After 35 years, the Resource Management Act is on its way out.
Parliament has passed the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill, replacing the RMA with two separate regimes governing land use and development on one side and management of the natural environment on the other. The Government describes it as a once-in-a-generation reform designed to make development simpler, faster and more predictable.
For Māori, however, the question is bigger than whether it will take fewer months to get a resource consent.
Who gets a say over whenua, wai, wāhi tapu and taonga? Where does Te Tiriti sit? What happens to mana whenua participation when decisions are increasingly made through national rules and regional plans?
Those questions matter because the new system fundamentally changes where decisions are made. More decisions will be settled upfront through National Policy Direction, nationally consistent standards and long-term regional spatial planning, while more than 100 existing planning documents are expected to be consolidated into just 17 regional combined plans.
That may deliver the certainty developers, farmers and infrastructure providers have been asking for. But for iwi and hapū, it also means the battleground increasingly moves from individual consent hearings to the rules and plans written much earlier in the process.
And that creates both opportunity and risk.
If mana whenua are genuinely involved when regional spatial plans and environmental rules are developed, Māori could have greater influence over the long-term future of their rohe. But if participation comes too late, is poorly resourced, or national direction has already settled the important questions, the ability of iwi and hapū to influence individual developments could become considerably more constrained.
The environmental stakes are equally significant.
The Government has been explicit that its reforms are intended to enable housing, infrastructure, renewable energy, farming and investment while narrowing the scope of the resource-management system. Ministers argue the old RMA simultaneously frustrated development and failed to deliver good environmental outcomes.
For Māori, however, environmental management is not simply regulation.
Te taiao is whakapapa. Wai is whakapapa. Whenua is whakapapa.
Decisions about a river, wetland, coastline or maunga can therefore involve much more than balancing environmental effects against economic development. They can engage kaitiakitanga, mātauranga Māori, customary interests, Treaty settlements and the relationships hapū and iwi have maintained with those places for generations.
Those wider questions are already before the Waitangi Tribunal through its Natural Resources and Environmental Management inquiry, Wai 3450, which includes claims concerning Māori participation in environmental management, mātauranga Māori, climate impacts on Māori land and protection of taonga.
There is another important point: the change will not happen overnight.
Existing RMA plans and consents continue during the transition. The Government expects national instruments, regional plans and supporting systems to be progressively developed, with the new regime intended to be fully operating by 2030. Formal consultation on National Policy Direction is still to come.
That means the legislation passing Parliament is not the end of this kaupapa.
In many ways, it is the beginning.
For Māori, the next fight will be over the detail — what goes into those national rules, how mana whenua participate in the 17 regional planning processes, how mātauranga Māori is recognised, and whether economic development can proceed without diminishing the rangatiratanga of iwi and hapū over their whenua, wai and taonga.
Because you can replace the RMA.
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