ACT’s ‘street votes’ will see residents vote

The ACT Party has proposed an RMA alternative that would introduce ‘‘street votes’’ and a freshwater market. Its street voting idea would give people the chance to vote on whether their neighbours should be able to build something that would otherwise be prohibited by a council’s zoning rules. ACT leader David Seymour called the proposal ‘‘a truly local democracy’’, and said it would take power away from bureaucracies and move it into the hands of individual landowners in the direct vicinity of proposed developments. The party launched its resource management policy yesterday following the introduction of the Government’s bills to overhaul the country’s resource management and planning laws. ACT’s proposal would also require that companies lodge a bond with authorities before doing ‘‘highly risky activities’’ that could cause pollution. Seymour used the example of mining, saying there was a ‘‘moral hazard’’ that mine operators could fail to clean up after they have closed a mine. Therefore, he said companies that could damage commonly held resources should pay a bond to secure their cleanup.