RMA set to be an even bigger monster - Feds

Submissions on the bills closed on Sunday 5 February, and in its submission, Federated Farmers says it agrees that reform of the Resource Management Act is necessary.

“Currently, Resource Management Act (RMA) processes are too expensive, too time consuming and lack predictability. Expensive, drawn-out and unpredictable processes slow down and prevent investment, reducing New Zealand’s productivity,” the submission reads.

However, Feds claim the two new bills that make up the majority of the RMA reform package don’t make any improvement on the current law.

The industry good organisation says it wants both the Natural Built Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill withdrawn and a return to consultation on how the RMA should be reformed.

Feds argue that requirements for decisions to promote 18 different system outcomes, alongside future wellbeing and interconnectedness, creates an impossible maze for a Minister to navigate when setting new regulations.

The organisation says it could leave New Zealand with a decade of court cases, and says too much has been left “to be confirmed”.

Federated Farmers national board member and RMA spokesperson Mark Hooper says the organisation could accept the “pain of going through this process” if it looked like the two new bills would lead to a better outcome.

“Unfortunately, after a decade of court cases, farmers will be left with a regime that looks very similar to the one they have now, if not worse,” he claimed.

Hooper said that when the current Resource Management Act (RMA) was introduced in 1991, people were told it was ‘world-leading’.

“30 year on, no one else in the world has followed our lead in building all environmental law together,” he said.

“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.”

He says that for rural communities and local democracy, there are numerous concerning aspects to the two bills.

The bills propose that all planning decisions are shifted away from local councils to 15 new Regional Planning Committees.

These, the Federated Farmers submission claims,  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.

Feds says this would mean that decisions around transport, parks, and urban planning would happen in regions the decisions don’t impact.

"This of course happens fast on the heels of decisions to strip district councils of responsibility for Three Waters. If we aren’t careful, there won’t be much left for district councils to do but organise the Santa parade," Hooper says.

"If the Government is serious about shifting New Zealand from our current three tiers of government to two, this should be done transparently. We don’t accept a situation where district councils are stripped of responsibility piecemeal.

"Federated Farmers knows the Government has put five years into this reform, so it won’t be easy to just start again. But we are also of the view that these bills need a fundamental rethink,” he says.