Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management Amendment Bill (No 2) — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:608;Page:5526] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 National and ACT members have been asleep for the last 2 years. The terms they are objecting to in this bill have been in front of this House for 2 years. All the words to do with cultural and historic heritage were in the Resource Management Amendment Bill reported back 2 years ago this month. They have been sitting in front of Parliament for 2 years. There was ample opportunity for anybody who thought those terms were a mistake to do some negotiating and to have some discussions with the Government about putting forward some alternatives but none of that happened. Opposition members have now gone around the country persuading people that these are new ideas that those words have just come in through the No. 2 bill and they have not been consulted on them. They are relying on the fact that most people have not actually read the bill. 
The consultation that happened on the No. 1 bill happened so long ago that most people have forgotten they were consulted. Some of the angriest letters that we have had about the lack of consultation on the No. 2 bill were from people who presented at length to the Local Government and Environment Committee on the No. 1 bill on the same issues. As has already been remarked when a committee makes some changes to a bill before it it does not send the revised version of that bill out for consultation again. If it did no bill would ever get back to this House because there would always be somebody objecting to the changes that had been made. But the changes in this bill were made by the committee and I do not remember a huge rumpus on the committee over those issues in the No. 1 bill at the time. Those issues certainly did not hold us up for a long time and I do not remember alternatives being put forward. 
The reasons for upgrading the cultural and historic heritage provisions stem partly from a report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment a few years ago pointing out that we are failing dismally to protect Maori cultural and historic heritage. We are doing OK on buildings put up by the early settlers but we have serious shortcomings when it comes to Maori heritage because it takes a different form. There are not very many old buildings where Maori heritage significance lies but there is intense significance attached to places. Those places may be a rock a coastal promontory a stand of trees or a hill and they are highly significant because of the things that happened there sometimes over hundreds of years and because of the people who are associated with those events and the significance of those places. The significance of those places will have to be argued to the satisfaction of a court which will not just buy any line that is being peddled. The fact is that Maori will have to make their case and now they can do so. 
I am glad that Georgina Beyer has raised the issue of iwi management plans because although the attacks on those plans have not yet surfaced tonight they will—as they did in the committee. The upgrading of the status of iwi management plans from the words “have regard to” “take into account” was put in the No.1 bill by Simon Upton. Simon Upton was not a Maori-basher; he was actually quite focused on solutions. He could see that if planning is done without any great reference to Maori there will be a pile of objections delays and hold-ups when matters reach the Environment Court. So he said we should let Maori lay out in a decent planning document what is important to them let them discuss that with the local council and let that have some influence on the council’s plan. He argued that then Maori could hardly turn round and raise a whole lot of issues at the Environment Court stage that they had not raised when they put forward their iwi planning document. 
The committee was presented with some very good examples of iwi planning documents. Ngai Tahu has done a really good iwi management plan on water for the South Island. It makes it really clear what is significant to Maori. The committee strongly supported maintaining Simon Upton’s proposal that we should raise the value of those iwi planning documents so that we have the debate upfront. If we get the debate and the consultation into the documents when they are first written we will reduce the amount of controversy and flack that happens further down the track. That is what we have tried to do in the Local Government Act and in many other bits of legislation.