The two bills that will replace the Resource Management Act were reported back to Parliament on Monday, and the Government used the moment to overrule its own select committee on one of the most contested questions in the whole reform, which is how iwi get a formal seat at the planning table.
The Environment Committee reported back on the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill on 20 July, recommending by majority that the House should pass both. The committee published redrafted versions of each bill along with a joint commentary explaining its reasoning, and thanked “members of the public who took the time to provide us with comprehensive and informative submissions”. The tidied bills go up on the legislation website within a couple of weeks. Second reading follows, with a third reading expected in September.
Together the two bills retire the RMA, which has governed how New Zealand builds, farms and protects things since 1991. A Natural Environment Act will set the framework for the use and protection of the natural environment. A Planning Act will handle the planning system itself. Ministers put big numbers on the change. Independent analysis cited by the Government estimates the new system lifts GDP by an extra 0.56 percent a year by 2050, worth up to $3.1 billion annually, with officials picking $13.3 billion in savings on administration and compliance over 30 years and roughly 45 percent of consent and permit applications disappearing altogether.
The late change concerns Mana Whakahono ā Rohe agreements, which are formal arrangements between councils and iwi authorities setting out how the two will work together on resource management decisions. They were created in 2017 under then-environment minister Nick Smith. Cabinet has now decided that existing agreements will not carry over into the new system. Councils will instead be able to enter iwi participation agreements that are, in the Government’s words, narrowly scoped, with guardrails written in to stop them expanding beyond their original purpose.
What makes that notable is the committee had gone the other way. Its majority had recommended keeping the transition arrangements for existing agreements, concluding the bills already gave iwi authorities enough mechanisms to work with councils. Cabinet decided otherwise after the committee had done its work.
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop pointed to a surge in dealmaking as the reason. “Eight existed when the bills were introduced late last year,” he told 1News. “Since then, several dozen more have been agreed or initiated.” In the Government’s release alongside the report back, Parliamentary Under-Secretary Simon Court said the result was a planning system “that’s simpler, more predictable, and makes it easier to build” the infrastructure the country needs while still protecting the environment.
Federated Farmers backed the decision. Spokesperson Mark Hooper said decision-making powers that affect communities “should remain with democratically accountable elected representatives”.
Labour recorded a dissenting view, arguing that removing the ability to make new agreements “is not in anyone’s interests” given submitters had told the committee the agreements “assist with the timeliness and efficiency of the resource management system”. That is worth sitting with for a moment, because it is not the argument you might expect. Labour’s objection was not framed around partnership or principle. It was framed around speed. The agreements, on that reading, are the thing that stops a consent getting stuck, because everyone has already agreed in advance who talks to whom and when. Te Pāti Māori’s dissent went further, saying the committee had failed to account for the inequities created by stripping the RMA’s Māori participation tools out of the new system.
So there are two competing claims about the same instrument. One says these agreements are process bloat that shifts power away from elected councillors. The other says they are the paperwork that makes the process faster. Both cannot be right, and the answer will show up in consent timelines a few years after the new system starts rather than in anything said in the House this week.
Farmers got a second change they had pushed for. Under the revised bills, farms doing lower-risk activities will no longer need a certified and audited freshwater farm plan. They will prepare a plan and declare to their council that it exists. Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard said that “only those farms undertaking activities with a higher identified risk to freshwater will be required to have a certified and audited freshwater farm plan”. Farmers can still choose to certify and audit voluntarily, which some will, either because a market requires it or because they farm in a sensitive catchment where regulations demand it. Agriculture Minister Todd McClay called the report back “a significant step forward for the primary sector”, saying the RMA “has added cost, delay, and uncertainty for the people who grow and produce New Zealand’s food and fibre”.
Councils got something too, though less headline-friendly. The transition period has been stretched from 30 months to 39 months, an extra three quarters of a year for councils and planners to get ready. That is a quiet admission that the original timeline was tight, and it lands at a time when councils are already carrying a heavy workload of plan changes and infrastructure decisions.
A draft National Policy Direction, which is the document that will tell councils how to actually apply the new rules on the ground, is due out shortly. Much of what the new system does in practice will be decided in that document rather than in the bills, so it is worth watching more closely than its dull name suggests.
With a third reading pencilled in for September and the general election after that, this is one of the larger pieces of legislation the coalition will put its name to, and resource management has a long history of being amended by whoever wins next. If you want to see where the parties sit on this and other issues before you vote, our voting tool lays out the policy positions side by side.
What do you make of the change on iwi participation agreements, and do you think the new system will actually be faster than the RMA? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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