Parker David; O'Connor GregSPATIAL PLANNING BILLSecond ReadingHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I present a legislative statement on the Spatial Planning Bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon DAVID PARKER: I move That the Spatial Planning Bill be now read a second time. This bill is an important part of the new resource management system the new laws that will do a better job of enabling development and protecting the environment. This bill was also introduced in November 2022 and referred to the Environment Committee. I again thank the committee for their careful work in considering the around 3000 submissions on the bill and I as other members do acknowledge the capability and hard work and chairpersonship skills of Eugenie Sage. The Government has accepted the amendments proposed by the committee which will improve the bill's workability. The Spatial Planning Bill has a single function. It's the creation and the implementation of regional spatial strategies. This will do a number of things including national consistency across key aspects of these strategies. Time and again throughout the long reform process leading to this bill we've been told by developers and environmentalists alike that the absence of regional planning is a major problem in our resource management system. Above all else those with interests in the system are crying out for predictability—land use rules land use plans and uncertainty around where infrastructure should go delaying infrastructure and there's a lot of money and time being wasted. Spatial planning at the regional level will be a big step in overcoming these challenges. Finally developers and environmentalists can expect to work with plans across the country that are based on some pretty common-sense underlying principles. For years we've had successive leaders of parties rallying against the Resource Management Act (RMA) promising that they'd throw it out they'd repeal it. Now that we've got around to finally putting something comprehensive in its place they're going to chuck it out and start again. They know this reform's right and they know it needs to happen. I'm going to recount a bit of a story. Just after we started the RMA reform process I was somewhat surprised to have Federated Farmers come into my office and say they wanted the RMA. And I said Too late. You've kicked it to death." I actually used those words. You've got to ask yourself: why is it that Federated Farmers want the RMA now? Because they've hated it. It was before they saw the detail of the bill but they had learnt that we were going to knock over first in first served in respect of water issues. It's an issue that's perhaps more apposite to the Natural and Built Environment Bill rather than this so I won't go into that now but I'm happy to in the committee stage of the House. Now we're seeing some parties in this House wanting to demonise this in order to court a few votes and I suspect also to deny the Labour Party and the Greens credit for a job well done.The regional spatial strategies will drive the direction in growing regions. They're actually not so important in regions that don't have growth pressures but in growing regions they'll make it easier for regions to respond to the challenges that they face over the next 30 years or more. The strategies will be given effect through natural and built environment plans and there's very broad support from submitters for introducing this new spatial planning system that comes through the Spatial Planning Act. We need these spatial strategies to ensure that the regions identify the areas where growth is likely to proceed in the future perhaps with some population triggers and the areas where it's less likely that growth is likely to take place. You know some of the areas that might be prone to climate change hazards or might be areas of high natural biodiversity compared with other areas that are lower productive land and more suitable for development. So spatial planning will deliver an integrated approach including protection of the likes of transport corridors or rail corridors. This will both enable the private sector to mobilise their resources towards the areas which are most efficiently developed but it will also enable central government to better plan and integrate these things into the long-term investment plans that central government has for the likes of transport infrastructure. So this will both deliver improvements to infrastructure provision and to the appropriate release of land when it's needed. Now we're not creating monopolies for anyone or saying that all development should be in a certain area. In any event these decisions will be regional; they won't be made by central government. But I think it's pretty easy to see that the efficiencies that will come of this will be significant. And indeed once a spatial strategy suggests that those areas over there should be developed and those transport corridors protected and those areas of natural importance protected over there a lot of the development activities will flow through into Natural and Built Environment Act plans as permitted activities. It's one of the reasons why the new system can have so many more permitted activities rather than things that require a bespoke consent. It's because they will have been identified as future areas for growth in the spatial strategies. And that's why developers up and down the country the big development firms as well as councils think that this is a good idea. The new system will also provide benefits by improving housing affordability. I do agree with Simon Court that population areas that are growing need to make ample provision for land and the new system actually embeds that as a principle. It requires very expansive land markets rather than just-in-time supply in a way that drives up land costs. But it also through this legislation can be done in a way that achieves sensible outcomes for infrastructure planning. In respect of climate change Simon Court in his last contribution said it was irrelevant to these instruments. I agree that mitigation or emissions reduction is mainly a matter for emissions pricing but urban form avoiding natural hazards including from climate change storm events and the like has a proper place in the planning system including at times in the Spatial Planning Act.Regional spatial strategies will help achieve the purpose of the Natural and Built Environment Bill. While the spatial planning bill is a separate and new part of the resource management system it is linked to the Natural and Built Environment Bill in several ways. It will be done by the same regional planning committees that are established under the Natural and Built Environment Bill. That was a recommendation of the select committee that we've adopted.The national planning framework that Simon Court again criticised saying that it was some sort of instrument of the Minister—it's not. It's not prepared any differently to the way in which national direction under the RMA is. And indeed there are more checks and balances and in fact in some ways less ministerial power in respect of the national planning framework than is the case in respect of national direction under the RMA because some of the shortcut processes that could be abused under the RMA are not as able to be used under the new national planning framework. And the first example of that will be the first draft of the national planning framework will go to a full board of inquiry quite independent of any Minister.Essentially the first national planning framework consolidates all of the existing national direction into a single document tries to sort out inconsistencies where that's possible at that level in the planning framework and then adds some more national direction in respect of a pro-development chapter for infrastructure and also a chapter on avoiding natural hazards so that we avoid some of the problems that were so apparent in recent events from bad storm events up north. So the bill sets out what the Regional Planning Committee should consider when they're doing a strategy. And I welcome the drafting improvements the committee's made on that.Because there is a need to align Government programmes with what regions want there is one Government appointment on the Spatial Planning Committee in addition to the Regional Planning Committee members that are appointed regionally and that's because councils wanted that because they sometimes find it difficult to marshal central Government to actually pony up and make commitments that are needed and this will assist in that.Public participation is made clearer by amendments from the select committee which we've also adopted. I'm sure there'll be lots of additional questions in the committee stage on this bill. The final point I would make is there's no point having these grand plans if you don't have implementation plans. So the Act requires implementation plans so that we can see how councils and central government agencies are going to give effect to the high-level principles or the high level provisions of strategic plans.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."