Jones Shane: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Jones Shane: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6234] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena tatou katoa. Before touching on the broader themes and broader principles underlying this endeavour to reform the Resource Management Act I will reiterate three important things in those areas where our reservations remain and that we have endeavoured to amplify this evening. Firstly notification is about participation and participation is the cornerstone of social democracy. We in this country have a system of devolution whereby resource management decisions take place and are countenanced by democratically elected representatives at local and regional levels of government. That is why Labour was particularly insistent in endeavouring to secure support from the Minister and his team in order to change that particular provision. 
Secondly we feel very strongly that the Crown’s role in the coastal environment for stewardship purposes Treaty of Waitangi purposes and public weal purposes ought not to be undermined. We fear that that has been the case in that particular area. We think it is crucial because of the issues we are still dealing with in relation to takutai moana. We also think that it is important that New Zealanders know that the coastal environment is in the custody of the Crown so that a proxy is present for the owners—that is the public—and that it is admitted that there is a process to establish what proportion of the original customary title pertaining to the seabed and foreshore might still exist. It is important that in the third reading we record our thoughts in that regard. 
The next important area is the trees. Hone Harawira and I went to the same boarding school. I think it was when I was doing School C we were taught—or made to learn—a poem by Hone Tuwhare from Ngapuhi an acclaimed resident of the South Island. His poem was called “The Tree”. I remember a little bit of it: 
Tree let your arms fall: 
raise them not sharply in supplication  
to the bright enhaloed cloud.  
Let your arms lack toughness and 
resilience for this is no mere axe  
to blunt nor fire to smother.  
What we have to say about the trees is contained in our matua Tuwhare’s poem. His ending line was: “… your end at last is written.” The effect of this action may represent a small saving but it will empower in an unfettered way people who will do damage to the tree landscape of Tamaki-makau-rau. But it is up to the Auckland MPs on both sides of the House to win that debate in relation to the feelings of the good citizens of Tamaki-makau-rau. 
We support the enactment of this bill. This bill endeavours to although not as handsomely as the Minister would have us believe reduce the number of resource management statutory consents that are needed by New Zealanders—either individuals families or firms—when they go about their lawful business. We should be identifying those areas of activity that ought not require bureaucracy or intervention by statutory decision makers. That is the sensible approach to take. The political debate has always been about the balance and one of the other reasons why we support this bill is that we see that there is a strong place for an Environmental Protection Agency. 
We remain however unconvinced as to how effective the Environmental Protection Agency will be in the absence of knowing what it is actually going to do in terms of its full functions. There are critical infrastructure projects in our country that cannot be left to languish at subnational levels of Government. We should harness the full power and authority of central government well armed and informed by an Environmental Protection Agency to make the hard large decisions that will have significant impacts of a productivity nature on the pace at which we develop or maintain the country’s capital assets—its infrastructure. So there is a great deal of work to take place. From the Minister’s comments I construed that he would give us further briefings in his phase two area. 
The other area that gave us confidence to support the passage of the bill was that the Local Government and Environment Committee gave effect to a number of important changes and I have to give credit to Dr Nick Smith. Obviously those changes would not have taken place had he been stubborn or indifferent to the wisdom behind them. However he ought to talk to Rodney Hide about the usefulness of being flexible. 
An area where we were pleased to see the change lay in appeal rights. Environmental policy environmental law and environmental disputes cause divisiveness: passions rise and run. People must have the ability to have their day in court and their day on an environmental matter is not just what they think; it is what they feel. So much about the environment cannot be captured monetised or quantified. That is why the change that the committee recommended which has been included in the bill enables the Environment Court to receive applications to debate the utility of resource allocation decisions not just on black-letter law but on the actual merit of the decision. I would not underestimate the importance of that change of thinking. I doubt whether my colleagues would have agreed to my supporting this bill in the select committee if that change had not been made. 
The other thing that needs to be pointed out is that this bill does not substantially unravel the principal purpose of the Resource Management Act. It actually is an attempt to reduce administrative dead weight. It is an attempt to cause decisions to be carried out more efficiently and that is part of the balance that we felt on this side of the House. It is cumbersome legislation if the decisions that are made cause people to become so disenfranchised or alienated that they use every technique in the book to circumvent the provisions in the legislation. 
Our friends in the Green Party made some important points and they are entitled to make them; I am sure there is a constituency for their perspective—that is that this legislation does weaken the Resource Management Act’s central tenets. That is not our view. What we think it does is improve the pace and the quality of decision making and make bureaucrats responsible for the performance of their organisations when they are taking the public’s money and using the public’s time to allocate resources or to make those statutory resource management decisions. That level of accountability is absolutely essential. In fact I think it is one of the more sensible innovations and hopefully it will see a reversal in those rather woeful statistics that Dr Nick Smith referred to earlier this evening. 
One final reason why I think this bill is deserving of our support overall lies in the fact that people will be able to take their issues directly to the Environment Court. They can make an application acknowledging that the Environment Court is where things will end up anyway. That is a sensible contribution on how we can get 4.5 million people to use limited resources efficiently and get decisions that people will be proud to have participated in and that will not represent a squandering of precious resources at a time when we want to both protect the environment and grow the economy. For those reasons we support the passage of the bill. Kia ora.