RMA Resource Management Act Reform

The National government has announced plans to streamline the Resource Management Act to achieve efficiency gains in the resource consent process.

Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, identified key elements of the reform package as:

• Removing frivolous, vexatious and anti-competitive objections
• Streamlining processes for projects of national significance
• Creating an Environmental Protection Authority
• Improving plan development and plan change processes
• Improving resource consent processes
• Streamlining decision making
• Improving workability and compliance
• Improving national instruments

The Government has backed off its election promise to remove references to the Treaty of Waitangi in the legislation because of opposition by the Maori Party - which is in a confidence and supply agreement with National - as well as claiming such removal was no longer needed because of existing case law and improved practices.

An Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) will be created to achieve national environmental goals. The government will use this agency to get around the appeals process to the Environment Court for proposals of "national significance".

An EPA board of inquiry will be the vehicle for fast-tracking these nationally significant projects so that board decisions are made within a 9 month time frame. The effect for major projects will be that the EPA board process will re-centralise decision-making, effectively removing local authority decision-making over such projects and subjecting decisions to more political interference at the level of national government.

As emphasized in earlier posts on the RMA, the late Robert Muldoon, Prime Minister of the National government in the last 1970s-early 1980s, can be heard cackling from the grave that his late 1970s fast track proposal to bulldoze through projects despite environmental issues is about to come to fruition.

While some environmental organisations such as the Environmental Defence Society (EDS), concede the need to improve the speed of the appeals process, they point to the narrowing of appeals to points of law as a mischaracterisation of the role of the Environment Court as a judicial tribunal rather than its true function as an expert tribunal.

More fundamentally, environmental groups such as the EDS and Greenpeace are concerned that the proposed RMA changes, yet to be enacted, effectively strengthen the hand of large developers and undermine public participation and environmental sustainability. With the RMA's fundamental principle of a "balancing test" that is readily interpreted to weigh more heavily in favour of commercial over environmental interests it is hard not to be persuaded that the revised RMA will result in a backsliding in New Zealand's efforts to move towards environmental sustainability.

Wellington’s Little White Lie on Oriental Bay

Oriental Bay, Wellington, NZ

Oriental Bay on a picture-perfect January day. One of only two days of the year, some Wellingtonians joke, that the postcard pictures are taken in a city dubbed the Windy City for the prevailing nor’westerlies that bluster & send low lying clouds scudding over the hills and through nearby Cook Strait between the North and South Islands.

But that is unfair to a capital city that has a great deep water harbour that one can enjoy from many different vantage points around the bays, out to the Hutt, and from the central city. A leisurely stroll along the harbour front, past Te Papa the national museum, and you soon find yourself in magnificent Oriental Bay.

Look at that stunning white sand. How can it be so bright and clean in a location where hundreds of thousands of people work and live?

Don’t worry! The more than 27,000 tonnes of sand needed to restore and expand the beach area fourfold was obtained from within New Zealand in an environmentally sustainable way. You can read more about it here.

But the sand was

Once again the Mainland (the South Island) stepped up to help out the national capital. The sand was shipped in from Golden Bay, Nelson in the northwest of the South Island.

Seven years to plan & consult, one year to construct (why does it take so long to get things done in New Zealand?), for a cool $7 million. Which incidentally must have pumped up the value of some of the most expensive property in Wellington along the waterfront.

But what price a Green Day at the beach?

So, tourists, not all is what it may seem.