Auchinvole Chris: Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Auchinvole Chris: Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 17 June 2009. Volume:655;Page:4386. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Resource Management (Climate Protection) Amendment Bill. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Good one because that’s what we’re on. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Indeed! But I believe the legislation is fundamentally flawed in its approach. Before I begin the substantive part of my speech let me place on record that I consider climate change to be a huge consideration both globally and nationally that we have to take account of. 
I believe that human activities can have a negative effect on climate change but I am not a scientist. The extent of my scientific knowledge most recently I guess comes from having read Bill Bryson’s  
A Short History of Nearly Everything 
 but the scientists I met at GNS Science told me that reading that book is a very very good start. I am pleased to say that I have read it twice; I found it very very interesting. It tells us that the climate has been warming since the 14th century which is when we had the last mini - ice age so of course global warming is a consideration and a reality. 
Human activities during the industrial revolution will have caused a steep increase in the emissions of greenhouse gases which certainly appears to be having a detrimental effect on the planet. All countries I feel must make an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and this is something that we in the National Party take very seriously. That is why the new Government has set up a special select committee to review climate change policy. This was in part a response to the record of the Labour Government which oversaw emissions rising at a rate of—and this is quite a figure—over 1 million tonnes per year. 
Climate change policy is something that we as a Government need to put a lot of work into getting right. This bill will not do that. It is not the way to go. First of all the very nature of the bill runs contrary to what we are trying to achieve with the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill which I have been privileged to spend quite a bit of time being involved with as it goes through its processes. The bill we have before us has the potential to build extra layers of bureaucracy within our regional councils. At the very least it will give extra work to those regional councils. Very recently we have seen how well or otherwise they are performing against expectations and it does not make very good reading. So the consequence of giving the councils extra work would be an increase in the unnecessary delays and costs which the other bill the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill is doing its very best to reduce. 
What this bill would do in general is make applications for resource consents more onerous more time consuming more costly and significantly more restrictive. Were this legislation to produce better decision-making there may be a valid argument that it would be worth it. However I would suggest that it will do nothing of the sort. Instead it will make decision making more problematic and more time consuming and it will produce massive inconsistencies throughout the regional councils of the country. We already have the most devolved system of environmental planning in the world. That is why we are having to pull together the activities under the Resource Management Act to try to introduce some efficiencies and consistencies. I am sure that as well-intentioned as this legislation may be the Green Party would not seriously want to introduce a bill whose effect would be to allow an ad hoc approach by regional councils to resource consents. That would have a very serious consequence to the economy. 
If this bill were passed into law it would have some very serious and unfortunate consequences—some of them unintended I am sure. Let me quote from the explanatory note of the bill: “Clause 5 repeals Section 70A of the Resource Management Act 1991 in order to allow regional councils”—here is the bit—“to control discharges to air of greenhouse gases on the basis of their effects on climate change.” If these decisions were left to the discretion of the regional councils and their ideas on the extent to which differing amounts of greenhouse gases have an effect on climate change—and that would put them in a very very hard decision-making basket—then we would see different regional councils making different decisions and we would have inconsistency. It would be a mishmash. It would be incoherent a reprehensible muddle and a regurgitated dog’s breakfast of outcomes. It would not be pretty. 
To ensure that different councils have the expertise to make the judgments—which by the very nature of this legislation would be inconsistent throughout New Zealand—more work and more effort is required. The consequences of this bill would be one giant mess—albeit well-intentioned. The issue of climate change surely requires a national rather than a regional approach. National approaches by definition provide consistency throughout New Zealand and avoid the sort of scenario whereby a regional council in acting on its discretion will not be prevented from developing its own resources and setting low standards all for the sake of improving its own economic standing. That is one of the problems that can occur and my good friend and colleague Eric Roy mentioned it during the first reading debate. 
Climate change must be dealt with on a national basis. The Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill sets up an environmental protection authority that allows a framework for a nationwide approach that will enable national consistency and that is the kind of approach that is called for here. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: That’s right. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I am glad that a Minister sitting with me agrees with that. 
The very essence of what the proponents of this bill want to do is made clear in clause 4 the purpose clause. I quote it in its entirety: “The purpose of this Act is to ensure regional councils are able to take into account the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change including when—(a) considering applications for air discharge consents: (b) developing rules in regional plans.” The second part of that clause paragraph (b) highlights my argument—and indeed the theme of my speech—about the fundamentally flawed nature of the bill and that is that the bill would enable regional plans to develop rules surrounding climate change issues. 
If this was not such a serious issue one could take it quite light-heartedly because we are talking about the same regional plans that five out of 85 local authorities still did not have in place in October 2008 and the same regional plans that have taken on average an astonishing 8.2 years to devise. I spoke to about 60 planners from councils just last week and they acknowledged that there are real problems associated with plan development not least of which is the cost. I cannot imagine how much longer this bill would add to the average number of years for a regional council to devise a plan but the mind boggles. This would be far beyond the concept in which regional councils would make decisions that take climate change into account based on a national framework which would be far better. 
This bill would let the councils make the rules themselves. Different people in different regions would be making different rules if this bill progressed. We would need to employ more people to devise the rules and to ensure the required limits on discharges for greenhouse gases. Regional councils do not yet have the required scientific and economic expertise to deal with these issues. Some may but how can we be sure they all do? I suggest that most regional councils do not have the immediate capability to deal with these scientific aspects. Experts would undoubtedly be required for each regional council if they were all to achieve a modicum of good decision-making. Again that is a very good reason to support a national approach rather than rely on the varying expertise of regional councils. And when are different so-called experts ever on the same page? 
The essence of my feeling is that the absence of a national environmental standard will result in markedly inconsistent decisions being made. This bill would make a lot more sense if there were a national environmental standard to adhere to but even then it would still be beset by many of the problems I have mentioned thus far. The criticisms of this bill could be endless. We should not allow this bill to become law as it is a poorer piece of legislation than it is an improving one. Instead of improving streamlining and speeding up applications for resources consents it will conversely make it more complicated and cumbersome for no clear gain. 
I do not have an ideological opinion that opposes anything that might increase a time delay for a resource consent. But it is not something that would ever be ideal particularly in the current economic climate in which job creation and protection is more vital than ever—even though that is ignored by people on the other side of the House. If I could be convinced by a good argument that this measure is necessary I could be persuaded but this bill does not even begin to persuade me.