Guy NathanHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you very much. It's great to be able to make a contribution this afternoon in this debate. The title of this bill should really read Repeal National's Pragmatic Changes to the Resource Management Act."I'm disappointed by this bill. With all the hype around it it promised so much but in the detail really all it is doing is repealing fundamental things that positively made a difference for residents in New Zealand who were going about their daily business trying to get a consent—it is now going to be repealed. If we look at the fast-track process for land-use consents that we set up 10 working days is now going to move to a standard 20 working days. For someone who just wants to extend their deck why on earth would the Government be proposing extending that time frame out to about one month when you take into account all of the weekends as well?It's interesting also when we look at other aspects of this bill because I can't see how this bill is going to help housing affordability in New Zealand which is a really topical issue. When I look at the detail of this bill—and I'm going to look forward to interrogating it at the Environment Committee I now sit on—this bill is going to create more bureaucracy and more time delays. And if we look in particular at the appeal rights the appeal rights are going to be extended and that's what I mean: there's a classic example of where there's going to be more red tape bureaucracy and poor timeliness around this bill.If we think about the nine years of the National Government when we had the Hon Dr Nick Smith making changes to this as environmental Minister making good pragmatic changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) all of my constituents in the Ōtaki electorate benefit from those changes because Nick Smith brought about changes to the RMA to ensure that projects of national significance could be called in in a nine-month time frame. That means that the Kāpiti Expressway went through a nine-month consenting process. Now we are enjoying driving on it. That means that Transmission Gully which is going to be open hopefully next year went through the same call and board of inquiry process. I take my hat off to Nick Smith. Also the Hon Amy Adams made good pragmatic changes to the RMA. And now we're in this House debating this bill which is all about repealing the good work that the National Government did. We're going to hear this afternoon from Todd Muller. He'll be focusing in as our agriculture spokesperson on talking about fresh water and also the cost of compliance on farmers with stock exclusion.The one that concerns me also in this bill and it hasn't been mentioned in speeches this afternoon is that this sets up a Chief Freshwater Commissioner. Who might that person be? Well we might hear from the Green Party that they want Mike Joy—someone like that as the Chief Freshwater Commissioner—wide-ranging powers.Todd Muller: Or Russel Norman.Hon NATHAN GUY: Oh yes! There's another one—Russel Norman.Hon Amy Adams: God help us!Hon NATHAN GUY: Heavens above the whole country would grind to a halt if you had one of those two gentlemen as the Chief Freshwater Commissioner. We want to know what the Government expects around this person.Finally I just want to say this point: the changes—and we made three changes over nine years in the National Government—have all been successful. They've made a difference for consumers and residents and motorists and the like getting big infrastructure projects up and built. This bill this afternoon is a sham. It's going to do nothing and we wait until we can interrogate it and kick it around in the Environment Committee. That's why we oppose this bill."