Williams Andrew: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12861. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to address the reforms of legislation arising from the Resource Management Reform Bill. The National Government would have us believe that the current Resource Management Act is the current blockage in the road to economic development and prosperity. The philistines over there on the Government benches would say that the Resource Management Act is a barrier. National says: “Take out the teeth from the Resource Management Act and suddenly all will be transformed. Suddenly there will be economic growth with a surge. Suddenly there will be a new golden age in New Zealand. Suddenly there will be a dawning of a whole new economic growth because the Resource Management Act has been reformed.” As theTui billboards go: “Yeah right.”The bonfire of the Resource Management Act regulations causes serious damage to our environment and massive unintended consequences. It will impose potential costs in the manner of the leaky homes fiasco which the National Government brought about back in the 1990s. Yes we did require some efficiency and streamlining processes to be brought about in the Resource Management Act and everyone would agree that there were areas for fine-tuning. But it did not require complete gutting as this National Government has moved to do.This Government does not really want to solve problems. It wants to use problems to pursue its own ideological agenda. It now claims that changing the Resource Management Act is somehow about solving the problems of first-home buyers. What a massive leap of logic. How absurd that it has used the Resource Management Act and says that by gutting the Act suddenly tens of thousands of new homes will be built all as a result of taking away the rules around the Act. It is breathtaking. How a bonfire of the regulations is going to translate into more affordable houses is never explained. Only a National Government would have the gall the temerity and the sheer effrontery to pull this sort of stunt.National has not adequately justified this legislation. It is in a world of assertion. It is all claim and spin with nothing to back it up. The facts are there before you in theregulatory impact statement—2 percent of resource consents were notified and 98 percent of resource consents were not notified. Yet the Government would have New Zealanders believe that a large chunk of resource consents were having to be notified when only 2 percent were. Of those 2 percent only 1 percent ended up being appealed and going through to the Environment Court—1 percent. That is such a low percentage. It is hardly something that means that the country is being held to ransom when such a low percentage is being appealed.We have also heard that a large percentage was being processed on time. Only 5 percent of resource consents were not actually being processed on time. The vast bulk of those consents were actually being handled by council officers—over 90 percent by council officers—not by commissioners and not by elected representatives. They were being done through the council processes and 95 percent were being processed on time.We did have the odd exception and I will agree that there were some exceptions. It was mentioned by the Minister for the Environment that Pak ’N Save in Wairau Road was one example of the Resource Management Act being used to hold up a supermarket for 17 years. That is true. The two supermarket chains were using the Resource Management Act vexatious litigation and trade competition to hold each other out. Basically it was a situation where for every month that one supermarket chain could hold the other supermarket chain off from building its supermarket its other five supermarkets in the greater area of about a 7 or 8 kilometre radius were making significant revenues by stopping the competitor from being there.There happened to be a certain mayor on the North Shore who became the mayor and said “We are going to stop this and we are going to move on this very quickly.” and who knocked their heads together and also brought the staff together. Many of the council officers themselves had very fixed positions on this. It basically became a situation of the leadership moving in talking to all the various parties sorting it out and bringing them together. Within 12 to 18 months it was done and I cut the ribbon to open that supermarket within 2 years of that. So 17 years of grief was brought to a head within 18 months during my mayoralty simply because we saw fit to use logic the Resource Management Act was put aside and we came to a common-sense position and got it sorted out.We have heard also that as a result of these Resource Management Act reforms there will be many other instances where things will be improved. But what we are seeing here are things such as the trees issue. Again I can tell you from a North Shore perspective that it prided itself on having very very good vegetation on the North Shore and a very very good governance of our trees on the North Shore. The North Shore was seen as being the jewel in the crown of the Auckland area in terms of our tree coverage and our rules around trees and ensuring that the communities were brought into this.During our Local Government and Environment Committee hearings we heard from many many groups a large percentage of which came from the North Shore who talked about areas like LeRoys Bush in Northcote the electorate of Jonathan Coleman. Jonathan Coleman will agree with this. There under our former situation we ensured that it was not just the bush in the public reserve but all adjoining properties around that in a global sense that were impacted. If somebody started cutting down all the trees bordering on to the public reserve the public reserve amenity would be greatly reduced as a result. The community accepted that and they all agreed that if you buy a property bordering on to LeRoys Bush you do not start chopping all the trees down.Under this legislation and as a result of this what the council will have to do is go andGazette every single property and ensure that every single property bordering LeRoys Bush—and you are talking probably a couple of hundred—will all have to be gazetted in terms of bordering on to LeRoys Bush. They will all have to go through aprocess. It will all be council time. It will all be council staff time. It will be very very time-consuming and it will be costly. At the end of the day this Government talks about reducing compliance costs reducing costs to councils and reducing costs to local authorities but there is one example of one reserve on the North Shore of Auckland that will tie up a considerable amount of council staff time in simply gazetting all the properties that border on to LeRoys Bush to ensure that the properties adjoining there continue to be protected. Because what—Maggie Barry: Money well spent.ANDREW WILLIAMS: —we are seeing in Auckland and the member for North Shore Maggie Barry might realise this is unscrupulous developers moving in who have no affinity and no connection to the areas. They are a bit like the member for the North Shore who moved to the North Shore just recently. They come into the areas buy out properties and chop down the trees. Somebody who has lived in a property for many years who has been used to trees on their property or on the border of their property with the adjoining property suddenly finds a bare barren section next door. We are seeing it happening increasingly in the last 1 year to 2 years as a result of the National Government. It is a great shame that you will not see Auckland the same in 10 years’ time as it is today.By contrast the city of Melbourne is actually increasing its tree coverage from something like 20 percent tree coverage—they actually have a 10 to 15-year target—to go up to something like 60 or 70 percent canopy coverage in the Melbourne area because of the improvement to the environment and improvement to the climatic conditions as a result. So there in Melbourne they are trying to increase the coverage but here this Government is impacting on it.The Resource Management Act has been an Act that has been seen globally—around the world—by many many other parliaments and many other countries as being a fine example of some of the best legislation in the world in the sense of environmental protection. This National Government is gutting the Resource Management Act. It is taking it down to the lowest possible level that it can get away with. It is doing this so it can help its friends its mates its developers—the people with the money. This is another case of the National Government getting in behind the developers the financiers and all those with money to develop properties. They will have an easy road as a result of this. This legislation weakens the Resource Management Act it weakens our democracy it weakens our local government structure in New Zealand and it weakens the protection of the environment. New Zealand First does not support this and it thinks this is a very retrograde step in terms of the history of New Zealand.