Jones Shane: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Jones Shane: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6136] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena tatou katoa. It is a rather unusual feeling I have. As a youngster in the late 1980s I was a member of the core group reporting to Sir Geoffrey Palmer that wrote the Resource Management Act along with Denise Church Kathryn Ashley-Jones and Joan Allen. That some 20-odd years later I have the privilege of sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee to work on improvements to the legislation shows that I am growing older but hopefully wiser. 
Labour will support this bill but with some important reservations. Colleagues of mine will be addressing those reservations during the Committee stage which with flair and a bit of innovation will prove to be a very focused and I think entertaining debate. Firstly let me join with the Minister in acknowledging the work that was carried out by the officials. This is a complex area and select committees are really only as good as the quality of the advisers consultants etc. and the actual clerical staff of the committee. The committee was well served during that period. 
This bill deals with a number of very deep issues. The first issue is devolution. We have a system which this bill largely keeps intact of enabling New Zealand citizens through the agency of both regional and local government to influence plans policies and allocation decisions that are made in relation to the environment they live in. I think that spirit of fairness deeply rooted in the Kiwi personality means they should be allowed—and the law should sanction it—a whole host of rights to participate and indeed to go on and appeal those decisions. 
Against that right which is what led to some of the more creative debates in our committee there is the fear that 50000 statutory consents is quite excessive. It represents a cost and a burden upon ordinary citizens trying to do things with their property upon investors and indeed upon others who fear that some of the decisions that are being made are not in the best interests of either the community they live in or the environment. As a Parliament this is a debate for us. Have we got it right? Ought devolution remain the exclusive basis upon which our major resource management decisions are made or should they be moved to a level that some might argue is more efficient? We look forward to phase two. Yes this bill is a simplifying and streamlining initiative but the big business I rather suspect lies in phase two. I look forward along with my colleagues to receiving briefings from the Minister in that regard. 
Let us turn to some of the important innovations in this bill. The bill will create an Environmental Protection Authority. We do not know what it will fully do. We know that Gary Taylor has written a paper on the issue. I am not entirely sure whether that will provide the policy basis for the Minister’s new Environmental Protection Authority. We on this side of the House have not been briefed and we do not know the final functions of this authority. But there is an awareness that if it represents a more efficient way of dealing with large resource-intensive resource management decisions then that is not bad. The fear however lies in local communities feeling that their local directly elected representatives are either being circumvented or being completely written out of the script. That is the first thing I would like to point out. 
Secondly there was a fear and fortunately the select committee was able to address it that people were going to lose the ability to contest a statutory decision on the basis of merit. As you know Mr Deputy Speaker along with the rest of us a lot of these resource management decisions are not quantitative decisions alone. They are highly emotional and they are highly expensive and people are making decisions not just on what can be counted but on what can be felt. It was a pleasure to find that colleagues on the other side of the House along with ourselves agreed that New Zealanders ought to be able to contest environmental decisions not on the basis of black-letter law alone but on the basis of merit or dare I say it virtue. 
That was one of the key improvements in this bill. But that in itself is a reflection of how difficult it will be for any Government to buy into a corporatist approach of environmental management that does not allow local communities to continue to have their say. My colleagues from Auckland will be amplifying that message no doubt when we get to the children of Tane Mahuta dwindling in number in Tamaki-makau-rau as we speak. 
There are three elements that we did not agree with. The first is the role of the Minister of Conservation in the coastal environment. For us it is quite a simple issue. If I as an owner of property learn something is happening with my property I ought to be entitled to have a say yea or nay as to whether the proposed usage on such property should be tolerated. That will no longer happen. Once the Minister of Conservation as the putative owner on behalf of the nation of the coastal environment is written out of the script the Crown will be reduced to the role of rule maker or regulator not proxy owner for the nation. Not surprisingly as the people who are still working through the detritus of an earlier attempt to deal with the seabed and foreshore legislation we see a strong ongoing role for the Crown in that regard. We will have Supplementary Order Papers in that respect. 
The second point is notification. The only reason notification has loomed large is that it is the trigger that allows a neighbourhood either to learn or to participate in a decision that they rightly or wrongly believe will affect their quality of life. That is a fundamental tenet about where social democracy meets resource management. For those reasons we do not feel that the bill has the mix right. 
The third point and obviously I have already referred to it is the insistence by the current Government that while it is building a super-city for Auckland it will deny Aucklanders the ability to derive their own rules and regulations as to how they deal with that aspect of the local environment called trees. This is not just about the number of permits. This is a deep issue. It has resulted in the Government’s forcing its will on the neighbourhood the citizenry and the broader community of Auckland as to how they want to deal with trees. The Government through this bill is depriving the Auckland elected local government people and their advisers of the ability to do that. But more on such matters later on. 
As I have said Labour will be agreeing with this bill but the big unanswered questions lie in phase two. We are glad that certain things have been tossed over to phase two not the least of which is designations. Therein lies a great debate as to where social democracy ends and economic efficiency takes over. They are legitimate hotly contested issues and there is no better place to have these arguments than in this House. 
The number of submissions was extensive but unfortunately a number of them were driven by fear because the Government sought to compress far too much in the 100-day initial period of its reign. Had more time been taken and had a greater amount of resource been dedicated to the technical advisory group the committee that tidied up the bill possibly would not have been so busy. 
Just before I sit I say that we experimented with an innovation in our committee time. We secured access to four advisers. They looked at various drafts of the bill and I think both my colleagues on the other side of the House and dare I say even the Minister can see that because of the collective wisdom of these people Judge Skelton and others the bill is a better product is more user-friendly and will actually achieve some of the objectives that Kiwis want which is the ability to make decisions in the most efficient friendly manner to the environment and to their quality of life. Kia ora tatou.