Parker David; Tisch LindsayHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): We heard it again from Minister Nick Smith and I think it has got to be said that the reduction of the many dimensions of the housing crisis to the vilification of planning in the Resource Management Act (RMA) is just politically dishonest. Blaming the RMA and planners for the tax biases and the inequality that has driven homeownership in New Zealand to the lowest level since the 1950s—for over 60 years—is just wrong. Blaming the RMA and planners for the pressure caused by having amongst the highest rate of economic migration into a city is just wrong. Planners cannot be held to account for the shortage of motorway space in Auckland.The truth is the RMA has been in force since 1992. In 2004 when the RMA was enforced there were 34000 consents for new houses in New Zealand. In 2016 that went down to 30000. In Auckland the drop was more extreme. It went down from 12000 in 2004 to 9000 in 2016. That was a decrease of 25 percent disregarding population growth which had gone up by about 20 percent. So the per-capita drop in housebuilding over that period under the RMA was more than 30 percent. Over that same period housing cost increases—not land costs; building costs—increased by 96 percent and the average house size increased by 21 percent. The RMA did not cause those problems and has not caused those problems. I think it is true that those facts dismantle the severity of the blame that is attached to the RMA for the housing crisis. So this means that this appalling RMA amendment bill which is now being pushed through cannot be justified by the housing crisis.That does not mean that there have not been silly RMA rules under plans that have constrained the supply of land. It has been the Labour Party policy for more than 5 years to fix that through a national policy statement under the RMA. That was always open to the Government. That is still open to the Government and it has never properly pursued it. There are other things that are needed—Hon Dr Nick Smith: We did it in November.Hon DAVID PARKER: What was that?Hon Dr Nick Smith: The urban development.Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh your ineffective attempt in November after 8 years in power—the Minister has just proved the fallacy of his own logic. He said: We've done it in November."—under the existing RMA. He does not need this amendment to do it.I heard the tripe that we got served up in respect of freshwater quality. Of course we need national guidance in respect of freshwater quality that is better than the polluted sludge that we have been dealt with by the current Government. Of course we need rules about fencing. That can also be done through national guidance under the existing RMA. If there was a problem with the detail of that why did the Minister not fix that in the last 8 years? And if that was all this bill was doing we would have no objection to it.But there are so many other terrible parts to this bill which is why if this bill passes through—with two votes from the Māori Party pushing it over the line by one vote—then it will be because this is just such an appalling piece of legislation following a terrible process where the select committee process has been abused and where the normal rules of Parliament have been taken advantage of. Pushing this bill through without a decent Committee debate was one part and now the Government is trying to get it through tonight so that the political embarrassment to the National Party and the Māori Party is minimised.I want to deal with one of the issues relating to the Māori Party. The Māori Party said that it opposed the National Government having the right to knock out anti-GM rules and plans. The current law in New Zealand is that the release decision for a GMO is taken by the Environmental Protection Authority and that is the safety decision. We say the clinical decision for medical uses of GMOs should be for clinicians not councils but the existing law does allow and should continue to allow economic decisions to be taken by local councils such as the council in the Hawke's Bay which says that for economic reasons—which can be challenged by anyone in its planning processes including through appeals to the Environment Court—it does not want GM plants in its area for the next 10 years. That is legal at the moment.Minister Smith hates this. He is not brave enough to come to this House and pass an amendment to make the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act—the empowering legislation—a code. He wants to give himself a ministerial override power that knocks those rules out by regulation which is one of the many Draconian regulation-making powers that take power off local democracy and giving it to the Minister.The Māori Party is supporting that. It came along and said it had fixed it with a provision that said that that regulation-making power to knock out rules and plans could not be used in respect of GM crops. Well what does that mean? The word "crops" is not defined in the legislation so as the Minister quite rightly said in the Committee of the whole House stage "crops" will be given its natural or literal or ordinary meaning. That meaning as the Minister read out in the dictionary is that crops are the produce of plants such as cereals fruit and vegetables—not pasture not grass. So the Māori Party members are now running around trying to tell everyone "Well it includes grass. It includes trees." and then they show the fallacy of their own logic by saying "Look at the Forest Rights Registration Act. Crops include trees." Well in that Act there is a definition that says that for the purpose of that Act a crop includes a tree. It actually goes the opposite way. The fact that there is no such definition here goes to the point that in this legislation "crop" just means crops—as the dictionaries say the produce of plants like cereals fruit and vegetables—and not trees and not grasses. This will be visited upon the Māori Party and it has been shown to be hapless in respect of this issue.There are some other problems with this. You know you can go too far with this. The issue of property rights and the balance between that and controls and plans is a very valid one. The Productivity Commission report that came out last week backs essentially what the Labour Party and actually the ACT Party are saying in respect of urban development issues—that you need urban development agencies you need a decent national policy statement you need to get rid of the urban boundary and replace it with decent rules around infrastructure and financing that is very close to what the Greens are saying too because we are all logical in our economics and the New Zealand First Party—Hon Members: Ha ha!Hon DAVID PARKER: Well we are. It is the Luddites in the National Party who have got this completely wrong.Anyway the Productivity Commission is not actually saying that what is being done here is necessary. It is not saying that we should do away with the rights of people to have a say in respect of a subdivisional application. You know the opponents to that included not just people who thought that they should have a say if they are close to a subdivision it included the airports and the quarries who say that if they do not have a say in a subdivision close to them then there will be reverse sensitivity concerns into the future and in 10 years' time someone will say: "Oh we've got a house here now. We shouldn't have an airport. It's too noisy or dusty to have a quarry. Please shut down." Those sort of nonsensical outcomes and future costs from the planning system are caused by this.They also say that not having appeal rights—and these are developers saying this—in respect of a subdivisional application is nonsense because you are encouraging councils to impose excessive or stupid conditions and not letting anyone have a remedy. So is that going to drive down the cost of housing or is it going to increase the complexity of council conditions? Use your common sense Hon Nick Smith because we know the answer is that it is going to make things worse.There are lots of other problems. The problems in respect of the Reserves Act I do not have time to go through. There are some good provisions in here in respect of the Public Works Act—even some of the provisions around national guidance. I do not quite like the way the Government has done them but we could have gone along with them if it was not for the glaring problems that there are in other parts of this.This does include various routes for Draconian ministerial powers to override local democracy. We all agree there should be standard templates and definitions but when you draft those powers so widely that they go to the substance of conditions you are going too far and that is what the Government has done here. It is what National often does; it actually does not believe in local democracy. It always thinks it is right and everyone else is wrong. You cannot delegate these things to councils and then give these powers to the Minister. It is just wrong.The many other faults in this bill have been touched on only superficially in the Committee stage debate because of the way in which that was run. There is a need to change Standing Orders so that bills return to multi-parts if they are complex and are dealing with lots of things because otherwise these issues do not get properly debated and there are—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry. The member's time has expired."