Twyford Phil: Resource Management Reform Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Resource Management Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7342. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 This bill the Resource Management Reform Bill represents the latest instalment in this Government’s slide into Muldoonism and it is the latest exhibit really in a long line that we have seen under this National-led Government. You see it never saw a power exercised by a local council in this country that it did not want to take for itself. It never saw a council that could not have been improved by the appointment of commissioners and the sacking of elected representatives. It is a long litany and it bears repeating I think. It goes back to the establishment of the Auckland super-city where it overrode the democratic rights of Aucklanders to have a vote on the super-city. It took away that right and it proceeded to corporatise 75 percent of local government and take all those operations and activities out of the reach of ordinary citizens and away from the normal democratic process. We saw it with the sacking of Environment Canterbury because National’s corporate dairy-farming mates were not getting quite enough free irrigation consents. 
We saw it with the systematic stripping away of local government rights enjoyed by communities around this country in two bits of legislation—most recently the abolition of the four well-beings the narrowing of the purpose statement of local government and the taking away of all sorts of powers that communities have enjoyed for many years including the right to vote on amalgamations. We have seen it in the way that this Government has spent most of the transport budget on big new State highway projects forcing local communities to pay more and more for their local roads or let them fall into disrepair. The latest land transport management legislation also very explicitly takes away powers from regional councils and gives them through the Government policy statement to Cabinet to determine transport funding priorities. So there is a pattern here and we have seen it in one piece of legislation after another with this Government. It is centralising more and more decision-making power in the executive arm of Government and away from local government and away from local communities. That is what is going on here. That is the context in which we have to see this Resource Management Reform Bill. 
I want to give three examples of this Muldoonist tendency to centralisation. The first is the issue of blanket tree protections. That is something that is worth looking at. It is worth a little bit of scrutiny I think the way this Government is overriding the rights of local communities. It is overriding rulings that the Environment Court has made and is trying to make it much harder more expensive and more bureaucratic for local communities to use the provisions of the Resource Management Act to protect trees. Secondly let us look at the Auckland plan because I think that is another very interesting case study in this Government’s Muldoonism and its complete inability to resist taking powers for itself and we will look at that in a bit of detail. Then thirdly there are a number of other measures in this bill. They are a grab bag of measures that repeat this tendency that is on display so often with this Government to take powers away from local communities and invest them in central government. 
The spiritual godfather of this bill could be said to be Ronald Reagan the former US President who is often said to have said that “Once you’ve seen one redwood tree you’ve seen them all.” In fact that is very unkind to Ronald Reagan because he has been misquoted so many times. In fact what Ronald Reagan said was “A tree’s a tree. How many more to you have to look at?” and that pretty much sums up this Government’s attitudes to the urban forest that Aucklanders treasure so much. This bill could be known as Nick Smith’s revenge—it is the remaking of the chainsaw massacre of 2009 when in a very ham-fisted way Nick Smith tried to take away from local councils the ability to use blanket protection measures for trees by deeming that trees in a certain area were to be protected and if they were to be severely pruned or cut down then the owner would need a resource consent. So what Nick Smith tried to do back in 2009 was basically to dictate that councils would have to individually name particular trees that they wanted to save. The Environment Court looked at this and said “What a load of nonsense.” and said that it was going to allow in the North Shore and Waitakere legacy plans councils to basically say that trees in a certain area could be covered by blanket tree protection rules. 
So the provisions in this bill on trees in section 76(4A) in clause 12 are deliberately about trying to overturn the Environment Court ruling and basically make it virtually impossible for councils to protect their trees. They either have to name specific trees or a grove or a line of trees in a property or adjacent properties. The effect of that is that it will become humongously expensive for councils to protect trees. They will no longer be allowed to protect trees of a certain species or of a certain size; they are going to have to name certain trees or a grove or a line. This is hugely ironic. This is the Government that rails against councils about how they are spending too much money. It accuses them of being bureaucratic and then it is imposing a cost of what will undoubtedly be millions of dollars in the case of the Auckland Council if it wants seriously to protect the trees in the leafy suburbs and in the Waitakere Ranges for example. In places like Titirangi and Laingholm the communities there have about 40 percent higher rainfall than anywhere else in the rest of Auckland. There is a real problem with instability and erosion. The trees in places like that—in the Waitakere Ranges—are basically holding up the roads and the houses and if we see the deforestation that many people predict as a result of this bill then the blame will lie fairly and squarely on the shoulders of this National Government. 
The other thing that is worth noting as well as all the aesthetic and quality-of-life benefits of the urban forest in Auckland is that trees have a huge benefit for stormwater. Every tree scientists calculate treats 16 cubic metres of stormwater. If we see deforestation in parts of west Auckland for example of any significant scale then there will be a huge negative impact on stormwater and erosion. So there is a terrible irony in this in that the same National Government that rails against councils accuses them of overspending and accuses them of being bureaucratic is actually imposing massive costs on local government or forcing it into a situation where it will simply be unable to protect its urban forest. 
I want to move on to the issue of Auckland because Labour has signalled that we are willing to give qualified support to the Auckland Council for the proposal that the Auckland Council took to the Government for a fast-tracked process for the Auckland Unitary Plan. Many of us are very sympathetic to the Auckland Council’s argument that the bedding-in of the Unitary Plan should not be allowed to take 5 6 7 or 8 years but the support is qualified because it is unclear to us as it is to many commentators that this process will actually deliver a shortened time frame and a good result. But the thing that is really interesting about this is that the Government could not resist taking control of the process. So what has it done? It has said “OK we are going to appoint the hearings panel that is the one-stop-shop for considering the Auckland Unitary Plan.” Paula Rebstock Peter Kiely Stephen McElrea Tony O’Brien—fine upstanding New Zealanders and true friends of the National Party. People like this will be making the decisions because this Government has hijacked Auckland’s Unitary Plan process. 
It is a plan that belongs to Aucklanders. The bill for it will be paid for by Aucklanders but this National Government could not resist putting its sticky fingers in the cookie jar and hijacking the Unitary Plan process that should belong to the people of Auckland. It is typical. It follows on an established pattern of hostility that this Government has towards Auckland. It cannot stand Mayor Len Brown’s agenda for public transport in Auckland. It cannot stand the agenda for a quality compact city. It can barely disguise its contempt for it and that is why it is insisting on putting its own people into a hearings panel so that it can exercise control and take it away from the people of Auckland.