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Cabinet has agreed that new RMA rules should only restrict a building that impacts other properties or the wider environment. The government said enjoyment and property rights will be the guiding principle and replacing the RMA. But how much will it really improve development? What difference will it make? Well to discuss that with me now is the Undersecretary to the Ministry responsible for RMA reform, and he is Simon Court. Good afternoon, Good afternoon, Simon. Every time I would say
most New Zealanders hear the word the letter's rama. It's never about anything good. What's wrong with it?
Well, for too long the Resource Management Actors made it too difficult, unclear, too expensive to get consents to build things that we know we need, whether it's housing, subdivisions or new bridges for example. My background is a civil engineer. I've worked on landfills, worked on rooting projects, and the time it takes to get consens for things is often
longer than it takes to build things. So I've been thinking about this for many years and now as part of the coalition government have an opportunity to put some of some of the concepts that Act campaigned on and that are in the Act National Coalition Agreement into practice, which is to replace a system we've got which is called integrated resource management, mixing up development aspirations, Well the gosh, we've got to protect everything everywhere we find it, the
precautionary principles saying well, we better not do it now. We're going to have a system that's going to be enabling. We're going to agree it's not if we can build something, but where. And guess what. We know that most things, whether it's a bruge or a subdivision, have been done thousands of times before, and they've been done with the
minimal environmental impact. We can simply take all of those learnings put them into a new law, rather than having to have people apply for consents for things that we already know how to do. Well.
Is it just straightforward just to say, look, we're not reforming now, we're throwing this one out and we're starting from Is it starting from scratch?
Yeah, we certainly are the problem with the resource management at is it talks about all of these concepts going back to the nineteen seventies, like sustainable development and integrated management. It's just not possible. There's no other country in the world has copied what New Zealand trying to do, bringing
all these things of the one law. Most other OECD countries have separate law for development and housing, particularly for infrastructure enabling, and separate law that sets environmental limits, say for fresh water, coastal areas or air quality. So we're going to create two separate pieces of legislation and it's going to be very clear. There will be environmental limits and places that there need to be and that are
special ti kiwis. But most of the places that we want to get on and build, whether it's state highways, whether it's wastewater treatment plants or pump stations, housing subdivisions, they're going to be shown on a map where they're going, and at that point it won't be having to ask for permission. All will be doing is making sure that those things fit within existing environmental best practice.
How different does your approach to what labor, Because labor, we're trying to reform it as well, weren't they.
Labor had proposed a very complicated series of new laws, which included new and mystifying terms like temana tayo, which the lawyers I've just been a couple of days with the Planning Conference and New Plymouth this week said they had no idea what that meant, how long it was going to take to work out what it meant. That's the last thing you do to give confidence to people who want to get on and build stuff. They had also planned that it would take ten years to implement
their new system. Well, what we're saying is, look, it's much simpler than that. We've got to stop resource management doing system doing things it's not meant to do. But the resource management system doesn't need to control climate change. You know, we've got the zero carbonac, we've got their emissions trading scheme. The Resource Management Act actually doesn't need
to control heritage. If some people who work at your local council think that the houses in your street look nice, well they should come around and knock on the door and ask the permission to lest those houses as heritage, rather than an issue blanket heritage orders that actually make it much harder for people to develop their properties.
So I noticed in Crispship speech one of the Senates said that Cabinet has agreed to the high level principles for the system. What are the high level principles.
Well, there's around ten of them, and at a high level essentially designs the outcomes of the act. So we want two acts with clear distinct purposes. We want two bottom lines, a double bottom line. We want to provide essential human needs. That means infrastructure and housing, food production for example, drinking water, energy, and the other bottom line is environmental limits. We want councils to be able to set environmental limits for fresh water, say in their region,
not have them set by central government national standards. For most of the things we already do well. I mean, I've worked as a soil engineer, I work with people who do subdivisions, and I know that the emrosion can seem control traffic management noise does They are all the same type of consent conditions every time there's almost no change. Wine Co we make these into annational standards so you don't have to pay for consents. Now there's ten legislative criteria.
If your listeners want to find out more, you can jump onto the high website. We'll certainly follow me on LinkedIn. Simon Court and I'll be posting with your updates about what we're up there.
Have you had input or conversations with the opposition about this? And the reason I asked that is because obviously, in major pieces of legislation, you know, we want an act that's going to persist. We don't want it to be played around within three, six, nine years time. So what input are you expecting or seeking with other parties in Parliament on this, Well, we will.
Be seeking the cooperation and support and some of the things that we do agree on with you opposition, such as the need for spatial planning one plan pro region that shows where the infrastructure is now, where the future infrastructure is, we're housing should be built up in a new transport bus center is going to be for example. There is no political disagreement that we need one spatial
plan per region. That is an enduring concept. I think some of the challenges will place around the previous government wanted to make the treaty the center of resource management and what we're saying is, look, it's focused on private property rights. Many of the organizations I've spoken to ee Maori ruining organizations that want to invest in infrastructure and invest in their own housing. The place problem. They've got this the barriers put up by the resource central system.
The last thing they want to do is have to go and negotiate with cousins that get along down the road and think the position about how they should be allowed to develop their land. So we say, look, it needs to be around private property rights, enabling infrastructure and housing, protecting the environment with sound environmental and it's based on science,
it's not based on vibes. We think we'll have this up and running within three years, so it'll be past this term apartment and we aim to implement it very very quickly.
What an impact do you expect it to have on the cost of developments. Let's just look at say residential proper then the cost of development. So how much money do you expect is going to be saved through the expediency of what you're proposing.
Well, a lot of the savings will be in the infrastructure provided to housing developments and where we want to build up, saying cities like Auckland or Tarong or Hamilton for example. The infrastructu Commission estimates that New Zealand spends around one point three billion dollars per aund the just
on consenting infrastructure. Now we can move that into a national standard where you don't have to ask for permission, then potentially there's a billion dollars worth of savings right there that won't go on through householders and infrastructure uses. The other things we want to do is allow people who own property and want to build on it, whether that's housing or industrial subdivisions that actually provide jobs for people, that they can just get on and do that and
they don't have to ask for permission. The only concern that they'll have to address is does this affect my neighbors if I'm building higher than allowed in the zone, or is the noise, you know, the traffic movements for example, going to affect people who who live next door. So we're going to make it much easier to get on and build the things that we need for housing that encourage employment, and we think we can do this relatively quickly.
What about the environment are there? Does it create any dangers in terms of people go on doing developments or building infrastructure where the environment hasn't really been properly considered.
Well, one of the problems we've got the cities is that we do want to build out and up, and we have wastewater riverflows in Auckland into the harbor into our fresh water system and in the countryside you've got concerns that farmers are not looking after fresh water for example. There's many different ways that are except to do this, whether it's constructing new wetlands, planting out raperian species along the raperian margins, along stream banks. There are river care
groups around New Zealand. Catgement management groups want to be able to take ownership of water quality their regions. They're made up of farmers, regional counselors, ere groups. We want to empower them to do that, and they can do that by setting environmental limits that what they want to see in their region, rather than have it handed to them top down. So we've got to invest in the infrastructure.
We're going to provide an enabling pathway to do that in our cities where there's real pressure on the environment from growth, and we're going to give the opportunity to fix up the local environment to people who know it best and love it best.
What are the reactions You're getting any pushback or applaudits from councils around the country.
Well after the past couple of days, I've had the most incredible support from particularly lawyers and planners who work for councils that are trying to get their own infrastructure upgraded, whether it's upgrading the local wastewater treatment plant, building new roads, doing the coastal protection to stop the sea washing away
roads and homes, for example. They're telling me, Simon, if you could get this as quickly as possible, would make it much easier for us to actually deliver the infrastruct through our communities met that we wouldn't spend years and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in court for each results consent because someone turns out sectually a vicatious lilquan says, well, we don't think what you're doing is right by the environment,
and we're going to object. We're actually going to make it much harder, if not impossible, for people who do not have direct interest of thems, they're not neighbors to object to the kind of things that a local government wants to do that benefit us. All. Yeah, overwhelming support from the planners and the lawyers have spoken to over the past few days. They're not worried about their jobs.
What they're really concerned about is extra delivant better services for all their clients and getting on delivering stuff.
So, how you mentioned a window of about three years to get this legislation passed. How long do you expect it to be until the rule changes? The new act would actually see a tangible change in the way we get things done.
Well, we'd like to have it passed. I think the intention is and from its Relux has confirmed this will we pass this term of government thinking a very rapid implementation phase rather than creating a whole lot of new rules. We're simply saying, if there's a national environmental standard safe for chelecommunications, renewable energy, for electricity transmission, all these things that really exist, then councils shouldn't be able to ask
for anything more, either in their plans or consents. Therefore, you're going to be able to do that as of right. What we're hoping to do is to turn off large parts of existing plans. Essentially national standards override, because look, we've got a national standard to protect the environment. There's no sense in law and Coupital's asking people for consent conditions or for consents or putting planning conditions in their
local plans. We're going to make sure that this is abled to implemented by turning off making things less complex, rather than adding more stuff to the.
Me So you're going to pass this term, You've got what eighteen months to get it sort of eighteen months two years to get it all past, isn't you? Well?
Fortunately, we're not starting from black slate. I mean I conduct more than forty interviews or people while in opposition to come up with the policies that reflect accesspirations for a system based on property rights. But that also all the things that we've learned through the Select Committy processes on the previous government's failed attempt at resource management reform.
We're taking all the good things that infrastructure, property developers and the environmental scientists and fondness and we're putting them into this design outline. We're going to get a group of experts, lawyers, planners, environment scientists, people with tau Maori knowledge to essentially produce the bulldeprint and the legislative architecture. We're well down the track. We're not going to be waiting for for years for a group of lawyers and do good is to tell us how to do this.
We've set the addenda around about ten legislative principles and we're expected to get on and act, start drafting legislation early next year, have it into the House in middle of twenty twenty five.
Excellent.
OK.
Hey, look, so I'm going to re appreciate your time this afternoon. So a big job, so crack on, thank you very much. Yes, there we go that. Simon Courty's the Under Secretary Parliamentary arounder secretary for RM reform. We're going to do some talkback after the break.
And now the.
Simple question is do you, well, simple straightforward questions, do you support RAMA reform. I would have thought that's that's a no brainer, isn't it. I mean, is there anyone who thinks, no, no, RMA is working just fine right now? Do you support it being basically let's throw it out and start again and come up with a new piece of legislation. But in particular the getting rid of I
guess actually the couple of things resonated. I think that there's a I don't want to put this the wrong way, but it does come across a little bit that in a lot of our legislation there's a bit of virtue signaling going on. And I don't mean this to beat up on treaty principal clauses and things like that, but more things that are a bit amorphous and hard to sort of pin down. Do you support the idea? It's like, hey, lock first principle, it's your property, do what you will,
but you must do it within the law. But we're not going to make you jump through a million hopes. Do you support this reform of the IMA? And for more from the Weekend Collective, listen live to news Talks it'd be weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio