whether a landscape should be protected or if we should have wind turbines on that landscape. There's always going to be difficulties with planning legislation but we do need it. What we had done with the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act was much better long-term planning for our infrastructure. So to be clear in the 30-year time period we could say "Right what areas are going to grow or might grow where is it suitable where are we going to need to move away from because of climate adaptation? OK let's get those people who are involved with that infrastructure—so central government as well as the local governments—to plan for growth in areas that we don't want to be growing into." That was the Spatial Planning Act.Then we had the Natural and Built Environments Act and one of the main parts of this was to set environmental bottom lines very clearly. Yes to have some more national direction as well—that was something that was always anticipated for the RMA but didn't come for many many years. But also—and this is a critical point—to move all the GDP in the system that happens at the consents phase to move that up the chain; to move it into the regional plans or into that national direction so that when someone is coming to work out whether or not they might want to undertake an activity or a project they can see that clear direction that this is an area that say might be affected by climate change. So no don't build new houses in that area; that might be prohibited. But in these other areas where the infrastructure is already there or it is soon to be upgraded then yes—yes you can do that. You can do that maybe within some constraints like what in the RMA is called a restricted discretionary activity or controlled activity where there's listed items that the decision makers can make conditions around on your consent and have some controls. But otherwise yes you can do that. Much more certainty for businesses much more certainty for councils and to enable those councils within a region to work with each other. In my career as a resource management lawyer a lot of my time was spent working for one council having to appeal another council's decision. That was the legitimate way that those councils could talk to each other through appeal documents. So if you take out all those steps and all those different plans and have the regions making one document for the entire region—or the councils; not taking out the district councils and making the regional councils in charge—having all those councils work together then that is a lot more efficient.I keep hearing from the other side that they are interested in efficiency they are interested in business they are interested in cutting red tape. Yet all this is doing is going back to the system that we know does not work. It makes no sense.In addition the changes that we made to the Natural and Built Environments Act—and I say "we"; you were on the select committee—included of course being stronger on climate change both enabling more mitigation so ways that we can reduce emissions and also being clearer about not building in hazard zones where we know that there's going to be climate adaptation problems.So it's very disappointing that these bills will be repealed today. Hopefully they won't be repealed. Hopefully the Minister opposite will see the light and work with parties to improve that legislation—all legislation can always be improved—and to amend it in a way that gives comfort to some of the National Party's concerns. Those concerns that I heard in the debates on the bill were around the use of new phrases leading to more litigation; hearing some submissions on renewable electricity which were then addressed in the bill; and that more things were going to be centralised. These are all things that could lead to amendment rather than repeal.I am hopeful though on one area and that is in waste. The previous Government did some very good work on waste getting ready for some new legislation and I am hopeful that the new Government will take up the work in terms of waste minimisation. Thank you Madam Speaker."