New regime to replace RMA to take 10 years to bed in, cost $3.891b and create benefits of $10.039b

The Government has finally presented two of the three new acts of Parliament needed to replace the Resource Management Act, which was passed in 1991 and amended thousands of times since then in failed attempts to reduce the cost and time to get consents for development from councils.

Government analysis of replacing the RMA estimated total costs over the next 30 years of $3.891b in present value terms, but potential benefits of $10.039b, including $7.5b in benefits from increasing housing supply to improve housing affordability.

The new regime will take 10 years to bed in and for the first year will only trial three 'model' regions, which have yet to be identified. The regime change will see 100 district plans reduced to 15 and the aim is to reduce the number of consents required by 40% per annum.

Environment Minister David Parker previewed this full replacement suite for the RMA in February 2021. And the two bills being introduced to Parliament this week and read for the first time next week are the Natural and Built Environment (NBA) and Spatial Planning (SPA) bills. They have been through an exposure draft process and more than a year of consultation with umpteen government departments, councils, iwi and business groups.

A third bill, the Climate Adaptation Act, is not expected to be introduced until next year and won't be enacted until 2024.

The broad outline of the reforms to replace the RMA were drafted in the Randerson Review started in 2019 and presented in report form in June 2020.

Parker presented the two bills to a 'lockup' of journalists and resource management lawyers and consultants in Parliament, arguing the current RMA system was broken. He identified 23 separate amendments to the 1991 legislation and thousands of smaller amendments that had not reduced the time and cost of consenting.

"They've not only increased complexity, they've also failed to make the improvements that we need," Parker said.

"Everyone's frustrated. Environmentalists, developers, councils, farmers and home builders," he said.

Parker pointed to how council consenting fees for notified consents had risen 124% between 2015 to 2019 and that mid-size project developers were now spending 5.5% of the project costs on consents, which was at the extreme end of international comparisons ranging from 0.1% of project costs to 5.0% of project costs. The Infrastructure Commission had estimated infrastructure developers were currently spending $1.29b per yer on resource consent processes. Decision-making times for infrastructure projects had blown out by 150% between 2010-14 and 2015-19.

The RMA's two major replacement acts, the NBA and SPA, will see the creation of regional spatial strategies (RSS) and regional plans within a National Planning Framework (NPF), the first of which will not be notified until 2023 and not published until 2025. The natural and built environment plans for each region will be developed by a new Regional Planning Committee (RPC).

These new committees will have at least six members, including two Māori members and one Government member, although the total size of the committees are not limited to six and each region can decide how many members it will need. The Government denied this was a form of 'co-governance'.

Opposition sceptical

Contrary to hopes the reforms might prove more durable across changes of Government, National came out with a very critical first statement. Acting Environment Spokesman Chris Bishop stopped short of saying a National-led Government would repeal it, but he said the proposed reforms would likely be worse than the current situation.

“National’s simple test on RMA reform is whether it will make it easier to get things done - like building the houses New Zealand desperately needs and addressing our infrastructure deficit – while pragmatically protecting the environment," Bishop said.

“We will be carefully considering the Bills but we are deeply sceptical that Labour’s reforms will meet this test. The new Bills will add yet more bureaucracy, add more complexity to the system, introduce significant legal uncertainty, and risk repeating the mistakes of the past," he said.

ACT Leader David Seymour was even more critical.

They even dusted off the same guy who did the RMA to design them,” says ACT Leader David Seymour.

“Centralisation is unpopular because it often fails. The reality of this reform is that a new and more centralised bureaucracy will write plans with different headings, but the same basic content," Seymour said.

“Unfortunately, the NBE Act repeats the mistakes of the past. It is not clear who has the right to do what on their land and who has the right to object. That means projects will still be held up by years of hearings, appeals, consultants’ reports, and iwi consultations," he said.

Even the Greens weren't happy, saying the Government had missed an opportunity to redesign the system with climate and nature at its heart, and had mistakenly taken a view that there was a trade-off between quality infrastructure and good environmental outcomes.

“Over the next 30 years we will need to build new warm, dry, energy efficient housing; more renewable energy capacity; and more carbon-zero transport options like rail. At the same time we need to protect and restore coastal and estuarine areas, remaining wetlands, native shrublands, forests and waterways," said Green Environment Spokeswoman Eugenie Sage.