Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe Madam Speaker. Pleased to take a call on the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill. Sometimes I think the National Party doesn't understand MMP. The fact that we've got three parties in Government representing the breadth of views of New Zealanders of course means that there are discussions and debate about significant legislation such as this bill. That strengthens the process of developing the legislation because it means that the different perspectives go into drafting the bill and then amending it through the course of the Parliament so it then ensures that it represents the wider spectrum of views of New Zealanders. So I make no apology for the fact that we are part of an effective Government which really demonstrates MMP in action and three parties are working together.The Green Party has worked throughout the development of the bill to improve it to strengthen it. I really acknowledge the work of environment Minister David Parker and the good faith negotiations that he has undertaken with us. I also acknowledge the really important contribution that submitters have made because the Green Party was adamant that there needed to be a select committee process for this bill so that the public would have an opportunity to comment on it because communities want to be able to influence the decisions that are made under the Resource Management Act which affect their neighbourhoods and the places that they care about. Public participation enables more information to be put in front of decision makers and again that wider spectrum of views.So this fast-track bill does reduce the opportunities for full public participation but it does enable a number of organisations to present their perspectives and their critique of projects to the expert consenting panel. I'm pleased that in the Environment Committee this has been further expanded with the addition of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Others have commended the work of officials. I would also really like to commend all of those individuals and organisations who worked through a weekend—very short compressed time period—to analyse the bill and to make submissions and the work that Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick did on the select committee to ensure that everyone who wanted to be heard had that opportunity and the long hearings of the select committee to enable that to happen. As we have seen with the bill that has been reported back there have been a number of further improvements in the light of those submissions.The National Party has said that the Government lacks vision and their response their vision is just to put a whole lot of Supplementary Order Papers seeking to have a number of other projects included in the schedule to the bill. This Government's vision in responding to the environmental and climate challenges of the time is to ensure as a key part of our recovery to the economic insecurity caused by COVID that we have a nature-based recovery that we invest $1.1 billion in creating new nature-based jobs that help Papatūānuku and ensure that people can bring home money to put food on the table and have that security of employment. That is part of our vision. So is this bill because it ensures that while responding to COVID while responding to the need to create jobs through these fast-tracked projects we also recognise sustainable management. That's a key part of the purpose of the bill.In the criteria that the Minister for the Environment has to consider when deciding whether projects should go on the fast track those have been strengthened. As Duncan Webb noted there was already a major criteria that projects have to contribute to New Zealand's efforts to mitigate climate change and transition more quickly to a low-emissions economy and the impacts of reducing New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions is all there in relation to that criteria. The select committee has strengthened it by including a specific reference to greenhouse gas emissions when the Minister comes to consider adverse environmental effects. One of the key areas where the bill was strengthened early on was ensuring that there was a strong commitment to Part 2 in terms of the decisions made by the Minister and by the expert consenting panel so that the environmental bottom lines that are part of the Resource Management Act (RMA) come across to this bill.So our concerns are around the constraints on public participation. While National is suggesting that this bill should supplant the RMA permanently there is a significant constraint on local participation and decision-making by councils because of course decisions under the bill are made by the expert consenting panel within 25 to 50 days rather than by councils elected to represent their communities. So access to justice is constrained too with the inability to appeal beyond the Court of Appeal. This bill is complex. So like others I really acknowledge the work of officials in taking the behemoth of the Resource Management Act working out how this bill integrates with it particularly the members of the Parliamentary Counsel Office and their legal drafting so that this bill does fit alongside the RMA. It changes the processes that are in the RMA but retains those key fundamental environmental bottom lines that are in Part 2.The National speakers have queried why things like cycleways are part of the fast-tracked projects in the schedule. Those cycleways had significant benefits for sustainability both in reducing emissions and in promoting the health of the population by ensuring that people can commute safely without being threatened by cars. So that's the sort of change that this Government wants in order to shift us to a low-emissions economy to tackle the climate crisis and to ensure that infrastructure projects take us in that direction and are not the big motorway projects the roads of national significance that that party was so keen on when it was in Government which increased emissions and created an enormous taking of funding away from things like active transport cycleways walking projects and improved access around our cities.The vision that this Government has for the Resource Management Act is to follow on from the recommendations of the Randerson review which will be made public. That review I hope deals with the issue of spatial planning and infrastructure integration. We have a real deficit in infrastructure planning in Aotearoa. We have a deficit of investment in things like three waters in things like effective transport effective public transport. This Government is making that investment through the COVID response and recovery package and through the Provincial Growth Fund. We need our environmental planning legislation to be about good spatial planning where we are planning to ensure that new housing development integrates with transport corridors. Where we put infrastructure affects how cities and towns develop. So that is our vision for environmental legislation which does that spatial planning and takes us to a low-emissions economy. So this bill is not the bill that will achieve that but that will come with the results of the Randerson review when we get back into Government after 19 September to take that forward.So this bill with its three tracks for projects has had significant improvements through the select committee process in response to submissions things like the ability of infrastructure agencies to do permitted activities through clearance of vegetation in significant natural areas—there've been changes to things like that. Auckland water which is a big issue is now on a pathway that's under the existing Act through being called in by the Minister for the Environment. What National would have done was ram that through without taking into account the concerns of Waikato-Tainui. That will go through that more comprehensive process under the RMA because it is critical that adverse environmental effects are considered properly. Because we've seen with projects like the Clyde Dam which was rammed through the failure to really look at the geological characteristics there and the impacts that things like that have had on the functioning of that dam. Things that are done in haste where environmental effects aren't fully considered can have detrimental impacts further down the track as happened under National with the way it wanted to ram through a lot of irrigation projects. So I'm pleased to take a call on the bill. Thank you.