Nick Smith: Waitakere City's protection bill anti-democratic

Nick Smith

The Waitakere City Council's proposed local bill for the Waitakere Ranges reads more like a visitor promotion brochure than a serious attempt at good environment law. It will not improve environmental management of an Auckland icon, nor will it help Auckland to better to manage its growth.

The bill, like its chief advocate, former ad-man Bob Harvey, is more about spin than substance. The Waitakere mayor's attempts to stop last week's public meeting of affected landowners (by trying to get his Labour contacts in Cabinet to veto the use of a local school hall) was a clumsy abuse of power.

The mayor's problem is that the bill will not withstand detailed scrutiny. The legal effect of it would be to add another tier to the requirements of the Resource Management Act.

There is already widespread acknowledgement that the RMA has generated far too much paper and too few environmental improvements.

The act suffers from a lack of clarity and excessive bureaucracy. This bill will make those problems worse.

The core of the proposal is an additional 20 broad principles that must be applied to resource applications in the Waitakere Ranges area.

These are in addition to the 10 principles in the act. The additional requirements will sit alongside the national policy statements, the regional plan and district plan in determining what can and cannot be done in the ranges.

This is an extraordinarily inefficient and cumbersome way of developing sensible rules for protecting the ranges. There are ample mechanisms under the RMA to develop policies and rules in regional and district plans. The additional requirements would be a recipe for confusion and poor management.

It would be a nightmare for people wanting a say in how the area is to be managed or wanting to know what they can and cannot do.

The bill is further flawed because it treats public and private land identically. Where land is owned publicly, the community has an absolute right to determine how it shall be used. Private land is different.

The community must respect the owner's fundamental right to decide how the land is used (within reasonable limits) based on the environmental effects on neighbours and the community.

This bill will not improve the management of the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park. It will not make one jot of difference in dealing with the problems of erosion, pest control, weed control or visitor management. The bill only adds additional legal complexity to the Auckland Regional Council's management of the park.

The four-year fiasco between the Waitakere City and Auckland Regional Council over replacing the disgusting Karekare toilets aptly illustrates how the environment ends up losing out with this sort of law.

The bill proposes formal recognition by councils and the Government of tangata whenua's traditional, cultural and spiritual relationship with the Waitakere Ranges.

This will drag councils further into the treaty grievance industry. Such provisions in the South Island are being used to advance gondola proposals in Fiordland National Park.

It is law of this sort that ends up with the Environment Court arguing over the home of the taniwha. We should put an end to laws that drag courts into the spiritual world, not add to them.

Other quite nonsensical provisions in the bill are those covering sequestration of greenhouse gas emissions. The Government has just taken this issue out of the RMA, correctly arguing that it is a poor mechanism for managing climate change emissions.

It is bizarre that the sequestration of greenhouse gas emissions would be ignored in every resource consent application in New Zealand except in the area around the Waitakere Ranges.

This sort of vague law is anti-democratic. Nobody can say with any confidence what effect it will have on a landowner's ability to subdivide, build a driveway or a garage, extend a vineyard or clear some vegetation. The Environment Court and not local councils will make the decisions.

This law would disenfranchise local communities from finding the right balance between development and protection.

Proponents of the bill see it as a model for other areas experiencing strong growth, such as the Coromandel Peninsula, Nelson Bays and the Wanaka basin. Piecemeal laws like this just make problems worse.

The real problem is the that the RMA is crying out for reform. We need clear, concise laws and not more bureaucracy. Auckland would be better served by the Government and councils focusing on the practical conservation issues facing the ranges rather than the ill-conceived and flawed Waitakere Ranges National Heritage Area Bill.

* Nick Smith is the National Party's spokesman on local government and environment.