No co-governance in RMA reforms - Environment Minister David Parker

Environment Minister David Parker's proposal is not to have co-governance in RMA reforms. Photo / Mark Mitchel

Environment Minister David Parker has brushed aside a suggestion from the Waitangi Tribunal that the Government move to put co-governance measures into the replacement for the Resource Management Act.

Legislation on the reforms is due in October, and Parker said the Government's plan was not to include co-governance requirements in the bill.

"The Government is not proposing 50-50 co-governance. Regional planning committees will have a legal minimum of 2 Māori representatives. Local councils and Māori in a region can then agree on whether they want more," Parker said.

The Tribunal has recently been looking into the way Māori will be represented on the new committees that will take planning decisions under the reforms that replace the RMA.

The New Zealand Maori Council took the claim against the Government's plans to give iwi and hapu the leading role in determining the Māori representatives.

In an interim report, the tribunal concluded the Crown was not in breach of the Treaty with its current proposal.

The report did, however, float the idea that the new planning committees be co-governed 50-50 between local government and Māori - an arrangement similar to the controversial co-governance proposals for the Government's three waters reforms.

Unlike the Government's reforms to the health sector and three waters, which both involve different forms of what can be called co-governance, its replacement to the Resource Management Act would involve consultation with Maori, but no co-governance.

Under the new planning framework, there will be 14 regional planning committees throughout New Zealand comprising representatives of local government and of Māori.

The committees will have a minimum of six members, at least two of whom must be Māori.

The precise shape of the committees will be negotiated between local government and Māori in each region.

The tribunal suggested the Government could commit to 50:50 Māori-local government composition on the committees.

It suggested this "could take a lot of the heat out of the selection process".

The Crown submitted that there be no co-governance requirement. The tribunal stopped short of recommending there be a co-governance requirement.

"As our consideration of this issue is contextual only, we can take the matter of
co-governance no further than that, and we will make no findings or recommendations about it in this report," the report said.