The 2025 Taskforce identified reform of the RMA and slashing of red tape as crucially important in raising New Zealand’s living standards. Up to one-third of the income gap with Australia could be closed if New Zealand adopted OECD regulatory best practice. The RMA has generated many absurdities where property owners are constrained in how they can use and develop their land for minimal environmental benefit. There’s insufficient protection or acknowledgement of private property rights under the RMA. There is also no compensation when property rights are impaired under the Act.
In the urban setting, councils have adopted plans under the RMA, which have restricted the supply of buildable land and dramatically pushed up the price of sections. New Zealand now has some of the most unaffordable housing in the English speaking world. Compared to incomes, New Zealand housing is now less affordable than that in the United Kingdom, from whence many New Zealanders once came precisely to pursue the dream of owning property.
In the rural setting, restrictions on what farmers can do on their own land under district plans create a major headwind for farmers who are trying to maintain competitiveness in the global agricultural industry.
In the last Parliamentary term, with ACT’s pressure and support, the Government:
• Introduced the Regulatory Standards Bill in the House. The Regulatory Standards Bill ensures that all new regulation should be consistent with good law-making principles.
• Passed legislation that reduced the bureaucratic costs, delays and uncertainties of the RMA. This included reducing the number of consent categories, getting rid of the Minister of Conservation’s veto in coastal consenting, and limiting claims by those who only had a commercial interest in stopping development (i.e. kneecapping competitors).
ACT will continue to push for major RMA reform. A Party Vote for ACT is a vote to:
• Separate the planning functions of councils from decisions on applications for resource consent. This would mean that consent decisions would concentrate more on the effects of a particular application and place decision-making in the hands of individual commissioners;
• Limit the fees that councils can charge for consents, meaning that councils would be using ratepayers’ money for challenging development and would come under greater pressure to do so only when they were serving the public interest;
• Widen the scope for the Environment Court to award costs against councils and other objectors to resource consents when their objections were not sustained by the Court;
• Increase the right to compensation for those whose land values are reduced by council planning decisions;
• Clarify that the only harms and benefits that should be considered are those that relate to human welfare, and that “intrinsic values” are not to be considered.