Councils Plead For Bipartisan Resource Management Act Reform

Saturday, 31 May 2025, 4:11 pm
Article: RNZ

Rachel Helyer Donaldson, Journalist

Regional councils want greater certainty and bipartisanship on regulations, as they gear up for an expected spate of rule changes when legislation replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA) next year.

The government has announced sweeping changes to the rules governing councils' oversight of everything - from housing, to mining, to agriculture - under the RMA, and these have been released for public feedback.

Speaking on behalf of Te Uru Kahika - Regional and Unitary Councils of Aotearoa, Greater Wellington chair Daran Ponter said when policy resets every three years, regulators scramble to deliver the new government's national direction.

"As regional councils we have effectively seen these national instruments landing on our lap as regularly as every three years. The music just has to stop.

"We need certainty, we need to be able to have the chance as regulators to actually bed in policies and rules and provide a greater certainty to people who want to do things - who want to build, who want to farm, who want to mine - because the bigger block on those things at the moment, at national and regional levels, is that we continue to change the rules."

Ponter said bipartisanship on regulations was needed to provide certainty.

"I don't want to be in the position in three or six years' time that all the rules are going to change again, because the pendulum has swung the other way."

Ponter said in recent years there had been "more radical swings" in policy under successive governments.

"At the moment, the meat in the sandwich of all this, is the regional councils, who get accused of not doing this, or being woke, of being overly sympathetic to the environment... when all we are doing is following the national guidance that is put in front of us."

The government has released three discussion documents covering 12 national policy statements and and national environmental standards, with the aim of having 16 new or updated ones by the end of 2025, ahead of legislation replacing the RMA next year.

The consultation covers three main topics: infrastructure and development, the primary sector and freshwater. It is open from 29 May to 27 July.

Doug Leeder, chair of Bay of Plenty Regional Council, has governed through the implementation of four National Policy Statements for Freshwater Management.

He said implementing national direction was a major undertaking that involved work with communities, industry and mana whenua.

"Councils contend with the challenge also faced by iwi and hapū, industry, and communities that the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management has changed every three years since it has been introduced.

"When policy resets every three years, it imposes significant costs on councils and communities, creates uncertainty for farmers and businesses, and makes it harder to achieve the long-term outcomes we all want.

"We need to work towards something more enduring."

Could bipartisanship on regulations work?

"That's the challenge for the minister but also for the leaders of those opposition parties, as well," Ponter said.

"Everybody is going to have to find a degree of compromise if something like that is going to work."

But he said regional councils had worked constructively with successive governments and they were ready to do so again.

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