New Zealand’s Resource Management Act is on its way out after 35 years. Parliament on Tuesday night passed the third readings of the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, the two laws that together replace the Act that has governed almost every consent to build, farm, dig or discharge since 1991.
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop called it the most significant overhaul of the country’s planning system in more than three decades. “Today is a major milestone. After 35 years of the RMA, Parliament has passed legislation for a fundamentally different way of planning for New Zealand’s future,” he said in a statement released with Parliamentary Under-Secretary Simon Court.
Opposition parties were just as clear that they think the Government has got it wrong. Labour and the Greens warned in the House that the new system could prove unworkable, push costs onto ratepayers and weaken protection for rivers, air and native species, RNZ reported.
The split is simple to describe. The Planning Bill deals with land use and development, meaning where houses, roads and businesses can go. The Natural Environment Bill deals with the use and protection of freshwater, coastal water, air, soil and native biodiversity. Under the RMA both jobs sat in one law, and critics on the left and right agreed it did neither job well.
Bishop said the old system had given the country “the worst of both worlds”, describing it as costly, complex and hard to navigate “without delivering effectively for either growth or the environment.”
The biggest practical change is that more decisions are meant to be made once, at the start. National policy direction, national standards and long-term regional spatial plans will set out where growth goes and what must be protected, so that the same arguments are not fought again on every consent application. The Government says more than 100 council planning documents will be replaced by 17 regional combined plans, with nationally standardised zones and rules.
Officials estimate around 45 per cent of the consent and permit applications currently required under the RMA could go. Based on 2023/24 volumes, the Government says that means between 15,000 and 22,000 applications a year that would no longer be needed. “For homeowners, farmers and businesses, they will no longer need to seek permission for ordinary low impact activities,” Bishop said.
The Government is also leaning on big economic numbers. It cites independent analysis projecting that the new system will lift GDP by an extra 0.56 per cent a year by 2050, worth up to $3.1 billion annually, and a cost-benefit analysis estimating $13.3 billion in savings over 30 years from lower administrative and compliance costs. Those are forecasts, and they depend heavily on how councils and the new national bodies put the system into practice.
Property rights sit at the centre of the reform, and that is where the sharpest political fight lies. In the debate Bishop said the changes were about restoring “the freedom for New Zealanders to shape their own futures by using property as they choose, a once in a generation shift towards growth, choice and prosperity.” He accused the Opposition of painting property rights as “some evil, right wing plan”.
ACT, which has campaigned against the RMA for decades, claimed a large share of the credit. Court told the House the old system “let every Tom, Dick and Harry say no” to building projects. “The new one starts from the opposite place, saying it’s your property, and if you’re not harming anyone else then you have the freedom to use it,” he said.
A new regulatory relief scheme is the part most likely to be felt by council ratepayers. It requires councils to compensate landowners when certain public-good planning controls significantly restrict what they can do with their land. Court’s statement framed it as a way to “discipline over-zealous councils” by making them face the cost of those rules.
Labour’s Rachael Brooking sees it very differently. She told Parliament the scheme would either cause chaos and great expense for ratepayers or lead councils to give up on environmental protections altogether. “This [reform] will lead to a big, muddy mess … it will not improve efficiencies, and it will not improve the cost burden on the public,” she said. Brooking also said a Labour government would not flip-flop on the reform, but would amend it rather than repeal it.
That matters for anyone watching the election. Labour’s own RMA replacement, the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act, passed in August 2023 and was repealed by the incoming National-led Government that December. Brooking’s comments suggest voters will not face another full reversal, but the details of the new laws are now firmly on the table as an election issue. If you want to see how the parties line up on planning, housing and the environment, try our voting tool.
The Greens’ environment spokesperson Lan Pham said the laws would allow untold harm to human health and the environment. “With the passing of these bills, Aotearoa is in a new era of environmental exploitation at the hands of polluting industries,” she said. Pham said the Government had ignored official advice, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the 75 per cent of submitters who opposed the bills. Environmental groups including Forest and Bird had warned during select committee that minimum standards for healthy ecosystems were being weakened.
Court said the Natural Environment Bill would set environmental limits on effects on ecosystems and human health, backed by regional natural environment plans, and that the system moves public participation to the plan-making stage rather than individual consents. A new Planning Tribunal will give applicants a low-cost way to challenge lower-level disputes such as council demands for more information or extra consent conditions.
Nothing changes overnight. The bills still need Royal assent. Law firm Simpson Grierson notes that a transition period begins one month after assent, with a four-year backstop bringing any remaining provisions into force. Existing RMA plans, consents and processes will keep running while national instruments, regional plans and data systems are built, and the Government says it intends the full new system to be operating by 2030. Budget 2026 set aside $294 million over four years for the rollout.
“Passing these Bills is not the end of the job. The next task is making sure the new system works in practice,” Bishop said.
That is the real test. The RMA itself was sold in 1991 as a simpler, effects-based law, and it grew into the system both sides now say failed. Whether the replacement delivers faster building and better environmental outcomes, or simply a different set of arguments, will take years to show, and likely at least one change of government.
Will the new planning laws make it easier to build without costing the environment, or have the protections gone too far? Tell us what you think 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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