Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Speaker. They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and there's more than an element of that analogy in this piece of legislation because what this second leg of the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform trifecta that the Government is introducing effectively does is create another level of local government another level of bureaucracy. But a scary one at that in that there is almost no potential for electoral accountability for democratic accountability of the people who will be making very significant decisions on a regional basis about what gets built where it gets built how it gets built and what impacts that will have on the lives and wellbeing of the people that live within that region and indeed the cumulative effect of those plans across the whole country.So this piece of legislation has some lofty ambitions. In the Minister's legislative statement it says that The [Spatial Planning] Bill mandates long-term spatial planning at the regional level through the development of Regional Spatial Strategies. It will enable and drive changes in land use and the coastal marine area while protecting and enhancing the natural environment. It will integrate planning across different legislative frameworks that are associated with the management of the natural and built environment." Now that's very motherhood and apple pie—hard to disagree with it except when one delves a little into the detail of what it might mean and how the implications of such planning might have actually perverse outcomes that go directly opposite to the lofty ambitions and intentions that the Minister's new planning model has.So there are going to be these committees all around the countryside—15 of them. The legislation defines the minimum membership requirement but it doesn't define how the district councils will appoint the base members to these new planning committees. And as one of my colleagues—Chris Bishop—said earlier in the day when he was talking on the previous piece of legislation he's seen more than a few local government stoushes in his time—haven't we all. And the potential for enormous conflict and one-upmanship and regional and district scrapping over the representation on these committees is practically never ending.And then of course we come to the mana whenua representatives—there will be a minimum of two. There's nothing in the legislation that defines how those two people will be selected. I've always been of the view that if people are going to be put in places of decision making that have impacts on other people's lives their businesses and their wellbeing then there should be some accountability about it. There should be some clear pathway and definition about how people are elected and appointed and then accountability through the recourse of a ballot box actually is the safest methodology and that should occur. Now there appears to be in the make-up of these committees almost none of that basic democratic principle about the way that the committees will be formed how they will be shaped who will sit on them what the definitional requirements and capabilities of those people will be and what kind of accountabilities they will be subject to.Now I want to just for a moment talk to the House a little bit about some of the practical issues that this piece of legislation may have in terms of consequential impact. So clearly the establishment of these committees is a step for a further reduction in democratic accountability. So for many parts of the country for instance in my own area of the beautiful Coromandel decision making will move from Thames to Hamilton; and decision making for instance for Carterton will move to Wellington; and for Kaikōura to Christchurch; and from Ōpōtiki to Tauranga. Now those smaller communities do have unique and individual requirements ambitions and ideas for the future of their regions and districts and they don't necessarily want those to be reflected by an unelected unaccountable group of people who don't live work or recreate in the areas where those smaller communities are represented. So we on this side of the House are very concerned about the issues relating to the predictability of outcome from these regional committees their efficiency and the timeliness of what they are seeking to do. We remain very sceptical about those things.So a lot of this is based on theory. And yes there will be not so many plans—there'll only be 15 plans. They will be 30-year plans. Yes that's a smaller number than the 100 plans now but they are plans still. So just because there are not as many plans it doesn't mean that the impacts of those plans is not going to be as powerful or even more so than the ones that exist now. So these regional spatial strategies will define where everything will go. And then it's going to be in theory really easy for people to get stuff done if those things are clearly defined. Well I would just say that that's exactly the situation we have now. Nothing much has changed except under this new model I think it's going to be worse because your consenting authority has to now avoid compromising the wellbeing of future generations before you can get a resource consent. That's going to be very tricky. What does that actually mean and how will it be interpreted? What are the practical applications of that? Now members of the Government will say "Well that's all very fine and dandy." but it's the practical application that is the problem.So let's just think for a minute about potentially the unintended consequences of a heavily planned city. So clause 17 of the Spatial Planning Bill states that a 30-year spatial plan will include "(1)(l) the indicative location of planned or potential business and [recreational] activities and the likely general scale and intensity of those activities". So they're going to plan where businesses can go and where houses can go. So what happens for instance if a spatial plan for a new suburb includes the indicative location of a supermarket? Now is it easier to get a consent in that one place? Well apparently it will be easier to get a consent in that one place where supermarkets have been designated. So the person who currently owns the land where that new supermarket designated place will be has suddenly had a windfall advantage in terms of being able to sell land to supermarket developers because the area has been defined. And that will be an issue for sure. So the person who owns that land now has a monopoly on the supermarket land and so they can land bank and then extract a premium price. Rather than paying for a consent the investor is paying more for the land and so the price ratchets up again. And once they build their supermarket clearly then there's a very low threat of a competitor building a supermarket there because the designated land has already been designated. And so the grand plan starts to look very very intrusive.What about if they get it wrong? What happens if the town planner who has decided that this will be the supermarket area of the city—the supermarket precinct if you like—what if they've got it wrong and they choose the wrong area? What if the demographics change? What if the movement of people and traffic changes and the supermarkets are suddenly in the wrong place; what happens then? What happens if for instance those planners actually get the whole thing wrong and there's a move against supermarkets in years to come and we start getting minimarkets are all the rage? Well what happens if they shift the theory to the practicality and get it completely wrong?So there are some very big potentials for unintended consequences in this piece of legislation. I don't think the Minister or his advisers have really thought through that stuff. So again on this side of the House as we were in the first piece the Natural and Built Environment Bill we are sceptical of the outcome we're sceptical of the theory we don't think it's nimble enough and we will be opposing this legislation as well."