Parker DavidANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): My apologies to my colleague Erica Stanford Madam Chair but I do have a few questions just to follow up on some of the Minister's comments and they do relate to clause 7 of the bill which refers to listed projects. I'm not going to go into those projects because you've made your points very clear on that. But I do want to ask the Minister following on from some of Erica Stanford's points in relation to how those projects were selected because it's certainly been noticed by members on this side of the House and I'm sure by members across the House that the initial list which the Minister referred to in his comments just previously skews very heavily towards the North Island rather than the South Island. So my questions to the Minister are: who did he ask—who did he consult with in coming up with those listed projects that are referred to in clause 7 of the bill? Did he for example discuss it with local authorities? Did he approach for example pan-mayoral groups for example the Canterbury Mayoral Forum?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry to interrupt the member. That wasn't nearly as clever as your colleague. You could take a call in Part 2 if you would like to discuss the contribution that you're making now or you could direct your contribution now to Part 1 which we're debating.ANDREW FALLOON: Happy to move on to clause 12 which is the RMA aspect which is the relationship between this bill and the Resource Management Act. Some comments were made earlier in the debate in the first reading which was in relation to why we're not considering wider RMA reform at this time. Certainly—and I'm not going to go into the projects of course—there are a range of projects across the country that could be considered as part of this bill. So I want to ask the Minister: was wider RMA reform considered rather than ramming through a bill which focuses only on a small number of projects for now and then obviously some further projects later on? Was wider RMA reform considered that would have enabled any range of projects some of which we don't even know about at this stage? So there's obviously a list of projects that we on this side of the House would like to see progress. I'm sure there's other projects that members on the other side of the House would like to see progressed as well. And so my question for the Minister is: was wider RMA considered?Because what I worry about when we discuss the RMA actually is it's not so much about the projects that we know about that are declined; it's often about the projects that we don't even know about. Because there's a whole range of things. People get put off by the RMA. It's a time-consuming laborious and costly process to go through often. And so there's a range of projects that might even never be proposed because people are put off by the RMA and the huge impediments it puts in place. And so my question to the Minister which I hope he'll address is: was wider RMA reform considered or did he just decide to progress the COVID-19 recovery bill faster a consenting bill with a small range of projects accepting of course that there's a process to go through for additional projects but did he at any point consider wider RMA reform? If he did why did he discount that? And if he is perhaps looking at wider RMA reform can he perhaps go into some of the detail of that about what we might see in future? Thank you. Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): In respect of the issue as to wider Resource Management Act (RMA) reform the member will be aware that in the last couple of weeks we've already passed a significant reform to the RMA. Unlike most of the prior reforms of the RMA over the last 15 years or so it didn't add much to the overall length of the RMA because it stripped out some of the verbiage that had been put in by the last Government particularly in respect of the so-called collaborative planning process which is meant to be sort of a collaborative consensual process and was so overregulated by codification by the last Government that they added many tens of pages to the length of the RMA that the process was never used. Hon Michael Woodhouse: Think of the 48th Parliament—800-page SOPs.Hon DAVID PARKER: 800-page Supplementary Order Papers?Hon Michael Woodhouse: The Minister was the author of an 800-page SOP.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Can we just get back to the debate on this part please.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you Madam Chair. In respect of the wider RMA reform it is complex and you couldn't do it through a short-term process. And if you did it would be quite inappropriate to push it through in a shortcut process such as this which had a very limited select committee period and that would cut across the rights of many people to have a say in legislation like this in a more fulsome way. So it would not be able to be done in practice properly and it would also be a poor process. Whilst I'm on my feet if I could mention my two SOPs on this part of the bill. There is a list of technical amendments which I won't go through in detail; they truly are technical. There's also a second Supplementary Order Paper in my name SOP 534.Hon Nathan Guy: Four—that's an interesting one. What's gone on there?Hon DAVID PARKER: SOP 534 is easily explained by reference to page 3 of the bill as reported back from select committee which shows struck-out language which says that under the Act all persons performing functions and exercising powers under it must act in a manner that is consistent with (a) the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi; and (b) Treaty settlements." The Treaty settlements subset is covered elsewhere in the bill as well. But that was replaced with the wording in the existing Act which is "[For the purposes of this Act] all persons exercising functions and powers under it … must take into account the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi". That was the form that came out of the select committee. We prefer the earlier form and therefore we've promoted a Supplementary Order Paper for the benefit of the House to consider in my name which would restore section 6 to the form in which it went to select committee rather than came out of select committee with some other consequential amendments."