In combination, these principles promise a worse quagmire than the RMA they are intended to replace.
One minute to midnight on the Sunday of Waitangi weekend is a strange deadline for submissions on a once-in-a-generation proposal to reform the Resource Management Act.
Yet Sunday is the extended deadline for submissions on the Bill. The extension followed howls of protest as submitters scrambled to respond to an 810-page Bill introduced into Parliament only shortly before the summer holiday recess.
But undue haste is not the main problem with Parker’s Bill. The more fundamental issue is incoherence.
The Bill is the first of a trio of statutes intended to replace the deservedly discredited RMA. Yet there are many reasons to believe the reforms will make those processes worse rather than better.
At their heart, planning laws should help discover the best use of scarce resources. They do this by helping with two problems markets can struggle with: the provision of public goods (like parks and transport infrastructure) and controlling externalities (like pollution).
However, like the RMA, Parker’s new statues have far grander goals. Unfortunately, they also have greater flaws.
In place of the RMA’s ill-defined objective of “sustainable development”, the new regime proposes strict environmental “bottom lines.” But hard-and-fast bottom lines are a fantasy. All resource use decisions involve trade-offs. And whereas the RMA permitted assessments of costs and benefits of these trade-offs, Parker’s reforms offer no such safety-net. Instead, Parliament and central planners will cast decisions in stone.
There are also problems with the new Bill’s two other resource allocation principles. “Efficiency” and “equity” sound like reasonable ideas.
But the Bill omits any reference to property rights and price mechanisms necessary for economically efficient outcomes. And it leaves equity to the whims of planners. Minister Parker may have confidence in planners, but does anyone else?
Overlaying these principles is a Te Ao Māori concept incorporating the relationship between iwi and individual hapū and the natural environment. Called Te Oranga o te Taiao, this principle will place undefined race-based considerations at the heart of the planning framework.
In combination, these principles promise a worse quagmire than the RMA they are intended to replace.
Chris Hipkins has committed to cutting back the Government’s reform agenda to focus on bread-and-butter issues.
He should start by axing Parker’s misguided RMA reforms.
Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014. This article was first published HERE
At their heart, planning laws should help discover the best use of scarce resources. They do this by helping with two problems markets can struggle with: the provision of public goods (like parks and transport infrastructure) and controlling externalities (like pollution).
However, like the RMA, Parker’s new statues have far grander goals. Unfortunately, they also have greater flaws.
In place of the RMA’s ill-defined objective of “sustainable development”, the new regime proposes strict environmental “bottom lines.” But hard-and-fast bottom lines are a fantasy. All resource use decisions involve trade-offs. And whereas the RMA permitted assessments of costs and benefits of these trade-offs, Parker’s reforms offer no such safety-net. Instead, Parliament and central planners will cast decisions in stone.
There are also problems with the new Bill’s two other resource allocation principles. “Efficiency” and “equity” sound like reasonable ideas.
But the Bill omits any reference to property rights and price mechanisms necessary for economically efficient outcomes. And it leaves equity to the whims of planners. Minister Parker may have confidence in planners, but does anyone else?
Overlaying these principles is a Te Ao Māori concept incorporating the relationship between iwi and individual hapū and the natural environment. Called Te Oranga o te Taiao, this principle will place undefined race-based considerations at the heart of the planning framework.
In combination, these principles promise a worse quagmire than the RMA they are intended to replace.
Chris Hipkins has committed to cutting back the Government’s reform agenda to focus on bread-and-butter issues.
He should start by axing Parker’s misguided RMA reforms.
Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014. This article was first published HERE
3 comments:
It's way overdue that this claim that, Maori are more attuned to the land /environment than the next person and thereby should be accorded special rights and privileges, is called out for the bollocks that it is. History clearly shows how they treated their own lands and the environment and that can be seen even today by a drive through suburbia or the countryside.
And, as for the Treaty, apart from the ceding of sovereignty, it gave them the protection and rights of all other owners and the privilege (and duties) of British citizenship - nothing more, nothing less (other than protection from themselves in their original sales).
We hear all this incessant talk of systemic / institutionalised racism and here we have a proposed Act that seeks to embed it.
This racist, divisive nonsense must stop. Bring on a referendum.
It is hard to imagine a worse situation. Don't vote for Labour. Vote for anyone else.
MC
The Rule of Law is a concept basic to a free democratic nation. Underpinning the RofL is that laws are made by our elected representatives in the Legislature, (not by the ruling branch...the Executive, in effect Cabinet who have the responsibility to administer such laws). The law should be reasonably stable and "known" by the citizenry. An independent judiciary is responsible for judging any law breaking and to enforce sanctions as appropriate.
For many years the RofL has been under attack. For a start our Parliament seems unable to enact clear law, and instead, justified by "technical complication" & a call for "flexibility" they increasingly delegate their supreme law making power to, firstly the Executive, via statutory regulations, and even to the bureaucrats via tertiary level "rule making" and authority to "approve" (or disapprove) actions by the ordinary citizens.
The 1991 RMA is a good example (but by no means the only one) of this trend toward excessively delegated legislative authority.
It all sounds so good..."we avoid 'one size fits all' rules",..." our legislation can easily adapt to changing circumstances and changing technology,"...."ourParliamentarians are ordinary people who can't be expected to be able to frame laws in an increasingly technical society",...etc, etc.
Then end result us that much of modern statutes are just "fluff", expressing vague and undefined, albeit "nice" sentiments. The real power to frame, administer, and even enforce highly detailed rules is given to, possibly the Cabinet, but more usually the departmental bureaucrats.
When we arrive at the stage when, faced with doing something, even on on our own property, we find the easiest, and most productive way to proceed is to "ring the nice man ( or woman) at the ministry and humbly ask what we have to do,
This is about as far away from the Rule if Law as it is possible to get...short of a dictatorship ruling by edict!
The ministry will for example lay down rules setting out slopes of paddocks and distances from waterways, etc., to tell you what you must do before, say, spreading fertilizer. The object of course is to prevent runoff and pollution, but rather than having clear law about discharges from private properties, they in effect assume a management role for your land.
But of course this was implicit in the title...the "Resource Management Act". Somehow a clerk in a government department in Wellington knows better than you how to manage your property.
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