Chris Bishop: Minister responsible for RMA reform on changes

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop spoke to the public today with more details about the RMA reform. 

Bishop confirmed all existing agreements, called Mana Whakahono ā Rohe, between councils and local iwi will be scrapped, replacing them with 'iwi participation agreements'.

He told Heather du Plessis-Allan the one main goal is protecting Māori land, "and so the question is how you go about doing that in a streamlined way in the system where you don't have co-governance and you don't have broad cultural rights that are asserted".

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right. The government's decided to stop counsels from rushing
to sign ewe agreements that would carry over under new
RMA rules, which are you to come in. It made
the decision at Cabinet today following a week of controversy.
Last week. Resource Management Reform Minister Chris Bishop is with
us now, Hi, bish, good afternoon. There's a little bit
of confusion about this, so lets you see if we
can clarify this. Okay, you're keeping the agreements that were

(00:21):
signed before you started working on the bill. You're just
getting rid of the ones that the councils have rushed
to sign recently.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
No, we're getting rid of all of them. So if
they were in existence or if they're being initiated in
the last you know, eight or nine months, they're all gone.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
So every single one already signed at any point in
the past.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Gone, yes, gone, yes. Week. Cabinet has agreed today that
the ones that were in existence when the bill started,
there's eight of them, they're gone. And the ones that
have been initiated and agreed since, and there's dozens of them,
they're gone.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
To Okay, but then why are you replacing them with
new ones?

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Well, we're replacing them with a thing called EWE participation agreements,
which is designed to reflect treaty settlement obligations between EWE
and councils. For example, so the government's signed, you know,
for the last thirty years, the Crown has signed treaty
settlements with a range of EWI and they give those
settlements and these are in law now. They give EWE

(01:19):
a range of different participatory rights through planning instruments right now,
and so this is a way of streamlining exactly how
that works. So the EWE participation agreements that we're putting
in place in the new legislation will be voluntary. They
won't be obliged as is the case in the RMA
at the moment with the Manifucker agreements. So they'll be

(01:41):
voluntary between EWE and councils, and you know, some will
be signed no doubt, and we'll won' and see how
that goes. Why do you need them because of the
treaty sentiment obligations. So for example, there's a range of
different requirements depends on where you are and what EE
you're talking about. But it might be for example, or
in a spatial plan, the law says that law says

(02:05):
this right now, and there will be a version of
it in the new law. The law says that council
should map areas that are significant to MAI so old
par sites for example, or burial grounds, or areas that
are of particular cultural significance to the local ewe. The
law rightly says, well, we want to protect those, Well,
how do you do that? Will you go and talk

(02:25):
to the local e wei? And so you need a
mechanism to actually enable that to happen.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So is it not possible to actually work together without
signing an agreement? Well, it's not.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
It's not that it's not impossible to do that, and
that happens to some extent. Now, it's just that this
is a sort of a way of formalizing exactly how
that happens. So it might be things like, you know,
we're going to meet every quarter to sit down and
talk about it, or it might be that here are
the people who'll do fair enough.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
But what it will do it will it will formalize
co governance at council level.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Right, it's not, it's not co governance. And and I
would get excellently well, I would call it participation in
the planning system.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
That's a much better name.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well it's but it is, but it is literally what
it says on the turn right, which is Ewe and
Hapu and local manafena do have a role in the
planning system because I think most New Zealanders listening would
want the planning system to protect sites of significance to Maori.
They'd want us to protect Maryland, for example. There has
been enough alienation in Maryland over the years, so they'd

(03:25):
want us to protect that. And so the question is
how you go about doing that in a streamlined way
in the system where you don't have co governance and
you don't have broad cultural rights that are asserted that
which is what we've seen at the moment. And so
this is a much more streamline, narrow way of doing it.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
It strikes these agreements because the devil's in the detail.
Is it out there.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yet in the coming week? So no, no, no, we're
going to move an amendment paper to the bills when
they come back into the Parliament of the in the
next few weeks.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
All right, we'll have a look at that. Hey Bush,
thank you very much for your time. Appreciated. Chris Bishop,
the Resource Management reformanist, so they can call it what
they want. It's going to end up co governance. It's
co management, co governance right, it's the same thing, different names.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
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