If the Green Party calls them "a major assault on the [Resource Management] Act and on sustainable development" then, sight unseen, I'm for them.
The advisory group set up by the government after the Canterbury earthquakes to examine quake-related issues relevant to the Act has apparently exceeded its brief in a most edifying way. It has proposed a significant rewrite of this singularly fascist legislation, under which property owners have been viciously persecuted and prosecuted for some 20 years now. It has recommended the removal of the mandate to local bodies to protect coastal areas, wetlands, lakes and rivers, and indigenous flora and fauna.
