Second tranche of Resource Management Act reforms on the way

The shake-up of New Zealand's planning laws continues with a proposed second amendment to the Resource Management Act (RMA).

It would focus on the areas of infrastructure and energy, housing, farming and natural hazards, with the intention of enabling projects to "drive economic growth and productivity", RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop said.

The introduction of the bill would coincide with the government making changes to help prepare and amend National Direction, which is made up of national policy statements, national environmental standards and national planning standards that all help support local decision-making under the RMA.

Bishop, who made the announcement at the Local Government NZ conference on Thursday, is in charge of delivering on the 20 different coalition commitments relating to the RMA.

"It's about getting the balance right between making sure we look after the environment but we also make it easier to get on and build things like renewable energy in this country," he told Morning Report on Friday.

The coalition government has already repealed legislation the previous government had introduced to replace the RMA and introduced the first RMA Amendment Bill earlier this year. It makes urgent changes to give certainty to councils while new legislation is being developed.

"The previous government kicked off a piece of work around that called a National Policy Statement for Natural Hazard Decision-making… They were going to do a quick-and-dirty version to try and get something into place that would help councils, and then do a more comprehensive version. The last government consulted on that. We have listened to all the feedback, and I've read all the submissions, and the feedback was do it once and do it right," Bishop said.

"So rather than sort of rush into something and do a quick-and-dirty version, do a more comprehensive version about identification of hazards and how councils would respond."

Fast-track legislation has also been introduced, with the intention of creating a "one-stop-shop approvals, consenting and permitting regime" to speed up the delivery of significant projects, Bishop earlier said.

That legislation has been met with both criticism and support.

"Our next step is four packages of reforms to be delivered through a second RMA Amendment Bill, which will be introduced alongside the single largest package of national direction changes in New Zealand's history: seven new national direction instruments, and amendments to 14 existing ones."

They include:

infrastructure and energy

• amending consent information requirements/requests and support decision-makers in making effective consent conditions
• extending default lapse period for designations from five to 10 years
• extending designation (requiring) authority to ports and emergency services
• removing or simplifying alternatives test, and reduce assessment and information requirements
• extension of certain coastal permits for port companies by 20 years
• introducing changes to Electrify NZ (Bishop said announcements would be made on this shortly).

Bishop said the package would enable a range of productivity-boosting energy and infrastructure projects, including a new NPS-Infrastructure.

A consistent approach to quarrying across the Resource Management System would be outlined, and it would extend the duration of port coastal permits by a further 20 years, which was signalled earlier this year.

Telcos would get greater certainty and reduced consenting costs as they upgraded infrastructure, Bishop indicated, through changes to the NES for Telecommunications Facilities.

The package would also give effect to the Government's Electrify NZ reforms to make it easier to consent renewable energy.

"I've talked before… about just how hard it is to build wind farms and, keep reconsents for hydro, for example, geothermal energy, solar farms," Bishop told Morning Report. "And so it's about making sure that it's easier to do those things because we need more renewables in this country."

Housing

• Councils to demonstrate compliance with the 30-year Housing Growth Targets.
• A process to allow Tier 1 councils to opt out from implementing the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) into relevant residential zones.
• Processes for councils that have not yet completed their MDRS and National Policy Statement on Urban Development related plan changes..
• Providing central government with new powers relating to compliance with housing and business development capacity assessments.
• Exploring additional intervention powers to support implementation of the Going for Housing Growth plan.
• Heritage management.

Bishop said the housing package would contain the reform needed to enable the government's Going For Housing Growth policies.

That included "requiring councils to demonstrate compliance with the 30-year Housing Growth Targets while providing the flexibility for councils to opt out of the Medium Density Residential Standards".

Bishop said the government planned to make changes to the National Policy Statement-Urban Development and the National Policy Statement-Highly Productive Land, as well as simplify heritage management, and develop new national direction to enable granny flats and papakāinga housing, which had been previously signalled.

"The classic example in Wellington is the Gordon Wilson Flats, where the people who own it now - which is Victoria University - they want to demolish it and put in place modern student accommodation," he told Morning Report. "The city wants to demolish it, or wants it to be demolished so they can have modern student accommodation. And the widespread feeding in the Wellington community is that they want these eyesore flats, which have been unoccupied for years, to be demolished.

"But yet through the vagaries of the legal process, it is just basically impossible to do that. So I think there's widespread consensus we need to make that easier.

"It's not to say that heritage doesn't have a role. It does, but something it's equally important is property rights. So if you have a heritage-listed property, and and you own it, but you don't want it to be heritage listed, we're going to get the balance right between the genuine interest in protecting heritage but also recognising that actually, you might own a piece of land or property and you might not want it to be heritage listed."

Farming and the primary sector

The package was about driving primary sector productivity, Bishop said, and gave effect to National Party manifesto promises and coalition agreements.

"Cabinet has agreed to amend the National Policy Statement-Highly Productive Land to make it clear that indoor primary production and greenhouses are permitted on highly productive land, as well as specifying that farmers are also allowed to build new specified infrastructure such as solar farms on that land."

Further announcements would be made shortly, he said.

Emergencies and natural hazards

• Improvement to emergency provisions, including a new regulation-making power for emergency responses.
• Ability to decline land-use consents, or attach conditions, where there are significant risks of natural hazards.
• Rules relating to natural hazards have immediate legal effect (from notification).

"This package will provide a comprehensive, nationally consistent framework for addressing the risks posed by natural hazards, including risks from climate change," Bishop said in his statement.

That would create efficiency in the form of a new national direction on natural hazards, "which will provide direction to councils on how to identify natural hazards, assess the risk they pose, and how to respond to that risk through planning controls", he said.

The RMA Amendment Bill 2 would also include "improved emergency provisions to better enable rapid responses to disasters".

"Every time there's a natural disaster, we amend the RMA or give the minister or the government the ability to suspend RMA rules, because they're so restrictive when you just need to do things quickly," Bishop told Morning Report.

"And so we're going to essentially build into the law a thing where there's a trigger - so there's a declaration of a state of emergency - easier consenting pathways for things that you need to do in response to a disaster can happen. And it sort of just reflects what we've been doing."

Bishop said he hoped to introduce the bill to Parliament by the end of the year.