Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5639] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I wish I could welcome the third reading of this bill and say that it is the last stage of a project I worked on intensively for a whole year from 2000 to 2001 and again intensively—on the No. 2 bill—in the last 2 months. But it is hard to get up a lot of enthusiasm about welcoming a curate’s egg—and that is what this legislation is: a curate’s egg. There are some simple constructive changes as the Minister said. I worked very hard to get them tied down and put into the No. 1 bill and I support them. But there are some other things that are not very constructive. 
One of the things that was not discussed at all during the Committee stage was what this bill does to both amend and enact the case law on the permitted baseline. The Smith Chilcott case states that only those effects that are on top of what is in the existing environment and are on top of all the permitted effects can be considered in notification decisions and consents. That as it stands is a very worrying piece of case law. The way that it is being applied is a recipe for cumulative damage. The Local Government and Environment Committee when considering the No. 1 bill put that concept in at the suggestion of the officials. The committee when looking at the No. 2 bill recognised that councils need to maintain some discretion and that there are times when simply allowing cumulative damage on the basis of something that is already out there is not appropriate. I am very pleased that our committee has given councils that discretion and I hope that they will use it wisely. 
It is good that we now have a process that will be used for national policy statements. Up until now the process was complicated and it has not been used. It is good that we have a process to develop environmental standards that cannot be overridden and lowered by councils setting a different standard. Those are both positive measures. I support the raising of the status of heritage to a matter of national importance under section 6 of the Act. That has not changed between the No. 1 bill and the No. 2 bill. 
Last week we finally learnt in the House what the deal was that encouraged the United Future members to support this bill. Up until then that had been a mystery because they did not seem to have gained anything in return. All the gains that they claimed initially for supporting the bill turned out to have been announced by the Minister before the United Future members came to Parliament. So we have been wondering what the price was. We found out last week that it was the removal of certain words to do with the definition of historic heritage. The removal of those words in the Committee of the whole House came as a big surprise. The normal way to remove unwanted words is by negotiation in the select committee—through discussion. The United Future members did not raise that matter in the select committee at all nor did they raise it in their previous speeches. It was suddenly landed on us in the House. 
I want to know who told the United Future members that the Green Party had introduced those words because that is what they said in their statement and is what they went around the gallery claiming last week. Every journalist who rang me about that matter said United Future had said the Greens had put those words in the bill. In fact those words had nothing whatever to do with the Green Party. Even the Government’s statements saying that they were introduced by the select committee is a little devious given that they were brought to the select committee when it was considering the No. 1 bill by officials of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. So the advisers to the committee had recommended those words. The committee decided to take their advice as committees often do. I did not disagree with them; I did not feel I had enough background in culture and heritage to disagree with the perception of the officials. But given that United Future was not represented on that select committee—there was only one United Future person in Parliament at that stage—the United Future members could not possibly have had any knowledge of what happened on the select committee. Who told the United Future members that it was all the fault of the Greens? 
Whatever may be the case on that matter it is clear that the Government would have had a lot less trouble on that issue had it simply been prepared to say at the beginning that it was responsible for those words. It should have said that after listening to some submissions as to what the public was saying and after talking with the United Future members and others it had decided that the words were not actually necessary and were a bit confusing so it had agreed to take them out. If the Government had said that the whole matter would have died right there. But that is not of course what happened. In fact the removal of those words will not make a lot of difference as Larry Baldock agrees and has said in the House. The matters they cover are already covered as they should be under the definition of historic heritage. If anybody thinks that by just removing a few words we can make Maori cultural aspirations go away then he or she needs to think again. Those things are part of the New Zealand community. They are part of New Zealand society and we need to take them into account. 
The overall question we have to ask in respect of this bill is how it will affect the fundamental problem of the Act: the imbalance between the developer applicants on the one hand who generally have very deep pockets paid staff and professional lawyers and who can afford to hire all the experts on a topic to give evidence for them and community groups with no previous experience of being in court on the other hand that are trying to protect their local way of life their fishing spots their landscapes and views their quiet urban streets and their undeveloped coastline. Many Resource Management Act hearings are truly David and Goliath scenes. I have been involved in them myself. Only 1 percent of applications are turned down now and less than 5 percent are notified. And let us look at what gets built. No one could seriously argue that the Act is currently protecting us against unsustainable development or the inappropriate subdivision and use of the coastal environment that it is protecting areas of significant indigenous vegetation that it is avoiding remedying or mitigating adverse effects on the environment or that it is protecting the needs of future generations. Yet those things are part of the Act’s purpose and principles. 
Neither this Government nor the last one nor the National Governments before that have tried to address those problems. The only problems to get airspace are those perceived to be problems by the developers who want to build more and faster with less community input. As we have just heard some think that the public should not have a say even on the diversion of two-thirds of the water in one of our last remaining braided rivers. This bill has reduced the time frames for those developers and provides streamlined processes to help them. I supported those changes because we should try to make the Act work smoothly. But what is in it for those who give up their free time for nothing and try to use the Act to protect the common good—in fact to protect the values set out in Part 2 of the Act itself? The participation of those people has been further reduced with limited notification and that has not been balanced by a process to review wrong notification decisions as proposed by Simon Upton. 
That is why we changed our vote on the bill from “abstain” to “oppose”. If the Government had needed or wanted our support for this bill it would have accepted some of the many ways we offered of obtaining the benefits of limited notification while safeguarding the matters that concerned us. But it did not do that. 
The select committee was concerned that some councils interpret the persons affected as being simply the adjoining property owners. Sometimes those people are the only persons affected and non-notification is entirely appropriate. However as I outlined previously to the House there are many cases where organisations formed to protect some aspect of the public interest whether it be historic heritage environmental values amenity values community values or Maori cultural values are affected. The committee took the trouble to express a strong view in its commentary on the bill that sometimes it is appropriate to consider those groups as persons who are affected when it stated: “We are concerned that regardless of differing views on limited notification there are some cases where neighbouring landowners should not be considered to be the only affected party. For example if biodiversity or amenity values or built heritage will be reduced—for example by removing trees from a road reserve or draining wetlands or redeveloping urban precincts—then groups representing relevant aspects of the public interest should be considered to be interested parties even where the application is not being generally notified. Some councils already have a practice of requiring consultation of such groups and we commend this practice as a guideline for consents requiring limited notification.” 
I hope that that statement by the committee will be taken into account by councils and by the courts.