Court Simon; Brooking RachelSIMON COURT (ACT): Madam Chair I do accept the honorific of being compared to the Hon Scott Simpson. What a charming dapper and experienced member of the Environment Committee who I would have to give no small credit to for what I have learnt in my three short years as an MP.Minister clause 63 a Minister may make grants or loans to any person to assist in achieving the purpose of this Act." Now it does go on to say that money must be "appropriated by Parliament for [this] purpose." But Minister I'm concerned that a Minister of the Crown having all of the powers of a Minister for the Environment conferred by the Natural and Built Environment Act as it no doubt will become and the Spatial Planning Bill or Act as this will become will also have the power to hand out some Crown bucks some green bucks to any person to assist in achieving the purpose of this Act.Now that's a remarkable thing to include in a bill. Minister would you care to explain in just a moment because I've got three questions. What are the criteria that a taxpayer might assume are applied to this power for the Minister to make grants and loans?Hon Scott Simpson: Where do we apply—where do we apply?SIMON COURT: The Hon Scott Simpson wants to know where does he apply? I'm sure that's because he's the member for Coromandel. He has a plan to capture and rehome some Hochstetter's frogs because he might be a person assisting in achieving the purpose of the Act.Minister clause 66. "Interests in land are not taken or injuriously affected by regional spatial [strategy]". It says here "An interest in land must be treated as not being taken or injuriously affected by any provision in a regional spatial strategy unless this Act provides otherwise." Minister are we to assume that property owners' interests in land will be injuriously affected by plans made under this bill or Act when it becomes law?Will the Minister explain what that clause means? Because many many submitters at the Environment Committee were concerned at the erosion of property rights—including existing rights—through resource consents to take water to discharge to the commons from their businesses from their undertakings. Minister would you explain in addition to what is the criteria for the handing out of green bucks or planning bucks under clause 63 what is the risk of interest in land being injuriously affected by regional spatial strategies? How's that to be mitigated?Then Minister we come to clause 67 "System performance". Now Minister I remember that you were on the Randerson panel that identified some of the problems with the Resource Management Act. One of them was—when it came to consenting and land development making land available for housing and for making it easier to build infrastructure—that the performance of the Resource Management Act was poor and that this legislation and the corresponding complementary bills were intended to improve system performance.Yet rather than the efficiency of the system being up there maybe in the purpose clause it's down here at clause 67. Which doesn't give it much weight Minister compared to all the other things that people making decisions having powers giving effect to things under this legislation will have to take account of.System performance—chief executives are supposed to prepare a monitoring and evaluation report and then to report on it and local authorities have to prepare a report on it. Well goodness me. How the ambition to improve the system performance of the resource management the land management environmental management process has been eroded. Clause 67 Minister would you care to explain your answers to those three questions?Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Associate Minister for the Environment): We're starting at clause 67 "System performance". Of course it is the whole scheme of the legislation and having these spatial plans that is one of the ways to achieve the issues identified by the Randerson review there. Clause 67 though is of course helpful. Going backwards now to clause 66. This is the same as the Resource Management Act (RMA) and it's not an erosion of any property rights. As I said before the same can be said for clause 63.I do want to though turn it back to Stuart Smith's question. My apologies to Stuart Smith when I said everything was the same as the RMA. There is in fact at clause 65—it is the same as clause 814 of the Natural and Built Environment Bill and it's consistent with a High Court case. The Crown has committed to not preclude options to address freshwater rights and interests and this clause is to preserve that commitment."