RMA needs reform to ease urban development

Newly appointed Environment Minister Nick Smith has announced Resource Management Act reform to foster urban development, where high land prices and expensive resource consents are blocking efforts to provide affordable housing.

In his first major policy statement since being sworn in last week, also as Minister of Building and Housing, Smith said "the RMA needs to explicitly recognise the importance of New Zealanders' access to more affordable housing if the downward trend in home ownership over the past 20 years is to be reversed."

In a speech to the Property Council New Zealand's Residential Development Summit in Auckland, Smith made no comment on the government's previously stated intention to collapse two fundamental clauses of the RMA into one and to add economic as well as environmental bottom lines to principles applied to resource consent applications. A spokeswoman said there would be no immediate further comment and it was "early days" in the government's thinking on the detail of reform.

Prime Minister John Key has indicated since the Sept. 20 election that plans to merge Sections 6 and 7 of the RMA, which were hotly opposed by environmental advocates and blocked in the last Parliament by the government's minor support parties, the United First and Maori parties, may not proceed.

Smith said the RMA needed to safeguard the natural environment but was also "a crucial piece of planning legislation."

"It forms the basis for the decisions that determine what we can do on our land. So it's important we have a system that balances environmental protection with the wider needs of New Zealanders. We need a system which ensures that important environmental standards are maintained, but which also enables growth and development, including a strong housing supply," Smith said.

The RMA and its implementation were "largely responsible" for land price increases that had "gone up so rapidly in unaffordable housing markets like Auckland."

Any reforms would also wrap in the need to renew Special Housing Areas law, which has a looming sunset clause.

"The vast bulk of consent processes under the RMA are about urban development, yet they barely rate a mention in the purposes and principles of the Act," Smith said. "No one Minister has previously been responsible for the full regulatory framework affecting housing, from subdivisions, building consenting to occupational regulation. This presents the opportunity to streamline how we develop new housing so as to increase housing supply and affordability."

(BusinessDesk)