RMA 2.0 gone by Christmas - Bishop

The controversial reform package is made up of three laws: The Natural and Built Environment Bill (NBEB), the Spatial Planning Bill (SPB), and the Climate Adaptation Bill. Also included in the reforms is the as-yet-unreleased National Planning Framework (NPF).

The former two bills were introduced to Parliament in November 2022. Controversially, submissions were required from stakeholders on those two bills without access to the remainder of the reform package in February 2023.

At that time, many submitters, including Beef + Lamb NZ, the Meat Industry Association, and Horticulture New Zealand said it was difficult to have any certainty about the outcome of the reforms without access to the NPF or the Climate Adaptation Bill.

Federated Farmers, the industry group representing farmers, went so far as to say it would make resource management issues worse and the two Bills needed to be withdrawn.

National Party RMA and urban development spokesperson Chris Bishop says that while the RMA itself is broken, but any reform of it needs to improve things and be worth the cost of change.

The NBEB and SPB were reported back from Parliament’s Environment Committee yesterday.

“The clear feedback on the Government’s bills is that they will make it harder to get things done, will not improve the environment and will actually be worse than what we have got now,” says Bishop.

“Environment Minister David Parker sees RMA reform as his legacy, but after five and a half years, it is deeply depressing that this is the best he can come up with.”

Bishop says the two bills will increase bureaucracy, significantly increase legal complexity and litigation, remove local decision-making, and put the country’s decarbonisation goals at risk.

“New Zealand simply cannot afford the extensive litigation that the bills will inevitably produce,” he says, adding that the Government should have listened to calls from many submitters, slowed down and started again.

“It looks like the Government will try and ram these massive bills through Parliament before the election,” Bishop says.

He says National is committed to repealing the NBEB and SPB as soon as possible after the election, to wipe them from the statute books, “so the next National-led government can make a fresh start on substantive RMA reform”.

Bishop says the party will campaign on its own changes to the RMA, some of which, he says, have already been announced. These changes including one-year consenting for major infrastructure and renewable energy projects, alongside the party’s ‘Going for Housing Growth’ plan.

“If elected, we will legislate for these in our first term in government,” he says.

“We will also begin on a longer-term programme to repeal and replace the RMA.”