RMA reforms revealed

Environment Minister Nick Smith outlined a 10-point plan for reform of the environmental and planning law this evening.

He made the speech in front of a backdrop of 80,000 pages of resource management plans from around the country. 

"If in a single pile it would stand ten metres tall and probably require a resource consent for breaching local height restrictions. This mountain of red tape well illustrates the need for an overhaul of the Resource Management Act," he said.

Smith said new research from economic consultancy Motu showed the RMA had added $30 billion to the cost of new homes and stopped up to 40,000 being built over the past 10 years. 

Smith said the RMA was making housing too expensive and was hampering job and export growth.

“It is stymying much-needed infrastructure. And it is not doing a particularly good job of managing vital natural resources like fresh water and the coastal environment."

Smith said the purposes and principles of the RMA were outdated and did not match the reality of the issues it managed.

Among other things, the RMA reforms would clearly identify the importance of housing affordability, force councils to use templates in developing planning rules, give more weight to property rights, encourage collaborative resolution to reduce the amount of time and money spent on RMA litigation and move consent processes online.

National could pass the reforms with the support of Act's one MP but the party wants wider support for the changes.

Smith said low-cost housing was near impossible under the RMA rules at present because section prices were pushed up.

"If the section costs $250,000, nobody is going to put a modest $150,000 building on it," Smith said.