Mark Hooper: Federated Farmers RMA Spokesperson on the Government's new reforms

Farmers are keeping an eye on how some aspects of Resource Management Act reforms will work in practice. 

The Government's new framework for planning includes new acts around development of land and on protection of the natural environment. 

It also includes greater property rights – including allowing landowners to seek compensation against unjustified restrictions on their land. 

But Federated Farmers RMA spokesperson Mark Hooper told Andrew Dickens it's important local voices take precedence. 

However, he says there's a good line being developed regarding proposing each individual district have its own plan. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Finally a government has decided and has actually come about
to reform the Resource Management Act. In fact, the Resource
Management Act has gone. It's going to be replaced by
a Planning Act and a Natural Environment Act by the
next election. Analysis of the new system estimates a forty
five percent improvement in admin and compliance cost. Look, the
whole thing is a whole lot more simple. And Mark

(00:20):
Hooper is the RMA reform spokesperson at Fair Farmers and
joins it now, HALLI Mark, good morning. So finally this
brings us into line with other OECD countries.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yes, it does. It's it's good news really, I mean,
it's sometimes hard to get excited about RMA, but this
is great that we're seeing the government do what they
said they were going to do. They've entered now into
phase three of RMA reform by presenting at least at
this stage the early outline of what a new RMA

(00:55):
legislation might look like. And Federated Farmers Guests, along with
quite a lot of other organizations have been advocating for
significant RMA reform for probably twenty years or so, so
in that sense, it's an exciting development for New Zealand.
I think and the opportunity to do things differently to
what we have done over recent decades and see some

(01:17):
real change, and it.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Should have bipartisans support because a lot of it is
quite similar to Labour's proposal last electoral term. But the
important thing about National's proposal is the maintenance of property rights.
To talk us through that, yeah, so that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
So there's similarities, I guess to what the previous government
brought through, but there's significant differences as well. And as
you say, one of those big ones is around the
principle of property rights, and it's something that takes a
little bit of understanding, but basically it's around managing what

(01:53):
we call externalities. So another way, if an effect doesn't
impose anything upon a third party or outside of your property,
then you should be able to manage what happens in
your property. So that's the principle of property rights and
being able to enjoy those and do within a set

(02:16):
of national limits, whatever it is that you want to
be able to do.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
But the flip side of that, of course, if your
neighbor decides to do something that impinges on your property rights,
you've got the chance to come back at them.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah, so absolutely. So obviously there's still limits and
constraints there. There's both the Planning Act, as you mentioned,
and the Natural Environment Act, So the Planning Act will
have certain limitations on it. The Natural Environment Act will
be based around the set of national standards, and so
in the farming seen for example, those national standards will
probably be based around a farm plan system which has

(02:52):
been developed simultaneously, and so that will provide that kind
of guidance in terms of what is allowable.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
You sent through some notes last night and I saw
that one of the first thing you said, it's good,
but it's not perfect. So given that these things are
slow evolutions, what else would you and fed farmers like
to see.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Well, I think one of the things that in terms
of the good category that we're very excited about is,
and I guess because this has been a major concern
for our members of some time, is what's known as
regulatory takings. The regulatory taking is when a regulatory framework

(03:33):
is imposed upon your land, and that might be in
the form of an outstanding natural landscape, Outstanding Natural Features
SNAs and things like that. So these restrict what you
can do. These go against that principle that we're just
talking about and being able to enjoy property rights, and

(03:54):
so they are in effect of regulatory taking and what
we're advocating for, and what seems to be indicating here
is that there would be some sort of compensation associated
with that. If there is a public benefit, then the
public should be able to compensate in some way for
that imposition on private property rights. So that's a good

(04:15):
step forward. We'll see how that develops and what the
detail around that is, but that's something good, I guess
in terms of the things that we would want to
keep an eye on. There's sort of a shift of
having one plan per region, and we don't want to
see local voice lost. But we think that there's probably
a good line that's been developed there in terms of

(04:39):
proposing that each individual district prepare its own plan. But
the big am is remembered that to have to try
and have less consents. But that also then means that
we move to a system where there's more focus on
compliance and enforcement, and so that's something again that you
would have to see a bit of a transition as

(04:59):
to how that would so there'll be something to look
out for.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Good serve Mark Hooper Federated Farmers Roma Reformed.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
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