Goldsmith Paul: Resource Management Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Resource Management Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to speak on the Resource Management Reform Bill. I want to focus on the Auckland Unitary Plan which is a very very important document for the city and indeed for the country. Housing is an issue for all New Zealanders to be concerned about. If inflation in housing in Auckland is out of control that ultimately leads to increasing interest rates which causes ripples throughout the New Zealand economy. Making sure that we have got on top of that issue is a very serious priority for this Government. The Government has been guided particularly by the work of the Productivity Commission in looking at housing affordability. There are lots of factors but the supply of land is an important one so I commend the work of Nick Smith in conjunction with Auckland Council on the plans that he has got there to free up supply and get the houses built so as to make housing more affordable for Aucklanders.The unitary plan is a very important part of that mix in the long term and depending on how good a plan it is it may help or it may hinder Aucklanders to get into their homes. It also affects their lives in so many many different ways. The first iteration of that plan that we saw certainly was not perfect. There is a sense that maybe the council has bitten off more than it can chew. I am certainly concerned about extra costs being put on. In the drafts that I have seen there is a requirement I understand to have newcommercial buildings have five-star ratings for a green status. That is not exactly the way it seems to me to make sure that we can build properties and get businesses into factories and offices as cheaply as possible. We need to have flexibility rather than necessarily having ideological blinkers from planners demanding that they do things x y and z regardless of the cost.There has also been very significant concern in the community particularly around Epsom where I am based about some elements of the intensification. There is a real balance to be struck between spreading out and intensifying. I am not sure that it has got it right and again I am concerned about some of the ideological blinkers of some of the planners who if they are not carefully controlled could lead to the housing dreams of many New Zealanders being lost. So I am amazed that anybody would think it would be a good idea to make the plan operative immediately on notification given the size of the task and the scale of it—Phil Twyford: Not operative—legal weight. It’s different.PAUL GOLDSMITH: —or to have legal weight even. I think the Government has absolutely got it right in not taking that step.We have heard a lot of complaints from Mr Twyford and others moving to the issue of the hearings panel that somehow the council should be appointing all the hearings panel people. That would be I think a dreadful outcome. They are setting the rules. It is very important that this process has clear independence.Phil Twyford: Arrogance.PAUL GOLDSMITH: It has nothing to do with arrogance. It is about making sure that Aucklanders in a plan that will affect their lives over the next three or four decades and that has been proposed by the Auckland Council—very strong direction from the Auckland Council about what it wants to do. It is about intensification. It is about all sorts of plans and theories. It is very important that Aucklanders can see that there is an independent group of highly qualified people who can go through that plan line by line. The council can advocate for its argument but people can see that there is strong independence there and I think that is absolutely appropriate.The Local Government and Environment Committee did hear a lot of submissions on this and we have made some significant changes around some of the opportunities for reviewing some of the hearings panel’s decisions. So if the hearings panel is making a recommendation outside the scope of submissions then it has to make it very clear that it is. Then we recommended changes to section 150 inserted by clause 125 which I think are important to provide a clear right of appeal to the Environment Court where the Auckland Council has amended a provision recommended by the hearings panel. We also recommended enabling a merit-based appeal to the Environment Court where the hearings panel makes a recommendation identified as out of scope because people were concerned that in the original plan if the hearings panel just dreamed up something new and there had not been debate and suddenly the panel passed it and the council agreed then we would have a lack of appeal rights. So we have made those changes. We are also aware of the concern about the combined effects of section 139 inserted by clause 125. We have made significant changes and on that basis I commend this bill.