Jones Dail: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Jones Dail: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
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DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 The United Future member who has just spoken made a point during the course of his speech about the Opposition not supporting Government amendments. Of course United Future did put up an amendment which was supported by the Opposition. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: All parties. 
DAIL JONES 
: All parties supported it. The Opposition put up amendments. How many of those did United Future support? How many Opposition amendments did United Future support? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Absolutely none! 
DAIL JONES 
: Absolutely none as far as I am aware. What a lot of humbug that speech was. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. We supported United Future. Did it support the Opposition? No! There are words to describe that speech—but I will leave it alone. I have demonstrated that the member does not practise what he preaches—and he preaches a lot here and elsewhere. I feel sorry for his other congregation. 
The Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) was introduced on 20 March 2003. As far as New Zealand First is concerned and I am concerned I am discussing the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). I am not discussing any other bill. I was not here at the time. I appreciate the work that may have gone into any other bill but I am discussing the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2). When that bill was introduced the previous speaker said—and I quote from the  
Hansard  
advance of 20 March 2003—talking about the bill: “For this reason today’s first reading of the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) represents a real and much-needed breakthrough. We in United Future have made it a priority from the outset to get this much-needed reform legislation through Parliament and today our efforts have reached fruition.” I remember him saying that because he makes the same speech all the time—it is just the name of the bill that changes. 
In the particular bill he was referring to—the bill about which he said: “We ... have made it a priority from the outset to get this much-needed reform legislation through Parliament”—there was a reference to those “spiritual” things and ancestral landscapes and suchlike. He supported it. He had been working hard to get the bill through. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Did he express concern about it then? 
DAIL JONES 
: I looked through his speech for concern being expressed on those issues and he said: “I am also pleased with the provisions requiring councils to take into account iwi planning documents. The smart thing for councils to do in response to this provision will be to put the details from hapu and iwi planning documents that are reasonable into their district plans.” and so on and so forth. That comes into this category. 
This bill was then sent to a select committee. As far as I am concerned that is the bill I am talking about. It was of course just a subterfuge because the whole purpose of the method in which this bill was introduced—supported strongly by United Future—was to reduce its parts which numbered about 13 to two. That is a gross constitutional distortion of the way in which Parliament should operate. United Future supported it hook line and sinker. That is the party that tries to preach to us about how things should be done and there it was curtailing and terminating the right of members to speak on that particular debate on a part-by-part—13 parts in total—basis. It cooperated in cutting those parts down to two. This is the type of United Future we have in this House today. So anyway it went to the select committee and then of course it came back from the select committee. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Did United Future vote for those provisions at the select committee? 
DAIL JONES 
: United Future must have voted for those provisions in the select committee. I have the bill as introduced and in the bill as reported back from the select committee there were no changes. References to “spiritual” and the various landscape provisions were still there. So United Future supported those provisions being introduced. In the bill on which they worked so very very hard they supported the spiritual requirement they supported the cultural landscape requirement and they supported the ancestral landscape requirement. This was after considerable consideration of the bill. 
I noted from the comment of the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark on one of the Newstalk ZB programmes that the inclusion of cultural landscapes ancestral landscapes and spiritual resources in the Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) were changes inserted by the select committee and that “people didn’t really recall having made conscious decisions to put it in.” In actual fact these provisions were already in the bill before it went to the select committee. They were not put in by the select committee on the No. 2 bill. They were there already. 
I really think the Prime Minister has had a very unconscious moment—a total lack of consciousness—because her advisers have not even told her that these provisions were in the No. 2 bill when it went to the select committee and that when it came back from the select committee they were still in the bill. That was a real error on the part of the Prime Minister. She went out of this House today with her tail between her legs and she is still wrong because she still has not been told that as far as the No. 2 bill is concerned these provisions were in the bill before it went to the select committee and were still there when it came back. 
My major interest—and New Zealand First’s major interest—in the bill has been to try to get it before the public so that there could be submissions on it subsequent to New Zealand First—and United Future—members coming into the House. We have cooperated with the National Party and the ACT party to try to have public discussion on the bill. We in New Zealand First are indebted to Jim Peters for the time and effort he put into this legislation. He regrets that for personal reasons he is not here today but he has made a tremendous effort and given a tremendous amount of time to this legislation. 
A number of submissions were made on this bill during that process. It indicates that there was still a request by the public to have a say on this No. 2 bill. But that say was denied by United Future. It was denied of course by the minority Labour Party with whom United Future is well and truly in bed. The right for the public to have their say on this bill has been choked off completely by the attitude of United Future and the Labour Party to the legislation. We would have liked—and we want and we still require—more consultation on this measure. 
As a practising lawyer who has done a little bit of resource management work I find that this seems to be an area that every 10 or 15 years or so Parliament must have another go at. We started off in the old days with the 1955 Town and Country Planning Act. I was on a parliamentary committee in about 1978 when we redid the Town and Country Planning Act. Then the Labour Party came in Simon Upton came along and they had another go at it. Really it is the type of thing that more tinkering with does not make any better. One wonders whether New Zealand would ever have got under way if even the first Town and Country Planning Act legislation had been passed at the time. On the whole I find that the main problem with resource management legislation is often the people who administer it who are lower-level public servants who do not have the ability or—and I do not mean this in a harsh way—the courage either to make a decision because they are frightened that if they make the wrong decision they will lose their job or there will be all sorts of repercussions. 
Stephen Franks 
: That makes bad law. 
DAIL JONES 
: And that at the end of the day makes bad law. I have had experience with subdivisions. Someone gets consent for a subdivision and there are 25 provisions on it one of which states “subject to any future engineering reports”. A neighbour complains and bang! The developer has to spend another $25000 to $50000 on another engineering report and profit goes out of the window. 
One of the major areas of complaint I have with this bill which I am sure will lead to its downfall as a whole is the removal of security for costs. As a lawyer I would think that surely this would still have been a matter to be left to the discretion of the judge involved. The main criticism we make of judges in this House—I know the rules about it—is that they tend to be too soft. That tends to be the attitude judges take because as lawyers we are trained to give the individual all the protection we possibly can under our system. I have never known anyone to complain that security for costs has ever been too high. But we remove security for costs whether it is $500 $1000 or $1500 we put nothing in its place and now the same old people who delayed things prior to 1996 are really going to have a field day. They are there already. They work under the system already. If anything will delay say the diversion at Bell Block in New Plymouth or extensions to South Island roads—whether they be in Nelson or wherever—or the Auckland motorway the Orewa motorway or other extensions it will be this failure to have security for costs. New Zealand First cannot support this legislation.