Sitting date: 16 December 2025

PLANNING BILL

First Reading

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform): I present a legislative statement for the Planning Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: I move, That the Planning Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 26 June 2026—and, for the avoidance of doubt, that is beyond the six-month window; I'm not seeking to shorten the report back, but I think it will give the committee a bit of extra time just with the way the House schedule is looking for next year, to consider things properly and for full consideration.

I am genuinely very proud to be here, moving this first reading. It is the culmination, just before Christmas, of two years of hard work, along with many Ministers in the Government and, of course, my erstwhile under-secretary, Simon Court from the ACT Party. This has been very much a team effort across the coalition, when it comes to planning and environmental reform. We have worked together cohesively and coherently.

I think it is now understood that for 30 years, or so, the Resource Management Act (RMA) has tried to do everything in one law—planning and resource management, environmental protection—and it simply hasn't worked. The RMA is the root cause of our housing crisis. It's made it difficult and expensive to build infrastructure and energy project that we need, it's tied farmers and growers up in red tape, and it has not protected the environment.

These bills that we are debating today—the Planning Bill before us right now, and the Natural Environment Bill—are the opportunity for New Zealand to unshackle itself from a failed system. We are going to, through this bill, in particular, restore the freedom for New Zealanders to shape their own future by that radical concept, to some, known as property rights.

It was interesting, I did a Morning Report interview last week, and Corin Dann, the interviewer, said, "Well, this is all interesting and very radical. Why are property rights important?" I was a bit struck dumb for a few seconds because, in a funny way, it's so intuitively obvious why property rights are important that I was a bit taken aback. Property rights are important because they are the foundation of a market economy. It is difficult to have a proper price mechanism in the allocation of goods and resources based around price, without sound property. We've had experiments in the world, and economies run not on price and not on the basis of private property being a foundation stone of that economy. Generally, they haven't gone very well.

SPEAKER: Name three.

Hon CHRIS BISHOP: Well, all of the Soviet Bloc from 1945 through to roughly 1989. In contrast, sir, countries that embraced private property and market-based economies tend to do better. Now, I didn't intend to start my speech by echoing the great battles of the 1980s, but it seems to be that period of time, just before Christmas, in December, to recast those battles.

Anyway, this new planning system is going to radically change how we build our houses and infrastructure. I want this speech, and the speeches to come, to be an articulation of Parliament's intent. The Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill have been designed deliberately. The Planning Bill: for planning and regulating how land is used, developed, and enjoyed, and another for protecting and enhancing the natural environment. Not every development has an environmental impact and does not need to be caught up in a natural environment regime.

The Planning Bill that's before us now is critical to accelerating housing and infrastructure delivery. The bill introduces a significant change in what gets regulated, so more things can be done without needing a consent and allowing more people to enjoy their land. We estimate we can cut consent volumes by up to 46 percent. Now, that's an estimate. It's been done by officials. I'm sure the Environment Committee will want to test that work over the course of their consideration of this bill. But that itself is a radical reduction in the number of times that people need to ask permission from the local council to do things.

So the shift is delivered in three ways. We're narrowing, or proposing to narrow, the range of effects that councils can regulate So we need to focus the planning system on real impacts. Things like noise and vibration and shading—those are legitimate things that the planning system should consider. But the bill contains a list of effects that are deliberately out of scope: interior changes, apartment layouts, private views, things that do not affect others are out of scope. The need to get little council planners investigating every element of everyone's house—they need to lay off.

The bill lists the threshold for consents. Everyday projects, like building a deck or a garage, won't need a consent if they have no, or less than minor, effects. That is a change to the status quo.

The bill introduces the framework for standardised zones and rules. We have 1,100 different zones currently in use in New Zealand—around 1,175, I'm advised. So we can introduce greater consistency nationwide.

There are 100 plans prepared under the RMA. The bill will reduce that number to 17. Reducing the number of plans to regional combined plans, standardising content via national direction and standards will create a faster, more consistent planning process.

I do want to take a moment to explain the core structure of this bill and the Natural Environment Bill, because the architecture is what drives the system. It sets the hierarchy, locks in certainty, and ensures every part of the process aligns to faster, clearer decisions. We've been calling this "the funnel". It's a clear, deliberate hierarchy—or a funnel—that clarifies decision making from national goals, down to local actions. The structure is designed to close the door on unnecessary re-litigation and provide certainty.

The new system starts with bills having a tightly defined purpose. This is quite a contrast from the RMA, which has a long and confusing purpose clause and requires everything to be looked at through a sustainable management lens. The purpose clauses in the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill aim to avoid that.

From there, the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill have clear goals that set the objectives for the system. These focus the system. If it's not in the goals, it is not part of the new planning system. The goals do not have an inherent hierarchy within them. No goal is more important than another. The order does not indicate a hierarchy. So for the next High Court judge that considers this issue, once the bill is passed into law, there is no hierarchy. Members can see for themselves the goals of the Planning Bill. The goals we have devised are enabling and positively framed. This is done specifically and deliberately. We want people in the system to behave in that way. We've taken great care to ensure that each and every one is required to be in the primary legislation. I have no doubt that the select committee will kick that around, and I look forward to that.

Under the goals sits national policy direction. This particularises the goals. It's the way for the Government to set clear expectations of councils and system users and define what must be achieved. Every goal will have accompanying national direction to particularise and explain them. With these measures in place, everyone will know exactly what is expected.

Beneath national policy direction are national standards. They set out how national policy direction should be implemented through the combined plans, how councils develop the plans, and what people can do when doing certain activities. National standards must implement national policy direction.

Below that are regional spatial plans, which are within regional combined plans. They play a key role in the system. They're the place where strategic trade-offs are made about how land and natural resources are used. Regional spatial plans have to implement national standards.

There'll be a land-use chapter under this bill, and a natural environment chapter, which is in the Natural Environment Bill. These govern local actions and rules. Here is the critical point: land-use and natural environment chapters must implement regional spatial plans and national standards.

Each instrument is built on the one above it. This is not guidance; it's a legal requirement. And then there are consents under the Planning Bill, and permits under the Natural Environment Bill.

The impact of the funnel means that the consenting authority cannot refer back up to or relitigate any direction made in the instruments that sit higher up in the system. When decision makers act under the bill, they begin by looking at the instrument directly relevant to the issue at hand, only looking upward in the hierarchy if there's something missing, unclear, or in conflict. This ensures that every decision follows the hierarchy with each layer reinforcing the next with clarity and consistency from top to bottom. This is a decisive shift from the past, ensuring that every decision is anchored in clear enforceable direction from the top down.

It does mean greater responsibility on the Government for robust and effective national instruments. That has not been in place under the RMA, or certainly not over the last 20 years in particular. We will be doing that through the new system.

I'm going to let my colleague Simon Court, and others to follow, talk about other areas of the bill. These are substantive changes. I'm looking forward to the consideration by the committee.

SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Unlike the Minister, I only have five minutes, so I will not undertake a treatise of where property rights have or have not worked with market economies but will note that property rights do not deal with the issue of common resources such as air, water, and biodiversity. I'll leave that there.

Now, of course, it was very disappointing to hear last Tuesday the Prime Minister say that this was the first Government to address resource management. Of course, the last Government, the Labour Government, repealed the RMA, and this Government brought it back two years ago when this Government repealed the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act. They were two Acts. The rationale for that was that the spatial plans might be able to at some point link in with infrastructure funding, so they could be in a separate Act to the rest of the Act, which was a replacement for the Resource Management Act.

What this Government has done has split the Resource Management Act in two, one looking at the functions, really, of a regional council—and we'll get to that bill shortly—and one looking more at the functions of a district council, being the Planning Bill. Now, I would say that this is unnecessary and oversimplifies an idea that development does not impact the environment and that you can neatly put the environment to one side. However, we will have that discussion in select committee.

I do want to note that this emphasis on private property rights and regulatory takings is very troubling to the Labour Party. We are troubled that it will have a chilling effect, because councils will be required to compensate for protections in the Planning Act on heritage and landscape, and that will result in there being no protections.

We also note, and it is very frustrating, that there are many similarities with the legislation. This Government could have spent perhaps a month or so reviewing what we did to make some changes. But instead, they repealed it, have amended the RMA time and time again to enable more pollution and stop councils from doing their jobs, and have then come up with a new Planning Bill that will not be passed until sometime late next year.

I'm also very disappointed in the differences between this legislation and Labour's legislation about the role of mana whenua. It is a great diminishment between our legislation and their legislation, but I also suspect—and this is something that we'll be asking at select committee—that it is a diminishment even from the Resource Management Act into this legislation, which is taking us in totally the wrong direction.

But I will now turn to many similarities in terms of the importance of spatial plans; the importance of moving a lot of the GDP in the system away from consent, by consent decisions up into the plans and into the national direction; the efficiencies that can be gained from not considering urban amenity. These are things that we also did. Having one plan— you can argue about the chapters and things in the plans—per region and keeping it at that regional scale with the councils working together. These are all the similarities. Having stronger compliance, monetary enforcement, these are good things as well. So there is a lot that this Government has replicated in these plans but, obviously, with some very important differences; differences that we will discuss at the select committee.

Talking of the select committee, it's going to the Environment Committee, that is good, and I very much hope that the Government members will enable a longer time for submissions, given that this is going over the Christmas break. Our legislation, also similar timing, and there was 11 weeks given, I believe, for submissions. I encourage them to do that. Also, to look at the bills together to enable people to not necessarily have to identify which bill they are submitting on.

I think it would be very good, also, to have the Ministry for the Environment's briefing in the public session as well, because there is—resource management law is difficult. We, the Labour Party, are the grown-ups in the room over this and so we will be supporting sending this to select committee.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As a qualified urban planner, I would be the first to acknowledge that our urban planning rules have been the source of many of the challenges that we face today, and I've spent the last 20 years trying to find opportunities to get better urban planning rules.

While the Resource Management Act (RMA) has been a bogeyman, I would say it wasn't necessarily the RMA that was the problem. It was the lack of national direction that was always meant to be brought in under the RMA, and then it was the detail of the rules in many of the plans, that caused many of the problems. For example, separating out land uses, requiring minimum parking requirements—a whole series of intersecting rules that stopped us from developing high quality density done well; as we did, really, up until the 1960s and 70s.

So, definitely, changing our approach to urban planning is a huge opportunity to get more sustainable, affordable cities, which is what we need to respond to both climate change but also have healthier, happier people; a more productive economy; and lower transport costs right across the country. It's necessary, but not sufficient, to deliver these things. We also need changes in Government investment in infrastructure and probably much more public house building, as well, whether that's at a local government or central government level.

It's a very interesting, long bill. I agree with the previous speaker, Rachel Brooking, that a lot of the good parts of this Planning Bill do retain some of the changes the previous Government brought in that were repealed when this Government came in—like the Spatial Planning Act comes back, in a form, in this bill. I do congratulate the Minister on having a full select committee process—we're looking forward to that, to teasing out all of the detail—and for keeping us briefed, to some extent, on the progress on this new system. There's a lot to like in the new system, and I see a lot of potential to get better outcomes.

Nonetheless, it is, at this point, difficult for us to support the bill, and it primarily comes down to some of the goals laid out in clause 11, which I'm sure the Minister will understand. I completely understand why the coalition Government has framed goals in this particular way, but I think it does miss the mark. A subgoal to "create well-functioning urban and rural areas"— that sounds really good, but there's no definition of what that means. A lot of that will come down to the specifics of—

Hon Chris Bishop: To national direction.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well, when we see the national direction laid out, then that will be something that, maybe, we can support.

Probably our biggest hang-ups from the Greens—and no one will be surprised about this—has to do with clauses 11(1)(b) and 11(1)(d), and the lack of hierarchy in these; and, also, as the previous speaker, my colleague Rachel Brooking, pointed out, the much more restricted recognition of mana whenua and Te Tiriti o Waitangi—which, no doubt, would be a condition from some of the coalition partners. For the Greens, it's fundamental to our future as a country that we recognise Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the kaitiaki role of tangata whenua, and that's something that should be reflected in our approach to planning.

Secondly, I think the goal of the Planning Bill has to be developing sustainable, healthy cities and towns, and that would be a much better goal, I think, than enabling competitive urban land markets. It is true that the way that we approach housing and land, at the moment, is a very commodified approach, but I think that's not how it has to be. While we do want to enable more homes within existing urban areas, which will mean more affordable housing, more affordable transport, and will reduce cost for people in many, many ways—across public health, air quality, climate change; there's so many win-wins of that approach. But describing it as "competitive urban land markets", to me, is too narrow, and doesn't recognise that we're more than just an economy. Like, the point of the economy is to support humans to live good lives, and in harmony with our natural environment, because we're actually part of it; we need nature to survive and thrive.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The member's time has expired.

SIMON COURT (ACT): It is with great pleasure that I stand today to read the Planning Bill for the first time. This is a single, fit for purpose law, unapologetically focused on preparing and facilitating growth and development. I want to acknowledge my ministerial colleague the Hon Chris Bishop. We've worked together exceptionally well, it's been a pleasure, and New Zealand will look back on this time and say, "Wasn't that coalition Government great."

This bill champions that continued human development that has seen generation after generation growing up with greater opportunity than their parents, and it recognises that property rights must be the anchor for this. For decades, the Resource Management Act (RMA) stood in the way of that progress. It's made it harder to build homes and even harder to deliver the infrastructure to make those homes livable. Roads, water supply, electricity, renewable energy—every major and minor project has faced uncertainty, unnecessary delay, and eye-watering costs.

The Planning Bill is an important step in ending that zero-sum RMA game that says, "You can have either development or the environment, but not both." A separate bill, the Natural Environment Bill, will complete the overhaul of the RMA's failed sustainable-management approach, which mushed development and environment together for no discernible environmental outcomes.

We are clear about what functions a planning bill must deliver and with property rights as the starting point. Minister Bishop has articulated the goals, which begin with ensuring that people are free to use their land and on the basis that they don't impinge on that right of others to use their land. The goals extend to critical functions like ensuring we have readily available land and infrastructure to enable cities and regions to grow.

The limited scope of the goals is the entry to the funnel that Minister Bishop spoke to, intentionally narrowing the scope of the planning system. This sets parameters for national policy direction, the national standards that will further define and streamline that direction, the fewer combined plans that will apply that direction in each region, and any limited residual function that consenting still plays in this much more enabling system. These core elements sit alongside a range of carefully designed provisions, which together recognise not just the need for a legislative overhaul but a fundamental culture shift to restore Kiwis' property rights and the number eight wire mentality we used to celebrate.

We have raised the bar for what effects are considered material. We've reduced the ability for people to inject themselves into your business and to resist that outrageous Government intrusion on private property rights that we've seen under the RMA. We've raised the bar for notification of consents, as well, and ensured only those in the relevant regional district can submit. This prevents any Tom, Dick, and Harry from completely different regions weighing in on your application. Notification should be reserved for those only materially affected.

We do recognise the important role of communities, including Māori, in shaping their spaces. But we've intentionally provided for more robust opportunities for engagement earlier in the system, including through the plan-making process.

Culture change also requires ending the RMA's absurd bespoke planning processes and the requiring of consents for common activities that we know how to do well. Instead, we will codify best practice and we'll trust builders, farmers, and infrastructure operators to meet that standard, subject to compliance monitoring and enforcement, and culture change certainly means ending unjustified limits on the use of private property.

Regulatory relief will mean that for some controls over private property—things like outstanding natural landscapes and significant historic heritage—councils will have to provide relief to affected property owners where those restrictions are significant. If they can't justify the relief, they can't impose the controls, because if the public-good case is not strong enough to convince ratepayers that it warrants relief, then it can hardly warrant the costs that the private property owner would be forced to bear.

A new planning tribunal will drive further accountability in the culture shift by, essentially, putting a referee on the field for private property owners for the first time. I commend this bill to the House.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Planning Bill. This is a great day today, as we put the new framework in for resource management in New Zealand.

New Zealand First campaigned in the 2023 election on getting resource management a better system in place. We know that the Resource Management Act, for a number of years—actually, over decades, now—has been broken. It has been plaguing New Zealand with bureaucratic complexity and excessive litigation, and has only hindered development. So, today, putting in this system and getting it under way is changing the way resource management will be dealt with.

What we do need through the select committeeis, as the Minister has described, a really good process for submissions. We're really glad to hear that the submission process will be longer in order to hear the views—especially from councils and people that use the resource management system—and to refine anything in this bill as we go forward.

The thing that I really want to say is that we do need an enduring system, going forward. We can't be swapping and changing. We need, in this House, to get behind this bill, and go into the next election and give people in New Zealand certainty. We want to give certainty to our businesses and to our community so we can lift productivity in this country.

What we have seen in this bill is that there are no great surprises. We have signalled through the Ministers that it was set around property rights, and that has come through in the bill, but also it's top-down decision-making. It's about giving consistency. We do not want to see ad hoc plans across this country. We've had too much ad hoc planning, whereas we want to have some consistency so that we know if we go from one district to another, we've got consistency in the rules.

We are also having the national instruments that will become a fundamental part of this bill. They will come in through at the end of 2026, and in 2027, and we're having national standards. Again, across the country, it won't matter whether you're at the bottom of the South or at the top or the North, because you'll know what those national standards are. They will not be different across the country.

We'll have those standardised plans with standardised zones so that we know what development will go where, and one thing that was a real bugbear from my time of being a hearings commissioner was all the different activity classes that there were. We used to have a thing called a non-complying activity. As a decision maker, you would have to go through this gateway test and all of a sudden, for something that almost seemed to be prohibited, you could go through a gateway test and then be able to actually try to find a way to get that consent through. This is streamlining the classes, either making things more permitted or, if they're going through a system, making them complying activities so that you can get things through the system quicker.

Also, another bugbear, especially for the New Zealand First Party, if you look in the coastal area, has been around amenity and landscape when we're talking about things like aquaculture. You've got the Marlborough Sounds, where we've got about 60 percent of the marine farms, and you could get hung up by some batch owner in Christchurch saying, "It's the amenity of this. We can't put this marine farm in this bay.", whereas the marine farmers in the community there want to see the farms develop, but because of this silly thing around amenity, it was always subjective. It was always subjective by some people that were well-paid landscape architects and that, who were saying that you could not do it. That's gone.

We're really pleased to see that this bill will enable economic growth and infrastructure development, but what I'm proud to stand in this House and say is that this is about creating jobs, it's about creating investment, and it's about increasing productivity. I will commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): Te Pāti Māori is not opposed to development; in fact, it's really important. A lot of our communities need warm homes, they need safe roads, and they need resilient infrastructure. The problem that we are having with this is why development consistently comes from this Government at the cost of Te Tiriti, mana whenua, community voices, and environmental integrity. I think those are some of the questions that we pose at this stage of the bill. Again, we cannot understand why it is that those who are building houses and are, in fact, really committed to the economic development of Aotearoa—i.e., iwi, hapū and mana whenua—are constantly relegated or sidelined in the Government's thinking when it comes to the bills and the amendments and the way that they see things going forward. It's not so much about what will be built; it comes down to who will decide. It does seem, again, consistently, that this Government doesn't see a role for iwi or hapū or mana whenua. When we look at what it is that they've proposed in section 11 and where they see the participation of iwi, the vagueness—we talk about giving certainty through legislation, but, actually, this gives uncertainty to not only the way that Te Tiriti is seen but also the way that iwi are seen by this Government, in any role of development. We take exception to that.

Clause 9 is saying that there's going to be a two-year appeal, which creates uncertainty for iwi and hapū. There's the exclusion of statutory acknowledgment—the way that it provides uncertainty to existing settlements, which have taken generations to confirm and to be enacted. There's actually some really great partnerships that are going out in local sense. The sell or the marketing of this bill—being able to reset and make life easier for everyday New Zealanders—seems to exclude Māori. There are concerns with the centralisation of power. That's not been something that's worked for a lot of our local communities very well at all. In fact, it gives out quite broad ministerial powers to set the national instruments, to override councils, to appoint members to spatial plan committees, and to intervene directly in plan making. We cannot see how that heightens the relationships for our local and regional decision makers and, certainly, the communities. These, in fact, reduce public participation. I get the whole concept of providing jobs and development for us as a nation, but, again, that shouldn't be at the cost of those who are materially affected. There seems to be a watering down of not only the Tiriti but where this Government sees communities, particularly those who are going to be adversely affected.

One of the things that we've been really concerned about is this development versus protection. It says that the bill will balance housing, infrastructure, the environment, and Māori interest, but there's, actually, no clear rule of hierarchy of where Te Tiriti sits in this. From, certainly, the iwi's perspective, it is that Te Tiriti comes first, and it is, in fact, what the Governments have agreed to in the settlements and the relationships that they have with them. Again, this vagueness of why Māori rights are being watered down is concerning, and the Government's continued this theme with how it sees that these amendments or this bill is going to work and is going to be able to work better. It just, really, means that there'll be more time spent in courts and spent doing things that are counterproductive to developing the economy of Aotearoa.

Environmental and heritage protections—we've seen some of that effect management really narrowed—concernedly narrowed down. This whole Treaty transition where we see that Treaty settlements are going to be negotiated or rearranged within a two-year period: what happens if that doesn't land the way that the iwi who have settled expected it to? What is the Government providing for certainty? Are they going to be opening up so much more for the complex settlements, and what they're risking to everyone in New Zealand when we have to see some of those opened up?

We're not pleased with some of the changes. We have been pleased with the fact that the Minister did engage with us and has actually agreed to extend this and make sure that the public have a really good say about this bill. But, certainly, at this stage, we don't support the first reading. Thank you.

CATHERINE WEDD (National—Tukituki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I rise with great excitement today to support the largest Resource Management Act (RMA) reform we've seen in the past 30 years, and this is an exciting day for New Zealand. I said the largest reform because this is about saying yes to infrastructure, yes to housing development, and yes to renewable energy—and yes to actually getting things done and getting the wheels moving in our economy, creating jobs and opportunity.

We all know that the RMA system is broken. As we've heard from many members across the House already in this first reading debate, it's been holding our country back. And look, I would like to congratulate and acknowledge our Minister responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, for taking the bold move to deliver these two bills to the House today.

This new planning system will save ratepayers and taxpayers an estimated $13.3 billion, by regulating only what is necessary, and it will reduce the number of consents by up to 46 percent. This reform supports getting things built faster and more efficiently. It'll cut red tape and remove the unnecessary bureaucracy. For too long, people have been tangled in red tape and paperwork, waiting months and months, or even years, for a consent. I have many examples in Hawke's Bay, my electorate: housing developments taking years to consent; renewable energy projects taking up to two decades to get a consent—a recent wind farm that we opened in my region taking 18 years to consent. It's frustrating and, put quite simply, it is not good enough.

Under the new system, we're making consenting faster and simpler. We're removing unnecessary hurdles so our communities can move forward. No more wasting time and money. It will mean we can get on and build houses—those houses that we so desperately need. The old RMA has caused endless delays, waiting, filling out forms—long processes costing millions and millions of dollars. Our new system will speed up the processes so more homes can get built quicker and cheaper.

The same goes for infrastructure: roads, bridges—we'll get them built faster. These projects need to happen. Farmers and growers will be enabled to grow and innovate. We're backing our primary sector and letting them get on with what they do best, and that is grow the best produce in the world. Just today, we saw horticulture exports forecast to hit another record high of $9.2 billion. Our horticulture sector can only flourish if we enable our growers to do what they do best. Reducing red tape for our growers and farmers is critical to their success and enabling them to create jobs and opportunities for our regions across New Zealand. RMA reform is the key to unleashing productivity in our primary industries.

Renewable energy is another area where the old rules make it too hard. As I've already touched on, wind farms and solar farms take far too long to be approved. We're making sure clean energy projects can get off the ground faster, helping us meet our climate goals. This bill will give certainty and confidence, with clearer consultation requirements, standardised rules, and faster conflict resolution through a new low-cost planning tribunal.

This will also give more confidence to invest in New Zealand. Planning rules will get a whole lot simpler. As we've already heard from the Minister, right now, New Zealand has more than 1,100 different zones, each with its own set of rules. This is a maze for anyone to try and navigate through that to get something built.

Look, this is an exciting day for New Zealand, where we are seeing this significant RMA reform. National is ending the culture of "no" and creating a culture of "yes". It's time to release the brakes. Let's get the wheels moving and deliver the growth, housing, and environmental improvements that New Zealand deserves—fixing the basics and building the future.

Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. If anybody listening would like to see an example of the shamelessness and the arrogance of this Government, all they need to do is listen to the speeches that have been on display today, and the last one from Catherine Wedd is a prime example. That member is a breathing, walking, talking point; she has not met a key message that has come from the National Party head office and failed to repeat it in this House, and that speech was a classic example. It started out with a misleading statement that the Prime Minister said earlier this week, that "No Government has tackled the RMA". We could see exactly the same from Jamie Arbuckle's contribution, who said, "We shouldn't have to put up with this stop-start attitude." And, of course, Simon Court, who was rather upfront in the praise of not only himself but also this Government: "Isn't this coalition Government great?" he said, before he left to go and high-five the mirror.

What this Government has done today is attempted to paint themselves as heroes. Not one of them has mentioned an indisputable fact: that they were the ones that brought us back to the RMA. Everybody agreed that the RMA was out of date; everybody agreed that it was not fit for purpose, and the last Parliament moved away from the RMA. We repealed the RMA, we reformed it, and they were the ones that took us back. They took us back to the RMA that was not fit for purpose and that did not serve our communities, and then they turned around and said, "We need a bipartisan approach." What a colossal waste of time these last two years have been. While Simon Court might be congratulating himself and saying that he's great, I'll tell you who won't think he's great or that this Government is great: anyone who would have been able to build a house under the reformed RMA brought in by the last Parliament but, because this Government brought us back to RMA, haven't been able to; anyone who works in local government who finally felt like they could get things done in their communities, only to have the handbrake pulled up—the very thing that Jamie Arbuckle pleaded this Parliament not to do.

This Government put the handbrake on planning laws in this country, stopping housing developments, stopping infrastructure, stopping massive, important builds in every community in the country. The question has to be posed: why? There was no logical reason for them to pull the rug out from under the new planning system in this country—other than to put their name on something that the previous Government did. Two years of wasted time. What they could have done was do the work in Opposition so that when they came into Government, this bill on this day wouldn't have been needed. They could have made the amendments required, and we could've got on with it. Two years of wasted growth; two years of wasted progress in this country because of their vanity and their decision to play politics so that it was Chris Bishop's name on the bill instead of David Parker's. I think that is regrettable. That is a decision that they made that has held up this country. We are finally here today when we didn't need to be.

As my colleague Rachel Brooking has pointed out, we are supporting this bill, but what we pleaded with this Government to do was to not get rid of the new planning system. If they felt the need to change it, amend it—don't scrap it, don't start from scratch, don't waste two years. But they were too arrogant. They wanted their moment, and they've held this country up for two years as a result.

The local government sector and the construction sector—who, incidentally, have been screaming out for work and has lost 20,000 jobs in the last two years because of decisions made by this Government—they would have benefitted from an amended bill, if the Government had felt it was necessary, because then we would have had actual progress over two years. But they haven't benefitted. That is a lack of progress. The infrastructure sector has been screaming out for certainty as well. Everyone that wants to do things in this country has been pleading, on both sides of this House, for certainty. Why? Because when this Government came in, they cancelled things, they scrapped things, and they did things not for logical reasons but for political reasons, and the planning system is the perfect example of that. We didn't need this to be this way; they could have avoided all of this. We didn't need to come here today, on the second to last day of Parliament for the year, to debate this bill. They could have sorted it, and they chose not to.

MIKE BUTTERICK (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This mic—oh, there we go. It is a great day, today. It's great to see that we've got support around the House for the Resource Management Act (RMA), because there's no doubt about it that the RMA has been a dog's breakfast, and it's been a dog's breakfast for a very long time. It's probably been one of the single biggest barriers to doing anything in this country. That's whether you want a build a house or a road, put up a commercial building, put a dam in—do any of that.

Speaking of buildings, as Chris Bishop has said—there we go, the speaker has just turned on. As Minister Bishop has said, your front doorway is actually your own business; it is nobody's business where you put it, what colour it is, and what shape it is.

To Catherine Wedd, who was talking about the Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries report—I've actually brought it in, Catherine. If we want more of this in this country: $62 billion in export revenue from our food and fibre sector; 12.5 percent of, or almost one in seven, New Zealanders working in the sector; 15 percent of our GDP—if we want to double our export value within 10 years, we need to sort out the RMA. It's as simple as that, because it has been a mess, and I, like a whole lot of other people, will be very, very happy to see it put firmly in the dog tucker pen.

In terms of the streamlined process, there will be a streamlined process, which is the Planning Tribunal. That is, it will narrow the scope of effects—I'd better have a look at my right notes, sorry, Madam Speaker. There will be a faster, more cost-effective way of resolving certain lower-level disputes between system users and councils, and that's got to be a good thing.

We've also had instances where the Environment Court has, effectively, been weaponised by people up and down the length of this country, with the previous regime, and we've had some groups that have refused to participate in the planning process. Literally, they have said, "Oh, don't worry, you can just do what you do. If we don't like it, we'll see you in the Environment Court.", and we have spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for certain consents—and, in some cases, millions of dollars—to then go into that process.

There are also consent applicants who put in an application and then they'll get 30 pages of RFIs, or requests for further information, with seven or 10 days to respond, and if they don't—and it's almost impossible to do—they just head straight off to a notified hearing, where every Tom, Dick, and Harry up and down the length of the country can put in their two cents' worth, even though it's got nothing to do with them. To that point, that is going to be narrowed down as well. The new system will only allow people who are materially affected to participate in the consenting process and it will raise the threshold for all notifications to focus on adverse effects that are more than minor, and that has to be a good thing.

Catherine Wedd has touched on the costs. We have spent billions and billions of dollars in this country to do anything. That is borne—it's the trickle-down effect—by the either the taxpayer or the ratepayer, and the buck has always stopped with them. This planned bill is going to—and it's modelled, so it will not be 100 percent accurate—save ratepayers and taxpayers $13.3 billion by regulating only what is necessary. It's modelled to reduce consent numbers by between 15,000 and 22,000 per year, as well, and it'll unlock housing, speed up critical infrastructure—that is jobs. That's jobs, and that's what we desperately need.

My last comment would be that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to try and get this right.

Hon Rachel Brooking: No, it's not—it's really not.

MIKE BUTTERICK: Well, it is, and we do need to get it right. I would urge people to have their say. If you've got a consent or you think you need a consent for something under the current regime, think about whether, under the new system, it's better or the same, and even if it's better, it doesn't mean to say we can't make it better again. Please submit on the bill. I commend it.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. It's really interesting because here, this afternoon, listening to Government members talk about this bill—and I guess, it's a bit of a first of the double, really, of these two bills—anyone would think that this was not a Government that repealed, within the first 100 hundred days, a legislative approach that was basically delivering on all of the things that they themselves have articulated, within 100 days. I mean, we're sitting here listening to the Minister saying that this is an opportunity for, you know, the unshackling of itself. Yet, he is part of a Government that within the first 100 days basically threw out the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform that the previous Government had instituted and put in place.

We hear from other Government members, such as Jamie Arbuckle, who says that what's really important here is certainty, but for the last two years, since the Government within their first 100 days threw out the legislative reform, has actually not provided certainty for many sectors, local government amongst that. We've heard from Catherine Wedd, who talked about the fact that the RMA system is broken. Why, then, did they, within the first 100 days throw out legislation that would indicate a different direction.

We've heard from others that this will see roads being built. Well, with the track record in terms of roads of national significance, I don't think the RMA is going to help them there. I think it's more about the money, which seems to be growing by the day. Then we hear from Mike Butterick who says that the RMA is the biggest single barrier to building anything in this country. Yet, within the first 100 days, they turf out, with no alternative plan, a legislative package that would seek to make changes that now they have suddenly come around and seen the light. We did something and now this is the Government who sat on their hands for the last two years and have done absolutely nothing.

We've heard from the Minister that it is his intention that this goes to select committee for an extended period. Now, we will see about that because when we look at the Environment Committee, there's a bit of a track record there where despite what this House says in terms of instructions as to when report-backs will be delivered, that committee seems to, by a Government majority, go against all of this House. So while the Minister has indicated that it'll go through to 26 June next year, I do hope that perhaps some members on the Government backbench are happy to follow through on that because it is important that the community do have their say.

There are a number of changes within this first bill, and one of them that does sort of raise some concerns—but as my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking has indicated, we will be supporting this bill through to select committee—but the select committee, hopefully, will tease out a number of the issues and it is important that we do have the opportunity to hear from folks.

I want to just focus on the local government sector for a moment because one of the concerning aspects that I think does need to be teased out is in the area of heritage and landscape matters, where councils may be required, as a result of what is included within the instruments, to head down a compensation pathway. As we know, this is a Government that loves to put the boot into local government whenever they seem to be down, and this is a Government that is very happy to do that. Councils don't have a lot of discretionary income, and so when we look at how those compensation options might exist, whether they be rates relief, whether they be land swaps, whether they be development rights that might fall in favour of one party or the other, whether they be basic cash payments or grants, at the end of the day, that comes down to what capacity and appetite, I guess, councils have to be able to deliver on that. So, there is a real risk here that this would serve as a fairly strong disincentive for councils to either put in or put out or put on the table or take off the table particular considerations when it comes to heritage and when it comes to landscape.

I do hope that the select committee is open to hearing the views that will be expressed because I'm pretty sure they will be expressed. I also hope that the Minister is going to follow through with his colleagues to ensure that this does receive a fulsome and wholesome form of consideration when it goes to select committee because the community has waited for two years for this Government to come up with a plan, and it's important that the Government hears from them.

RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East): It really is a privilege to stand today on this bill. This truly is a remarkable opportunity for a once-in-a-generation change to change the landscape of the Resource Management Act (RMA). Can I acknowledge some of the previous speakers. Rachel Brooking and Tangi Utikere, I thought your comments were fair and we welcome your support to take this to select committee. I thought Kieran McAnulty's comments were aggressive and inappropriate. The reason why we didn't accept Labour's RMA reform was because we couldn't put lipstick on a pig, frankly, and so we had to get rid of it.

This Government has been very busy in the last few years. So, firstly, the first order of the day was to repeal that. The second order of the day was to bring in a hybrid solution, which was the fast-track amendment process which we've been working on and even tweaking over the last few weeks. It's been great to hear that that has actually been working very well and we're seeing projects now locked in and away.

But it's taken two years to pull this together. I acknowledge the work of Minister Chris Bishop and the under-secretary, Simon Court, because it is a very robust change. It is changing the landscape of how we do things in New Zealand. If we look at productivity of New Zealand—and productivity is the keyword that all Governments of all stripes continuously refer to—since the late 1980s or, arguably, the early 1990s, our productivity rate hasn't changed much. If you correlate that to 1991 when the RMA was introduced, it would be no surprise to see that that was also a correlation to the RMA.

I do have to say, on the backdrop of today's RMA announcements, it's important we look at the holistic change that this Government's doing. We had to tidy up housing and Kāinga Ora and reset some of that. We had to tidy up some of the New Zealand Transport Agency. We've introduced roads of national significance. We've introduced Invest New Zealand and some of those things. The work of Minister Chris Penk around the building and construction industry—we've enabled more building materials into the country. We've enabled proportionate liabilities, so councils aren't the last man standing, so we're resetting the disincentives why councils were so risk-averse. This week, we'll be introducing the seismic recalibration where it's just literally sent a chilling effect on the building industry and it's going to enable Auckland to go and grow.

All these things taken together really create a holistic change around the whole RMA settings, and it really, really is something to behold. As we've heard, in the current 1,100-odd zones under this bill, spatial planning will be mandatory for each region and must be developed collaboratively by all local authorities within the region through a spatial plan committee. So whilst we're resetting the macro level, at a Government level, we're also still enhancing a degree of localism as local bodies will work through those trade-offs, as we've heard about.

Consenting: under this bill, activity classifications will be simplified into four categories—permitted, restricted discretionary, discretionary, and prohibited activities—and each activity will be subject to clear and distinct information, which is really important so there's transparency around this. In terms of designations, the designation process is intended to enable effective infrastructure provisions, reduce the cost and complexity of the designation process, and enable designations and infrastructure provision to be aligned with spatial planning.

Again, I refer to last week when we put through the first reading of the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Amendment Bill. Only two projects throughout New Zealand had been able to use the infrastructure funding and financing even though parties of both sides of this House had sought to enable it. That will enable much more development, and will enable development entities to use off - balance sheet funding and financing tools to unlock infrastructure. Combined with these RMA settings, it's going to be something to behold.

As we've heard through Mike Butterick and Catherine Wedd, an estimated $13.3 billion of savings—we're going to reduce consents by up to 15,000 to 22,000 per year. We're going to unlock more housing, with standardised zoning rules and 30-year regional spatial plans that ensure land and infrastructure for growth. We're using the regional council's footprint. We're going to have 17 regionalised zones.

So we're building on what works. We're changing what doesn't. We're going to back farmers and growers. We're giving investors and developers greater clarity. The future is bright. Today is the beginning of New Zealand's future economy growing. New Zealand is back on track, and New Zealand is back on the map. I commend the bill.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Planning Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 102

New Zealand National 49; New Zealand Labour 34; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 21

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 4; Ferris; Kapa-Kingi.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is, That the Planning Bill be considered by the Environment Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Environment Committee.

Instruction to Environment Committee

Hon CHRIS BISHOP (Minister responsible for RMA Reform): I move, That the Planning Bill be reported to the House by 26 June 2026.

Motion agreed to.

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