Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Can I begin by thanking the Environment Committee for the work they did on the exposure draft of what is essentially the equivalent of Part 2 of the Resource Management Act (RMA) which is the heart of the more general provisions as opposed to the processing provisions really.I might make just some introductory remarks as to how much has been done in civil society before we embarked upon this project. It's roughly 30 years since the RMA was passed and there is a societal concern that it hasn't worked properly. It has certainly cost too much for people to work through. It hasn't protected the environment adequately and that's so obvious in respect of climate-changing emissions water quality and soil loss. In addition to that it hasn't adequately seen to the development outcomes that we need as a country including the housing space where there is agreement at least on this side of the House that constrained land markets have been one of the reasons why house prices have gone so high in New Zealand because we haven't been making enough land available for building opportunities. So it costs too much it hasn't protected the environment and it hasn't enabled housing. It's a three-way fail. So we've been willing to take this on and try to improve things. The Productivity Commission gave us some learnings so did some civil society reports from Local Government New Zealand the Property Council Infrastructure New Zealand the Environmental Defence Society and lots of others. We then had an inquiry by a panel led by the Hon Tony Randerson. The panel considered the idea as to whether we should have a separate development Act compared with a separate environmental protection Act and concluded that that would not solve the complexities that it wouldn't make things easier and that it would probably make for worse outcomes because these things do need to be integrated and are not irreconcilable. The Randerson panel presented a template which we're largely implementing. We thought it's such a big piece of work that we needed to chunk down the consideration of it by select committee and civil society by putting the equivalent of Part 2 to the committee first which we've done and we've had the report which we're taking very seriously in Government. We thank the select committee and the submitters to it for that report and we're proceeding to implement those recommendations of those select committee reports as well as the balance of the Randerson report.Can I respond to some of the issues that have been raised today by others in this debate and I thank them for their comments. Unnecessary consents: I agree that there are unnecessary resource consents in the current system. We have already as a Parliament addressed that in a very significant way last year with the upzoning bill which enables tens of thousands of building opportunities probably hundreds of thousands to flow through the planning system in a way that will not require a resource consent to build a new house in a way that currently does require a resource consent. That sort of principle will be baked into the new system because we don't see those issues as being inconsistent. I agree with Simon Court that there are too many issues where unnecessary resource consents are required by the system at the moment.I also agree with the comment that he and Scott Simpson both made about there being too much uncertainty as to who should be able to participate in the system. One of the recommendations from the Randerson report which we will be implementing is to require plans to be clearer as to who is to be notified in limited notification applications because there's too much uncertainty around that and as a consequence planning departments at risk of suit for getting it wrong default to too wide a group of notification.In respect of issues that are boundary disputes in the residential sphere that go to recession planes or an intrusion into a recession plane the proposal is that those be notified just to the adjoining people who are directly affected and that those issues be resolved through alternative dispute resolution mechanisms rather than through the courts. So I agree that those concerns are legitimate and we look forward to work with other parties on those issues to try and make them better.In respect of the point about codification of things rather than bespoke details of them in consent application and consent conditions I agree with that as well. I think that it is absurd that applicants trying to develop have to specify in a bespoke manner sediment controls for major road works; they shouldn't have to do that. There should be a series of standards for sediment control. It couldn't really be much worse than what happened even with those bespoke controls on Transmission Gully where there were terrible breaches of good practice up there and a lot of sediment ending up in the Porirua Harbour. We should actually have agreed standards and there could be standard A standard B standard C and standard D. A new applicant might say We think it should be standard B." and the council might say after having a think about it "No we think it should be standard C. There are some serious risks here you need to follow that standard." But it shouldn't have to be specified in a bespoke way.Currently costs are far too high. They've increased according to the Infrastructure Commission about 150 percent so that they're now 250 percent of where they were about a bit more than a decade ago and that's just absurd—just absurd. How do we control that thing? Well I've actually been around here for a while and I've come to the conclusion that we can't control all of these things in Parliament through the legislation. The last Government with ACT and National tried to do that with a number of amendments and they were well intentioned but it actually didn't control costs. We do need to enable and push responsibility on to the councils to control excessive costs. Councillors ought not to be able to interfere in an individual planning decision but they should have to take responsibility for the control of the efficiency of their planning departments and I intend to make that clear and perhaps give some more tools to councils so that they can keep control of the complexity and cost of the planning processes that are being operated through their councils. I can give some personal accounts on another occasion of where these things are going wrong currently; I think most of us can.In respect of how you get the flow-through of signals to the private sector as to where they should invest the spatial planning Act I think will make a big difference. The spatial planning Act will set out likely new infrastructure corridors that need to be released when you hit triggers of population growth. Those infrastructure corridors will be better protected through new designation rules and the associated activities like intensive subdivision around those transport corridors will flow through into Master Builder Association plans. In those sorts of situations once that land is released or that corridor has started to be utilised the development of those things will become permitted activities on occasion. So things will be a lot more logical going through the spatial planning Act than the Natural and Built Environment Act. The number of plans will reduce from over a hundred to about 10. The first plans to put together will be quite complex. There's no simple way to do that. We will be well advanced compared with the implementation of the RMA because we will have in place a national planning framework which transitions all of the existing national direction and adds a bit more. The crucial bit that is being added which I think members will want a briefing on from the Infrastructure Commission once the bill comes to the House will be the piece that the Infrastructure Commission is leading in order to get these development rules clearer and to incorporate the likes of the standards or codification of codes that Simon Court mentioned.The five objectives that we're trying to achieve are to protect and where necessary restore the natural environment; better enable development with environmental biophysical limits—and I emphasise biophysical limits—including development of housing. I'll just divert a little bit on why we're specifying biophysical. We agree that you can go too far with matters of taste rather than matters of environmental outcome. So we're trying to strip out the excessive reference to amenity which doesn't mean to say that we want everything looking like Stalingrad. There is a place for decent urban form. The third principle is to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and Tāmati Coffey has spoken to that. We need to better prepare and adapt to climate change and risks from natural hazards. We need to improve system efficiency effectiveness and reduce complexity whilst also retaining appropriate local democratic input. There is a concern amongst some in local government that this is Big Brother or Big Sister taking over plan making; that is not the case. There will be no Government representatives on these joint committees that are massaging together plans that will all be in the control of local government with iwi participation. In respect of the spatial plans there will be a central government representative that local government want because central government has to martial transport and health and police and the Department of Conservation in order to put together these plans. So I look forward to the introduction of the full bill and again thank the committee and members for their contributions today."