Luxon ‘can’t see’ National backing Labour’s RMA plan
National leader Christopher Luxon at this stage cannot see his party supporting the Government’s large-scale overhaul of New Zealand’s planning laws, introduced to speed up builds, lower costs and better protect the environment.
Environment Minister David Parker on Tuesday released the ‘‘overdue’’ reform plan, referencing cross-party consensus that the country’s resource management act (RMA) needed to be changed.
Luxon told Stuff yesterday he supported parts of the proposal, but ‘‘when you zoom back out and say, replacing one 900-page bill with a 850-page bill, they’re probably going to end up in the same space’’.
‘‘Good intentions, poor execution, lots of bureaucracy, complexity, uncertainty,’’ he said.
‘‘I can’t see us supporting it as we go forward at this point. We’ll go through it in great detail, and in good faith.
‘‘We want to hear the submissions process as we go through the select committees, and then we’ll make a decision.’’
Asked what National would do if it were in power, Luxon said they could ‘‘either look at stripping down this piece of legislation to really the core components that we think are necessary, or alternatively just start from scratch and actually build back a simpler set of environmental protections and also development guidelines.
‘‘We definitely need RMA reform in order to get things built in this country. We need to make sure we’re protecting our environment. But I’m a bit sceptical about this bill, to be brutally honest with you,’’ he said.
The proposed changes include a major shift of land use and resource rules, cutting more than 100 plans down to 15 regional-level plans created by committees of local and central government and Mā ori. Luxon said that could add a layer of complexity and bureaucracy ‘‘that’s not necessary’’.
He said National supported fasttrack consenting provisions introduced in 2020 to help the country recover from the Covid economic hit, and he asked why the fast track process wasn’t the norm rather than the exception.