Brooking RachelHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Madam Speaker. A lot to respond to in that contribution from the Minister responsible for RMA Reform about me. So I'll start with that. I don't normally—Simon Court: Show us your hands.Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Yeah—yes I know. It was an interesting comment—something about my hands not being clean.I'm very proud to have been a member of that Randerson review group. It did make me just so interested and motivated in becoming a politician because I knew that the Resource Management Act (RMA) wasn't working and that it did need changing. I'm happy to say that I came to that review group with a very open mind about some things which were then decided in that review report and became the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act. So I came to that with an open mind about whether we needed separate environmental-type regulations from urban planning. The experts that we consulted with and people that we talked with were very clear that it's very difficult to separate those two issues and leads to more complications. So that is why the Randerson review said no to that idea.I also came to that group with a very open mind about whether or not the RMA could simply be amended or whether new legislation was required. I've listened to Sir Geoffrey Palmer many times at many conferences and his arguments that the RMA wasn't broken that it was the implementation around it that was the problem. So I came to that group with that in mind. However again we heard time and time again that fundamentally the RMA was broken. This is to do with it being so focused on effects and the whole regime being driven down to that consenting decision-making process. That is expensive. That kept me employed for almost 20 years. That's not a job I want to go back to. I'll put that on record here—that's my conflict: I don't want to become a resource management lawyer again. I think there shouldn't be so much GDP in our system at that consenting end.I'm also obviously very interested in the environmental outcomes of the legislation. Of course they weren't working under the RMA and we need clear direction and clear environmental bottom-lines. But my professional interest in this has been always focused on the efficiency of the system and trying to take people—like old Rachel—out of the system because really we should be having clear debates within the community about those planning trade-offs that are always made. As the Minister said planning is always difficult. People are going to have different views. I said in one of the other speeches somebody loves a highly modified landscape; somebody else wants to put what I think is a very beautiful wind turbine on it. There's a debate to be had. Those debates should be higher up the food chain not at the consenting level.That is what these two Acts that have been repealed today did because it is a complicated system. So rather than everything being at the regulatory stage there was the Spatial Planning Act. That was to say Let's look—let's look—into the future. Let's look about where we want to put growth."—but also very importantly where we don't want it. We just heard the Minister say that there's a housing trifecta of some sort. I don't particularly disagree with the issues that he raised but he missed a really important one and that is hazards climate change and climate change adaptation. We know that there are areas that don't have houses on them at the moment where we don't want to ever put houses—that that would be the wrong place to put houses because we know that there will be sea-level rise we know that there will be higher-intensity winds and we know that there's going to be higher-intensity rainfall. So there are areas of the country that we don't want to put more houses. So it's very important that we have that all mapped out in spatial plans.Of course I was very pleased that my contribution to the Spatial Planning Act was to get the word "map" into that Act—eventually. We want to able to see—see what's going to happen see that different things happen over different time frames as well. But we also want to know where that infrastructure is—where that existing infrastructure is—that the Minister was talking about in terms of those efficiencies of where you put houses. Obviously there's a lot of infrastructure that needs to go with them. If you can intensify areas then there will already be some existing infrastructure. Some of it might not be big enough though so to be able to have those considerations in that spatial planning exercise is very important.The Minister's spoken a lot of times about how "Oh well it wasn't coherent. We've got other things going on." He keeps talking about local government reform. I don't think that's something I heard in the Speech from the Throne—I welcome one of the National speakers to correct me on that if I'm wrong—or particularly in manifestos either about major local government reform. So if the reason for repealing the Spatial Planning Act is that there is going to be local government reform I think that is a very interesting idea and it's certainly not one that I've heard mentioned before this until this debate today.I also heard again from the Minister talking about his involvement when he was on the Environment Committee about hearing various submissions. I remind everyone that that was a very fulsome select committee process. It had an exposure bill for the Natural and Built Environment Bill—for the first part of that for the purpose clauses; that went through its own submission process. The select committee reported back to the House and then we went through the process of the Natural and Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill as well. There were many many submissions on those bills. A lot of those submissions had very useful amendments suggested. They were picked up by the select committee. So what came into the House in the first reading was very different to what came into the House at second reading and then again there were changes made in the committee of the whole House stage as well. All of these things were done to improve the bill.As I said in one of my speeches on this bill that we're looking at today the repeal bill the importance of renewable energy was not at issue. Everybody agrees about the importance of renewable energy. There were some sections around the time frames for renewal consents and they were changed in the process. We had debate in the committee of the whole House stage today about what was clause 58 of the Natural and Built Environment Bill—I think it might have become a different numbered section in the Act—and what that was going to do with the planning framework. That included many useful things that would be in that national planning framework including on hazards including on papakāinga housing which we're hearing about today.So it's a great shame that we are not going to have all of that national direction combined into one so it's not in conflict with each other. Of course at the moment it is in conflict with each other. There was a process there in the Natural and Built Environment Act to make it coherent. This is really important for users of planning legislation. It is very difficult to be going around if you are either a council if you're trying to draft up your plans and you have one national instrument telling you do one thing like build those—grow; you don't build pine trees—grow the pine trees and look after that water quality. What are those councils supposed to do? You get lots of lawyers involved and I go back to where I started: that they just shouldn't be in the system when the Government could be making clear national direction and doing that national direction to deal with issues that we haven't spoken about much in the past and that is the likes of the sponge cities and the importance of green infrastructure—all things that really came out strongly through the select committee submission process and that were embraced by the select committee. My recollection was that all of the select committee was very interested in what we are doing about hazards and how we are planning for the future. So it's a very sad day indeed today and I condemn this bill."