The three strikes against the RMA reform

Roger Partridge writes:

This month, Environment Minister David Parker’s Resource Management Act reforms will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Provided, that is, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is listening.

Three extraordinary interventions during March point to the reform’s inevitable demise. 

The first occurred at the start of the month. Chief Justice Helen Winkelman took the highly unusual step of publicly warning, in a submission to the Environment Select Committee, that Parker’s reforms would disrupt the courts.

It is very rare for the judiciary to submit on a bill. Why did they?

Submitters before the environment select committee, including the New Zealand Initiative, repeatedly pointed to the vague language, the lack of coherence and the unworkability of Parker’s Resource Management Act (RMA) reform proposals.

The high threshold required for the chief justice’s intervention means the judiciary shares those concerns. And that they are so serious they will adversely affect the administration of justice. Strike one against Parker’s reforms.

The new law has so many competing objectives that any major project will probably get tied up in ten years of litigation as judges try to work out how the law would work.

Strike two came from environment commissioner Simon Upton.

Upton is well versed in planning law bungles. After all, it was Upton who, as the Bolger government’s environment minister, delivered the RMA into law in 1991. 

But even Upton sees the perils of Parker’s proposals. Indeed, his submission to the select committee says the reforms are so flawed the environment might be better off if they were scrapped. Parker’s reforms, he said, “weld a wide range of unprioritised outcomes into what is supposed to be the basis for environmental law”.

Even if the proposals are substantively amended, Upton questioned whether they could deliver an enduring framework. “As they stand, they substitute the uncertainty of new law with novel definitions and complex ambitions for the relative certainty of amending the existing legislation,” he said. Upton concluded that a better approach would be achieved through a comprehensive amendment of the RMA.

So the PCE is saying this new law will make for worse environmental outcomes, and it should be scrapped.

Just in case the prime minister had not got the message, last week the select committee chairperson, Green MP Eugenie Sage, delivered strike three. 

Speaking at the Environmental Defence Society conference in Auckland, Sage said she wanted Parker’s reform proposals sent back for more public consultation. The select committee process was moving too fast. Too many changes were needed to the 859-clause bill to do the reform process justice.

Even the Greens have worked out this new law is a dog. The renewable energy sector have said it will mean no new renewable energy project will get consented for ten years.

Since taking over as Prime Minister, Hipkins has shown a ruthless determination to dispatch anything in the way of his Government being re-elected. So far, this has resulted in two so-called policy bonfires. 

While these have largely involved dumb ideas being deferred, it would take a brave punter to bet against Parker’s reforms being struck out.

Hopefully Hipkins does the right thing and over-rules Parker.