Heatley Phil: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHeatley Phil: Resource Management Amendment Bill Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12860. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei): I rise to support the third reading of the Resource Management Reform Bill which has been divided into three parts: the Resource Management Amendment Bill the Local Government (Auckland Transitional Provisions) Amendment Bill (No 2) and of course the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill. This legislation makes four or five significant changes to what we have grown to know as the Resource Management Act. In fact I remember a member of the Labour Party saying some 6 or 7 years ago Marian—oh what was her surname? Minister—Hon Member: Hobbs.Hon PHIL HEATLEY: That is the one. She said it was a beautifully crafted piece of legislation. She was in love with it ignoring the fact that it had stopped so much legitimate development in this country. What this bill does is a number of things as I said. First of all the direct referral process allows notified resource consent applications to be decided by the Environment Court bypassing the local council. The reason is that so many of these consents if not all that go to the council go through a process that is elongated painful and expensive and ends up in the Environment Court anyway.The 6-month consenting provision in this bill allows medium-sized projects to fall under a category where the consent needs to be granted within a 6-month period. There are about 1600 medium-sized projects on average throughout New Zealand each year. We are saying that they should be consented within the 6-month process. We have seen projects of national significance done in a 9-month process and now we are doing a 6-month consenting process here.Also we have got the section 32 amendments where councils have to ensure that the economic consequences of any decision they make are fully examined and reported on. Of course there are the amendments to do with trees as well which members from the other side of the House have talked about ad infinitum as if a tree is the most significant issue on New Zealanders’ minds at this time.Parts 2 and 3 deal with the Auckland Unitary Plan. This legislation as I commit to the House in the third reading does again underpin National’s environmental successes. We have got improved air quality. We have passed effective legislation in the exclusive economic zone which the previous Government ignored even though it was backed by the Greens. There was no legislation out in the exclusive economic zone. The Greens never thought of it. We put some legislation and regulation out in the exclusive economic zone and the Greens opposed it saying it was not good enough—it was not as good as the nil that they did. We passed legislation dealing with climate change and we are seeing more renewable energy. I commend this legislation to the House. I thank the Hon Amy Adams for all the work she has done with her Cabinet colleagues and for her support. Thank you very much.