The Government’s overriding principles for resource management reform, released on Friday, are likely to be widely welcomed by some and resisted by others.
Minister Chris Bishop and Simon Court promise the two replacement bills will be less complex than Labour’s legislation, which was passed by Parliament last year but would not have come into widespread effect for at least another two years.
The first Bill will be a rewritten Resource Management Act, and the second will be a Spatial Planning Bill designed to set out overall planning parameters for each region.
But there are yawning gaps in the Bishop-Court proposals.
There is no acknowledgement of Maori beyond saying that Treaty settlements will be upheld.
And proposals to limit the number of plans to the 11 regional councils could well provoke the same kind of debate we saw over three waters about the Government eliminating the local voice.
There is also no specific mention of the environment in the core tasks the Ministers are assigning the new legislation to perform.
A big question may also be how much deviation ACT will be prepared to allow from those core tasks if there is a public backlash to the proposals.
ACT MP and Under Secretary to the Minister for Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, Simon Court has outlined those core tasks as being:
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unlock development capacity for housing and business growth
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enable the delivery of high-quality infrastructure for the future, including doubling renewable energy
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enable primary sector growth and development (including aquaculture, forestry, pastoral, horticulture, and mining)
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These contrast markedly with the purpose of the Natural and Built Environments Act (NBEA), which the Hipkins Government passed into law in August last year.
That was, firstly, to uphold “te Oranga o te Taiao”.
The Act said, “The purpose must be achieved in a way that:
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- Protects the health of the natural environment, and
- Enables the use and development of the environment in a way that promotes the well-being of both present and future generations.”
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It defined “Te Oranga o te Taiao” as meaning:
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- the health of the natural environment, and
- the relationship between the health of the natural environment and its capacity to sustain life and
- the relationship between the health of the natural environment and the health and well-being of people and communities, and
- the interconnectedness of all parts of the environment, and
- the relationship between iwi and hapū and te Taiao that is based on whakapapa.
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National repealed that legislation in December last year, and RMA reform Minister Chris Bishop is promising a complete rewrite.
POLITIK understands that practicality may have prevailed and that the Government is now looking for substantial amendments to the NBEA and a milder reform of the Spatial Planning Act, which both the National and ACT did not oppose in its entirety when it was passed last year.
The moves announced on Friday have already been greeted with some enthusiasm.
The head of Advocacy at the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA), Alan McDonald, who has been the business voice on RMA reforms for the past eight or nine years, said he liked the direction of travel announced on Friday.
Infrastructure New Zealand’s Policy Director, Michelle McCormick, said it was encouraging to see the Government focused on a simpler, more efficient planning system that could provide clearer guidelines and achieve faster decision-making processes.
But the devil will be in the detail and that is to be influenced by an Expert Advisory Group (EAG) that the two Ministers have appointed.
The EAG includes Tainui lawyer, Rukumoana Schaafhausen who has previously said the Crown needed to acknowledge Māori ownership of water which would mean working with the Crown “to co-develop meaningful reforms that both address our rights and interests but at the same time improve the health of our waterways.”
The two ministers want to reduce the sheer number of plans and the often wide differences between plans that might apply to neighbouring properties in different jurisdictions.
McDonald said business would welcome this.
The spatial plans will likely be formed and run only by the country’s 11 Regional Councils.
This would be a more ambitious move than Labour’s proposal to condense 100 district and other plans into 16 regional plans.
Bishop said regional and district councils would jointly prepare one plan per region.
“This will remove the hierarchy between regional and district plans,” he said.
And plans developed under the RMA itself will be limited by a series of national policy standards.
“The new system will provide for a greater use of national standards, setting minimum requirements for developments, infrastructure and other processes that are currently regulated via consents,” said Bishop
“Standards will reduce the number and scope of consents and simplify council plans.
“I would like to see standardised zones, particularly in urban areas, introduced through national standards, which will greatly simplify plans and reduce barriers to competition.”
This move may provoke some interesting debate with one of the members of the EAG, Paul Melville, a former National Party Parliamentary advisor and now Federated Farmers’ General Manager of Policy and Advocacy.
Melville has been a strong critic of reducing the role of the country’s 53 district councils in the planning process.
In the Feds’ submission on the Labour legislation, which was developed by him, they argued that there were other ways of streamlining the system than simply reducing the number of plans.
However, on Friday, Bishop repeatedly referred to the RMA plans as regional council plans.
“Quantified environmental limits, set by regional councils, should manage activities and control discharges for each environmental domain,” he said.
“The system will enable innovative methods for water and nutrient allocations to manage over-cap catchments back within environmental limits.”
That is not likely to get Federated Farmers’ support.
“Shifting all planning decisions to the regional level will see the role of territorial authorities (city and district councils) severely diminished and remove local accountability from planning decisions,” their submission said.
It might also be expected that there will be substantial opposition to the Government’s proposals from the Parliamentary Commissioner form the Environment, the former National Minister, Simon Upton.
In his submission on the NBEA, he argued that its purpose should be to “expressly prioritise the protection and restoration of the natural environment.”
The proposals, as outlined on Friday, do not do that.
Thus, the battle lines will be drawn: how much involvement for Maori, whether Council plans should be rationalised, and how the proposed legislation will protect the environment.
Court was optimistic.
“By improving resource management, New Zealand has the opportunity to unleash growth and improve the environment, ” he said.
“Our goal is to replace red tape with clear rules to unlock the double dividend of higher growth and better environmental outcomes.
By redirecting only a fraction of the resources consumed by RMA processes, we can protect the environment and provide clear pathways for investment and growth within environmental limits.
“The success of these reforms will be the step change in resource management this country needs to thrive in every sense in the coming decades.”
There may be quite a flow of turbulent water under the bridge before we get to where he wants to go.
