Twyford PhilPHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to make some comments about clause 105 but if you will allow me I want to provide some context to this discussion. The first thing for people who have not paid a lot of attention to all of the public debates around the Resource Management Act (RMA) is that it is important to note that the RMA provides a framework for all of the planning consenting and land-use decisions that happen in our country. The actual decisions are made by councils. They are made by the elected local representatives in those communities. But the drafters of the RMA always assumed that there would need to be a balance between local decision-making local knowledge and local ownership of those decisions and national direction and guidance from central government about matters that are in the national interest and things where there is a need to have consistency and order across the country and not just letting a thousand flowers bloom.The Minister in the chair Nick Smith and his very very good friend the Prime Minister Bill English have spent the last 10 years blaming the RMA and blaming councils for expensive housing. It has been their main alibi their go-to alibi for having a failed housing policy over the last 8 years—blaming the councils and blaming the RMA. But the real culprit here—and we differ with some of the other parties in this House because we believe that having an overly restrictive planning system is one of the root causes if not the primary root cause of the extraordinary housing problems that have beset this country. But we need to be really clear that it is the failure to provide national direction on questions of land use and planning. That is at the heart of the problem we have got—Meka Whaitiri: In housing.PHIL TWYFORD: —in housing—and Nick Smith has been blaming the RMA and blaming councils for 8 years but has done precious little to address that problem. He finally after 7 years in Government brought out a national policy statement which was a wet bus ticket. It simply put in place a bureaucratic mechanism that directed councils to release little bits of land into the supply—land that could be used for housing development every time after measuring the projected demand. It was an incredibly bureaucratic mechanism which would do nothing to address the fundamental cause of a speculative urban land market caused by highly restrictive planning practices.So that is the problem we have got and that is the necessary context for a consideration of the housing-related aspects of this bill particularly in clause 105. A failure by this Government to provide national direction to councils about the parameters and the limits and what should be in their plans and their consenting decisions—a failure by this National Government to do that. And then an unfolding Nick-tastrophe"—and I have to credit the member Fletcher Tabuteau from New Zealand First for coining that phrase because that is what it is. It is a "Nick-tastrophe".The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no.PHIL TWYFORD: And then what we see is that the Minister brings—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No I just ask you to keep it seemly thank you.PHIL TWYFORD: And then the Minister brings this bill to the House which does everything but address the core problems caused by a failed and overly restrictive planning system that has spawned the worst most unaffordable house prices in the world according to the magazine The Economist. So we are going to go into a lot of detail about the clauses in this bill but actually it is really important to note that what this bill does not do—and we have some Supplementary Order Papers on the Table that do address the core problems—is put the conditions in place to create competitive urban land markets. That is the core problem. Particularly in our biggest city—in Auckland—we do not have competitive urban land markets and all that this bill and the Minister's national policy statement on urban development do is put layer over layer after layer of tinkering.I want to talk about clause 105 because that is a classic example in this bill from Nick Smith. Instead of actually dealing with the core problems of the lack of national direction and the need to deliver competitive urban land markets by freeing up the planning rules that stop cities growing up and growing out what this bill does is it actually gives the Minister arbitrary and excessive regulation-making powers. I have already made the point that using the existing instruments in the RMA like a national policy statement (NPS) and like national environmental standards but in this case particularly a good well-crafted NPS with clear directive language could actually have achieved years ago—years ago—what is so desperately needed. What this bill does is it gives the Minister a raft of other arbitrary powers that I think have other unintended consequences. We can see from the departmental report and from what happened at the Local Government and Environment Committee a deluge of criticism from very credible and informed stakeholders who had some pretty savage things to say about the provisions in clause 105.What does clause 105 do? It gives the Minister regulation-making power to permit particular land-use activities to prohibit some planning provisions and to override other planning provisions that restrict land use in a way that is not reasonably required to achieve the purpose of the RMA—nothing that could not be achieved through a national policy statement. So let us see what stakeholders said at the select committee. First they pointed out that other national direction tools exist. These excessive and arbitrary powers that the Minister is effectively handing to himself to override local plans and local decisions are not needed because the drafters of the RMA put those tools those instruments—a national policy statement and national environmental standards—into the RMA. They are much more elegant they are much more constrained by due process and they do not represent what clause 105 embodies and that is a huge transfer of arbitrary and unchecked regulation-making powers into the hands of the Minister. Fonterra said to the committee that there is no demonstrable need for this additional power to reside with the Minister. The New Zealand Planning Institute said that there are other mechanisms to address these concerns.Secondly a number of submitters including the New Zealand Law Society described the provisions the regulation-making powers in this clause as a "Henry VIII" clause. It would empower the Minister to make regulations that would effectively override the statutory powers of local councils to control land use through the imposition of planning provisions. The Law Society pointed out that these kinds of decisions should be made by the Parliament not by the executive and that I think is a very important principle.There are so many other criticisms relating to this such as the undermining of local decision-making. Federated Farmers pointed out that these powers regarding matters that are otherwise delegated to be managed at local governance level are excessively heavy-handed. People said that these powers would create additional costs and complexities. The New Zealand Law Society said that costly analysis would be required to interpret the inconsistencies between the plans and any regulations made under the new section that is imposed under clause 105 section 360D.I think this provision really speaks to the fundamental flaw in this Minister's approach to RMA reform. In 8 years in Government he has not used the very tools that were put in place in the RMA to allow central government to provide national guidance on these issues. He is using this bill to transfer huge regulation-making powers that are unjustified that will make the bill more costly more expensive more complicated and more of a burden to the people who rely on it."