Sandra Goudie: Further submission on the Natural & Built Environment Bill

The premise of new environmental legislation is to improve on the workability of the RMA to deliver better outcomes for people and communities while at the same time protecting the environment.

The case for that premise is well proven.

 Hard working mums and dads have spent thousands of dollars and time on minor works, as well as funded by way of rates the millions of dollars and time it takes for Councils to get anything done through the RMA process.

Roger Partridge: Why Hipkins should call time on RMA reforms

In combination, these principles promise a worse quagmire than the RMA they are intended to replace.

At 11:59pm on Sunday, submissions close on Environment Minister David Parker’s Natural and Built Environment Bill.

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.

Chris Trotter: David Parker Rejects Co-Governance.

On his Politik website, Richard Harman reveals how Environment Minister David Parker upset the co-governance project. Labour’s Māori Caucus saw co-governance becoming a central feature of Parker’s Natural & Built Environments Bill – the legislation poised to replace the Resource Management Act. On the all-important regional bodies established by the legislation, it was assumed that 50 percent of the seats would be reserved for Māori, leaving the rest for the rest.

According to Harman, Parker refused: successfully facing-down the opposition of Nanaia Mahuta and the Māori Caucus “in what may be seen as a defining move by the Government, which has been under fire over the Three Waters co-governance proposals.”