For many years, the National Party has stressed its commitment to reforming the Resource Management Act (RMA), the piece of legislation which more than any other determines how we protect our environment and plan our cities. In the first term of this Government, some modest reforms were introduced. But it was always accepted that more fundamental reforms were needed.
In January last year, the Minister for the Environment, Dr. Nick Smith, gave a major speech to the Nelson Rotary Club in which he set out at length both the problems caused by the current wording of the RMA and what he proposed the Government would do to fix those problems.
He began by noting that if the 80,000 pages of local government resource management plans and rules were stacked on top of each other, the pile would be 10 metres high, and noted “there is not a single official anywhere who understands this huge pile of RMA plans and rules”.
He talked about the effect of RMA rules like the Auckland Metropolitan Urban Limit and noted that these rules are “the single greatest factor in driving house prices to all-time highs” in Auckland. He quoted the example of a 29 hectare block of unimproved land in Flat Bush just inside the Auckland Council’s urban limit which appreciated in value from $890,000 to $112 million in just over a decade to illustrate the effect which these rules are having.
He quoted an OECD study of the cost burden of environmental regulation, published in 2014, which found that New Zealand ranked as the worst of the 34 countries surveyed when it came to the administrative burden of the RMA.
He gave lots of specific examples where the RMA had caused enormous cost and huge delays for no obvious environmental benefit at all.
And he was absolutely right. If I were asked what single measure the Government could take to raise living standards in New Zealand, I would without hesitation answer “reform the RMA”.
In his speech, the Minister went on to outline the very substantial reforms he planned to make to improve the situation.
Late last year, the Government introduced a Bill ostensibly designed to implement those improvements (the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill). What is depressing in the extreme is how pathetically limited the reforms incorporated in that Bill actually are. By common consent, the reforms barely scratch the surface of what is needed, and I am fairly confident that Dr. Smith would agree with that assessment. Certainly, they don’t come close to meeting the objectives set out early last year by Dr. Smith himself. Indeed, the improvements are so trivial that my friend David Seymour, the Leader of the ACT Party and a strong supporter of RMA reform, felt obliged to vote against the Bill in its first reading, before the Bill was sent to the Select Committee for careful review.
Worse still, even those extremely modest improvements have been bought at the cost of greatly extending the rights of those with a Maori ancestor to have a preferential involvement in the decision-making process.
The RMA has long required local governments to consult with their community, and that is surely appropriate. Unfortunately, the RMA has also required local governments to additionally consult with Maori, as if Maori were somehow not part of the community. That wording of the legislation is at one and the same time both demeaning to Maori – implying that they are somehow not part of the community – and offensive to everybody else, giving Maori “two bites of the cherry” since they are in fact in every respect part of the community and additionally entitled to being consulted separately.
The Bill now under discussion by the Select Committee would vastly extend that preferential involvement for Maori by requiring local governments to invite iwi into “iwi participation arrangements” within 30 days of local body elections. This is surely a recipe for further delay, for corruption, and for anger on the part of the rest of the community at what is the most flagrant breach of the basic principle in every democratic society that all citizens should have the same legal rights. Every Member of Parliament who understands Article III of the Treaty of Waitangi should be appalled by this Bill, given that Article III guaranteed the “rights and privileges of British subjects” to all Maori – no less but also no more.
A few years ago, a Leader of the National Party gave a speech in which he said:
“The Treaty created one sovereignty and so one common citizenship. Unless New Zealanders accept Te Tiriti o Waitangi at something much closer to its face value, we could destroy something unique…. Maori were sovereign in 1840. But the Treaty of Waitangi fully conveyed that sovereignty. Maori were prepared to cede their sovereignty because of the expected benefits of a common, non-segregated polity in New Zealand.”
And no, that former Leader of the National Party was not me – it was Bill English in 2002. He was absolutely right. A year later, Mr English while still Leader of the National Party committed a future National Party Government to abolishing separate Maori electorates on the grounds that they had long outlived their original intention.
It is incomprehensible to me how a National Party-led Government could now propose a Bill which violates every principle of democratic governance – particularly when the Party’s own constitution lists among its core values “equal citizenship”.
It is even more incomprehensible that a National-led Government would persist with a Bill in its current form when the Leader of New Zealand First, Mr Peters, has offered the Government a vastly better alternative – meaningful reform of the RMA provided that all reference to racial preferences for those with a Maori ancestor are removed.
Mr Peters made that offer in a speech to the Orewa Rotary Club last January, and repeated his offer in another speech in Auckland the following month, in case the Government hadn’t noticed his first offer.
I myself appeared before the Select Committee considering the Bill early in January and asked why on earth a National Party-led Government would not take up Mr Peters’ offer. I very much hope they still do.
Copyright © 2024 Don Brash.