For 35 years, New Zealand’s Resource Management Act (RMA) has choked off growth, destroyed property rights, and made it nearly impossible to build the basic infrastructure, homes, supermarkets, hospitals and so much more that this country needs. It has made farming a nightmare, strangled productivity (and therefore wages), and driven up costs faced by households and business.
That era is officially over. Late last night Parliament has passed the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill into law, replacing a 35-year planning failure with a modern system built on a simple, foundational principle: your land is your land.
When ACT entered Government back in 2014, National didn’t want to fix the RMA, in fact, they made it worse by adding co-governance in a deal with the Māori Party. Then Labour tried and failed to fix it and somehow managed to come up with a proposal that would have made things even worse with more red tape. But ACT held the pen on these reforms, and we did the hard yards to deliver a system that works for everyday Kiwis, not council bureaucrats.
If you want to understand why this reform was so desperately needed, just look at the numbers. Over the last decade, the time required to secure a resource consent for infrastructure increased by 150 percent, and infrastructure consenting costs blew out by 70 percent. Infrastructure providers were burning through $1.3 billion every single year just pushing paper through council halls, spending an average of 5.5 percent of total project budgets before a single shovel even hit the ground. It reached the point where it could take 28 years just to consent a supermarket.
Our new planning system reverses that broken incentive structure from the ground up:Freedom by default: Unless your activity harms someone else’s property or the environment, you should be free to use, build, and enjoy your land without begging the council for permission.
Drastically fewer consents: Because the new system raises the bar for intervention and the scope of what can be regulated is narrowed significantly, estimated consent volumes will drop by up to 45 percent – saving between 15,000 and 22,000 unnecessary consent applications every single year. Where you do need a consent, it will be much, much easier.
Forging a planning funnel: The big decisions will now be settled upfront through national policy direction, national standards and planning, so developers, farmers, and homeowners don’t have to re-litigate the exact same battles over and over again on individual projects.
Holding councils accountable: Through “regulatory relief” rules, if a council wants to impose significant restrictions over your private property, they will actually have to confront and cover those costs rather than dumping the financial burden on the landowner. We’ve also established a new Planning Tribunal to give everyday applicants a fast, low-cost way to challenge over-zealous council demands.
Unlocking economic potential: Independent estimates show these reforms will cut $13.3 billion in administrative and compliance costs over the next 30 years and add up to $3.1 billion annually to New Zealand’s GDP by 2050.
This is what targeted, principled reform looks like. You can draw a straight line from ACT’s 2022 policy paper ‘Building New Zealand and Conserving Nature’ to the landmark legislation passed by Parliament yesterday. We won the debate because we focused on practical solutions that restore basic freedoms, lower the cost of living, and make it easier to build homes, roads, and energy projects.
The transition to the new system will begin in around a month’s time. New rules under the existing RMA will immediately narrow what councils can interfere with and force them to take a sensible, enabling approach while central and local government finish building the new national instruments and plans.While this is a massive win, the job isn’t finished. Over the coming years, the government will be setting the national policy directions that sit underneath this law.
We cannot afford to let left-wing parties regain power and use downstream regulations to undo this progress. To ensure the new system lives up to its promise, ACT needs a strong seat at the table in the next term of Parliament.Thank you to everyone who supported us in making this happen. We’ve finally cleared the way for New Zealanders to build, produce, and grow with confidence.
Yours sincerely,  Simon Court MP ACT spokesperson for RMA Reform |