Street Maryan: Resource Management Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Resource Management Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 25 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11230. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour):I rise to speak to the Resource Management Reform Bill which Labour will be opposing. This is the first of the onslaughts on the Resource Management Act that we are seeing from the National Government. It is not going to be the last one. We have had items foreshadowed by the Minister for the Environment that are raising concerns up and down the country about the dilution of environmental protections. However that may well be a speech for another day.I just want to set this bill in the context of a range of plans that the Government appears to have to as it sees it balance the environment against development agendas. To me and to the Labour Party that is a wrong-footed way of approaching environmental protections. The Resource Management Act is an environmental protection Act; it is not a development Act or an economic development Act. And it is primarily for the purpose of laying down in fact some world-leading standards in environmental protections which should not be conceded easily if at all.We are in favour of improving the processes around the Resource Management Act. The Labour Party believes that there may well be room for improvement in the processes of the Resource Management Act and we are not averse to making those more efficient and achieving some expediency around how the legislation is implemented. But we are opposed to any undermining of environmental protections or of the right of communities to be engaged in the consent process and that is where we begin to differ from the National Government.I want to talk about three things in particular. I want to talk about trees and the protection of trees particularly in Auckland. I want to thank the Minister for some of the changes that she has made in respect of tree protection but I do have some serious reservations about it even as it stands amended. I want to talk about the cost-benefit analysis clause clause 69 which deserves closer scrutiny. And I want to talk at some length about the transitional regulations which have caused a great deal of concern as they stand in Part 2 clause 124 of the bill as it is. I want to address all of these things both in general and in particular. Obviously I will have more opportunity at the Committee stage to pick through the detail of some of my objections but I do want to sit all of these things together because they form the fundamental opposition that we have to this bill as it currently stands. So tree protection cost-benefit analysis—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Hon MARYAN STREET: Just before the dinner break I had outlined the things that I was going to cover including trees the idea of a cost-benefit analysis and the transitional regulations that appear in this legislation.When this legislation first came to the Local Government and Environment Committee it had very onerous provisions around the identification of the trees that were going to be allowed to be protected by local authorities. Instead of allowing local authorities to say: “Trees in this area are protected.” or “That line of trees over there is to be protected.” or in the case of Auckland City “The coastal pohutukawas are all to be protected.” in the legislation the Minister originally wanted to name and to give a birth certificate and a christening ceremony for every tree that was to be protected. So the council in the original bill would have to go out measure the girth and everything else identify a tree by a number or a name or who knows what and say: “This is a protected tree; this ‘Jimmy Tree’ over here at this address is to be protected.” We obviously found that to be slightly ridiculous.I did refer earlier to the fact that the Minister had made some changes in this respect by allowing patches of bush to be identified and lines of trees to be identified but still and all they all have to be identified by property—by street address or title. That becomes quite problematic. So right in the middle of this discussion the heart of this is individual property rights versus the community environment. Whether it is the intrinsic worth of trees in an environment or as we heard from some of the submitters on this particular area the fact that a tree next door in Titirangi or up the bank behind you in a steep area in Titirangi in West Auckland might affect one’s own property—by virtue of the fact that it retains water it stops subsidence and all of those things that trees are known for—could not be taken into account in a collective way in a community-based way in the legislation.There were 99 submissions on this bit about trees. Of the 99 submissions 67 of them were opposed and 11 of them were opposed in part. So of the 99 submissions relating to trees 17.2 percent were in support and 78.8 percent were in opposition and still the Government proceeds to make what are quite difficult provisions for councils should they wish to protect areas that have trees and are wooded.The particular example I come back to again because it relates especially to a couple of members on the select committee who live in the area are those coastal pohutukawas as one heads north across the harbour bridge. The coastal pohutukawas ought to be able to be protected as a group without having to be identified section by section address by address unit title by unit title. There will be a lot more to say about this in the Committee stage.The second thing I wanted to touch on which I thought was one of the more ridiculous provisions was the one that the National Party makes a lot of song and dance about and that is the cost-benefit analysis—the cost-benefit analysis that has to go into applications. So I asked one of the submitters just how they worked out the cost-benefit analysis of a swimming hole in a favourite river. He said: “Well what we would do is have a look at it in the height of the summer and work out how many children use the swimming hole and then we would multiply that by the amount that it costs to take them to the local swimming pool and we would get some kind of cost-benefit analysis.” I am sorry but the man misses the point—the man misses the point. There is intrinsic value not just monetised value attached to the environment.My concern and Labour’s concern with this legislation is that the Government is preparing the ground in this assault on the Resource Management Act for even worse assaults on the Resource Management Act to come in the next onslaught. So this is preparing the ground by taking away some of the fundamental principles underpinning environmental protections and allowing development to rule.The last point I wanted to make was about transitional regulations. The Regulations Review Committee wrote to the select committee. The select committee considered those concerns in detail and with some seriousness—which I do appreciate—from the chair and the committee. But still and all there remain transitional regulations in clause 124—which I will talk about again at length in the Committee stage—that give the Minister too much power to alter the primary legislation by subsequent regulation and that is not how we do things. Thank you.