Edmonds Barbara; Bishop Chris; O'Connor GregHon BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Madam Chair. The difficulty with not having a select committee process and this bill going through under urgency is that the committee has to put a lot of trust in the drafters of this bill and the proof-checking of the bill to ensure that it meets the policy intent of the Government of the day. I have only in the last hour been able to go through Part 1 of Schedule 2 through the Airport Authorities Act the Aquaculture Reform (Repeals and Transitional Provisions) Act—these are all the consequential amendments as a result of this bill—the Auckland Improvement Trust Act the Biosecurity Act. Now I had to stop at the Biosecurity Act because this is where I think there has been an omission and I want to get a clarification from the Minister responsible for RMA Reform that it is an intentional omission from this bill. So under the heading Biosecurity Act" it states "In section 7A(1) and (4) replace "Part 2 of the Natural and Built Environment Act 2023" with "Part 3 of the Resource Management Act 1991" in each place."So if you look at Part 2 of the Natural and Built Environment Act you see that Part 2 is in relation to the duties responsibilities and the restrictions in that particular Act which this bill is repealing. Section 17 of the Act which this bill is repealing has a requirement around environmental responsibility and again I tie this back to the Biosecurity Act and that has the purpose of protecting New Zealand's borders from biosecurity threats—it's really serious stuff. It has serious penalties and for anybody who's in the primary industries or has an interest in the primary industries in New Zealand it's really important that this is made really clear. So Part 2 of the Natural and Built Environment Act has section 17 "Environmental responsibility". It states "(1) Consistently with the ethic of stewardship every person has a responsibility to protect and sustain the health and well-being of the natural environment for the benefit of both present and future generations including as required by ." and it goes on in subsection (2). My question is in relation to the fact that this is a brand new provision that was brought in. Now obviously when you translate this to Part 3 of the Resource Management Act (RMA) which is what that part in the bill wants to do—which is basically to replace Part 2 with Part 3—this section 17 around environmental responsibility is actually missing from Part 3 of the RMA. And the reason why it's missing is because it was an intentional new provision that was put in during the drafting of the Natural and Built Environment Act—it's a brand new provision.So after a bill is passed officials will provide some guidance to the rest of the country as to how you interpret the law. Under that guidance that's been provided by the Ministry for the Environment it says that clearly this is a new duty and responsibility. It says the purpose must be achieved in ways that first and foremost protect the health of the natural environment.The second thing that's most important about it is that it futureproofs it. It futureproofs the environmental responsibility so that basically the decision makers of today have to ensure that they take into account how they can futureproof the protection—again I go back to the Biosecurity Act—of the biosecurity of the country. So basically when you make decisions take into account the duties and responsibilities in those provisions.My concern is that by replacing this just squarely with Part 3 of the RMA there is no duty and responsibility because that is within the Natural and Built Environment Act. So I'm just wanting to make really clear: is it the Minister's intention that there is no longer this very specific duty which is set out in the Natural and Built Environment Act "Consistently with the ethic of stewardship every person has a responsibility to protect and sustain the health and well-being of the natural environment for the benefit of both present and future generations including as required by ."?So I just want to ask the Minister that. Because he is transferring this straight from Part 2 and going straight to Part 3 is it an intentional omission not to have that environmental responsibility duty on decision makers?Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform): As I have said about eight nine maybe 10 times now we are going back to the Resource Management Act 1991—it's pretty simple.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Just before I take—I've been watching this debate carefully for the last hour; I'm aware that most in fact all of the amendments have been spoken to by those proposing the amendments. Also conscious that we are sort of even when we are speaking to amendments while we allow some context it can't turn into a general debate speech. So it will now be getting to the stage where we will be looking for fairly specific ideas and questions on this."