Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, January 27th, 2009 - 46 comments
Categories: economy, Environment, national/act government -
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We have received information that National’s plan to change the definition of ‘environment’ under the RMA in their 100-day legislation roll out will consist of removing the legal protection of a range of important parts of NZ’s environment, such as eco-systems, amenity values (e.g. the look and appearance of a landscape or townscape) and the human factors that affect the environment (e.g. constructing a building within a sensitive landscape, or a factory making too much noise near houses).
The RMA currently defines the environment as:
(a)Ecosystems and their constituent parts, including people and communities; and
(b)All natural and physical resources; and
(c)Amenity values; and
(d)The social, economic, aesthetic, and cultural conditions which affect the matters stated in paragraphs (a) to (c) of this definition or which are affected by those matters
National is set to reduce the definition of environment to only “natural and physical resources”.
Think about what that means. It means that when deciding whether to give resource consent to a project, authorities will no longer be allowed to consider whether ecosystems will be destroyed or damaged. That could be a death sentence for endangered species. Nor will authorities to allowed to consider the value of the existing environment in anything other than monetary terms. The beauty of our land, the right of Kiwis to enjoy our country in its natural state will not be protected – only dollars and cents will be at issue.
If a developer wants to pave over a rare wetland, destroying the ecosystem, there will be nothing in the RMA under National to stop them. If a developer wants to build housing by your favourite beach or mine in your favourite landscape, there will be no requirement in law for them to ensure they minimise the damage to the natural beauty of the place and your right to enjoy it. Townscapes will be threatened too – developers will not need to consider making their new buildings or industrial activities fit with the surrounding neighbourhood.
This change will also make a large part of RMA case law useless and most Council policies would become redundant, which will severally slow down the RMA process – something that National are saying they want to speed up!
National is already attempting to soften us up for the introduction of this legislation by claiming reforming the RMA will bring down house prices by allowing more new housing to be built. That’s rubbish. It was speculation, not under-supply, that caused house prices to rise so fast. The RMA does not impose significant monetary or time costs on housing. These changes will not speed up house construction, they will just be a license for the few unscrupulous developers to make a quick buck with the rest of us bearing the cost.
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I think what is really interesting about the proposed changes to the definition is that most developers/ property lobbys do not want it changed – this is because they can argue about amenity value from an economic/ cultural and social perspective.
This change will not make it easier to get your deck built thats for sure and there are serious ramifications for councils as Steve and others have outlined.
I am not sure why they are making this change considering there has been no support from the development sector or from the environmentalists.
Council processes and staff quality are whats really important in cutting down time for smaller projects not the RMA and as for big developments the RMA doesnt really need to be changed better national standards will do more to solve the problems most associated with the RMA.
RL: So … if the RMA were less convoluted and engendered less i-dotting, t-crossing and arse-covering on the part of underqualified WCC minions, would your building consent have been significantly quicker/cheaper?
Why/not?
Because while it might not be the right way to go about it, my instinct is that the planned changes will have the effect of making development quicker and cheaper. It seems to me that the strongest grounds for opposition arent `it won’t make things better’, but `it will have unintended costs’, as Dean and SP and others are arguing.
L
Sorry all you who are wailing and moaning –
Its called the pendulum effect.
You see when you have extreme detailed regulation that the RMA has – like anyone can object and almost any basis can be used to object, and almost any interpretation, etc, then there will always be a backlash – the pendulum swings one way and then it inevitably swings back the other way. It depends on how tight the ‘spring’ is as to how many times it swings.
What the current government are doing is exercising the natural swing of politics.
If the regulations werent so bloody insane (in some areas) then this wouldnt be happening. Just like the EFA, its insane and there is obviously going to be a backlash (which even Goff agrees with !!) How you “Redlogic”can be happy to spend twenty odd thousand to allow the effects of the RMA to proceed indicates only that you either have far tioo muc money or are a bit feeble brained. Will you have a better house for this money ? – and the answer is a big fat NO.
There are a lot of regulations that need gutting. The building regulations need throwing out (how come we could build houses 100 years ago that didnt leak – and many are still standing today. With the building regulations what we got was leaky buildings – thats not progress)
And yes, there will be a swing in due course against the changes national are going to make
So if the RMA were less convoluted and engendered less i-dotting, t-crossing and arse-covering on the part of underqualified WCC minions, would your building consent have been significantly quicker/cheaper?
Alternately you might have suggested that it would have been quicker if said WCC minions were better paid, better qualified and sufficiently experienced to be able to operate the RMA and various Consent processes more effectively. That is where the problem lies, deal with it there.
BTW the problems we really encountered were not so much with the RMA. If you understand what it’s requirements are, and approach them conservatively, then it is not all that difficult to gain compliance. The real problems arose with the Council’s own subdivision and multi-dwelling rules… these are much more complex and onerous. Dismantling the RMA will have no effect on them.
There are a lot of regulations that need gutting. The building regulations need throwing out (how come we could build houses 100 years ago that didnt leak – and many are still standing today.
A totally different issue to the RMA. Actually few people would want to live in a house built to 100 year old standards; they may not have leaked much, but they were small, cold, drafty and damp… with crap layouts and lousy services. In response an excellent NZ Building Code was gradually developed over decades (up until the 1990′s), that was a prescriptive document mandating a limited range of proven methods (esp around watertightness) that most builders and inspectors were very familiar with. The downside was that it was quite difficult for inspectors to approve alternate or novel approaches. Generally you had to get an engineer to sign off on anything unusual.
The big cock up was National caving into vested interest pressure in 1990. Instead of expanding on and improving the flexibility of the existing Building Code, completely tossed the old document out and went for a ‘descriptive’, ‘self certifying’ approach. The suppliers rapidly flooded the market with a whole range of new materials and techniques with minimal training and unproven or downright dodgy durability. Problem was that the Councils had no experience with managing the huge risk this created, nor did the host of private ‘certifying’ companies that were signing off on all this new work. The industry was under huge cost and competive pressures and with no effective external oversight, issues around breathability, watertightness and quality slipped badly. It has and still is costing this country billions.
In 1990 National did not so much as swing the policy pendulum, as kick off it’s pivot.
No I did not enjoy shelling out $20k plus (for no measureable added value) this last year or so, but neither am I going to whinge about it either. Everyone else has been up against the same hurdle as well. But the way forward is not another ideological leap off the rails, but to identify the most frequently RMA and Building Consent issues and improve the system so that it is able to deal with them more effectively.
I would bet that around 80% of the delays encountered with the existing process are caused by a relative handful of common issues, that could be dealt to with some fairly non-controversial reforms.
We gotta fight ‘em on the beaches boys!
sorry haven’t read the thread, but is there a strategy to combat this? Try to make it very unpopular.
Having been overseas the first thing every foreigner says to me is how beautiful our country is. It is only that way because we’ve fought for it.
The moment we build a tonne of massive tacky apartments and destroy a location, or anything else we can’t get it back.
Good to see someone remembers back as far as the leaky buildings nightmare which still hasn’t been cleared up from the last time these cowboys had a go at deregulation.
I remember it. I’m still living with it. We’ve repaired the building, but the court case hopefully starts in two months. In a year or so the nightmare may be over.
This is now a bit over 10 years after my apartment block was built and about 4 years after the problems were detected. I feel it every month when the mortgage and loan payments come out – they are close to double what I was paying.
All because some national party hack in the early 1990′s thought that deregulating the regulation of the building industry would improve the market efficiency. In Auckland this was taken by the local council as a reason to simply abrogate the council responsibility for buildings.
It was and still is a mess. The current level of regulation is about right, but we’re still cleaning up from the last time we had these dickheads in charge of building regulation (and making noises about ‘efficiency’).
But hey, that is the nature of a conservative – if something didn’t work last time, then lets repeat it and hope that it works this time.
Some egg said:
” . . . What the current government are (sic) doing is exercising the natural swing of politics . . . ”
There is nothing “natural” about Minister of Tourism and Chairman of the Green/Blues Goober John Key and his big business buddies eliminating legislative protection for the environment – it is the antithesis of “nature”.
I could understsand your premise if Goober & Co were to shut certain groups of citizens out of the process, or reduce the timeframe for consultation, or stack the deciding authority with National Party softcocks. But no. They will do that as well as sacrifice what’s left of our ecosystems to assist Goober John Key’s mates profit from destruction.
The “spring” you refer to was no way wound that tight. Its more like, rather than a pendulum, a flood gate of greed is about to swing open.
The immediate impact of an RMA change that removes “amenity value” as a criteria for resource consent applications will be that the flyover at the Basin Reserve will be railroaded through by the NZ Transport Agency. After all, being able to actually hear a cricket match won’t have any monetary value, so won’t have to be considered.
Maybe this is the “brighter future” that John Key promised us.
I found this on: http://thorndonbubble.org/
Too funny not to share:
http://www.plentymag.com/features/2008/11/stuff_environmentalists_like_p.php
When National enacted the Resource Management Bill there was a caucus scrap between the then Minister of the Environment, Simon Upton, and development lobby within the caucus led by members like Warren Cooper. Upton was so concerned about keeping the purpose of the Act in section 5 intact that he did not take enough care over the definition of the environment (s.2). To this day he believes it is too wide. While Cooper and others lost the fight for section 5 they did achieve ammendments that affected the operation of the Act.
The information provided above is reliable but time will tell what changes are made and how those changes affect the interpretation of the Act and the case law. Some of the interpretations are a bit fanciful but I know how you feel.
It seems the intent is to remove certain aspects that frustrate those undertaking development. These frustrations are real.
The RMA works in a continuum. Those that want to develop and those that want to protect what we have. We should not be surprised that the arena of resource management is characterised by the conflict of strong views, values and emotions. I don’t believe it is realistic to fix this situation so everyone is happy.
The purpose of the Act is the “sustainable management of natural and physical resources” It will be a huge failing if any changes weaken the Act in this regard.
But….water quality worsens from increased land use intensification, buildings and apartments are being built that have scant regard for the inhabitants health and wellbeing, cities sprawl out over countrysides. new towns spring up requiring higher energy and transport costs. The list goes on. Developers are not the only people unhappy about how the Act works in practice
The problem is that government has failed to provide leadership by the provision of National Policy statements and Environmental Standards. This has caused endless protracted debates in the courts over the formation of Regional and District Plans.
Our environment is under threat from this government and there is nothing like a recession to excuse those in charge removing rules to encourage development.
We must be vigilant and ensure this does not happen