Source: New Zealand Parliament – Hansard
Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve got a couple of issues I would like to traverse in this contribution with the Minister, going back to comments that were made in the Chamber last night on Part 2. One of them around my question around the amendment to section 80A of the Resource Management Act (RMA), and this is the time frame for when councils have to implement the national policy statement on freshwater.
I asked the Minister about what analysis there had been about where councils were at with the progress of that, and the answer was, “Well, we’re going to change the national policy statement; that is the reason for changing the date.”—a paraphrase somewhat there. But then that begs the question about what councils are to do. They have legal requirements, and there are requirements within the RMA to act as effectively and efficiently as possible. There’s a requirement in section 55(2D) of the RMA to put a national policy statement into effect as soon as possible. What are councils to do now that they have had a letter from the Minister saying that it’s got to change, but they don’t know what the change is? And this is very important constitutionally, because, as we all know, Parliament is sovereign, the laws and regulations are those that are on the Table, not ones that the Government intends to make at some future point. If the Minister wants to answer that—or I can go on? I’ll go on.
I am interested in being able to jump back up and down with the Minister, as I think that’s what the committee stage has been designed for. I do appreciate, though, that this Minister has been answering many of our questions. But, of course, there was some sadness last night when there were many questions and many amendments on the Table regarding Part 1 and we did not get to those.
On a different tack, then, you will see in Schedule 2 that there’s a lot of grey highlighted bits, and we can ask questions on all of these. But it may be in the Minister’s interests to go through them and to give some assurance to the committee that these are only technical changes and that there is nothing substantive in them. For instance, there are amendments around Auckland and the spatial planning. I know some members will have some specific questions on different changes. We have not had the time to cross-reference everything to see what these changes mean, because, of course, this is all coming through under urgency—all stages. And there’s a big difference between urgency for different parts of a bill, where you’ve got some time, but this we saw in real time yesterday and in parliamentary time just today.
There’s also questions around—well, last night we had a discussion on a different topic, about the need for reducing plans—I think there was some reference to the Spatial Planning Act. But, of course, it’s the Natural and Built Environment Act that reduces the number of plans from over 100 to 16 regulatory plans. That just seems to be a whole lot more efficient, so how is it is that the Minister thinks it’s a good idea to go back to the RMA and the over 100 plans?
I’m also interested in the comments made by the Minister last night about the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act, which are both Acts, of course, that are being repealed in Part 2. So it’s our opinion on this side that we can talk about those Acts, and I have some specific questions on them. The Minister was saying that everything that needs to be done in a coherent way—that we have three waters issues going on and there needs to be a structural coherence. Madam Chair, you know that there was a lot of thought that went into the coherence at the select committee stage of both the Finance and Expenditure Committee considering three waters and the Environment Committee considering these pieces of legislation.
So what is the Minister imagining that there needs to be more coherence for that isn’t already included in that Spatial Planning Act, which already enables central government involved with the different councils within a region to do that long-term planning and thinking about infrastructure? I do have more contributions but I see the Minister is on his feet.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform): I thank the member for her questions and am happy to engage in a dialogue back and forth. I don’t have her level of expertise on the Resource Management Act, but I’ll do my best to answer the questions. I’ll just go through them one by one.
In relation to the extension of the freshwater deadlines, the member asked what councils are meant to do. Councils are meant to follow the law. I am not Rob Muldoon. As I’ve said—
Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Ha! The similarity has not gone unnoticed.
Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Thank you. As I’ve said to Parliament many times, if members come to my office, as she’s very welcome to do, on the way into the office you will find a printed copy of Fitzgerald v Muldoon, the entire judgment, framed, on the way into my office, to remind myself that Parliament is sovereign in this country and Governments can’t suspend the law by press release. We are not purporting to do that. We have given councils an extra three years from 2024 through to 2027 in the development of their freshwater plans. Contemporaneously with that, the Government is advancing work that has started, is under way now, led by Minister Simmonds, alongside other colleagues, to repeal, replace, and rebalance the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020. There’s widespread consensus, at least on the Government benches, that the current hierarchy needs to be rebalanced, and so that work will flow in due course. This is just a simple amendment to extend the time frame.
In relation to the other question she had, which was the second question, which was all the bits in grey, as she put it—and she wanted an assurance that these are technical amendments—I’m advised that, yes, they are. They just go through that process of taking the law back to what it was, basically, and the only substantive amendment is the extension of the time frame that we’ve just been talking about.
In relation to your third question about the Spatial Planning Act, well, I think the member answered her question through her own comments, which is, look, reasonable people can agree to disagree about spatial planning, but I think everyone would agree that it needs to be done in a structured and coherent way alongside local government and alongside any potential changes around water infrastructure, which the previous Government was advancing and the current Government remains committed to as well, in a different form.
I just think it’s important we get that right, because one of the things we heard during the select committee process from local government was they just had an avalanche of stuff being thrown at them from central government. One of the points many councils made was, well, what is going to be the point of regional councils under the new Natural and Built Environment Act and Spatial Planning Act, because the Government was essentially rendering a lot of their powers and their abilities nugatory—because we were establishing these new regional planning committees, and what would regional councils do. It’s a legitimate question. There were unanswered questions around that.
We are interested in spatial planning, and the member, and other members too, have raised good points around the ability to lower long-term infrastructure costs to better plan our cities and our regions. The member knows I’m very deeply interested in infrastructure planning and housing, and I’d say it’s the biggest problem facing this country, and social planning’s a part of that, but it’s important we do it in a structured and coherent way.
