Woods Megan; Bishop ChrisHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Thank you Mr Chairman. I have some questions that further go into what the Minister has just alluded to in that answer around the transitional arrangements specifically the fast-track consenting processes in clause 8 that are laid out there. The Minister actually referred to some of this in an earlier reading speech around renewable energy.I have a very simple question for the Minister. He said in an earlier statement that a wind farm in Wellington—Mākara—took eight years to consent. I'm interested to know what he means by that. Does he mean from time of lodgment of the consent? Does he mean time of appeal in the Environment Court? What is the process he is describing? This is a pertinent question because this goes—Hon David Seymour: Which part is this in Mr Chair?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: It's Part 1 Mr Seymour as in terms of the transitional provisions and the fast-track consenting process in Schedule 1 of the Act which pertains to Part 1 of the bill.The problem definition that National and the Government are using around this is: One of the reasons we have to repeal this legislation is because there is going to be too much bureaucratic red tape so what we're going to do is we're going to repeal the thing that you put in place to speed up consenting infrastructure projects and go back to the thing that actually we're arguing held things back but we'll just keep your fast-track stuff in place."So specifically the wind farm the Minister mentioned in an earlier contribution I'd just like some detail around that. Thank you.Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform): Thank you to the member for that very good question. The wind farm that we're talking about is the one at Mākara it's Meridian's West Wind facility. From memory it's 143 megawatts and it from memory went through resource consent from 2000 to 2007 it opened in 2008—in fact the Rt Hon John Key opened it which I think was a source of much chagrin for the prior Labour Government which was a strong supporter of the wind farm. But that is a reflection of the quite convoluted resource management processes that apply to renewable energy and that certainly was the case back in 2000 to 2007. I acknowledge that there have been process improvements made to—Hon Julie Anne Genter: 2000 to 2008 that's the RMA.Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah exactly. And if you listen to what I'm saying I will acknowledge that there have been process improvements to consenting since then including by the last National Government. When it comes to renewable energy we need to go further and faster which is why this Government's committed to updating a national policy statement on renewable electricity generation. I acknowledge the work of the prior Labour Government who had done some initial work on that. We intend to use that and have our own national policy statement on renewable electricity generation.In relation to why we are keeping fast track I think that the member has essentially answered it for herself which is that we want to develop our own fast-track consenting regime but we were faced—as I said in the first reading I think it was—with a dilemma where if we repeal the Natural and Built Environment Act (NBA) and the Spatial Planning Act without the development and the passage of our own fast-track regime we will be left in a situation where there wouldn't be fast track at all. So the simplest thing seemed to be to just save what had been created through the NBA. So with the exception of as I say the fast-track consenting regime and a range of other minor technical matters we are essentially repealing all of the NBA but saving the fast track."