Adams Amy: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Adams Amy: Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1509] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am very pleased to rise today and speak in support of the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill because reform of the Resource Management Act was one of the things it was important for me to be involved with as a member of Parliament. That might seem like a strange goal to have in these difficult economic times but—and I agree with the Hon David Parker on this point—the Resource Management Act is indeed one of the most important laws that we have on our law books. I say that for two reasons. Firstly it is true to say that the Act is the principal legislation we have in this country for managing our very important environment. I think we would all agree about the importance of that to us all and of maintaining our clean green image. The other reason this is such important legislation is that if it is not working it is like cholesterol in the arteries. It slows everything down. Things do not happen. The systems do not flow the way they need to flow. That is what is happening right now. 
The Resource Management Act is currently a little over 17 years old. We know that around 50000 resource consents are issued every year. Almost everyone we talk to will agree—and it has been quite heartening to hear broad agreement on this point today in the House—that although the fundamental principles of the Act are sound and are supported its operation has become overly bureaucratic. It is too slow it is too expensive and often it is not focused enough on the environment. Many other factors are often at play and it is really worrying that factors that have nothing to do with the environment can often have a huge weighting in the eventual outcomes. 
In my time as a lawyer prior to coming into the House I spent quite a number of years working on resource management law and in the field. Although I by no means profess myself to be an expert I have certainly seen enough to be confident in saying that the Resource Management Act has become cheque-book law. I do not think that is something that anyone in a free democracy wants to see. This law and the outcomes people can get under it are directly proportional most of the time to how much money they have to throw at the Act and that is the sort of thing we have to address. I have seen the Resource Management Act work badly for almost everyone in the process. I have seen it work incredibly unfairly for applicants. I have seen it work incredibly unfairly for submitters. I have seen it being very difficult for councils and I have seen councils being very difficult to other parties. I do not think it is excessive to say that the real benefit from the Resource Management Act at the moment is for the lawyers and the consultants not for the environment. That is what we have to start dealing with. As we have already heard this is stage one in a two-stage process of looking at this important Act but I am very pleased to be standing here within the first 100 days and speaking in support of an excellent bill. 
One thing we know and one thing that has become clear over the last 17 years is that bureaucracy is not good for the environment. If we are standing here today and talking up the importance of the environment we have to recognise that and take serious steps to address it which is what we are doing. I think it is also worth emphasising once again—although mention of this has been made already—that the changes in this bill do not affect the key legal thresholds in Part 2 of the Act. That is an important point to highlight: we are not changing those key legal thresholds. It is also worth noting that a number of sensible reforms were proposed by the National Government in 1999 through Simon Upton. These reforms would have made good strides towards changes that needed to made but they were unfortunately abandoned by the new Labour Government when it took office. Perhaps that shows the preference that that Government had for bureaucracies over outcomes and growth. The changes in this bill reflect the desire of this Government to see greater leadership from central government on these important issues and that is something I absolutely endorse. 
I will talk a little bit today about the processing of consents and some of the changes we will see in that area. I will start off by looking at this issue of notification. Through this bill we are removing the presumption of notification and we need to be clear that what that is doing is not having a presumption against notification; in fact the bill takes us back to a position of neutrality. The reason that this is important and we have already heard it is that about 96 percent of consents are non-notified so we have a legal test that has to be jumped over that does not actually reflect the reality of the situation. We are making parties go through an extensive set of legal positioning simply to get over this threshold when we know in most cases that the threshold is not actually met. 
The second thing I will touch on is the statutory time frames. In speaking to constituents and people who have worked with Resource Management Act consenting I can say that the time frames of getting a consent through is probably the single biggest bugbear. I have heard stories of consents with 48 different requests for further information coming from councils taking over 4 years. That is the sort of thing we have to look at. One of the things the bill will do which I think will be a good step forward in this area is to stop the clock on the statutory time frames for only the first section 92 request for further information. So the council can quite validly go back to the applicant and ask for further information and the time stops. But if the council continues to go back 48 times or however many times the statutory time frames will continue to apply. That is a real incentive for councils not to keep using that as a delaying tactic. That is an important advance. 
One of the other changes that will make a big difference to the statutory time frames is that there will now be a requirement that hearings must close no later than 10 working days after the hearing from the last party to be heard. Councils cannot use that process to hold hearings open indefinitely which would effectively buy them more time for the decision-making process. So again we are getting back to what the Act intended to happen which is that the statutory time frames would be meaningful. Backing that up this bill will insert in clause 35 of the Act new section 36AA which will require councils to come up with a discounting scheme on their fees. So if they do breach the statutory time frames then they will be required to give a discount to the applicants. Let us bear in mind that the most important part of that is that it will compel the councils to track and record their work on keeping to those time frames which we know will lift their performance. 
Another point I want to mention concerns direct referrals to the Environment Court. Again this is something that I think will be very useful. There are a number of complex matters on which the parties—the submitters and the applicants—all agree that whatever happens they will be off to the Environment Court shortly. The thing to mention for people who are not familiar with resource management law is that when one goes to the Environment Court one has a full rehearing—one starts all over again. So effectively everything up until that point has been an utter waste of everybody’s time and one starts again—all the money all the time and all the lawyers’ fees. When we are dealing with a proposal that we know will end up in the Environment Court the ability to go straight there is a huge advance. Let us remember that we have the safeguard that the territorial authority has the consideration as to whether that is appropriate. If it will prejudice any party then the council can have a say about that. It will save considerable time and money. 
Another point to touch on is the removal of the ministerial veto under clause 20 and we have approximately 100 of these a year. In the Whangamata situation after a long process of consenting—I believe it was 10 years—the process was tipped over by a Minister. We think that is quite inappropriate. That was utterly offensive to the people who went through that time and process so I am quite pleased to see that going bearing in mind also that the process can be tipped over by the court anyway. The decision held in but it put another 5 years on the process. In respect of issues of national significance it is fabulous that we will now see a better use of the board inquiry process—a streamlined 9-month time frame. We will see major infrastructure projects—projects that are important to growth and development in this country—processed in 9 months so everyone can get heard and we can get some growth back into the economy. One other point I want to make is around changes to the requiring authority. This is an important point although a bit legal: the change will stop a requiring authority that will compulsorily acquire land from being the judge in its own court. At the moment a requiring authority has to apply for approval to acquire the land and it makes the decision. That is a nonsense and we are very pleased to be changing it. 
I will end by talking a little bit about the impact of the legislation on my own area of Canterbury. In Canterbury we have massive issues around water and most of us recognise the importance of irrigation and water infrastructure to not only the local economy but the national economy—and the ability to continue to put food on the table. Freeing up the resource management process and allowing it to happen sensibly more cheaply and more quickly will be of huge benefit not only to the people of Canterbury in my region but to the people across New Zealand. I commend the Minister in charge of the bill the Hon Dr Nick Smith for the bill and I commend the officials and advisers who worked on the bill. I want to finish by saying that this bill is a fundamental part of this Government’s wider objective to lift growth and productivity in this country.