Sage Eugenie; Parker DavidHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. So with the bill enabling infill development across our major cities in the residential zones one of the major concerns of submitters was the impact that that would have on trees and the loss of urban trees. One of the issues with a cost-benefit analysis is that the economists often find it difficult to put a benefit and a cost and evaluate those in relation to some of the intangibles: urban amenity that's provided by trees the shade effect the reduction of the heat island effect the reduction in stormwater flows that urban trees assist with just what they contribute to our cities in terms of biodiversity and as habitat.Now the bill in Part 1 introduces an ability for local authorities to make rules about financial contributions. The supplementary order paper (SOP) in my name SOP 112 suggests that we make a change to the Resource Management Act (RMA) to enable district rules to provide for urban tree protection through the intensification planning instrument made through the intensification streamlined planning process. Because as the Minister will know it was the National Party who removed the ability of councils to have general rules which controlled the felling of trees in our cities and required instead a very detailed exercise of councils doing a site-by-site analysis effectively and scheduling individual trees with all the details of their street address and a legal description if there was to be a provision applying which required a resource consent for the felling of the tree. So the medium density residential standards with their reduced front yards and side yards is likely to see a continuation of what has been happening in Auckland in Christchurch in Wellington with the loss of significant trees. So could the Minister respond to SOP 112 and the ability that it suggests would require councils to use the intensification planning instrument to look at how you could better protect urban trees.There were submissions also from planners who highlighted the ability of councils to use digital tools much more. We see that as including satellite imagery to actually identify trees that merit protection. The SOP requires that any new objectives and rules that were included in plans would have to be consistent with the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 in particular objective eight which is around greenhouse gas emissions and climate change and just the accessibility of communities to natural spaces. So this SOP is seeking to integrate urban tree protection with the bill's framework around accelerating the supply of housing but ensuring that at the same time as we are accelerating housing provision we are also ensuring that our urban trees are protected.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you. Can I acknowledge the heartfelt way in which the member advocates for the protection of trees in the Auckland area. Can I also agree that the current provisions in the RMA are not entirely logical. The amendment that was made by the last National Government to take away from councils the discretion or the breadth of discretion as to how they protect trees in some ways is inconsistent with the overall scheme of the Act.That said I also have sympathy for the dilemma that the National Party then had because Auckland were rather inefficient in the way that they tried to protect trees. Instead of conducting analysis of which trees should be preserved they had very general rules that applied to the cutting down of trees and also the pruning of trees. The effect of that was that a substantial proportion of total resource consent applications in Auckland actually in the end were in respect of people getting a consent to cut down or to prune a tree and it was excessive. I think it was so excessive that it was largely ignored in respect of the pruning rules. It also brought the overall RMA into disrepute because people thought the RMA was silly if it had an effect in that way and therefore the National Party responded in that way.Now we do have the opportunity in the revamp of the RMA through the Natural and Built Environments Bill to actually have another look at that and see if there is a middle way through there that can actually achieve a better outcome. But we propose that to be the vehicle not this and we don't think that this should be the vehicle for that wider piece of work.In respect of recommendations that the Environment Committee has none the less made that improve the ability to protect trees there are some good recommendations that came from the select committee. I'll mention two of them: maximising rear yards by allowing the building to come closer to the street—that will protect more trees in backyards that are larger trees than would otherwise have been able to be protected—and the other is the enabling of a group of houses in a development to group their open spaces and use it collectively. I think that that will both enable the protection of trees but it'll also encourage the growing of larger trees because the agglomeration of those outdoor areas in respect of a development obviously makes for a bigger space that is more suited to more larger trees.