Alan Pollard: Civil Contractors NZ CEO on the Government announcing changes to consenting in their RMA reform

Contractors want one thing from the Government’s RMA overhaul: a simpler system. 

Ministers are today announcing significant changes to consenting as part of a shake-up to the Resource Management Act. 

It's expected to cut the need for consents in 46% of cases that currently need them. 

Civil Contractors NZ CEO Alan Pollard told Heather du Plessis-Allan RMA is the biggest barrier to getting projects off the ground quickly. 

He says the act is complicated, vague, and creates significant costs. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're going to get the first details of the IRMA

(00:02):
overhaul this afternoon around about one o'clock. The aim is
to simplify the system, massively cutting the number of consents
by up to half. Regional councils have of course already
been given the chopp as part of this reform. Now,
Alan Polad is the CEO of the Civil Contractor is
NZ and with us Morning Allen.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Morning Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now, the word is that we have about twelve hundred
different zones in the country and they're going to be
cut down to fewer than twenty. Is that right.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
I don't know the final detail, but whatever we can
do to streamline the process will be welcome for our industry.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
How much of a heads up have you been given
about this?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Not very little. What we do though, is that the
ministers determined to simplify. Yet, if I can add some
context to it, you know, for the last two years,
our industry has faced some pretty tough time for the
low project volumes, and yet there's two hundred and seventy
five billion dollars sitting on a project pipeline and there's
a projects our communities need. So our aims that these

(00:56):
projects need to come to market as quickly as possible,
and we need to remove the barriers to stopping that happening,
and the RIMA is one of the major barriers that
we face.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, I mean, if you were to list the barriers
and all the things that go into making a project
really hard to get off the ground, where would this sit.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's just right up at the top. The Act is
incredibly complicated, it's vague, it's open to interpretation. That creates
significant cost to the projects, and frankly, it's a little
to protect the environment or to enable efficient development.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
What is it about the Act that is causing the trouble?
Is it the time that it takes to get the consent?
Is the possibility that there's a decline? What is it?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
I think it's all of those things, because it's very complicated,
but also it's open to interpretation. It's quite vague, So
you gu have the Act interpret in one way in
one region and completely different than another.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Oh oh, you can have the Act interpreted differently in
the same region, can't you. I mean I've run into
that where you have two people sitting next to each
other totally different ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
What what you certainly can you have to say, lawyers
and planners could spend their whole lives trying to interpret
the Act.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
So would you say, Alan, that one of the most
important things in what we see today is actually some
certainty and very clear guidelines, not even guidelines, just very
clear as to what this is saying, rather than leaving
it open to people making up their own minds.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Absolutely, there needs to be clarity and certainty. If I
could give you an example, you know, part of our
sustainable construction practices, we prefer to reuse construction and demolition
ways from one site on another site. But if there's
the minutest part of contaminant in the soil and that's
defined by the local council officers, we have to send

(02:36):
that to Landfall. It's costing two point four billion dollars
additional costs a year to do that.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, just crazy. Alan, Thanks very much, appreciate your time.
Is Alan poll Out and bested like at one o'clock,
CEO of Civil Contractors n Z. For more from the
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