Hide Rodney: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — Procedure First Reading 
Hide Rodney: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — Procedure First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1397] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 It has been a pleasure to listen to the debate on this bill which I think a lot of thought has gone into. It has been a very interesting debate so I have listened with some interest. I think every New Zealander and certainly every Aucklander has a close affinity with the Waitakere Ranges and they are a very very beautiful part of New Zealand. But then we are blessed to live in a very beautiful country with so many beautiful areas. Again like Mr Peter Dunne I understand the sentiment perfectly that what we want to do is preserve that beauty and maintain that environment for years and years to come. 
But I searched through this bill and listened most intently to the debate to understand what the problem is in our current planning law and processes that this bill is designed to address. That is where I am stuck because we have a Resource Management Act. There may well be problems with it but let us address them. This bill does not identify any problems with the Resource Management Act. So we have the beautiful Waitakere Ranges which we want to protect and preserve for future generations but I ask myself why we need this bill. We have a Resource Management Act—and heaven knows the Waitakere City Council has been prepared to exercise enormous powers over property owners in order to implement its plans—so I am left failing to understand and not having heard one reason why this bill is needed to go alongside that Act. 
I pick up Mr Peter Dunne’s point: are we to have a similar bill for the Port Hills? Will we have a similar one for the beautiful city of Tauranga? 
Hon Member 
: Mt Eden. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: For Mt Eden—of course; it is a beautiful spot. So on and on we will go. But of course we will not because we have a national Resource Management Act that allows local bodies to implement their plans which is exactly what—as I understand it—this bill tries to do. 
Nandor Tanczos 
: I thought you were against it. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well I am against this bill. I am explaining why I am voting against it and if the member would give me the courtesy of listening he would understand why. I am actually picking up his precise point which was that if there are gaps in the Resource Management Act we should be addressing them. 
I heard the Green Party member clearly say that his party does not like the idea of having hotchpotch Acts of Parliament in order to address local issues of concern in relation to environmental protection. That is a point I am reinforcing; I think I am agreeing with the Green member. The only thing that is different about my position is that I am actually following through the conclusion the Greens made and therefore I will vote against the bill. That is why I do not understand why the Green Party is saying what it says and then voting for it. We do not want to get into a situation where we have a hotchpotch of legislation coming through this House for every nice bit of New Zealand because living in this country it would never end. 
I also pick up Mr Hone Harawira’s point. He said that this legislation will be great for the bureaucrats because it is just another planning process. I do not understand how we can conserve our resources by putting more and more bureaucrats into power by putting more and more planning processes into power and by creating more and more hurdles for people to jump through. 
I come back to this final point. I am always concerned—and Nandor Tanczos brought up this issue—about the moves to put these sorts of bills through this House because invariably they involve the diminution of property rights of people: Maori Pakeha everyone. Why? Because these pieces of legislation are all about shifting power to the bureaucrats and away from the people whose resources and land it is—indeed the very people who will protect and care for that environment. I have not see bureaucrats or local body politicians care as much for the environment as the actual people who own properties themselves and that includes the tangata whenua. I look askance very much at this legislation.