Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): One of the biggest pieces of feedback that I get from property developers landlords and businesses in the building and construction industry is: When will we see meaningful reforms to the Resource Management Act?" I've heard today from this House from the likes of Ron Mark that the Resource Management Act (RMA) is broken that it's dysfunctional and the question that this House needs to consider is: is this bill that we're considering today the best way to fix the RMA? What I mean by that is: will it speed up development will it ensure our environment is preserved and will it reduce unnecessary bureaucratic processes for those in the sector?On this side of the House we've answered no to all of those questions. This bill is essentially a bill that tinkers with the RMA rather than reducing the fundamental issues with it. It doesn't address housing affordability. I heard the Minister David Parker for 10 minutes talk about the bill and he didn't reference housing affordability at all. It makes building houses and subdividing more difficult and it adds unnecessary costs and delays in the process.Now under this new bill there are new powers that councils and the Environment Court and boards of inquiry will be able to consider the costs of climate change mitigation. But in terms of the greenhouse gases in New Zealand and the largest buckets of opportunity for this country this sector doesn't really fit the bill. If we look at the largest sectors—whether it is energy transport or agriculture—those are the sectors that we should be focused on in order to reduce our carbon footprint in New Zealand. So allowing councils to stop developments and subdivisions on these grounds we think is absurd.What I didn't hear from the Minister today is how this law speeds up the development of homes. What we also didn't hear from the Minister is how it reduces complexity and improves the resource management processes which is the core objective of the Act that we're discussing here today. What I think we need to do and what my community in Northcote has always urged in this instance is a bipartisan approach to have meaningful reform to the Resource Management Act. That means making it easier to build—whether it is small DIY projects in your home—but also making sure that we're looking after our environment as well.The second area is in relation to speeding up the resource consent process. I'm absolutely in agreement with my colleague Nicola Willis who said that the processes councils have for resource consents is essentially a monopoly and yet we have heard nothing from the Minister and nothing in this bill that addresses the complexities of getting a resource consent and in fact how we can speed that up.So I support the other bill that we're discussing in the House today which is around the COVID-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Bill but that in essence—Hon Chris Hipkins: That's not this bill.DAN BIDOIS: —that is not this bill as Minister Hipkins referred to absolutely—calls out the workarounds that were already in place and are going to be in place in this Government. We have such a poor Resource Management Act that we're now going to vote separately to this on a bill that essentially provides a workaround.So let me ask a question to this House today: are we committed to substantial reform of the Resource Management Act? If so then let's come together in a bipartisan fashion. We on this side of the House stand ready to make substantial reforms to the RMA that do improve housing affordability and the construction costs for everybody so that we can make housing more affordable. That's what we want in this country: housing affordability to be addressed. So I oppose this bill and National does not commend this bill to the House."