August 12, 2013
RMA changes undermine Act
A Gisborne District Councillor says the evidence isn’t there to justify proposed changes to the Resource Management Act.
Prime Minister John Key is selling his Government’s latest attempt to rewrite the 20-year-old act as being a way to free up land for affordable housing and strip away some of the red tape around renovating.
But Manu Caddie says it will make it much harder for communities, councils and iwi to restrain developers, even if their actions harm the environment.
He says trying to fix what are in many cases Auckland problems shouldn’t be an excuse for such a major rewrite.
"So there’s quite a bit of complaint around the process, the red tape and the time it takes to make decisions on some things and it's fair enough that some of that gets streamlined, but those are administrative changes whereas some of the fundamental parts of the Act are being severely undermined," Mr Caddie says.
He says the Government seems to be trying to make it easier to make political appointments to regulatory bodies, and it is offering Māori tokenistic advisory roles rather than giving iwi and hapū a real say in decisions.
Copyright © 2013, UMA Broadcasting Ltd