Speaker 1: Kyota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five came with a promise of the largest economic reform
Speaker 2: in a generation. It's when the government unveiled its radical
Speaker 2: overhaul of resource management laws, which aims to cut the
Speaker 2: number of consents currently required by forty to fifty percent.
Speaker 2: Led by RM reform Minister Chris Bishop, the move will
Speaker 2: see the decades old RM replaced with two laws, one
Speaker 2: focused on planning and the other on environmental protection, that
Speaker 2: due to be passed by the end of this year
Speaker 2: and be operational by twenty twenty nine. But what does
Speaker 2: it all mean and why has it taken so long
Speaker 2: to to tangle this convoluted law if so many people
Speaker 2: agreed it needed to be done. Today on the Front Page,
Speaker 2: Herald Political editor Thomas Coglan is with us to break
Speaker 2: it all death. First off, Thomas, what is the ROMA?
Speaker 2: Why have there been so many calls to change it?
Speaker 2: And why have we been talking about changing it for decades?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: So, the RAMA is the Resource Management Act, and the
Speaker 3: Resource Management Act basically does what it says on the term.
Speaker 3: It manages the nation's resources. Basically, all of our resources,
Speaker 3: from the air that you breathe, to the forest to
Speaker 3: the waterways to the land that you build your house on,
Speaker 3: they are managed by the Resource Management Acts. Basically everything
Speaker 3: apart from mineral resources, which are managed under different legislation,
Speaker 3: but almost everything else is managed by this one law
Speaker 3: that was passed in nineteen ninety one. It was a
Speaker 3: bipart as a labor national if it laid started that
Speaker 3: the government changed in nineteen ninety National pasted it and
Speaker 3: since then all of our resources have been managed under
Speaker 3: this one piece of legislation. Prior to that, resources were
Speaker 3: managed under many different pieces of legislation seven one for waters, serve,
Speaker 3: one for this and that. So it consolidated the more
Speaker 3: than one piece of legislation. It was meant to simplify it.
Speaker 3: It was meant to provide a clear direction on what
Speaker 3: you could do and we are and how Now it
Speaker 3: didn't quite work like that, and almost since the beginning,
Speaker 3: the ROMA has failed to deliver on that promise of simplicity,
Speaker 3: of allowing development, allowing New Zealand's economy to grow, allowing
Speaker 3: us to build more houses, more business premises, more factories,
Speaker 3: all of that stuff, allowing us to do that whilst
Speaker 3: also projecting the environment that we love and also which
Speaker 3: our lives depend on. You know, it's no use building
Speaker 3: heaps of factories to create lots of jobs if we
Speaker 3: pollute the air and make us all sick. The RAMA
Speaker 3: is meant to balance those two things, and so for
Speaker 3: basically its entire life, it has been a subject of controversy.
Speaker 3: The controversy really picked up in the two thousands when
Speaker 3: the housing crisis started to rear its head a little bit,
Speaker 3: and the RMA was blamed for stuff like why our
Speaker 3: roads are so expensive when our roads are partly expensive
Speaker 3: to build because it takes so much time and money
Speaker 3: to consent them, and the houses are the same. It's
Speaker 3: really hard and expensive to build a house, which means
Speaker 3: that house prices have gone up because it's actually much
Speaker 3: easier to buy an existing house for a lot of
Speaker 3: money than it is to just buy a piece of
Speaker 3: land and build one. And so for a long time
Speaker 3: we've been talking about remedying it. Then under the Labor government,
Speaker 3: the last Labor government, they commissioned a working group which
Speaker 3: essentially said, we need to repeal this thing. Entirely and
Speaker 3: replace it with two different pieces of legislation. That's probably
Speaker 3: the start of your question where you say, why have
Speaker 3: we been talking about it for so long? We really
Speaker 3: started talking about it. Then Labor did repeal it. The
Speaker 3: Labor repealed the RMA, got rid of it, replaced it
Speaker 3: with two new pieces of legislation. But that wasn't the end.
Speaker 3: The government that we currently have, the National lead coalition,
Speaker 3: they didn't like what Labor did. They thought it was
Speaker 3: overly complex and replaced one complex regime with another complex regime.
Speaker 3: Labor actually just disputes that, and actually there are lots
Speaker 3: of similarities between what National has done and what Labor's done.
Speaker 3: So when the coalition came in, they repealed the repealed RMA,
Speaker 3: they brought back the RMA. So the resurrected this. This
Speaker 3: this RMA has has been brought back to life. It
Speaker 3: is a resurrected law. The RMA is currently alive, that
Speaker 3: is currently the law of the land, but it will
Speaker 3: be repealed again. It will be repealed for a second time.
Speaker 3: Not many pieces of legislation get to be repealed twice,
Speaker 3: and then it will be replaced with two new laws,
Speaker 3: which which one of which was Planning Act which sort
Speaker 3: of defined the planning rules. The other one as more
Speaker 3: environmentally focused.
Speaker 2: At yeah, and on Labour's plans versus national's plans. I
Speaker 2: know the Minister responsible for the RMA, Chris Bishop, has promised,
Speaker 2: you know, a bigger and better one. Is it bigger
Speaker 2: and better?
Speaker 4: That's a really good question.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to be a wee bit of vasive
Speaker 3: because I'd quite like to hear what the Selecte committee.
Speaker 4: The laws were introduced last year.
Speaker 3: It'll be interesting to see what people people say in
Speaker 3: Selecte Committee when they come. Certainly labors labors there are
Speaker 3: a lot of similarities. So Labor Labor reduced the number
Speaker 3: of plans that councils would produce. So councils produced under
Speaker 3: the old existing regime more than one hundred plans. They
Speaker 3: reduced that number to I think seventeen plans, which would
Speaker 3: be roughly one for every regional council. The government is
Speaker 3: basically doing the current government is basically doing the same
Speaker 3: thing in a slightly different way, reducing the number of
Speaker 3: plans and focusing on on doing more of the more
Speaker 3: of the heavy lifting, the big controversial stuff. At the
Speaker 3: beginning of the process, getting everything sorted out at the
Speaker 3: planning stage so that when it actually comes to kind
Speaker 3: of build a house the year, you look at the
Speaker 3: plan and the plans for the season. More or less, yes,
Speaker 3: you can within these rules. It's slightly more complicated than that,
Speaker 3: but it's sort of the idea so that those that
Speaker 3: those those principles are roughly the same. There was some
Speaker 3: complexity around some of the Maori principles that were in
Speaker 3: the in the Labor the Labor the Labor version and
Speaker 3: and and some submitters on the Labor version were critical
Speaker 3: of it and thought it was overly complex and sort
Speaker 3: of unhelpful. There is a debate over whether the National
Speaker 3: should have just repealed the complicated and helpful bits from
Speaker 3: Labour's version rather than go matches or on the board,
Speaker 3: but that's not what they did.
Speaker 4: So we are where we are.
Speaker 3: But certainly when we when we get to the Slik Committee,
Speaker 3: it will be interesting to hear from those submitters again
Speaker 3: to see whether they think this one is any benefit
Speaker 3: what Labor proposed. Because Labour's one was welcomed, I think
Speaker 3: I'm balanced people people were happy that Labored did what
Speaker 3: it did, but it was not without controversy.
Speaker 1: It's too hard to get consent from major infrastructure projects,
Speaker 1: for example, for the energy, the roads, the rail the hospitals,
Speaker 1: the schools we need to build. I mean some of
Speaker 1: these even public sector projects, you know, hospitals, schools, tied
Speaker 1: up and consenting processes for months, years at a time.
Speaker 1: I mean, it should not take six to eight years
Speaker 1: to consent a wind farm in New Zealand, should not
Speaker 1: take ten years to get an extension to a port,
Speaker 1: for example. These are the type of real life examples
Speaker 1: that we're trying to deal with with the RMA, and
Speaker 1: they've unfortunately made New Zealand a far less prosperous place
Speaker 1: than it otherwise can and should be, if.
Speaker 2: We get into the weeds a little bit. I liked
Speaker 2: your explanation of the regime on externalities, because that's what
Speaker 2: it comes down to. Hey, if I want to build
Speaker 2: something in my backyard, you know what is it? Can
Speaker 2: you give us that? In plain English?
Speaker 3: Externalities is basically, if I am in a house right now,
Speaker 3: and if I decide to build like a coffee roastree.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if you're ever lived next to a
Speaker 3: coffee roasty. It smells like coffee being roasted it's actually
Speaker 3: it's not a case smell. It's not to everyone's taste.
Speaker 3: I don't mind it, but it's smells.
Speaker 4: It smells.
Speaker 3: It's not great if you're it's not everyone's taste. So
Speaker 3: if I build a coffee roaste on my house, well,
Speaker 3: great for me. I make a lot of money selling
Speaker 3: my coffee, especially in Wellington, but not so good for
Speaker 3: my neighbors. They don't make any money from me selling coffee,
Speaker 3: and their houses smell like burnt toast because I build
Speaker 3: a coffee roast tree on my house.
Speaker 4: So that's the externality.
Speaker 3: The externality is is there is their houses smell like coffee,
Speaker 3: they lose money.
Speaker 4: I make money. Not great.
Speaker 3: So there's an externality here which basically means that I
Speaker 3: will not be able to build a coffee roast try
Speaker 3: on my house. It is a residential My my house
Speaker 3: is on a residential zoning, and and and and.
Speaker 4: Therefore the sort of.
Speaker 3: Old factory pollution that would that would come from my
Speaker 3: my that that that that roastery would not be allowed.
Speaker 4: Now, by contrast, if.
Speaker 3: I built a new deck on my house, or if
Speaker 3: I if I did other things on my land that
Speaker 3: affected my neighbor's not a little bit, not not, not
Speaker 3: at all. There is no externality here and there. For
Speaker 3: I would, I would have a wider remit within certain
Speaker 3: rules to allow that. Obviously, there is still a building code,
Speaker 3: I would. You know, there is still that the which
Speaker 3: is covered under under the building X. So you know,
Speaker 3: I can't just build something unsafe on my house.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't build a that would collapse. But but but
Speaker 3: so long as my actions on my own land do
Speaker 3: not affect other people, then then I'm more or less
Speaker 3: allowed to do it. There was there have been some
Speaker 3: cases where where councilors quote their nose into even the
Speaker 3: configuration of internal configuration of apartments, not a structural configuration.
Speaker 3: This isn't about whether the apartment building would collapse or not,
Speaker 3: but it was sort of you know, should your couch
Speaker 3: face this wall a wall, or how you know, stuff
Speaker 3: like that that is that has gone under this new rating.
Speaker 2: So changes to five national directives the RMA have now
Speaker 2: taken effect things that will make it easier to consent
Speaker 2: minds and quarries. For example, then you've got converting your
Speaker 2: garage into a granny flat. Presumably this is kind of
Speaker 2: confusing because when I read up on their RM changes,
Speaker 2: aren't they meant to come in in twenty twenty nine?
Speaker 2: So are these kind of national directives just logistical stuff
Speaker 2: that kind of needs to happen before they start, you know,
Speaker 2: talking about it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, bit of both.
Speaker 3: So Chris Bishop has been as the minister in charge
Speaker 3: of this, He's had a multi stage he's called it,
Speaker 3: I think multiple tranches of ROMA reform. So while they
Speaker 3: are changing the whole RMA that the main law at
Speaker 3: the top of it, they're making tweets to the existing
Speaker 3: regime which will then be ordered over into the new regime.
Speaker 3: So these are the national environmental standards and policy standards
Speaker 3: that are promulgating now. They are rules regulations that can
Speaker 3: be made by cabinet and agreed by cabinet and then
Speaker 3: gazetted and then they become the law of the land.
Speaker 3: They exist their current law and then they can be
Speaker 3: adopted on a new law. So as of this week,
Speaker 3: the new Granny Flat rules. So these are detached the
Speaker 3: official terminology and read it off the piece of paper
Speaker 3: because I always forget it as detached minor residential units
Speaker 3: which I think up to which I think can be
Speaker 3: up to seventy square meters, so sadly not the garage.
Speaker 3: Garage I don't think can be a granny flat, but
Speaker 3: you can put uh what.
Speaker 4: If it's detached though, it's a very good question.
Speaker 3: You can put a granny flat of up to seventies
Speaker 3: square meters on your on your property detached mine and
Speaker 3: residential unit. Residential unit still has to meet certain rules.
Speaker 3: Can't be you know, moldy, deadly whatever. You know, there
Speaker 3: are still there are still rules around around the houses
Speaker 3: and what they can.
Speaker 4: Look like. I wilsoy not look like that.
Speaker 3: But exists as but you can now do that as
Speaker 3: of as of January this year, which is which is
Speaker 3: which is nice? If that's whatever what you're doing that
Speaker 3: those those rules come under one of these one of
Speaker 3: these policy statements which has been gazeated, which means it's
Speaker 3: now the law, and then they get carried over into
Speaker 3: the New York so that they are the government is
Speaker 3: kind of it's a horrible terminology that every government loves
Speaker 3: to use. But they say a rolling mall of initiatives
Speaker 3: so that they start here and goes.
Speaker 2: On right, so you can kind of start getting the
Speaker 2: benefits of the ROMA reform slowly, but surely I can
Speaker 2: go to Bunnings this weekend and get my wood for
Speaker 2: my new goola out the back. But the full effect
Speaker 2: of the law is that kind of twenty twenty nine
Speaker 2: ish date, I suppose.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's the whole the.
Speaker 3: Yes, the sort of the main pieces of the RAMA,
Speaker 3: the big stuff that the new Planning Regime dat all
Speaker 3: comes towards the end of the decade, and there are
Speaker 3: a whole lot of other reforms. You know, we haven't
Speaker 3: even talked about the local government reforms. The government wants
Speaker 3: to try and as sort of tactfully pushing a maldimation
Speaker 3: onto councils, trying to get the regional councils and the
Speaker 3: territorial authorities to merge. Those new councils would then be
Speaker 3: the ones who are drawing up the plans under the
Speaker 3: new ROMA, which will then implement some of these changes
Speaker 3: that we're talking about. So it's like hurting sheep. We've
Speaker 3: got all these different things that they're trying to get
Speaker 3: through the game at the same time. But it is
Speaker 3: at the end of the decade where where the full
Speaker 3: OROMA does come into force, and of course that it
Speaker 3: does require some of these other reforms to take place
Speaker 3: in order to actually work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because like you said, I mean the goalas and
Speaker 2: the granny flats and the new decking out the back
Speaker 2: is probably small fry as opposed to what the change
Speaker 2: will mean for local councils. Currently, the government says that
Speaker 2: there are somewhere like one thousand, one hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: five different kinds of zones in New Zealand, which with
Speaker 2: them carry all different rules. So what does it mean
Speaker 2: when it talks about these zones.
Speaker 3: Yes, so zone it's like a you know, you're in
Speaker 3: a residential zone you can build a house, you know,
Speaker 3: residential property or you're like a load nsity or high
Speaker 3: dnsity residential zone. Can you build an apartment building here
Speaker 3: or is it just a sort of detached home that
Speaker 3: you can build here? There's and the current regime is
Speaker 3: allows a lot of latitude for bespoke zones, which is
Speaker 3: why you get over a thousand of them, which which
Speaker 3: a lot of people think is slightly ridiculous. So to councils,
Speaker 3: councils have a lot of latitude to do what they
Speaker 3: want in that regard. Now, what the changes, not what
Speaker 3: these changes will do is reduce those the number of
Speaker 3: zones down quite radically.
Speaker 4: In Japan, I.
Speaker 3: Think they only have thirteen, and the current regime has
Speaker 3: a number. With the new regime, part of me has
Speaker 3: a number which will be in the tens. That basically
Speaker 3: means that councils don't really have a choice to to
Speaker 3: to use sort of bespoke zoning measures and and basically
Speaker 3: we have to say, well, this is a residential zone
Speaker 3: and therefore houses can be built here, and we're not
Speaker 3: we're not going to use zoning to dictate quite specifically
Speaker 3: what kind of houses can go here. People can live here,
Speaker 3: you can build a house here. You know, this isn't
Speaker 3: the this isn't the blue house with the red draw.
Speaker 2: Zone, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the regime is sort of metastasized into
Speaker 3: an overly prescriptive regime, which is why you get more
Speaker 3: than a thousand zones, and the government wants it to
Speaker 3: become a more kind of liberal regime where you have
Speaker 3: fewer zones and giving people who are actually doing the
Speaker 3: building during the planning more lagitude to to sort of
Speaker 3: do what they want within the rules, within the rules.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for the builders, that's actually, when we're doing our job,
Speaker 5: there's not a lot of change in that respect, but
Speaker 5: it's actually getting to putting your first nail into the timber.
Speaker 5: It takes a long time for some Sometimes you wonder
Speaker 5: why it takes so long. It's the paperwork behind the
Speaker 5: scenes that will speed it up for the guys and
Speaker 5: girls doing the work on the ground.
Speaker 2: So when you talk about the councils then having to
Speaker 2: go ahead and do this kind of work themselves, that's
Speaker 2: that's what we call the spatial plans, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, so the spatial planning is there was a focus
Speaker 3: of labor regime. Of the labor regime as well. The
Speaker 3: spatial planning will ask counsels to look over a thirty
Speaker 3: year horizon with what needs to be done in the area.
Speaker 3: So you will think, right over the next thirty years, well,
Speaker 3: this corridor it's going to be, is going to grow
Speaker 3: and develop. This is sort of an industrial corridor. This
Speaker 3: will continue to be industrial, so maybe we will need
Speaker 3: to preserve this this this this trunk of land for
Speaker 3: a rail line or a large highway to carry all
Speaker 3: the trucks heavy industry. This is a residential This area
Speaker 3: is a residential area. It is going to continue to grow,
Speaker 3: it will possibly identify, so we'll need to plan to
Speaker 3: over the next thirty years improve the water infrastructure and
Speaker 3: the sewage infrastructure. So you know, ten thousand people live
Speaker 3: there now, forty thousand people will live there in thirty
Speaker 3: years time, so we need to plan over the next
Speaker 3: thirty years to build bigger and better pipes, and to
Speaker 3: build a new train station and roads and all that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff. So by getting all that planning done
Speaker 3: at the top end, it gives planners over the councilors
Speaker 3: over those thirty years and developers greater confidence to.
Speaker 4: Sort of meet the plan.
Speaker 3: So you will be able to make these zones under
Speaker 3: The councils will then be able to implement the zones
Speaker 3: which will and developers and councils will have confidence that yes,
Speaker 3: this is a residential zone. Yes we can densify this zone.
Speaker 3: Yes there will be infra structure to deal with with
Speaker 3: with with what is coming. New Zealand obviously gets a
Speaker 3: bear rep for housing and housing is far too expensive here.
Speaker 3: But over the last ten years New Zealand has slowly
Speaker 3: moved towards intensification, and particularly in Auckland, there's been a
Speaker 3: lot of quite good in intensification, but one of the
Speaker 3: controversies in Auckland has been that the infrastructure has somewhat lacked.
Speaker 3: So you are putting in putting intensification, we're and creating
Speaker 3: traffic champs because all of a sudden, all these people
Speaker 3: live all these people are living on a Victorian street
Speaker 3: which was built for a horse and cart and is
Speaker 3: now dealing with five hundred uts. That is a disaster
Speaker 3: for the people who live there. And so we're sort
Speaker 3: of trying to get better at that now to ensure
Speaker 3: that the infrastructure and the development happened concurrently to that
Speaker 3: that that dilemma.
Speaker 2: And it would kind of make sense in that spatial
Speaker 2: planning process to have a lot less cooks in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: I suppose do you reckon that this is all making
Speaker 2: way for the next kind of wayth of super cities?
Speaker 3: Perhaps, yes, certain, certainly, I think I think Wellington there's
Speaker 3: not much super about Wellington.
Speaker 4: Wellington.
Speaker 3: Wellington seems destined to be malgamated into what into into
Speaker 3: something approximating the super city that that Auckland has become.
Speaker 3: So the Wellington councils will probably get together in form
Speaker 3: one one big council.
Speaker 4: Yeah, at the moment.
Speaker 3: The obviously there is a regional council that sits at
Speaker 3: the top of all of the Wellington councils, but there
Speaker 3: could be a bit of coordination between them.
Speaker 4: You know that to use.
Speaker 3: Wellington as an example, Wellington, the Greater Wellington Regional Council
Speaker 3: runs the sort of buses and trains and they go
Speaker 3: through multiple multiple councils. You know, you can catch a
Speaker 3: train from the Wide up to work in Wellington and
Speaker 3: you'd go through you'd start and a wider upper council.
Speaker 3: You would then go into one of the hat councils,
Speaker 3: and I think some one of the train lines goes
Speaker 3: through two of the hop councils before ending in Wellington Council.
Speaker 3: So on the train jour need to work, you're passing
Speaker 3: through four or five different territorial authorities and the infrastructure
Speaker 3: that was on either side of that train line is
Speaker 3: is the is the is the purview of those councils,
Speaker 3: So you can see that there is an argument to
Speaker 3: link that up into one system. So the regional council,
Speaker 3: obviously the technicalogy use the Wellington example, does run that
Speaker 3: is responsible for transport, but the physical infrastructure is often
Speaker 3: the responsibility of territorial authorities, so yes, there was an
Speaker 3: argument for that. It's probably actually to be fear the
Speaker 3: buses involved, sorry, the trains involved Keepy Rail as well,
Speaker 3: so maybe buses is a better example, but anyway, you
Speaker 3: get the picture.
Speaker 2: And lastly, Thomas, in terms of sore or this is
Speaker 2: to go to the Select Committee obviously, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: is there anyone adamantly opposed? I mean, I suppose I
Speaker 2: do see a lot of talk about, for instance, making
Speaker 2: way for quarries and consenting minds making it easier. But
Speaker 2: what are the actual chances of, you know, a group
Speaker 2: of a family of endangered frogs being wiped out because
Speaker 2: the consent process is consented to mine or something.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, Shane Jones has no affection for the
Speaker 3: New Zealand frogs is a I.
Speaker 2: Know frogs are always my example because of Shane's comments, I.
Speaker 3: Think I think it would it would certainly be accurate
Speaker 3: to describe the government's reforms in general as being a
Speaker 3: shifting the needle more towards development in a way from
Speaker 3: environmental protection. So I think the it's a bit of
Speaker 3: an evasive answer, but it would depend on those frogs
Speaker 3: individual circumstances, but one would one would imagine that once
Speaker 3: this legislation passes, the circumstances would err on the pessimistic side.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Thomas.
Speaker 4: No Wors, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzidhrald dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: hosted and produced by me Chelsea Daniels Caine. Dicky is
Speaker 2: our studio operator, Richard Martin, our producer and editor, and
Speaker 2: our executive producer is Jane Ye. Follow the Front Page
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Speaker 2: and join us next time for another look beyond the headlines.