The National Party says it will repeal a reform of the Resource Management Act which is going through parliament

A National administration is pledging to repeal - by Christmas 2023 - Labour's reforms of the Resource Management Act (RMA) currently going through parliament, party leaders say.

The most important reform is the Natural and Built Environment Bill. The others are the Spatial Planning Bill and the Climate Adaptation Bill.   

The Natural and Built Environment Bill has just been reported back from Parliament's Environment Select Committee.  

The RMA was widely accused of throttling initiative in red tape, and  successive attempts to improve it since it was passed in 1991 have been blamed for making the problem worse.

That is also what the latest change will do, according to the National Party politician in charge of this matter, Chris Bishop.

"The RMA is broken, but any reform of the RMA must actually improve things and be worth the considerable cost of change," he says.   

Labour's reforms "will make it harder to get things done, will not improve the environment and will actually be worse than what we have got now".

"Environment Minister David Parker sees RMA reform as his legacy, but after five and a half years, it is deeply depressing that this is the best he can come up with."

Bishop says the reform will increase bureaucracy, will significantly increase legal complexity and litigation, will remove local decision-making, and even put our decarbonisation goals at risk.

It would also produce extensive litigation that the country cannot afford. 

Bishop also accuses the Government of ignoring submissions against the bill.

He says if National Is elected it would be gone by the end of the year. 

In an explanatory note, the committee says the bill seeks to shift the focus of the current resource management system from managing adverse effects to promoting positive outcomes.

Bishop rejects this.