The Resource Management Act and Infrastructure

The Resource Management Act and Infrastructure

Hon Dr Nick Smith, RMA Spokesman
National Conference Speech
3rd August 2008

Leader John, Madam President, Delegates;

Reform of the Resource Management Act is a critical part of National's plan. It's about addressing the infrastructure crisis. It's about pulling back on nanny state. It's about delivering on the gear shift that John Key wants in New Zealand's economic performance.

For Labour, the Resource Management Act is about ideology. They say the Act is "beautifully written and beautifully crafted". They almost give it quasi-religious status. They rejected Simon Upton's reform bill in 1999. The few changes they have made in Government have made matters worse. And they have overseen one fiasco after another.

Take Whangamata, an example championed by our very own Orange Roughy, Sandra Goudie. Is it right that a community group has to spend nine years and over $1 million to get consent for a marina? Is it right that Environment Court decisions, after months of deliberation, can be overturned on the whim of a Minister?

Take the Alpurt B2 mess north of Auckland, championed by Lockwood Smith, where seven years of resource consent machinations have caused traffic gridlock for tens of thousands of people.

Take the awful and convoluted process highlighted by Colin King in Marlborough over the Trustpower hydro proposal on the Wairau. It's slow, it's ponderous, and the only winners are the lawyers.

Take the Northport resource consent over port infrastructure that, as Phil Heatley has highlighted, is still unresolved after a decade.

Take the hundreds of thousands of ratepayer's money that Anne Tolley has exposed being spent on resource management machinations on road access to Port Gisborne.

It is not just our MPs that are calling for change. Farmers, small businesses, environmental lobbyists and international studies are all advocating the need for reform.

I shared a platform this week with Environment Minister Trevor Mallard. He says he doesn't care if it takes seven years to get a consent. He thinks it is developers and businesses that pay. He's wrong. It's ordinary New Zealanders who are paying the price.

It's people like the 320 of my constituents who last month lost their jobs at Sealords Shellfish because of the mess Labour has made of the RMA in aquaculture. It's people like the tens of thousands who sit needlessly in traffic jams because bureaucrats take longer to process a consent than it takes builders to construct a road. It's the thousands of ordinary Kiwis who can't afford a home because the RMA has locked up land and pushed section prices through the roof.

Nor is the environment winning. The RMA holds up renewable energy projects for years while we pump ever increasing volumes of carbon pollutants into the atmosphere.

Fixing the Resource Management Act is a top priority for National. It is a difficult and complex job. It will require care and finesse. We are not about dropping environmental standards. We are about reducing the bureaucratic costs, delays and uncertainties. Our plan is a two-phase process.

The first phase of reform will be about streamlining and simplifying the Act. Our reform bill will include over 20 amendments. Things like getting rid of the Ministerial veto, like limiting vexatious and frivolous objections, like reducing the number of consent categories, like stopping trade related objections, like making greater use of national standards, like enabling direct referrals to the Environment Court as part of a new process of 'priority consenting'. Such consents will be required to be determined within nine months.

Our second phase of reforms will look at bigger questions. We want to revise the interaction between the Resource Management Act and the Public Works Act so as to reduce timeframes but more generously compensate.

Water is going to be a high priority. We need to find a better mechanism for allocation than first-in, first-served and New Zealand is going to have to lift its game in managing water pollution. Later this month we are hosting a forum of key stakeholders to start this challenging work. The drought last summer and the deluge these last weeks reinforces that the problem is not a shortage of water but a problem over how we manage it.

Urban design is a third area where fresh thinking is required. We need to make the Act fit better with the urban design protocols that has planners and developers working together on making our cities better.

Your caucus team is ready and able to do this important work for New Zealand. We need the mandate, so we can get on with the job.

-----------------------------------

NOTE: National is yet to announce its complete Resource Management Act Policy. This speech only includes some parts of the overall reform package that National is advancing.