Archive | Resource management

Published 1 September 2006

Environment Minister David Benson-Pope has launched a 4-part guide for small business & the public about working with the Resource Management Act.The guide consists of a cd-rom, website, 0800 phoneline & brochures.

“People sometimes see the RMA as something of a hurdle to overcome when they want to make changes to their home or business. An everyday guide to the RMA will help to demystify the process and remove a few misconceptions,” Mr Benson-Pope said.

Want to comment? Click on The new BD Central Forum or email [email protected].

Attribution: Government release, story written by Bob Dey for this website.

“A country of 4 million people cannot justify having 72 different sets of rules for power transmission, harvesting forestry, subdivision, telecommunications & even brothels,” Nelson MP Nick Smith said in an address to the National Party’s annual conference.

He wants an Environmental Protection Authority to take over that job and incorporate the role of the Environmental Risk Management Authority.

His speech was on resource laws for sustainable development and it’s produced here unedited:

One of the exciting challenges for National in Government will be rewriting New Zealand’s key resource laws so that we might deliver on Don Brash’s vision to close the gap in living standards between New Zealand and Australia.  New Zealand has many disadvantages in the GDP stakes of living standards.  We are small and we are isolated but no country is as blessed with natural resources as New Zealand.  Developing these resources sensibly and sustainably is pivotal to economic growth and maintaining the unique Kiwi lifestyle.The framework for resource use in New Zealand was revolutionised in the late ‘80s with the abolition of the Ministry of Works, Department of Electricity and New Zealand Forest Service that were replaced with the Ministry for the Environment and Department of Conservation.  In parallel the old Town and Country Planning Act was replaced by the Resource Management Act.The Resource Management Act has not lived up to its promise.  It has become a bureaucratic monster that is stifling growth and contributing to an infrastructure crisis.  The Act set up a complex matrix of national, regional and district policies for Resource Management.  It is an indictment that 13 years down the track only 23 of our 72 district council plans are fully operative.  The paper war that has flowed from the Resource Management Act has to be seen to be believed.  This stack of district and regional plans, some as thick as 7 inches, shows just how bureaucratic environmental regulation in New Zealand has become.  This cartoon on the fiasco at Whitianga aptly highlights just how frustrated New Zealanders have become over the Resource Management Act.Let me give some examples of just how serious this issue is for our country.  You will be aware that the top of the South Island, from Timaru north, is currently in a power crisis because of the lack of transmission capacity.  All that is required is additional wires be added to the existing transmission towers built in the 1960’s, a job that would take engineers only a few months.  The problem for Transpower is that to get consent for the additional lines it will need to get a separate resource consent from each of the six councils and also the consent of 85 landowners, a process that is expected to take three or four years.  We have faced three power crises in the past four years and the public will not tolerate bureaucratic excuses for not getting on and installing the additional lines.Nor can there be any solutions to Auckland’s billion dollar a year traffic woes without substantive reform of the RMA.  The consent for this Albany to Puhoi section was applied for in 1991, but consent was not granted until 1998.  It is a nonsense that it takes longer to get a consent for a new road than it takes to build it.It is not just public infrastructure that is being stifled by the Act. Wenita Forest Products proposed a $30 million investment in a new timber processing plant just out of Mosgiel, but ditched the plans after two years of RMA wrangling.  Millions of logs are being exported from the Port of Otago when we could have been adding value in New Zealand.  This is just one of many.  The NZ Forest Industry Council noted last week that there were 21 new greenfield mills under development in Australia – none in New Zealand.  The one proposal approved in New Zealand approved, in Coromandel, is off to the Environment Court, and one of the appellants is none other than the Department of Conservation ie the Government.It is not just big business that is losing out from the Act. A young entrepreneurial couple in Nelson attempted to start up a business of a maize maze where people would pay to find their way around in a crop of corn.  They lost over $110,000 when the Council and Environment Court ruled that the activity was ‘unsustainable’.  One has to wonder how people walking around in a corn crop is so environmentally damaging.Community groups have also been caught in the RMA quagmire.  The Whangamata Marine Society has been trying for 12 years to get consent for a 200 berth marina and despite $750,000 and 13 hearings, still has not got a consent.Nor should we underestimate the impact on housing costs.  It now takes between two and three years to get consent for a subdivision, and the costs for the developer of holding this land inevitably gets passed onto the homeowner.This is not just an issue about billion dollar consents like Project Aqua.You may be able to dismiss these anecdotal tales noting that 50,000 consents a year are dealt with under the Resource Management Act except for the fact that comprehensive studies have confirmed the problems of the Act.  The Ministerial Panel on Business Compliance Costs, set up by Labour in 2000, identified the RMA as business’s number one concern.  The report has been ignored, and as Chapman Tripp noted in May 2001 the Government’s amendment bill actually made things worse and not better.Perhaps the most damning data is from this year’s IMD World Competitiveness Study.  It showed New Zealand’s overall ranking slipping from 16th to 18th out of 60 countries under this Government. It is extraordinary that New Zealand’s environmental laws ranked bottom – 60th out of 60 for compliance costs hindering business.Meanwhile, Minister Hobbs, dubbed ‘Minister Boo Boo’ as the fifth Teletubby after the mess she made of TVNZ, has ignored calls for reform.  She and Helen Clark scuttled Simon Upton’s 1999 Reform Bill, introduced legal aid for objectors and has added additional bureaucratic requirements for councils in respect of heritage and biodiversity.  I don’t hold out much hope for the latest review, although it is interesting that on school closures, Treaty issues and now the RMA how this Government will change its tune in response to pressure from the polls.National could be lazy and wait until after the latest review to state our view on the RMA but we are better than that, and if Labour steals our ideas then so be it.  The sooner change is made the better.In embarking on changes to the RMA we need to be careful that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  There are some good features in the Act. The fragmented approach, where different consents were required for use of water, air, noise control and land use did not work.  We should retain an integrated approach.  The overriding principle of sustainability is also sound.  We have no right to create wealth at the expense of future generations of New Zealanders.  We must also retain the focus on environmental effects.  We don’t want to recreate the situation where council bureaucrats are interfering in decisions that are for businesses and homeowners to make.Nor should we kid ourselves that this area of lawmaking is easy. Some New Zealanders are quite contradictory in their views on property rights, believing they have the God-given right to do whatever they like on their land, but God forbid that their neighbour should do anything that affects their view, lifestyle or the character of their neighbourhood.The first major change I propose is the establishment of a New Zealand Environmental Protection Authority.  The existing Resource Management Act is the most devolved system of environmental regulation in the world and involves far too much duplication.  A country of four million people cannot justify having 72 different sets of rules for power transmission, harvesting forestry, subdivision, telecommunications, and even brothels (although if I had my way the rules would just say no).The EPA approach is that which is used in all the major Australian and American states.  The intention would not be to create a new agency but to expand the existing Environmental Risk Management Authority.  The advantage of national standards is that no consent would be required if the standard is met.The second major change I propose is rewriting the purpose of the Act to provide for sustainable development.  Parliament needs to deal to the anti-development culture that has grown out of the RMA industry in Councils, the Department of Conservation, and the Environment Court.  National should be up-front that we want to develop New Zealand and that our environmental rules are about ensuring we do that in a sustainable way.  We also need to make plain that property rights need to be recognised. If we are serious about fixing the RMA we must confront the political correctness over the Treaty that has infected the Resource Management industry.  We have seen state highways in Hamilton and prisons in Northland delayed and diverted as the Environment Court has speculated on the home of the taniwha.In the decision to decline an application by Genesis Energy for a long-term consent for the Tongariro Power Scheme, the Court said it would adversely affect the self-esteem of Maori to allow the ongoing diversion of the Whanganui River.In another woolly decision, the judge ruled that the difference between land and water has little meaning to Maori who tend to regard the elements as one.I better be careful where I head or Margaret Wilson will have me back before the courts on another contempt charge, but to be fair, Parliament has bought these sorts of rulings on itself with provisions like section six that requires all persons to recognise and provide for “the relationship of Maori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, wahi tapu and other taonga.”And if you think this stuff is bad, the Foreshore and Seabed Bill makes it a whole lot worse.  It will be near impossible with the new ancestral connection orders and customary rights order to get consent to do anything in the marine environment without the say so of iwi.Don Brash’s groundbreaking Orewa speech has set the scene for some commonsense thinking around these issues, but the ideas he so eloquently espoused go back 2,500 years to Aristotle, who recognised the basic truth that our laws must treat all persons equally.Applying Don Brash’s one standard of citizenship to the Resource Management Act will require rewriting 34 of the exclusive references to Maori culture and spiritual values and replace it with provisions that respect the cultures and values of all New Zealanders.  We need to get rid of the vague references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi that are so ill defined.  We also need to reaffirm the separation of church and state by removing references to the spiritual world.One of the biggest problems with the RMA is the time it takes to get decisions, and that is why we must advance reforms that streamline the process.  It is a waste of time putting major resource consents through a council hearing when everybody knows they are of such importance that they will go to the Environment Court.  That is why National supports direct referral of big consents direct to the Environment Court.We have also thought about how we can get Councils to comply with the time-frames in the Act.  Theoretically, no fully notified consent should take more than 60 working days to process, yet the Manufacturers Federation has reported that less than a third of consents are processed within the statutory deadlines.  National’s policy of ‘a late consent is a free consent’ will help focus the minds of Councils on the need for timeliness.There is also the problem of the infinite number of additional information requests by Councils without any regard for the costs of getting additional consultants’ reports. National proposes that an applicant has the right to refuse further information requests and ask that a consent be judged on the information provided.We should also revisit the notion that appeals are de novo, i.e. that all the evidence has to be heard again.  The practice has evolved that evidence is withheld knowing you get a second bite at the cherry.  We could hugely reduce the costs of appeal by limiting them to issues of law and not allowing a regurgitation of the issues already canvassed at the first hearing.A major problem with the Act is that anybody can object to anything, anywhere.  It is National’s view that the pendulum in respect of public consultation has swung too far, to the point where minority interests can hold the majority to ransom.  That is why National will reintroduce standing, where a person has to have a genuine interest to be able to object.  We would also scrap the $2 million legal aid fund for environmental objectors and put that money into an effective environmental mediation service.  We also believe we need to give the Courts and Councils wider powers to reject vexatious and frivolous objections, and to award costs to applicants where objectors have unreasonably caused expense.Another major issue that has come into sharp focus during the debate on Project Aqua are the inadequacies of the Act in allocating scarce resources.  Here there has been a hot contest between the use of the Waitaki waters for hydrogeneration compared with irrigation.   The current approach of a bureaucratic battle, where an expert panel decides the allocation, is bound to fail.  The relative economics of farming and electricity generation changes by the day.  It would be far more sensible to provide a tradable mechanism in which the market can determine the best use of the water and in which participants can sell or buy water depending on their need.  It also provides a powerful incentive for efficient use of the resource.There is a parallel problem in the allocation of marine space.  It is no wonder that there has been a gold rush-type approach to applying for aquaculture space when there is no value ascribed to the resource.  Imagine if your local Council advertised that it had a couple of thousand hectares of land, and you could apply for some.National believes we need to move to tradable resource rights in a number of key areas.  We need to provide resource users with the security of ongoing rights. There is a complex and difficult job in the initial allocation as was
experienced with the fishing quota, but long-term this is a far better way in which to sustainably manage scarce resources.I cannot conclude a discussion on efficient resource management without also raising concerns about the Conservation Act.  The way this rigid statute prohibits any attempt to sensibly use so much of New Zealand needs to be revisited.  The classic current example is the Dobson Hydro Scheme on the West Coast.  The Minister point blank refuses to allow 0.03% of West Coast conservation land, to be taken for a project that would make the region self-sufficient in electricity. He cites the areas so-called unique conservation values when it is all cutover bush, 30% is gorse and broom, and the department has no record of it being used by recreationalists.The proponents, Trustpower, has put forward an attractive package that would see more area added to the reserve than that required from it, and an extensive ongoing conservation package to control pests and weeds that would enhance bird numbers and recreational opportunities.We need to include in the Conservation Act the concept of net conservation benefit.  This will encourage people to think innovatively about how you can create win-win economic environmental outcomes rather than the current rigid approach.There is a further huge issue of which National needs to lead a change in thinking.  The ideology of the 1980’s is that the only way to secure conservation or recreational benefits is for state ownership, and so the state is on a massive land grab in the South Island.There are 3 million hectares, or 10%, of New Zealand in high country leases.  Labour’s plan is to drive farmers off most of this and put it in the hands of the Department of Conservation.  DoC is struggling to properly manage the land it has got and I have serious doubts as to whether the land will be better looked after in state control.National believes it is just Green dogma to say that land must be exclusively used for conservation and recreation, or production.  There are really good examples in places like the Pupu Farm Park where multiple uses are compatible with smart management.  We want to apply this sort of approach to the South Island high country.So these are the eight key changes we want to make to New Zealand’s resource laws.  We are committed to introducing amendments to the RMA to Parliament within three months of being elected to office, and putting these in law within nine months.  It is a demanding timetable.  But if we want to solve Auckland transport congestion, if we want to unleash Canterbury’s irrigation potential, if we want to process the wall of wood in New Zealand, and if we want to keep the lights on, we must deliver resource laws that work better for New Zealand.This is all about marrying environmental excellence with strong economic growth, and National is up to that challenge.

Website: National Party speeches