Source: New Zealand Parliament – Hansard
WEDNESDAY, 11 MAY 2022
(continued on 12 May 2022)
SPECIAL DEBATES
Inquiry on the Natural and Built Environments Bill—Report of the Environment Committee
Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Chairperson of the Environment Committee): I move, That the House take note of the report of the Environment Committee on the Inquiry into the Natural and Built Environments Bill.
Very pleased, as chair of the Environment Committee, to start this debate on our inquiry into the exposure draft of the Natural and Built Environments Bill, or the NBEA. So the Resource Management Act (RMA) is the cornerstone of our environmental law in regulating the management of land, fresh water, air, the coast, and our territorial sea. Its overhaul and replacement with the NBEA and a strategic or spatial planning Act and the climate change adaptation Act is the biggest change in our environmental law in 30 years. And even though the draft bill, which the Environment Committee considered, was only a very small slice of one of the two bills to be introduced later this year, it’s no surprise that our report last November ran to some 70 pages and with a revised bill attached after that.
I’d really like to thank the more than 3,000 individuals and organisations who submitted to the inquiry and the 301 people and organisations who presented to us and expanded on their submissions. The analysis and the thought, often unpaid, that went into those submissions and presentations helped shape our conclusions and our 37 recommendations.
Also like to acknowledge the members of the Environment Committee for a shared commitment to improving the bill, the Ministry for the Environment officials’ patience with seemingly endless Zoom meetings, Parliamentary Counsel Office for their insightful drafting, and our very capable select committee staff.
One of the former objectives is to make the resource management system less complex to standardise processes and to make them less costly. So the committee’s recommendations here included recommending that Government and officials really carefully consider the extent to which the new legislation should retain and accommodate existing RMA terminology, definitions, and concepts, especially where these are defined in case law. The intent here was to reduce the uncertainty, which will come with new legislation.
We’ve recommended a shift away from adversarial processes towards a more inquisitorial approach at both council and Environment Court level, and consideration of how to best support non-statutory conflict resolution processes, including tikanga-based processes on marae.
We wanted the use of digital tools improved, and central government, for example, could coordinate and fund an online quadrille to help councils—Marlborough District Council’s an example—in fully digitising their plans and properly formatting those so that they’re easily accessible.
So the 25 clauses of the draft bill that we considered were its preliminary provisions such as the interpretation section, its purpose, elements of the national planning framework, environmental limits, natural and built environment plans, and regional planning committees.
So, talking about the bill’s purpose, as human beings our wellbeing is intimately connected to the health of te taiao. And the RMA’s purpose of promoting sustainable management and its effects-based regime haven’t prevented a decline in water quality in our rivers and aquifers, the ongoing loss of wetlands, or car-dependent urban sprawl. So we heard from submitters, including the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who considered that the bill’s purpose clauses were not strong enough to prevent further degradation of nature and they’d be little improvement on the RMA. They suggested that much more directive and active language is needed, which prioritises upholding Te Oranga o te Taiao and protecting and, where possible, restoring the ecological integrity of the natural environment.
So the majority of the committee didn’t recommend any substantive changes to clause 5, which sets out the purpose of the bill, which is to enable Te Oranga o te Taiao to be upheld, but we did make considerable changes around other causes in Part 2. We also recognised the need for further conversations between the Crown and Māori about how te reo terms such as Te Oranga o te Taiao and Māori concepts are used in the bill, whether they’re defined, and what further direction is needed to give effect to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
So the changes that we recommended related to clause 5 were particularly around environmental limits. We spent quite a lot of time on that. We wanted to ensure that environmental limits are set for the purpose of protecting ecological integrity and/or human health, while noting that the National Planning Framework (NPF) and natural and built environment plans rather than individual consents are the major tool to achieve protection and restoration of nature.
We recommended that the bill express environmental limits in two ways: either as the minimal biophysical state of the environment, or the maximum harm or stress that could be permitted. To avoid a race to the bottom and to encourage improvement in the health of nature where it’s been degraded, the bill should enable the Minister for the Environment to set targets as a pathway for improvement.
It’s been widely agreed that a major failure of the Resource Management Act (RMA) has been in implementation and the absence of national policy, national environmental standards, and national direction until relatively recently. Councils were just left to work out how the RMA should be best applied. So the National Planning Framework is intended to consolidate and build on existing national directions, such as the national policy statement on freshwater. Here, the Committee recommended and expanded purpose for the National Planning Framework and that it would be mandatory rather than optional for the NPF to prescribe environmental limits on at least six environmental domains, from air quality to estuaries, as well as providing direction on matters of national significance.
We heard a strong desire from submitters to retain local democratic input and community engagement in plan making. So district plans, regional plans, and regional policy statements are all going to be scooped up into one regional natural built environment plan, which will be a massive exercise. Submitters sought stronger representation of councils on the proposed regional planning committees which will prepare and maintain these plans. So the committee recommended that the bill clearly set out a substantial role for local authorities, and I’m aware that the local government resource management reform steering group has made some further recommendations here.
Moving on to urban trees, more than two-thirds of the submissions to the inquiry—over 2,000 submissions—were about urban trees. Submitters reminded us that these trees are an essential part of a well-functioning urban environment, and they provide shade, reduce the heat island effect, and reduce soil erosion and stormwater run-off. The changes that the National Government made in 2013, submitters told us, had had a devastating effect on urban tree cover. So officials indicated that the issue of urban trees would be considered—because it wasn’t in front of us—but we’ve yet to see the results of that.
The replacement of the RMA and the introduction and passing of the Natural and Built Environments Act and the Strategic Planning Bill by the Parliament is a legacy project for the Government. I would encourage Government and the Ministry for the Environment to update the public on progress so that New Zealanders are better informed about the evolving shape of these two critical bills. This could include outlining their thinking on where the legislation is likely to differ from the recommendations in the Randerson review, how the regional planning committees will be structured and operate, what is proposed for urban trees, and how it is intended to ensure high-quality urban environments with the removal of the concept of amenity values, which has been part of the RMA.
This would give stakeholders and people time to absorb and consider the changes proposed and raised any potential red flags. The Government response to the select committee report, which the Ministry for the Environment released earlier this year, for example, provided no indication of whether any or all of the select committee recommendations would be progressed. Speaking now as a Green MP, the Green Party is also interested in whether it’s intended to respond to the evolving international discussion about the rights of nature and the growing campaign to establish an international crime of ecocide for harm to nature.
There’s been a large amount of public money, thinking, and parliamentary time which is going into the RMA reform exercise, with the expectation that changing our law will actually change the outcomes for the environment and human wellbeing. Transparency will help build trust, and building trust helps contribute to good policy and good law.
So it was a very substantial inquiry. Very grateful for everyone who contributed, and we look forward to seeing the two bills later this year. Thank you.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to.
