RMA goneburger: property rights now the law of the land

ACT Leader David Seymour has welcomed the passage of the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill, saying New Zealand has finally replaced a 35-year planning failure with a system built on property rights.

“When we entered Government in 2014, National didn’t want to fix the Resource Management Act. In fact, they made it worse by adding co-governance in a deal with the Māori Party. Labour tried and failed to come up with a better system. Now ACT holds the pen, the RMA is goneburger, and we have a new system based on property rights,” says Mr Seymour.

“You can draw a straight line from ACT’s 2022 paper Building New Zealand and Conserving Nature to the law passed today. That is what consistency and effectiveness look like. ACT has opposed the RMA for as long as I have been in Parliament, and we have never run from the massive job of replacing it. We won the debate, and Parliament’s only civil engineer, Simon Court, has done the hard yards to being the new system into law.

“ACT is celebrating today, but we’re also looking at the next term of Parliament. We cannot allow Labour or the Greens to write the national directions downstream from the new law. In order to truly unlock the potential of a better planning system, ACT needs a strong seat at the table.”

“We have extraordinary land and resources. We just need the freedom to make good use of them. When we don’t have that freedom, wages stay low, housing and energy bills stay high, and it takes 28 years to consent a supermarket,” says ACT’s Infrastructure spokesperson Simon Court.

“The principle behind the new system is that your land is your land. You should be able to use it as you see fit, provided you are not harming someone else’s property or the environment.

“The economic gains are huge for this country and essential for balancing the books in the future. Estimates suggest the new system could reduce consenting volumes by up to 46% and add up to $3.1b a year to GDP by 2050.

“The old system let every Tom, Dick and Harry say no. The new one starts from the opposite place, saying it's your property, and if you're not harming anyone else then you have the freedom to use it. That is how we unlock New Zealand's potential to deliver more homes, more infrastructure, and more high-paying jobs, without endless process and paperwork.”