Damien Grant: The biggest change to New Zealand in a generation is flying under the radar

The Resource Management Act defines its purpose as being to “promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources”. The operative word was sustainable. Your land was not yours. You were a brief custodian and your rights over it were constrained by who had come before and who would come after.

The Act began in 1991 at a relatively svelte 382 pages. It went through more revisions and reinventions than David Bowie and, when it was finally laid to rest, was a bloated 1008 pages.