Parker DavidRESOURCE LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 9 March.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): When the Hon Nick Smith spoke to this bill last Thursday—excuse me I am fighting a cold—he said it was necessary because of the housing crisis in Auckland. Well we know there is a housing crisis in Auckland but it is wrong to blame the Resource Management Act (RMA) for that crisis. The RMA has been in force since about 1992. In 2004 when the RMA was enforced there were 31423 consents for new houses in New Zealand; in 2016 there were only 29900. In Auckland the number went down from 2004 from 12000 to 9000. The RMA was in force throughout. How can it be that Nick Smith can blame the RMA for the housing crisis in Auckland? It is a nonsense.There is a problem with a lack of land supply in Auckland. The Labour Party has been saying that for about 4 or 5 years. I think it was Annette King who made the announcement with David Shearer at a conference about 5 years ago—we said we need a national policy statement under the RMA to free up land supply for affordable housing. I had a hand in that. I remember it. The RMA should have been the solution or one of the solutions to these problems; it should not be the whipping boy for problems with housing in Auckland. In truth the more important solutions in respect of housing involve cracking down on speculators and getting the Government to roll up its sleeves and build a few affordable houses. Every few decades the Labour Party has to do that and that is actually in the end the essential component of decent housing policy. We also need of course to ban offshore buyers.It is abundantly clear that the housing crisis in Auckland is no excuse for this deeply flawed piece of legislation. Last week I was complimenting Minister Finlayson and the National Government on a wonderful process in respect of the oversight legislation for the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau. Sadly this particular piece of legislation falls on exactly the opposite extreme. This is an appalling piece of legislation. It is poorly designed in principle and the detail of it is flawed in so many many ways. I and many others including Sir Geoffrey Palmer have described the regulation-making powers that are conferred on Ministers under this bill as completely rebalancing the current division of powers between local government and central government in favour of the executive. I ask this House: who in their right mind would give sweeping executive powers to Nick Smith to override—Phil Twyford: No!Hon DAVID PARKER: Well that is right. These are Trump-like powers. Who in their right mind—well the answer is the Māori branch of the National Government. The Māori Party is pushing this appalling piece of legislation—which is opposed by Labour and it is opposed by New Zealand First by the Greens by the ACT Party and by United Future—through the House and this terrible piece of legislation which further complicates the RMA will do nothing to improve affordability of housing. The Māori Party is pushing this through with its two votes and in return for what? In return for improved participatory involvement for the Māoridom in plan-making processes and some consents. You know I do not have a great objection to those provisions. They do not actually add much to what is happening or what should happen presently because in theory under the RMA everyone has got the right of participation. So why would the Māori Party trade this appalling piece of legislation for some minor improvements to Māori participation rights? Well it has got to answer that question.There are three main forms of executive power that are being granted here. The first is Draconian regulatory powers to override rules and plans that the Government deems to be inconsistent with other legislation which it would like to think is a code. It is aiming here at GM rules against rules and plans—rules against the use of GMOs in specific localities. The Labour Party position is that the safety decision should be taken by the Environmental Protection Authority under the hazardous substances and new organisms (HASNO) legislation. Clinical decisions ought to be taken by clinicians not councils but there is an economic decision that is legal for councils to take as to whether they think it undermines for example the ability of an organic apple business in the Hawke's Bay's to have GM crops. That is the current law; councils can do that.If the Government wants to make HASNO a code it should amend the HASNO legislation. It should not give great big regulation-making powers—executive powers—to Nick Smith. It is similar to if the Government wanted to say that the Building Act was a code for insulation and wanted to stock colder centres like Dunedin and Christchurch which want to have a more strict code so that their houses are warmer and drier. If those members want that to be a code in the Building Act amend the Building Act; do not give some broad regulation-making power to Nick Smith. I do not trust him to have that power.The other regulation-making powers here come through the plan to standardise plan formats and rules. We agree with standard plan formats and standard definitions. It is common sense. But those rules are cast so broadly that they can go to the substance of plan rules not just their format and definition and that goes too far too.Thirdly the rule-making powers of the Minister are also far too broad. These powers have been likened by some to the old powers that the Muldoon Government gave itself under the National Development Act and to the abuses by the Muldoon Government of regulation-making powers under the Economic Stabilisation Act 1948. We should never forget in this House that those broad regulation-making powers that were given to the executive just after World War II sat on the books for decades and were not abused until Muldoon came along about three decades later and used the regulation to impose a price freeze a wage freeze and a rent freeze through taking executive action by regulation not through this House. This bill is not quite as bad as the Economic Stabilisation Act and the regulation-making power thereunder but it is on that spectrum. It is on that spectrum and I ask again: who in their right mind would be handing those powers across to a Minister?This legislation was panned by just about everyone. Even the few people who came and supported it would say things like Well we support the intent of the bill." before criticising much of its detail. Take the provision in respect of subdivision applications not being notified. Do you know who was opposed to that? The developers—the developers. They said: "It's going too far. People should have a right of participation." They further said—and some of the big developers came along and said—"We wear more than one hat here. We don't just develop land; we run quarries. And when someone puts a subdivision next to our quarry and we have got no right of participation we get worried because in 10 years' time those people will be trying to shut down our quarry and we need quarries for the gravel for roads." They came along and said: "This is just silly." They said: "Abrogating rights of appeal to the Environment Court is wrong too. It will encourage stupid conditions from councils. If there is no right of appeal they will write 50 conditions instead of 20 and there will be no recourse." Appeal rights are important. They are not just rights that are important to objectors; they are also important rights for applicants.There are lots of other things wrong with this bill. In terms of some of the underlying problems that we have got in society we have got this appalling degradation of our waterways. Eight years after this Government came into power 70 percent of monitored waterways have still got increasing concentrations of nitrates. Its pathetic swimmable standard which it announced the week before last had no provision relating to periphyton which most people know of as "slime".Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes it does. Not true.Hon DAVID PARKER: No Minister Smith you are just wrong. You are spinning again. The standard that sits there is the old one that sat there for your wadeable standard. It is unchanged for swimmable rivers. I have said that.You would not answer the question in the House Nick Smith. I have tweeted and I have put out the information. People know where the truth is and that you have absolutely no credibility. You are letting our rivers be used as farm drains. You threw away the national policy statement that was available to you from Judge Sheppard when you came into Government that said that increases in land use intensity should no longer be a permitted activity. You nixed that and what you have done since has been completely ineffective and as a consequence we have got tens of thousands of people rising up around the country saying: "We want to be able to swim in our local river in summer putting our heads under without getting crook. We want to have aquifers where we can use the water drawn from bores to make baby formula without our babies getting sick." You cannot do that in South Canterbury now according to the medical officer of health.This is an appalling piece of legislation. It is typical Nick Smith—grandiose in intent and flawed in its detail and it really should go in the trash can."