Parker DavidADDRESS IN REPLYDebate resumed from 9 February 2021.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): In the Labour Party we were heartened to be elected the first majority Government under MMP. We were pleased that New Zealanders voted for stability and certainty in the election last year but we know that this comes with huge responsibility elected as we were in the middle of a global pandemic. We are humbled that New Zealanders have put their trust in us.Of course since the election COVID has got worse in just about every overseas country. Luckily our crisis partner Australia has it under control as well. But the economic outlook in every country where COVID has worsened has also deteriorated. Our focus here for those reasons remains on keeping New Zealanders safe and minimising the ongoing economic impact of the virus. Of course whilst we can shield New Zealanders from some of the internal consequences the flow-on economic consequences from the slow-down that is occurring in the world are affecting us. Nevertheless with a global pandemic raging around the world there is a sense here in New Zealand that many of us are pleased to be here rather than anywhere else in the world.I've been in politics for close to 20 years. New Zealanders are very respectful of the privacy of politicians most of the time. We're not cajoled in public places people don't generally come up to us in airports or when we're walking down the street but I've noticed that in recent months there's more of that than ever—there is! There is more of that than ever. People break through our personal bubbles if you like to say thank you. And they're expressing their thanks not just to the Government; they're actually expressing their thanks to the way in which the Government and everyone rallied around. There's an increased awareness I think in New Zealand of the inter-dependencies between us all a recognition that through COVID we only got there because we all helped each other we kept to our bubbles we washed our hands we respected the rules we agreed with the enforcement agencies where education wasn't enough and enforcement action was necessary and there's also been considerable agreement in society that the very expensive economic steps that were taken by the Government to keep people attached to their employment was the right thing to do. Far and away the biggest expense that we have faced as a Government has been the wage support provision that went to New Zealanders.The OECD statistics are very very interesting. I was at a presentation by the OECD in the later part of last year where they said that New Zealand had the first lockdown in the OECD relative to an in-country COVID death we had the strictest lockdown of any country in the OECD and we had the most widespread wage support of any country in the OECD. And it was this combination of events going hard and going early and being generous to maintain the social consensus upon which the team of 5 million relied and rallied around that have been the key ingredients.Now that said we obviously have to plan for the COVID recovery. We've brought forward a lot of infrastructure expenditure we've made sure that notwithstanding the pressures in the economy we haven't lost apprentices. We've increased the subsidies towards employment of apprentices particularly in the building trades but also beyond the building trades. As a consequence the number of people who are in apprenticeships in New Zealand is higher than it was at the start of COVID and if you compare that with the outcome after the GFC we've done better. After the GFC apprenticeship numbers went down and that's one of the reasons why house construction fell during those years that followed and one of the reasons why we're still grappling with the housing crisis that followed.Now in addition to our priorities of keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19 and accelerating our economic recovery we want to lay the foundations for a better future. We've identified some priorities there including dealing with child poverty and there'll be some statistics out soon on that that actually show the effect of some of the income support measures that we made during the last Government—those will be flowing through in statistics for the first time. We're also focusing on getting our climate change emissions down—I'm not going to cover much of that; others have already covered a lot of that—but we're also really focused on housing.Now the housing issue is really complex. We've already done a lot. We've created a new housing and urban development agency—Phil Twyford brought through that legislation including cut-through planning powers for large developments that enable that organisation to get on with the business. In addition to that we've required councils to change their Resource Management Act (RMA) plans to make room for growth up and out because some of the restrictions have been strangling developments that we need especially for affordable housing. Perhaps the most important part on that is trying to counter some of the nimbyism that prevents the intensification that will naturally occur if you don't have excessively restrictive rules. In addition to that we've passed legislation to create an infrastructure commission; the Prime Minister has put the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance in charge of pushing on with that infrastructure that we need as a prerequisite to housing.We've done a lot of other things. I've mentioned apprenticeships we've brought forward a fast-tracked consent processing we've made lots of other changes but the one that we've announced today is the overhaul of the RMA. Now this won't have short-term effect. Anyone that says we should just dump the RMA is being simplistic and most people know that. If you were to repeal the RMA without having a decent replacement you would actually slow down the massive housing build that we've got going in the country at the moment. We've got the highest rate of housing build that's happened in many many decades in both the public and private sectors and if we were to repeal the RMA there would just be endless fights in the courts as to what the rules are. So that would actually slow down development rather than aid it. So that's why we've taken all of those other steps that are discrete but each one of them is necessary. I didn't mention infrastructure financing or support for three waters infrastructure which are also important prerequisites for housing development but we've done that too. But we're now getting on with repeal of the RMA because it costs too much it takes too long and it hasn't adequately protected the environment. Since the RMA was passed water quality's gone backwards climate changing emissions have gone up and house affordability's gone in the wrong direction. It's a bit of a fail.Now there are some lessons as to what we need to do here. We need more strategic planning so we're going to have a Strategic Planning Act that sits alongside the Natural and Built Environments Act. We're going to pick up the recommendation of the Randerson review and we've got Rachel Brooking from that committee who has actually since come into Parliament so I thank her for her role in that.Chris Bishop: Don't make her ask patsy questions—it's demeaning.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well actually she asked meaningful questions. We've done more in respect of all of these reforms already than the National Government managed to achieve in nine years. They managed to increase the length of the RMA and make things worse; we're actually in the process to make things better.In respect of the core provisions of the RMA we've got to process—it is complex but we've got to get the equivalent of Part 2 right. There are some trade-offs in here and I want to get them right. I'm really interested in the views of Opposition parties on this. I don't agree with the ACT Party that we should just repeal it. I previously offered them a repeal of the RMA applying only to Epsom but I know from letters that we've recently had from the leader of the ACT Party that of course he responds to nimbyism from his own constituents and criticises some of the projects that we're putting through the fast-track process that go down Dominion Road. In any event we do want to get this Part 2 right so we're going to put that to a select committee largely in the form that's come from the Randerson review but we are making tweaks to that and we're interested in input from the National Party the Greens National/ACT the Māori Party—everyone. We've got no monopoly on good ideas here and we do need to get that balance right to try and create some enduring protection.We're going to be focusing on protecting natural environmental values biophysical values like water quality sometimes landscape but also soils and things like that. But we don't want to go too far and allow amenity values to be used to strangle development. That's the tension here. How do you allow decent rights of participation but not allow things to drag on for ever causing millions of dollars of cost in process and delay? I'm confident that we can land this in three years. It's a big piece of work and it's one of our duties that we see upon ourselves. We've been given that mandate by electors.