Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): The member is indeed well past his time.SPEAKER: Order! The member knows he doesn't comment on my rulings.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Well there are some of us in this Chamber who think that member taking his seat is well past his time. It was interesting to get the history lesson and the mixture of swings and roundabouts and all that sort of stuff. I guess it came close to being a valedictory speech but probably we'll wait for that sometime next week.It's been a bit of a momentous day today. I want to spend a little bit of time in this general debate talking about the Resource Management Act (RMA) and five minutes probably isn't nearly enough to do it. But today we had finally after months and months of a document or report sitting on the Minister for the Environment's desk the publication of the report of the Resource Management Review Panel headed and chaired by retired Court of Appeal judge Tony Randerson QC. It is one of the myriad of working groups that this Government has had. I have to say though that this was actually on the face of it quite a good working group because they've produced a very extensive report. It runs to over 500 pages—not quite as long as the Resource Management Act itself but getting close to it. I haven't had an opportunity since the document was released just a couple of hours ago to read the full 520-odd pages. But what I have been able to glean from it is finally that there is one of the Government working groups that agrees with the National Party position that the Resource Management Act's time has come and gone—it's time has come and gone. It was first passed I think in 1991 after years of consultation. The great plan was that it would be a world leader. By integrating our resource management planning legislation in amongst our environmental protection legislation we were going to be world leaders. And the plan at the time from Geoffrey Palmer and others was that the world would follow us and sadly they didn't. In the years that have ensued since the first enactment of the Resource Management Act nearly 30 years ago it has been amended something like 80 times there have been 19 amendment bills passed in this house and the document that started out as being 300 pages and kind of understandable and usable now runs to something in excess of 800 pages. It's a document that is largely the subject of scorn derision and ridicule in our country—pretty much everybody has a RMA nightmare story to tell. People don't have to go very far to hear horrendous stories about time delays cost delays expense frustration endless appeals endless and sometimes very insincere consultation processes and all at the same time not achieving at all what was originally set out and hoped for in the original Resource Management Act—and that was that the Act should be doing something to maintain enhance and protect our natural environment our natural resources whilst at the same time providing a platform for planning development and development of our economy and our natural desire to build construct and grow businesses and so forth.So the Randerson report has come out today and made what some were considering was a pretty radical suggestion when Judith Collins raised it again after having first done so in our very good RMA building reform document which was released last year when we first started talking about it being time to completely get rid of it and start again. When Judith Collins announced just a week or two ago our very good $31 billion infrastructure project and confirmed that a roadblock stopping that kind of development was the existing RMA she said No it's not going to be tinkered with and reformed any more; it's going to be repealed." People thought that that was a bit radical but actually here we have now the very good report of Tony Randerson QC and what has he suggested? Exactly the National Party policy which is to repeal get rid of start again and replace the existing RMA with two separate pieces of legislation. That's exactly what Judith Collins was talking about; it's exactly the policy that the new National-led Government will enact upon election after 19 September."