ACT Announces RMA Reform Policy

ACT Leader Don Brash today announced the Party’s Resource Management Act (RMA) policy which would dramatically reform the Resource Management Act, reduce bureaucracy and create a more prosperous New Zealand.  

“The Resource Management Act has been identified as one of the most important regulatory barriers to higher growth rates in New Zealand,” Dr Brash said.

“Its original intention was to make it easier for New Zealanders to develop and use their property.  Instead it has created a breeding ground for interfering behaviour where bureaucrats can tell you what to do with your property, despite bearing no personal cost in doing so.”

ACT’s policy focuses on five key areas of reform.  These reforms would:

• Separate the planning functions of councils from decisions on applications for resource consent
   
• Limit the fees that councils can charge for consents 
   
• 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

Dr Brash said much of the difficulty with the RMA comes from the fact that it allows interference on the basis of tenuous or aesthetic values. 

“These are impossible for anyone to either prove or disprove in a just and transparent way, which removes any right of response or argument.

“It has also meant that councils view the use of private land as a privilege that they bestow, rather than a right of the land owner. 

“Restricting the RMA’s concern to tangible effects on the air, soil, and water is the one of the most important changes that ACT will push for as part of the next government,” Dr Brash said.