RMA replacement: Chris Bishop set to deliver New Zealand’s biggest ever tax cut

The RMA is important. It is New Zealand's biggest regulatory tax and the most significant handbrake on our country's economic prosperity and living standards.

Yesterday 100 journalists and analysts worked through the Government’s just-released replacement to the RMA.

Planning law is inherently difficult, detailed, and technical. Having only had the material for a few hours, we don’t pretend to have our head around all the detail – but I wanted to get to you the source material rather than wait.

As we worked through the eight press releases, 11 “Fact Sheets”, and the 40-page “Overview” document, we liked what we saw.

The actual bills – a Planning Bill and Environment Bill – amount to nearly 800 pages.

If Chris Bishop delivers what he has said he wants to, he will cement himself as the boldest reforming Minister of the current Government.

These proposals will, more than any other reform since the introduction of MMP, ‘fix’ both New Zealand’s lack of housing affordability and infrastructure deficit. Both have been seeded by the RMA handbrake.

Based on the summaries provided by officials, Minister Bishop and his second-in-command on this project, ACT’s Simon Court, are on track. But there is a long way to go to amend the Bills at the Select Committee in the first half of next year to get to where they set out to get to: a regime based on property rights sitting at the centre.

Key features of the new system include:

Fewer effects managed

Many currently considered effects will be removed from scope, including internal site matters, retail distribution effects, visual amenity, competition impacts and the financial viability of a project.

Fewer consents

Fewer activity categories, with low-impact activities no longer requiring consent.

More proportionate conditions

All consent conditions must be necessary and proportionate, reducing red tape.

Fewer plans

More than 100 existing plans will be reduced to 17 regional combined plans that bring together spatial, land use and natural environment planning in one place, making it easier for New Zealanders to know what they can do with their property.

Spatial planning

30-year regional spatial plans to identify growth areas, infrastructure corridors and areas requiring protection.

Faster plan-making

Plan development time will fall from an average of 6 to 7 years to around 2 years for a regional combined plan.

Standardised zones

A major reduction from 1,175 bespoke zones to a nationally consistent set decided by central government.

National standards

A comprehensive suite of national standards for common activities to reduce costs and speed up consenting.

Regulatory relief

When imposing significant restrictions, such as heritage protections and significant natural areas, councils must provide practical relief mechanisms.

Clearer consultation requirements

Clarity about who must be consulted and when, including iwi.

Faster conflict resolution

A new Planning Tribunal to resolve straightforward disputes quickly and at low cost.

Clear environmental limits

Clear limits to support community decision making, improve efficient resource use and reduce unnecessary application costs.

Better, more consistent enforcement

Centralised oversight to ensure consistent and effective enforcement across the country.

In his speech, Minister Bishop talked a lot about the new funnel approach making the system more directive from the top, ensuring consistency across the country, and allowing local communities to focus on applying that approach in their area.

The documents state: "It would make decision-making more focused at each stage of the planning system. As the process narrows, fewer things would be up for debate, saving time and money. It would also give people greater certainty about what they can and can’t do, helping them understand likely outcomes before they begin."

Funnel new and old

Our Initial Observations:

Property rights are the cornerstone of a liberal democracy, and a return to a property rights based system is contained in the Government’s coalition agreements. But while officials have clearly been instructed to develop various systems that adhere more closely to the principle (such as limiting the scope of what planning rules, and councils can actually regulate), the “property rights” concept is conspicuously absent in the Bills. An obvious area to dig into.

For some regulatory takings – such as natural heritage and significant natural area overlays (that impact on the value and potential use for a landowner) – it is proposed that councils will be required to compensate with what the Bills call “Regulatory Relief”. It is an excellent principle, but the scope of the regime is not nearly wide enough. But it will mean that councils will need to start considering the costs when they get out the highlighter and change what you can do on your land because of their preferences. Councils are going to hate this!

The interface with the Treaty is also extremely technical (and vulnerable to capture by vested interests). The difficulty faced by Ministers is that some Treaty settlements give special rights to iwi based on the current regime. Much of the detail on how those are resolved are yet to be worked through, but the direction of travel should be welcomed: Ministers want the early identification of rights and obligations, rather than unclear ‘principle based’ legal requirements that are vulnerable to abuse and rent seeking.

As the Bills stand, councils will not be required to broadly ‘give effect’ to the Treaty but will have firmer, more defined obligations to consult and identify areas of special interests to local iwi.

While some special interests will complain, clarity will clearly be applauded by others (both Maori and non-Maori).

Conclusion:

The test is whether the details buried in the Bills reflect the political rhetoric about getting 'clipboard man' (or woman) out of the way and 'go for growth'. That’s what we’ll be working through with our expert advisors in the weeks to come.

But one thing is for sure: for the homeowner in the Hutt who battled the Council for eight months because a faceless planner didn’t like that his proposal to replace an existing garage didn’t match the design and colour of his house (yes, seriously!), these reforms are a major step in the right direction. Ditto taxpayers paying $1.3 billion per year ($634 per household) just for consenting infrastructure – this is a major step forward.

The RMA is one of the big kahuna items the Taxpayers’ Union has long fought on. We’ll have our heads down over summer, and keep you in the loop before submissions close early in the New Year.

New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union