Federated Farmers board member Mark Hooper says his industry didn’t get everything it wanted out of the new Resource Management Act, despite Green Party accusations of outsized influence.
Last-minute changes to the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill reduced regulations for the primary sector, which Greens co-leader Marama Davidson says is evidence of successful lobbying behind closed doors.
Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop and Hooper both dismissed the allegations, with Bishop saying he met with a range of parties in private meetings to discuss the legislation – including the Green Party.
Environmental groups, agriculture bodies and Bishop’s opposition are nervous about how the new bills will play out when they become law, with their third reading expected this week.
Across all sectors, uncertainty is shared in at least one area: how the two bills will interact with each other, and how a lack of hierarchy in their governing suite of national policy statements will be sorted out in practice.
Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking has questioned Bishop on this issue in the House over the past year, warning that without a clear hierarchy – and with the Minister for the Environment in charge of setting whatever priorities they choose – the dual-bill structure could lead to more red tape, not less.
Bishop is happy with where they’ve landed, but admits he’s anxious about the legislation’s rollout.
He says it’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity for much-needed reform: “I get that there’d be anxiety about it. I’m anxious about it as well,” he says.
With a three- to four-year implementation timeframe, there’s plenty of time for unforeseen kinks to surface.
Brooking expects as much. She says the coalition Government’s pattern of using urgency to pass legislation, often with significant amendments after the chance for public input, is a hallmark of “sloppy” lawmaking. The consequences of this approach have been visible in the many amendments to Bishop’s fast-track legislation, Brooking says.
Labour will not be supporting the bills at their third reading, because she said her party’s “good faith” approach was not taken on board. “It’s just shameful, and it’s reckless. This Government is reckless with lawmaking,” says Brooking.
The Green Party says the last-minute changes Brooking is referring to are evidence of corporate lobbying.
Davidson says the latest changes – which cover emissions, pollution limits and development – have been rewritten “based on industry lobbyists’ demands, and regardless of public submissions, official advice, and expert warnings” in closed-door meetings with “Big Polluter”.
Bishop says it’s “no surprise” he met with the agriculture industry, but that he also met with environmental groups like the Environmental Defence Society and Greenpeace, resource management leaders, and the Greens themselves. He says they’re “jumping at shadows a bit”.
Mark Hooper is one of the agriculture heads present at this meeting, and he says the Green Party framing of the issue gave him a chuckle.
In the “closed door meetings” the Greens referred to, Hooper says he was the only farmer in the room – and his farm is just a small family operation in Taranaki. “Yet supposedly I represented big farming! It just made me laugh,” he says.
Hooper helps run one of the country’s biggest farming bodies, but he doesn’t consider himself a member of “big farming”. He says his industry “just took the opportunities that the ministers provided”.
Horticulture New Zealand was also present, but didn’t respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Hooper tells Newsroom his group didn’t get everything it asked for, but the final version of the legislation is a marked improvement from the first draft.
The first iteration of the new scheme didn’t line up with what Hooper heard the Government promise, and he says the late changes reflect “good engagement” following the concerns raised by industry.
Removing a so-called “water tax” is one of the big wins Hooper takes from the process, which he says Bishop was keen on but was ultimately convinced to remove in favour of an alternative process for irrigation control.
But water conservation orders, another feature Hooper wants to see scaled back, remain in the legislation. “It’s not like we had a free ride,” he says.
The legislation heading for its third reading is now, by Hooper’s appraisal, much more workable – though “not fantastic”.
He says “there’s a lot of work in terms of joining those dots between those next levels”, referring to the unweighted hierarchy Brooking is also concerned about.
Hooper says much is riding on the results of the upcoming election, because so much power will be given to the Minister for the Environment. If the coalition Government remains, Hooper is hopeful the track record of industry engagement and red-tape cutting will continue. If the opposition can take power, he’s worried things will be pulled back.
The Green Party agrees, albeit in different language. Davidson says Aotearoa has “one chance, on November the 7th, to stop these dystopian laws from becoming reality”.