STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it is a pleasure to speak on the Natural and Built Environments Bill inquiry. I didn't spend all of my time on that committee when the inquiry was going on, but I did spend enough time to get a good flavour for it. And my colleague Scott Simpson, the Hon Scott Simpson, did make a very good point. It is a significant proposed change, albeit that there's so many placeholders in the draft that we have no idea what it's actually going to look like. I would like to thank all of those submitters that came in. Actually, as my colleague also said, there was some significant effort gone into those submissions that came forward, albeit that they also didn't know exactly what they were submitting on. I think a lot of them pointed out quite clearly their fears of what they are assuming is going to go into those gaps, those significant gaps in the draft bill.
I think one of the things for me that I didn't see, and it didn't give me any comfort, that should be in there—the Minister's there and, hopefully, he'll take some notes, but one thing that all of us who are electorate MPs will hear all the time from constituents is how much the Resource Management Act—the current RMA—is a disabling piece of legislation. It's supposed to be an enabling piece of legislation. It is sand in the gears of everything. Now, no one is suggesting for a moment that we should just have open slather on these things. But Simon Court, my ACT colleague, made a very good point. We could have things such as, you know, standards that we don't need to run through these processes.
A lot of the people involved all the way through the RMA—it's an industry now. They're totally dependent on these applications going through really complicated and long processes. They make money out of it and, of course, they may not set out to do it but, in effect, what they do is build in a very slow and tortuous path through which anyone who has an application has to go through. And I if I can give you an example, at the moment we've got a whole lot of renewable energy projects on the books, people wanting to get out there and get their renewable energy projects up. Everybody wants it—the Government wants it, we want it, New Zealanders want it—but they've got to go through this tortuous process. And actually a lot of those people are sitting back there and weighing up the costs and the benefits and the uncertainty in some of those projects that they are thinking about and thinking, "Well, actually, on all grounds, it probably should get there. But really, are we going to put our money up and put it at risk to run through this process where we'll have"—and particularly the Department of Conservation; one of the worst, actually. They get in there and put in a submission against that, and then they run through a torturous process where they just delay, either just through their own bureaucratic slowness, or they're hoping that the applicant will tire of the process and withdraw their application. I think we see that all the time. Every electorate MP will be well aware of it.
But I just wanted, with the time I have left, to note some of the comments from some of the submitters. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said that the environment limits should be given more substance and that they need a lot more clarity. And I have to agree with the commissioner; he's doing some fantastic work, by the way. I think he's really on the money on a lot of things these days. The New Zealand Initiative said that the bill is so broad that it threatens uncertainty over what activities are legal. I agree; I can't agree more strongly. And I think they pointed out also that they have concerns about clause 8. The key is how the trade-offs will be made between these outcomes, which will be determined by the Minister for the Environment through the national planning framework. This is sort of like a Henry VIII power going to the Minister, who is all wise of course. I think that's, actually, just ripe almost for corruption. I think the Minister should be very worried about that. I'm not suggesting for a moment that anyone is corrupt, but it's not just corruption not being done; it's corruption seen not to be done. This bill is really stepping right on the line of this, and I'm really concerned about that and I think every New Zealander should be as well. It's got to be a lot better than what we've seen. And I hope that this bill, when we finally see it—
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member's time is up. And before we take the next call, may I remind members that we are not to accuse anyone else of corruption in this House. The next call is Tāmati Coffey, who is connecting with us remotely.