Editorial: Keep 'monster' laws out

Public submissions on the Natural and Built Environment Bill and Spatial Planning Bill closed last month: they are part of the Government’s three-law reform of the Resource Management Act; a Climate Adaptation Act is not yet out for consultation.

MPs on the parliamentary environment select committee have already begun assessing feedback. And the feedback is damning.

The Natural and Built Environment Bill directly replaces the 30-year-old RMA and the Spatial Planning Bill replaces existing requirements for a spatial plan for Auckland.

The Government would set a national strategy, and regional committees would make their plans consistent with its rules and guidelines. Farmers agree the costly, slow and unpredictable processes under the RMA need fixing.

However, they say in getting rid of the old dog the Government risks replacing it with an even bigger monster.

Federated Farmers is concerned that the NBE is riddled with new, amorphous terms, like upholding the interconnectedness of the environment.

The farmer lobby points out that when the current RMA was introduced, farmers were told it was ‘world-leading’; 30 years on, no-one else in the world has followed their lead in bundling all environmental law together.

Under the new bill all the frameworks are still essentially the same and farmers will still need a costly resource consent for all the same things they do now.

The proposed legislation isn’t bringing any joy to local and regional councils.

The bills propose to shift all planning decisions away from New Zealand’s 67 city and district councils to 15 new Regional Planning Committees. These committees will have a mix of council and iwi or hapū appointees, none of whom will be directly accountable to the towns and districts they set the rules over, the Feds submission said.

This would mean decisions relating to transport, parks, and urban planning in a place like Taupō would happen in Hamilton, Masterton would see decisions made in Wellington, and Timaru would be planned out of Christchurch.

Combined this with the Three Waters proposal to strip council of their responsibility for water supply, farmers claim there won’t be much left for district councils to do but organise the Santa parade!