Federated Farmers board member Mark Hooper says his industry didn\u2019t get everything it wanted out of the new Resource Management Act, despite Green Party accusations of outsized influence.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 including the Green Party.<\/p>\n
Environmental groups, agriculture bodies and Bishop\u2019s opposition are nervous about how the new bills will play out when they become law, with their third reading expected this week.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking has questioned Bishop on this issue in the House over the past year, warning that without a clear hierarchy \u2013 and with the Minister for the Environment in charge of setting whatever priorities they choose \u2013 the dual-bill structure could lead to more red tape, not less.<\/p>\n
Bishop is happy with where they\u2019ve landed, but admits he\u2019s anxious about the legislation\u2019s rollout.<\/p>\n
He says it\u2019s a once-in-a-generation opportunity for much-needed reform: \u201cI get that there\u2019d be anxiety about it. I\u2019m anxious about it as well,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
With a three- to four-year implementation timeframe, there\u2019s plenty of time for unforeseen kinks to surface.<\/p>\n
Brooking expects as much. She says the coalition Government\u2019s pattern of using urgency to pass legislation, often with significant amendments after the chance for public input, is a hallmark of \u201csloppy\u201d lawmaking. The consequences of this approach have been visible in the many amendments to Bishop\u2019s fast-track legislation, Brooking says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Labour will not be supporting the bills at their third reading, because she said her party\u2019s \u201cgood faith\u201d approach was not taken on board. \u201cIt\u2019s just shameful, and it\u2019s reckless. This Government is reckless with lawmaking,\u201d says Brooking.<\/p>\n
The Green Party says the last-minute changes Brooking is referring to are evidence of corporate lobbying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Davidson says the latest changes \u2013 which cover emissions, pollution limits and development \u2013 have been rewritten \u201cbased on industry lobbyists\u2019 demands, and regardless of public submissions, official advice, and expert warnings\u201d in closed-door meetings with \u201cBig Polluter\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bishop says it\u2019s \u201cno surprise\u201d 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\u2019re \u201cjumping at shadows a bit\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In the \u201cclosed door meetings\u201d the Greens referred to, Hooper says he was the only farmer in the room \u2013 and his farm is just a small family operation in Taranaki. \u201cYet supposedly I represented big farming! It just made me laugh,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Hooper helps run one of the country\u2019s biggest farming bodies, but he doesn\u2019t consider himself a member of \u201cbig farming\u201d. He says his industry \u201cjust took the opportunities that the ministers provided\u201d.<\/p>\n
Horticulture New Zealand was also present, but didn\u2019t respond to multiple requests for an interview.<\/p>\n
Hooper tells Newsroom his group didn\u2019t get everything it asked for, but the final version of the legislation is a marked improvement from the first draft.<\/p>\n
The first iteration of the new scheme didn\u2019t line up with what Hooper heard the Government promise, and he says the late changes reflect \u201cgood engagement\u201d following the concerns raised by industry.<\/p>\n
Removing a so-called \u201cwater tax\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
But water conservation orders, another feature Hooper wants to see scaled back, remain in the legislation. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we had a free ride,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The legislation heading for its third reading is now, by Hooper\u2019s appraisal, much more workable \u2013 though \u201cnot fantastic\u201d.<\/p>\n
He says \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of work in terms of joining those dots between those next levels\u201d, referring to the unweighted hierarchy Brooking is also concerned about.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s worried things will be pulled back.<\/p>\n
The Green Party agrees, albeit in different language. Davidson says Aotearoa has \u201cone chance, on November the 7th, to stop these dystopian laws from becoming reality\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federated Farmers board member Mark Hooper says his industry didn\u2019t get everything it wanted out of the new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-607851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}