By splitting planning and environmental laws, the reforms directly target the RMA’s growth-strangling red tape that has driven up housing costs, blocked infrastructure, and held back our economic potential for decades.
The reforms put property rights front and centre. This shift has been a core recommendation from the Initiative since our founding and represents a fundamental reorientation of our planning system.
Instead of controlling every aspect of land use, the new system will only step in when activities truly affect neighbours or the environment in material ways. While it will still regulate so-called highly-productive soils – a practice we have consistently criticised – normal activities on your own land will face fewer hurdles overall, reducing compliance costs.
The reforms will stop councils from regulating things that do not matter. The new system establishes a higher threshold for when effects require management, focusing only on substantive impacts rather than minor or theoretical concerns that currently delay worthwhile projects.
Common sense will replace complexity. Rather than the current patchwork of 1,175 locally defined zones across the country, New Zealand will move to standardised national zones. Japan has just 13 zones nationwide – New Zealand may well adopt a similarly straightforward approach.
This standardisation means most everyday building activities will follow clear, preset rules. Though we normally favour localism, nationwide consistency in this specific area will free local authorities to focus on genuine local priorities instead of reinventing the wheel over and over again.
In any case, when councils want to create their own rules beyond national standards, they will be able to do so. But they will need to explain why – a welcome accountability mechanism that should prevent unnecessary restrictions.
The new spatial plans will define growth areas and future infrastructure corridors years in advance, with real legal weight behind them. Such early designations are significant because they allow for more coordinated long-term investment.
Some questions remain about implementation. The national compliance regulator and planning tribunal – which will enforce standards and resolve disputes, respectively – will not be in the first round of legislation. While these mechanisms deserve careful design, they should not be unduly delayed.
Success depends on staying the course through the drafting process. The government must resist pressure for complicated exceptions that would recreate the very maze we are trying to escape.
These reforms represent the most significant positive change to New Zealand’s planning system in a generation. With proper implementation, they will deliver the affordable housing, efficient infrastructure and economic growth our country has needed for decades.
The Initiative strongly welcomes this bold step forward.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE
Instead of controlling every aspect of land use, the new system will only step in when activities truly affect neighbours or the environment in material ways. While it will still regulate so-called highly-productive soils – a practice we have consistently criticised – normal activities on your own land will face fewer hurdles overall, reducing compliance costs.
The reforms will stop councils from regulating things that do not matter. The new system establishes a higher threshold for when effects require management, focusing only on substantive impacts rather than minor or theoretical concerns that currently delay worthwhile projects.
Common sense will replace complexity. Rather than the current patchwork of 1,175 locally defined zones across the country, New Zealand will move to standardised national zones. Japan has just 13 zones nationwide – New Zealand may well adopt a similarly straightforward approach.
This standardisation means most everyday building activities will follow clear, preset rules. Though we normally favour localism, nationwide consistency in this specific area will free local authorities to focus on genuine local priorities instead of reinventing the wheel over and over again.
In any case, when councils want to create their own rules beyond national standards, they will be able to do so. But they will need to explain why – a welcome accountability mechanism that should prevent unnecessary restrictions.
The new spatial plans will define growth areas and future infrastructure corridors years in advance, with real legal weight behind them. Such early designations are significant because they allow for more coordinated long-term investment.
Some questions remain about implementation. The national compliance regulator and planning tribunal – which will enforce standards and resolve disputes, respectively – will not be in the first round of legislation. While these mechanisms deserve careful design, they should not be unduly delayed.
Success depends on staying the course through the drafting process. The government must resist pressure for complicated exceptions that would recreate the very maze we are trying to escape.
These reforms represent the most significant positive change to New Zealand’s planning system in a generation. With proper implementation, they will deliver the affordable housing, efficient infrastructure and economic growth our country has needed for decades.
The Initiative strongly welcomes this bold step forward.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE
3 comments:
veto rights of a certain group of extremists???
is that going to be abolist??
IF SO !! That would be a big syep in the right direction.
We shall see, I wouldn't put money on it
People who are used to power over others don't concede that ability readily and they have plenty of time and financial resources to devise work arounds to keep it.
Managing everything we might call "resources", and in particular, trying to fit that "management" withing a code of law, is a fiercely complicated thing. ....as we discovered when the Resource Management Act 1991 was first introduced. It claimed it would make everyday involvement in one's own property "permissive'. ie you could generally do what you wanted without reference to "the state". Everything, the statute's promotors said, would be faster, cheaper, etc.. Yeah, right!
At the same time it placed the onus to fit all this within some framework of law, on regional and local government. Much of this was full of flowery phrases about 'saving the whales' and 'having regard' to the needs of the Tangata Whenua.
Of course it was largely undefined. ie Parliament was full of bright ideas but the courts would, over time, (and at huge cost!) work out what it all meant.
By contrast the old Town & Country Planning Act (much amended) which the RMA replaced was not permissive! It simply divided the country into zones,...rural, urban, commercial, industrial, and stated fairly simply what one could do within those zones. Pretty simple really., especially for the vast bulk of resource practices. However, if you wanted to do something different, this is where the complication and resource to courts came in. You had to apply for a 'specified departure' (from the ordinary rules.)
The advent of the RMA certainly 'tidied' up resource law but at what cost? My belief is that this hastily & loosely framed single piece of legislation has cost the country literally billions of dollars. And can anyone with hand on heart say that our 'resources' are any better 'managed'?
Can we hope that this new legislative proposal is going to be any better? More cost effective?
I am surprised that no one seems to have asked the obvious question...how do other similar countries manage all this area of law.
Or are we going to get the old & surely discredited notion that once again, good little NZ is a world leader?
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