'One-stop shop': How RMA reforms could shake up local government
Amid speculation the Government is looking at local government amalgamation as part of the legislation, some believe many council functions could be stripped from them, leaving them wondering what functions would be left at a local level.
But Environment Canterbury chairperson Craig Pauling firmly believes there is a future for separate district and regional councils.
''There needs to be a partnership between local, regional and central government and we (ECan) are good at bringing people together.
''If you are in Kaikōura, your main focus is Kaikōura, but at a regional level my focus is Canterbury.''
Among the proposed changes is compliance, monitoring and enforcement (CME) functions to go to ''an Environment Protection Authority-type regulator''.
A single regional plan is proposed, which would bring together ECan's seven regional plans, four river plans, the 10 District Plans and the various spatial plans developed by local councils.
Pauling believes there needs to be something at a regional level for planning and consenting, ''but you can still have delivery of services done at a local level''.
He says the proposed changes could lead to a ''one-stop shop'' for consents, instead of developers having to apply to ECan and local councils for different consents for the same development, but is not convinced a unitary authority is the answer.
''You shouldn't have a student marking their own exams.''
A single spatial plan chapter for the region is expected to have legislative clout.
But whether this will prevent housing developments, such as the proposed Ohoka sub-division, near Kaiapoi, appearing outside of a designated urban area remains uncertain.
''I suspect not because of the premise in the RMA reforms for private property rights,'' ECan deputy chairperson Deon Swiggs says.
ECan is continuing preparation work for a new Canterbury Regional Coastal Environment Plan and a single regional plan.
Former ECan chairperson Peter Scott blasted his colleagues last month for ''wasting money'' in allowing staff to continue planning work in the face of change.
But Swiggs said staff were conducting research and analysis which will help to inform future plans, regardless of the planning framework.
''We still have work to do and we need to get on and do it,'' Swiggs said.
''The work of our staff will endure regardless of what planning frameworks we have in place in the future.''
In November, ECan voted to delay notifying the Canterbury Regional Policy Statement until January 2026, while it awaits more certainty with RMA reform.
The council is also waiting for advice from the Environment Minister on whether it can notify a plan change to the Canterbury Land and Water Regional Plan designed to resolve issues arising from a Supreme Court ruling in 2023.
Local Government Minister Simon Watts said amalgamation is a local decision and the Government will not force councils to amalgamate.
He said the RMA replacement legislation will include provisions relating to the roles, responsibilities and processes of local government.
"I have asked my officials to work with the sector on what that could mean for councils."
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop said the new legislation "will provide a radical transition to a far more liberal planning system with less red tape" and an emphasis on property rights.
By David Hill, Local Democracy Reporter
■ LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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The Spinoff
2 hours ago
- The Spinoff
David Seymour blames karakia for high power bills. Here's what he gets wrong
In a speech this morning, the deputy prime minister said 'blaming isn't productive', then proceeded to link 'roadblocks' such as cultural clauses in resource consents to rates rises leading to high inflation. Liam Rātana takes a different view. This morning, speaking at the 2025 Local Government New Zealand Conference, deputy prime minister David Seymour told a room full of local government workers that karakia and cultural impact assessments were part of the reason why power prices and food bills were high. He prefaced this by stating 'blaming isn't productive'. What followed was a barrage of finger pointing and blame-shifting. Rates increases – mostly attributable to a need for local councils to address central government's underinvestment on critical infrastructure – were picked as a key driver of inflation. In what was a confused speech, Seymour also acknowledged many of the costs facing councils weren't of their own making. What really caught my attention, though, was Seymour's plan for council and communities – particularly the point on reform of the Resource Management Act. It was here Seymour took his chance to criticise his own culture: 'You and your ratepayers want renewable energy but the consenting process demands ceremonial chanting and spreadsheet-level detail about every shrub on site.' Seymour was referring to a clause included in a resource consent granted by Central Hawke's Bay District Council to Centralines Limited for the construction of a solar farm in Ongaonga. The 'demand' for ceremonial chanting cited by Seymour refers to a clause in the resource consent stating: 'The consent holder shall invite mana whenua to perform karakia for any native trees or plants that need to be removed from the site.' This consent also included a construction condition that states the consent holder must invite mana whenua at least 10 working days prior to the commencement of any works to perform a pre-construction karakia. A similar clause in a resource consent granted to Swedish furniture giant Ikea for the construction of its store in Sylvia Park was referred to by Seymour. In this instance, the consent stated: 'The consent holder must invite representatives of mana whenua groups… to undertake cultural monitoring, karakia and other such cultural ceremonies on the site' for the pre-start meeting, commencement of earthworks, and immediately prior to the completion of bulk earthworks across the site. While highlighting these clauses as unnecessary 'red tape' and 'roadblocks', Seymour says his changes will put 'power back with communities'. I wonder which communities he's talking about? From the resource consent for IKEA in Sylvia Park. This is the kind of fluff that ties up consenting processes and makes everything we do slow and costly in New Zealand. — Simon Court (@SimonCourtACT) June 27, 2025 A spokesperson for an energy company who was involved with a similar solar project said the clauses Seymour was referring to were 'pretty normal' and if companies want to create strong relationships in development projects, they put in place these types of conditions through mutual agreement. For the project this company was involved with, the spokesperson said their company had actually requested mana whenua be onsite weekly to provide cultural monitoring and build cultural capacity of the site team. 'If the developers weren't happy with this decision, they would have an opportunity to raise this during the resource consent application process, and if it wasn't resolved during that process then they can appeal the decision,' the spokesperson said. In the case of the resource consents granted to both Ikea and Centralines Limited, the requirement is to simply extend an invite to mana whenua representatives in advance of milestone dates that are normally identified well before the day. On a practical level, it's as simple as making a phone call or sending an email. If there's no response received, the work goes ahead. I can almost guarantee mana whenua will not be there to perform a karakia for the removal of every native tree, nor will the companies be cutting them so regularly that they need to extend an invite to mana whenua every other day. The most likely scenario is that a number of trees will be identified well in advance, an invitation to mana whenua extended, and a single karakia performed for several trees prior to their removal. If mana whenua representatives do wish to conduct a karakia or a similar ceremony, the whole process would normally take no longer than an hour or two, at most. It is misleading for the deputy prime minister to claim these are the roadblocks halting development and hiking the price of energy and food. Besides karakia, Seymour also attacked cultural impact assessments. These are often provided by mana whenua for consent applications or works involving sites of cultural significance. The reports document the cultural values, interests and associations mana whenua have with an area or a resource, and the potential impacts of a proposed activity on these. Seymour's criticism of cultural impact assessments made me wonder just how many he has actually been a part of. Perhaps the minister of regulation's negative perspective of these reports is due to a lack of understanding or lived experience. In a previous job, I was privileged enough to be part of training mana whenua to carry out cultural impact assessments and took part in the drafting of some reports too. Contrary to Seymour's belief, these assessments aren't some prohibitive cultural gobbledygook. While they aren't always a statutory requirement for resource consent applications, these reports can serve an important role in meeting legal obligations – particularly under the Resource Management Act. Importantly, cultural impact assessments also help to foster stronger relationships and better communication between applicants and tangata whenua, and help identify potential adverse effects early. Seymour's criticisms reminded me of a pūrākau about the story of Rata, a chief from Savai'i in Samoa who is attributed with the construction of the waka we know today as the Takitimu. The story goes that Rata was eager to construct a waka, so he ventured high into the mountains and found the two best trees for his waka. Rata cut down the trees, only to return the next day to find them standing. This happened multiple times before Rata finally learned that the children of Tāne were reassembling the trees in the night because Rata had not given thanks or performed the correct incantations. For Seymour and his supporters, this might be a pointless tale of folklore but for me, it's a reminder that tikanga Māori was here in Aotearoa long before resource consent applications and cultural impact assessment reports.
Scoop
3 hours ago
- Scoop
On The Costs Of Regulating Cost, And Burkina Faso As A Role Model
Article – Gordon Campbell Funny how blow-out gets so readily applied to cost escalation in the provision of public services (hospital rebuilds, the Cook Strait ferries) but when politicians get the figures wrong for their pet projects, its just a matter of opinion. Funny how 'blow-out' gets so readily applied to cost escalation in the provision of public services (hospital rebuilds, the Cook Strait ferries) but when politicians get the figures wrong for their pet projects, its just a matter of opinion. Case in point : the original cost estimates for the Regulatory Standards Bill came to $18 million a year – but this week, MBIE calculations released under the Official Information Act indicate that the annual cost could be $50-60 million, or roughly three times the original figure. Sounds like a cost blow-out to me. The sort of incompetence the Bill was created to prevent. MBIE has also calculated that between 95 and 285 full time equivalent staff would be needed to carry out the legislative vetting work envisaged. And already we know that staff at Seymour's Regulations Ministry get paid considerably more than other public servants, on average. In response, Seymour has queried the figures, and suggested that AI would help to reduce those costs. (Hmm. What could possibly go wrong if we asked Chat GTP to rewrite the Resource Management Act in the style of Ayn Rand?) At best, AI might conceivably cut the time spent on several basic administrative tasks, but that would hardly bridge the gap between $18 million and $50-60 million. As the Greens regulation spokesperson Francisco Hernandez told RNZ, one UK study showed that AI would reduce public service labour costs by only about 5%. With the Bill, Hernandez says, money is being diverted from frontline public services into'one person's ideological vanity project': 'But the level of nuanced work of interpreting secondary legislation and how it applies to a principles framework…its not the sort of thing that could easily be automated.' Nor will the Regulatory Standards Bill do much to restore business confidence, which MBIE expects will be negatively affected by the introduction of an extensive vetting process and related compliance worries that are unlikely to survive a change of government. Offal in, offal out This week, the news has been almost as bad about another ACT Party fiasco – the school lunches programme. In recent weeks, a venerable political gambit has been used to repair the programme as a success. First, government enacts a terrible idea, and lots of people complain. No matter how many of them complain – or how loudly – the government totallky ignores them and, over time, people just give up. The government then declares the decline in the number of complaints to be a sign of success! That's exactly what has happened with school lunches. People have been forced to accept a shoddier product as the new norm. This week though, Business Desk revealed just how shoddy that product has become. Reportedly, an offal mince blend is now being used in school lunches instead of pure beef mince, in order to cut costs. The School Lunch Collective has started using a cheaper offal mince blend, a move that has raised compliance questions. The supplier, headed by the Compass Group, quietly updated its website to disclose the use of 'beef trim/heart' only after BusinessDesk and regulators made inquiries late last week. Business Desk understands the value blend, which is 50% beef trim and 50% beef heart, is about 25% cheaper than pure beef mince. Feeding offal to children to make a buck….Truly, anyone who voted for the ACT Party at the last election should now be hanging their head in shame. Out of Africa Unless a natural disaster, coup or rugby team is involved, Africa rarely makes it onto our news bulletins. Even back when it was called Upper Volta, Burkina Faso barely rated a mention. Yet weirdly, Burkina Faso's young leader Ibrahim Traore recently became a point of contention between the leaders of two of our major political parties. Traore was praised by Te Pāti Māori leader Rawiri Waititi, and damned by ACT Party leader David Seymour with equal fervour. As is usually the case with any country not in the Anglophile sphere of interest, local media coverage didn't go much beyond the initial 'he said/he said' exchange. That's a pity, given that in the non-Anglo media, Traore is arguably the most popular political figure on the African continent right now. To Waititi, Traore is a 'hero' – the view that Seymour has described as 'insane.' Insane? This seemed rich coming from someone who – as recently as 2023 – was still expressing his admiration for Margaret Thatcher. Why does Waititi rate Traore so highly? After seizing power in a coup in 2022, Traore's regime cut ties with France, its former colonial ruler, and set up a state-owned mining company. He also required foreign mining firms to (a) give the citizens of Burkina Faso a 15% stake in their local operations and (b) transfer skills to the local people. To further ensure that Burkina Faso receives a fairer share of the benefits from its mineral wealth, Traore is also said to be building a gold refinery and establishing national gold reserves for the first time in the nation's history. The leaders of Mali and Niger are doing much the same. As the UK Financial Times has reported: Their more interventionist stance….stems from a desire to assert national sovereignty after decades under the thumb of western miners and subject to contracts the new rulers view as tilted in favour of the companies. They have been rewriting mining laws, demanding higher tax payments and larger ownership stakes in the industry, but have also resorted to restricting operations, issuing arrest warrants and detaining employees. The effects of France's grim colonial record of exploitation and oppression are still evident. Just before Traore's coup, the literacy rate for those aged 15+ was below 35%, which is almost half the average level of literacy found across the Sahel, the region located between the Sahara desert and the savannahs of Central Africa. Burkina Faso and two other Sahel countries (Mali, Niger) have cut ties with Western colonial powers and forged defence links with Russia, and its Wagner Group of mercenaries. Unfortunately though…right across the Sahel region, the banking system remains in France's colonial grip. How come this is still possible? As the US Foreign Policy magazine recently conceded in an article otherwise hostile to Traore: …[There] is a growing frustration with France's continued economic role in Africa, a result of the enduring Central and West African franc currency systems that continue to exist in twelve former French colonies in the region. This currency regime, which during de-colonization aimed to provide a smooth landing for African economies by pegging their currencies to the stability of the French franc, has endured through the transition to the euro until today. Yet, perhaps the most humiliating aspect of this system is that 50 percent of each member state's foreign assets are held in Paris, plus an additional 20 percent for 'sight liabilities.' All up, one can readily see why Traore's fightback against Western economic dominance and minerals extraction has struck a sympathetic chord with Waititi. Despite the authoritarian nature of the Burkina Faso regime, some of its brutal suppression of dissent has been a survival tactic in the face of the advances by jihadi military forces. For that reason alone, Traore's survival is in the West's self-interest. The jihadis appear to be winning, across much of the Sahel region. To combat them, the Sahel governments that have kicked out France and the United States have not only turned to the Wagner Group for military assistance, but have offered mining rights to Moscow in compensation. Russian assistance has also boosted Traore's sophisticated social media presence. As a result, deepfake AI videos of Beyonce, Justin Bieber and R Kelly have appeared online in which they appear to wish God's blessing on Ibrahim Traore for a long life, and for many more years of enlightened rule. In reality, Traore's rule barely extends beyond the country's two main cities, with jihadi militia controlling much of the countryside. Elections have to be deferred, Traore claims, until these Salafi fundamentalist forces are defeated – otherwise, people would be killed by the rebels for daring to cast a ballot. Given the extent of the jihadi threat, Burkina Faso is now rated by some as being the world's number one centre of Salafi terrorism. Footnote: Unfortunately, politics readily lends itself to this lionising vs demonising process, focussed on individual heroes and villains. The Congolese politician Laurent Kabila once called this process 'dancing in the glory of the monster.' Meaning : it's not about the man, it should be about the system. We need to better understand why the political system rewards the sort of leaders we get. Anthem for a nation The Ivory Coast has always had a strong influence on the music of Burkina Faso. Born in Ivory Coast, the artist now known as Floby has been a fixture on the Burkinabe music scene for over 15 years. From last year, here's a single in which he celebrates his country, and its people:
Otago Daily Times
3 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Seymour admits regs contribute to ‘enormous rate rises'
Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour says there is no policy for local government reform - yet. In his speech to local government leaders in Christchurch today, Mr Seymour took a softer approach than expected, acknowledging pressures placed on local councils by central government. Council leaders told Local Democracy Reporting they felt more upbeat after his speech at the two-day Local Government New Zealand conference. It was a contrast to yesterday, when councillors said they felt like "the whipping boys" after a short video address from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and then Resource Management Act Reform Minister Chris Bishop putting a halt to council planning to stop "wasteful spending". In Mr Seymour's speech, he said the government has "no policy of changing the structure of local government" - contrary to recent political statements. But he acknowledged change could come out of the Resource Management Act reforms. Mr Seymour said he recognised regulations imposed by central government were helping to push up rates. "It is true that people are angry with you [councils] because of enormous rate rises, but many of the challenges councils face are enforced by statutory rules." He encouraged people to contact the "red tape tip-line" with any "unnecessary regulations". "I want to float the idea that we all want the same thing - and that is affordable and efficient government." Responding to a question from Gore Mayor Ben Bell, Mr Seymour admitted to "kicking the can down the road" to share goods and services tax (GST) on new builds with councils - a promise made by ACT during the 2023 general election. "We aren't going to lose sleep about it, because times are tough." But it remained on the agenda, he said. Councils have been asking the government for the GST to be shared in a bid to create more revenue to help with rising costs. Mr Seymour said city and regional deals would lead to better co-ordination between central and local government, creating more efficiencies and cost savings. Hauraki Mayor Toby Adams said he felt councils were being rapped over the knuckles by central government at the conference. "This year the tone has changed, where you are realising the pressure that local government is under financially from the statutory obligations of central government. "You're saying it to us here, but you are not saying it to the public." Mr Adams called on central government to share the message to the public that rising costs are pushing up rates. "We are working hard, we are trying ... that's not out there in the public." After the speech, Mr Seymour told LDR he wasn't taking a soft or hard approach to councils. "We should be collaborative," he said. - By David Hill, Local Democracy Reporter • LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
