New Zealand’s new planning system will make it easier to build the homes and infrastructure our country needs, give farmers and growers the freedom to get on with producing world-class food and fibre, and strengthen our primary sector while protecting the environment, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Under-Secretary Simon Court say.
“This Government’s central ambition is to lift growth, productivity and living standards,” Mr Bishop says.
“The Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) has failed. It has slowed down energy and infrastructure projects, and fuelled a housing crisis in a country the size of the United Kingdom but with only about seven per cent of its population. It has created enormous uncertainty for developers, councils, farmers and growers – but it hasn’t protected the environment, with many environmental indicators worsening since 1991.
“Successive governments have complained about the constraints imposed by the RMA. This Government is delivering on the ACT-National coalition agreement by replacing it with an entirely new regime premised on the basis of liberal market economies: property rights.
“Our reforms are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to free ourselves from a millstone that has weighed on both our economy and our environment.
“The economic benefits of our new planning system are significant. Independent analysis shows the new planning system is projected to boost GDP by an additional 0.56 per cent every year by 2050, worth up to $3.1 billion annually. A cost benefit analysis estimates $13.3 billion in savings over 30 years through reduced administrative and compliance costs.
“Officials also estimate that up to 46 per cent of consent and permit applications required under the RMA could be removed under the new system. Based on 2023/24 volumes, that represents between 15,000 and 22,000 consents no longer needed.”
Major features of the new system include:
- Fewer, simpler consents: fewer activity categories, with low-impact activities no longer requiring consent.
- Fewer, faster plans: more than 100 existing plans will be reduced to 17 regional combined plans that bring together spatial, land use and natural environment planning in one place, making it easier for New Zealanders to know what they can do with their property.
- Spatial planning: 30-year regional spatial plans to identify growth areas, infrastructure corridors and areas needing protection.
- Clearer direction nationally: More consistency through nationally set policy direction will leave less up for debate.
- A more proportionate system: all consent conditions must be necessary and proportionate, reducing red tape. Positive effects of development must be taken into account.
- More standardization: planned national standards on zoning and common activities will cut red tape and speed up the system.
- Consultation only where it matters: clarity about who must be consulted and when, including with iwi.
- Regulatory relief: councils must provide practical relief mechanisms when imposing restrictions such as heritage protections and significant natural areas.
- Faster conflict resolution: the establishment of a Planning Tribunal will provide a low cost, fast way of resolving simple conflicts.
- Better environmental protection: enable community decision making over water quality and improve the efficient use of resources. We will be centralising responsibility for enforcement to deliver it more consistently.
“A core failure of the RMA was the absence of clear direction from central government,” Mr Bishop says.
“Most national direction was not introduced until two decades after the RMA passed, leaving huge interpretation gaps that fuelled uncertainty, inconsistent council decisions, and extensive litigation. When national direction finally did arrive, it was confusing, often contradictory, and impossible for councils or communities to navigate with confidence.
“The new system fixes this by requiring one clear, simple piece of national planning direction under each bill. These will set out the Government’s aspirations topic by topic in a concise, easy to understand format, supported by national standards that translate policy into practical rules for councils. This structure resolves conflicts between goals, provides certainty for plan making and consenting, and ensures the delays and confusion that plagued the RMA can never be repeated.
“The new planning system will protect the environment by setting clear, science-based limits on what impacts are acceptable, ensuring councils and communities know exactly what must be protected and where development can occur. Mandatory regional spatial plans will safeguard important natural and biodiversity areas, while nationally consistent rules will provide a fair, modern framework for managing indigenous biodiversity and natural hazards.”
“When you put property rights at the core and remove excessive government rules from people’s lives, the benefits will quickly follow,” says Mr Court.
“But this requires a monumental shift, and not just in legislation but in culture.
“The creeping excesses of the RMA have eroded Kiwis’ property rights and suffocated our number 8 wire culture in the process – a culture we must revive.
“This is why we’ve built in ways to drive this change.
“The regulatory relief mechanism will force councils to confront the costs of many restrictions on private property that for too long have been costless to them. If they want to impose significant restrictions, they must justify them, provide relief to the landowners, and convince their ratepayers the public benefit warrants it.
“A new Planning Tribunal will drive further accountability by providing a low-cost clearing house for people to challenge old council habits and overreach – no more unchecked information requests, no more disproportionate consent conditions.
“All of this sits within a slimmer system with less to do, less scope for Tom, Dick and Harry to insert themselves into consent processes that don’t affect them, and a reclaimed freedom for people enjoy their property.”
The bills will be introduced to Parliament this afternoon. The Government aims to pass them into law in 2026.
“Our bills are based on the work done last year by an Expert Advisory Group, led by environmental barrister and former Environmental Defence Society director Janette Campbell. We thank the group for their thorough analysis and advice,” Mr Bishop says.
National policy direction under the new system will be finalised within nine months of the bills becoming law. Mandatory national standards will be delivered in stages and aligned with council plan-making needs.
New Zealanders will be invited to have their say on the legislation via the Select Committee process.