The government places its proposed changes to the Resource Management Act explicitly in the context of "raising New Zealand's rate of productivity and economic growth".

Prime Minister John Key describes the current Act as "a handbrake on growth". The Bill introduced into Parliament last week is about simplifying and streamlining the current processes.

The Bill sets up an Environmental Protection Authority which will make recommendations to the Minister for the Environment on whether to designate certain projects as having "national significance." A Board of Inquiry, not the local authority would then hear the resource consent applications and appeals would be limited.

The Bill has the Minister as the decision maker on "national significance" , which sits oddly with the government's desire to take political considerations out of the process. Could not the EPA make the decision itself?

Major legal firms involved in RMA work are also questioning whether key aspects of the proposed reforms will actually reduce delays and compliance costs.

The regional and district plans, and policy statements produced by councils, are already a major battleground for resource users seeking to maintain their freedom to operate. The plans and statement are the context for resource management decisions.

In its commentary on the Bill, Russell McVeagh say that "some of the changes proposed seem likely to pose real risks and even added costs to industry and should probably be opposed."

If the battle over the planning and policy documents intensifies, even if the proposed changes shorten the costs of hearings, the total cost to resource users may not be lessened.

Appeals against council decisions will be more limited, but there is provision for applicants to seek permission from the Environment Court to appeal to it "on merit" before a council even considers its submissions on a plan or policy statement.

Russell McVeagh argues that many council decisions often need further consideration. "The fact that so many appeals do result in changed provisions of policy statements and plan clearly demonstrates that."

The bill also envisages that National Policy Statements (NPS) and National Environment Standards (NES) issued by central government will override regional and local standards.

The issuing of these standards is intended to increase national consistency and reduce the duplication of work by local authorities, but Simpson Grierson calls this a cause for concern.

"This approach could result in poorly drafted objectives and policies being placed in (council) plans that have not been tested through a submission process."

Government agencies have been slow to produce these documents and there is no much confidence among resource users and their advisers that this will change quickly.

"For a number of years, a proliferation of NPS and NES has been promised, but little has been delivered," writes Buddle Findlay partner Patrick Mulligan. "Implementation of policy rather than new policy is what is required."

Under the Bill applicants for resource consents can seek to go directly to the Environment Court provided that the relevant local councils agree. Simpson Grierson note that "it is not clear what criteria (a council) would use in deciding whether to agree to direct referral."

Projects not directly referred and not of "national significance" would be heard locally.

Councils might well give a lot of weight to local factors at the expense of national considerations, particularly where there are positive national benefits, but adverse local impacts. How is that consistent with the government's stated goal of taking the RMA handbrake off the economy?

Bell Gully says the proposals to give councils a greater role are "concerning", and place "an undue reliance on the quality of decision-making by territorial authorities."

Chapman Tripp refers to the "variable quality of local authority first-instance decision making". However the government maintains that their moves to centralise decisions at a national level and to force more decisions to be made faster at a local level will achieve its goal of quicker decisions at less cost.

Published in the National Business Review of 27 February 2009