There have been increasing calls for more urgent infrastructure delivery and central Government involvement in the country’s biggest city. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by Matthew Hooton
Matthew Hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients in Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the National and Act parties and the Mayor of Auckland.
That includes asking why it took him nearly 18 months to get to Monday’s announcement – the best answer being that he invested so much energy in his fast-tracklegislation.
More important is why it has taken nearly 30 years to reach this point after concerns about the original Resource Management Act (RMA) emerged so soon after it became law in 1991.
The 1996 National-NZ First coalition agreement promised a review.
Jim Bolger pledged changes in his big “springtime in a new era” speech, his final attempt to foil Jenny Shipley’s leadership challenge in 1997.
“We daily hear charges that the operation of the RMA impedes your decision-making and adds to your costs,” the then Prime Minister told the Auckland Business Chamber 28 years ago.
“The Minister for the Environment has listened,” Bolger enthused, “and is reviewing the method by which some local authorities are implementing the RMA, and the impact on compliance costs.”
Even way back then, the major principle Bishop announced this week was clear – that while the RMA’s philosophy was that everything was forbidden unless it was allowed, the new approach should be based on everything being allowed unless it was forbidden, or at least allowed subject to compensation for neighbours who would be negatively affected.
No one ever argued the RMA stopped everything. The country’s physical infrastructure is radically different from 1991.
In the Auckland region alone, the RMA didn’t stop the Sky Tower, the Viaduct, Britomart, the Waterview Tunnel, cycle lanes, the City Rail Link, the Waikato and Warkworth expressways, or massive new housing construction north and south.
The argument was always that the RMA slowed everything down and added costs, from the largest infrastructure projects to the smallest farming upgrades and home renovations.
It thus retarded economic development for 30 years from what it would have been otherwise, making us all poorer than we could have been.
Most shameful was successive governments stuffing round for 30 years over a problem they all recognised.
Beyond specific problems the RMA caused, witnessing those lost decades of political procrastination is surely key to the country’s ever-worsening commercial melancholy and economic malaise.
It’s one thing being forced to tolerate an annoying policy regime that successive democratically elected governments support. Having to tolerate one that successive governments keep saying they oppose is a special New Zealand economic disease.
As with much else, the Key-English Government’s nine-year failure to use its enormous popularity and mandate to scrap the RMA was particularly egregious.
For six years under the Ardern-Hipkins Government, David Parker tried, but his reliance for advice on those responsible for the original RMA slowed things down and risked producing something worse.
It can take eight years to get a resource consent for a wind farm. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The stars aligned when the last election produced a National-Act-NZ First Government but at least three of Bishop’s decisions were still necessary to make progress.
First, he has fully involved Act’s Simon Court and NZ First’s Shane Jones every step of the way, taking advantage of them being at least as committed to finally getting rid of the RMA as National.
Second, Bishop established with Court the best working relationship between a minister and their understudy from another party in the MMP era.
Court, an environmental engineer, suffers from being an expert on the RMA, having worked with it for private developers and Auckland Council.
In politics, this would normally see his senior minister keep him out of the loop, but Bishop took the novel approach of exploiting his undersecretary’s experience and technical expertise.
Third, Bishop appointed former Meredith Connell partner Janette Campbell to chair his RMA working group.
Previous reform efforts relied either on people so deeply committed to the original RMA they were unable to think beyond it, or those with the government-of-the-day’s desired ideology but without experience working with the monstrosity.
Campbell has no known ideological bias. Some legal associates are convinced she leans Green. Others swear she’s a closet Act voter.
What Bishop recognised in Campbell was her 30 years deeply immersed in the status quo but the imagination and creativity to elevate out of it.
Except for one member who seemed to believe there should be no restrictions at all on the exercise of property rights, Campbell has so far kept her diverse group focused on an approach that makes those rights central while maintaining strong environmental protections.
As Court has long argued, Campbell believes the most important priority is for the resource-management system to deliver clear and reasonably predictable decisions cost-effectively and quickly.
Precisely because she has profited from the current system where almost everything might be allowed but nothing is assured – and hope springs eternal on both sides between developers and environmentalists, with both needing high-priced lawyers to assist – Campbell thinks predictability and speed are most important.
Contrary to Christopher Luxon claiming it can take eight years to get a resource consent for a wind farm, any such delays suggest the project will never be consented but that the applicant is being encouraged by the RMA’s uncertainty – and their own lawyers – not to lose hope.
Campbell, Bishop, Court and even Jones understand that energy companies and investors, for example, don’t mind if the law forbids them getting a consent for a nuclear power station or because a project would threaten a native bird. Developers then know not to waste their time and money thinking about it.
What is intolerable about the RMA is how much time and money it takes to have that established, one way or the other.
Court muses that six months should be about how long it takes in a dynamic economy for the authorities to decide, once and for all, if a major new geothermal project can go ahead – and, if a consent is needed at all, a few hours for whether your villa’s new windows are okay.
Neither should be assured, but there should be an assumption the answer will be “yes” and that any “no” or conditions will come quickly and decisively.
Cabinet accepted all Campbell’s working group’s recommendations for the design of the new law and Bishop promises to introduce a bill this year. He’s now seeking input from the Opposition, which could help get the reform through before the election and ensure it is retained even if National loses.
To his credit, Chris Hipkins has vowed any new Labour Government he leads won’t oppose and repeal things just because National put them in place.
After 30 years of procrastination and failure by both main parties, RMA reform is an excellent issue for Hipkins to demonstrate he’s sincere.
