In February, Environment minister Amy Adams announced a revamp of the legislation to make it more "business friendly". Key features of her Resource Management Reform Bill include a six-month time limit on council processing of medium-sized consents, a streamlined process for Auckland's first Unitary Plan, and a provision for major projects to be referred to the Environment Court more easily.
Adams says a Statistics NZ Business Operations survey showed that only 3 per cent of businesses think the current RMA processes enhance their business practice. She says 430 businesses cancelled projects worth more than $100,000 each because of RMA-related delays and difficulties.
Adams says her reforms - which look set to be passed at the third reading - are about "providing greater confidence for businesses to grow and create jobs.
"In most cases, this is not about whether a particular project can or cannot proceed, it is about the time and cost to reach that decision."
Some critics of the current system believe the resource management 'industry' is at fault, claiming that few of those involved have much to gain by making the process faster and easier.
Company director Alison Paterson says: "There is a disconnect among the parties - profit motive/environmental ideology - at either extreme. The costs often accrue to the application, therefore [there is] no incentive on the other side to minimise costs."
Cooper and Company CEO Matthew Cockram adds "the resource management industry's attempts to overlay black letter law [technical legal rules] on to an amorphous subjective discipline is doomed to fail.
"The industry built up around it has become entrenched and they use the opacity of the law, uncertainty of the process, time and cost of the process, to underpin and build that industry. It is a vicious cycle."
NZCID boss Stephen Selwood observes that there is very poor alignment between NZ's principal planning laws.
"Development of regional policies and district plan taking decades to enact is not conducive to good practice, driving business growth, or investor confidence. There are too many districts, too many plans, and far too much parochialism."
Nearly 60 per cent (55.7 per cent) of survey respondents said council administration of the RMA is not generally positive for business.
Mark Cairns Port of Tauranga
Mark Cairns' best achievement in the past 12 months was finally gaining the resource to dredge Tauranga harbour to widen and deepen its shipping channel, making the port accessible to much larger ships.
The NZ Shippers Council estimates this will pave the way for potential annual savings to exporters and importers in excess of $300 million. The central gateway to NZ's import and export markets has the capacity to grow to meet customer requirements and future market demands.
Cairns has been generally impressed by the Key Government. "While there have been a few stumbles, the Government has been much more courageous this term in taking some tough decisions with significant political risk, e.g MOM process - the alternative is significantly more debt."
But one change he would like to see the Government make is to fix the RMA. "It is completely unacceptable that a relative routine consent application (of national significance) could take four years to be granted and consume $2.5 million in legal and expert witness costs. At risk of sounding like a broken record, RMA regulatory costs and hurdles remain significant when competing against supply chains for mother countries."
Cairns is slightly more optimistic than last year. But he cautions, "I can't help thinking we have another correction to go ... China/Australian slow-downs will be significant to New Zealand."
In the next 12 months, his top priorities are:
Completing $170 million capital expansion program to ensure NZ's exporters can access the lowest cost of shipping their goods to distant markets
Vertically integrating into other transport and logistics sectors to ensure NZ has a rational and sustainable supply chain
Continuing to improve productivity at the port.
