Resource Management Act to be amended this year: Bishop
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop says the Government will meaningfully amend the Resource Management Act this year, before introducing into Parliament a replacement bill in mid-2025.
Bishop spoke to the New Zealand Planning Institute conference yesterday morning and outlined the National-coalition Government’s year-long plan to overhaul resource management, after scrapping two laws the Labour Government passed to replace the unpopular Resource Management Act (RMA).
Growth was a “dirty word” for some, Bishop said, but the Government believed that economic growth meant better jobs, schools, hospitals and the wealth to afford a better environment.
“So that means we need more roads, more farms, more congestion-busting public transport projects, more aquaculture, more mines, more housing, more transmission lines, more electrification and so on,” he said.
But it had become “too hard or too expensive to get things done in New Zealand”, he said.
“Despite being blessed with abundant renewable energy resources, it’s too difficult to build wind farms, solar farms, hydro [and] geothermal power stations, and achieving our climate goals will be impossible without fundamental planning reform. “We’ve managed to design a planning system that locks up so much land we have some of the most expensive houses in the developed world, while thousands of families live in squalor in motel rooms.”
The Government was plotting reform of the RMA in three phases. The first was repealing Labour’s new laws, which Bishop said were well intentioned but poorly designed. An already announced Fast Track Bill to grant regionally and nationally significant projects approval outside the usual consenting process was part of the second phase.
Bishop said the Government was also going to amend the existing RMA in two pieces of legislation, from May.
The first amendment bill would be “narrowly” focused on clarifying “the hierarchy of obligations” for fresh water management in resource consents, on extending the duration of marine farm consents, and on pausing the implementation of significant natural areas, a contentious policy, while this is reviewed.
A second amendment bill later in 2024 would change how housing and renewable energy were consented. This amendment would make the Government’s Medium Density Residential Standards optional for councils.
These compulsory standards, which removed the ability for councils to set height limits of less than 11m in residential areas, were previously supported by National in a bipartisan effort with Labour, but the party backed away from this prior to the 2023 election.
The second amendment bill would also require councils to zone for 30 years of growth in their territories.
Bishop said the Government would also review or develop more than a dozen national direction instruments, such as national policy statements, to “unlocking development and investment on infrastructure housing capacity, horticulture, agriculture, forestry and mining while achieving good environmental outcomes”.
The changes to all these national directions will be made in a single process for the public to contribute to.
In mid-2025, the Government will put forward new legislation “based on the enjoyment of property rights” to replace the RMA. Bishop indicated that the Government would seek to narrow the focus of resource management law.
“We have to be clear about what resource management is for.
“Plans and consents are important, but they should not run economies or manage competition or trade off social, cultural, economic and environmental outcomes. The system can be simpler if it is targeted.”
Bishop said he was prepared to talk to other political parties to reach consensus, but he doubted it could be achieved due to a difference of opinion about resource management between the parties.