Brooking Rachel; O'Connor GregHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Sorry Mr Speaker I did make a call I promise but the House was rather rowdy. That was an interesting speech from the Minister there about his frustrations with the consenting of renewable energy. I agree. Renewable energy is very important for New Zealand and we should be able to consent it in the appropriate places in a much faster way in a much better way than what happens under the Resource Management Act (RMA). But what this bill does is it repeals this new legislation that would be helpful and goes back to the RMA. The examples that the Minister gave were decisions made under the Resource Management Act (RMA) which is what we are going back to with the repeal of this legislation. I also then heard from the Minister something I've heard many times before and that is that he did sit in on some select committees and hear some submissions where people made negative comments about the bill. With all the kindness of my heart I'm pretty sure that the select committee report does not have the Hon Chris Bishop's name on it because he was a part of that committee for a short time and he did attend select committee meetings and that's all on camera—we can all see that—and of course he's always a very engaged member as well. But he was not there when the select committee was going through the analysis of the submissions and making the amendments to the bills. Because of course nobody on that select committee wanted to frustrate renewable energy that might be more easily passed under the RMA than this new legislation. That is not what the committee was interested in at all.Of course there were many amendments to the bills and as I said in my first reading speech part of the structure of this whole legislative change was that decisions are made up the chain rather than at the consenting stage. So the point of this legislation is to do better. And I totally refute the statement made by one of the newer members to the Parliament the Hon Andrew Hoggard I think it was who said there's going to be more jobs for lawyers with this new legislation. The point of moving things up the chain is that you don't have all the lawyers and planners involved at the consenting stage. So I very much disagree with that point as well.We heard also the Minister saying there that there were many new terms—and this is something that I agree was canvassed in the last Parliament; I do not disagree with that. And he said there's words or phrases like te Oranga o te Taiao and nobody knows what it means and it will result in a whole lot of court action. But of course that was a point that was raised in submissions as well and it was very purposeful to include the purpose of the Act being to uphold te Oranga o te Taiao. Given the debates that happened in that select committee the select committee then decided to define what that meant. So section 3 of the Natural and Built Environment Act talks about the purpose of the Act and te Oranga o te Taiao means all of the following: (a) the health of the natural environment; and (b) the relationship between the health of the natural environment and its capacity to sustain life; and (c) the relationship between the health of the natural environment and the health and well-being of people and communities; and (d) the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment—" Simon Court: How is somebody supposed to make a decision with all of that?Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —"and (e) the relationship between iwi and hapū and te Taiao that is based on whakapapa." Now then there is at section 3A the means for achieving the purpose of the Act because I hear Mr Court call out and say "Well how do we know how to use it?" That was why section 3A was included. Now these are new terms and I don't disagree with the fact that they are new terms—[Interruption] And I hear the noise in the Chamber at the moment—some in support of the new terms and some against the new terms. But the point is that if this is your fundamental problem with the huge amount of work that went into both the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act then those things can be reviewed. And it would be possible to go back—if that was the thing that you hated the most about this legislation—to the purpose of the RMA which is sustainable management without undoing all the work that went into trying to change the system so that those bigger decisions are made further up the chain so that we can have a more efficient resource management system and one with clear environmental bottom lines.We've also heard that there's going to be changes to the national policy statement on fresh water and I have not yet seen where this is in the bill—of course we've only just got the bill today—so we will be asking questions about that. But I've heard the other side laugh about swimmable water as if it's a meme or something. This is a critical change between national policy statements made under previous National Governments and what Labour campaigned on in 2017 which is that we need our water to be swimmable. This is what people in New Zealand very much care about.I also heard from the Hon Mark Patterson that we're going to get stuff built and something about digging our way out of an economic malaise. This troubles me greatly. I'm not sure how going back to the RMA is going to do this. I presume that he means that because the fast-tracking provisions or some of them are not being repealed from the Natural and Built Environments Act we're just going to see diggers out all over the country and that seems to have no regard to our environment and our biodiversity crisis that we have in this country. I don't know how it relates to climate change either.I've also heard that there was some speculation or some assertions that the farming communities were totally opposed to this new legislation and want to go back to the RMA and just want to do things their way but when I go and talk to farmers they are often worried about what the bigger commercial farmer across the road might be doing and they accept that there is a need for regulations. Of course all regulations need to be sensible regulations and this also applies to our exports as well. Our trading partners are very interested in the fact that we have good environmental legislation and we need to continue with it.We've also heard in the Speech from the Throne that "The Natural and Built Environment and Spatial Planning Acts will be repealed and replaced with genuine reform that will make it easier to build." Again I'm not sure what this means and how that will be processed. Clearly it doesn't mean just going back to the RMA but the way that the members across the House are talking it does very much sound to me that they think that everything now can avoid the RMA because we know that the RMA takes a long time and is inefficient and doesn't do as well for the environment as it could do but it does do a lot better than having no regulations and no environmental standards. But it makes me worry that the Government the coalition thinks that we can just fast track everything anything we want and that it will make it the decision of the Ministers to fast track whatever it is that we want to dig our way out of this economic malaise that we heard about and that is—Simon Court: We're just keeping the bits of the NBA that you wrote—the fast-track bits. Didn't you write that?Hon RACHEL BROOKING: That is worrying. And I'm hearing now from Mr Court "Well didn't you write the fast track?" I'm not yet sure what provisions of the fast track are going to apply and how they're going to apply. And I'm also not sure what's going to happen to the RMA. We are going back to the RMA at the moment yet we're also hearing that the national policy statement for fresh water is going to be totally gutted. That is what we heard at question time today. There was no clear answer to my questions: if the pretty sensible objective of the national policy statement for fresh water would continue. These are statements referring to Te Mana o te Wai that go back well into National Party Governments including the 2014 national policy statement and the 2017 changes when National was in Government as well.This is quite a change and it's not what people were voting for when they thought that cost of living was the big issue of the day and to change the Government at that stage. New Zealanders are very proud of their environment and this is a terrible piece of legislation.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The question is that the motion be agreed to."