Simpson Scott: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSimpson Scott: General Debate[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8477. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Those of us who are fortunate enough to have the privilege of representing constituency seats particularly in rural and provincial New Zealand often hear from constituents who use words like “inefficient” “cumbersome” “inconsistent” “slow” “inflexible” and “bureaucratic”—and they are not talking just about the Opposition. They are talking about words that describe our resource management legislation. Those words are used to describe the Opposition and our resource management legislation. Tomorrow in this House the member who represents the Nelson electorate and is also the Minister for the Environment the Hon Nick Smith is going to introduce phase two of this National Government’s reform of the Resource Management Act. That is going to be wonderful legislation. It means that a solid pragmatic and sensible approach to Resource Management Act reform is going to be finally introduced into this House and it is much needed and much overdue. We had wanted to introduce this phase two legislation some time before in this Parliament. The announcement came last week and it has been interesting to see that across the country there has support and encouragement for this legislation being introduced. It has been welcomed by a whole range of interested stakeholders not least of which has been local government which has in fact responded incredibly positively to the introduction of this legislation.The first reading of this legislation tomorrow shows how effectively this National-led Government relates to organises itself with and engages its partners across the House. So I want to thank and encourage members of the Māori Party and the ACT Party MP who are going to support us in this bill. I was pleased to see that belatedly the Labour Party has decided to in fact support this bill at its first reading and I take that as a very positive sign indeed. But one thing that we will be wanting to watch with particular interest tomorrow at the first reading are the intentions of New Zealand First. Less than a year ago up in Northland the Rt Hon Winston Peters was campaigning to the people of Northland in a provincial rural seat a seat where people do get complaints about the Resource Management Act. Winston Peters was campaigning in that by-election and was saying he would support sensible Resource Management Act reform. Winston now has an opportunity to come to this House tomorrow and encourage his party his supporters on behalf of the people of Northland who will benefit from an improved resource management legislative environment.Tim Macindoe: Will he do it?SCOTT SIMPSON: Will he do it? Will the proof of the pudding be in the voting tomorrow? We are yet to see what that will be. Tomorrow we expect that because the people of Northland will be the sort of people who will benefit from this legislation New Zealand First and the Rt Hon Winston Peters will I am sure be supportive of this legislation.Planning processes under the Resource Management Act are we all know occurring at glacial speed. They occur incredibly slowly. They occur at a speed that prohibits development and that actually disincentivises people from making development decisions for progressing their businesses growing their enterprises creating jobs and creating a growing economy. What the legislation seeks to do is streamline and smooth out some of those processes. We had an operation going through the country a month or 2 or 3 or 4 ago led by my colleague and friend Jacqui Dean called the Rules Reduction Taskforce. It published a great paper about loopy rules and I am pleased to say that many of those loopy rules are going to be fixed by this piece of legislation. The Rules Reduction Taskforce has done a very very good job. Standard planning templates will be introduced as part of this reform. Just to give the House some idea of some of the benefits that will come from this I told that currently there are 242 definitions as to what could be described as a commercial zone. That certainly cannot create certainty in the environment that we want to be part of.So I am looking forward tomorrow to the first reading of this second phase of our Resource Management Act reform. I am looking forward to support across the House from parties like Labour like the Māori Party like ACT and certainly—hopefully—like New Zealand First. It will be good legislation. I am chairing the select committee. Bring it on. It is going to be a great bill.