Mike Fuge: Contact Energy CEO on the RMA reforms

A Covid-type outbreak of common sense. 

That's how Contact Energy's describing the Government's Resource Management Act reforms, which will see current rules replaced with two new pieces of legislation.  

One will be for planning, and the other for the environment. 

Contact Energy Chief Executive Mike Fuge told Heather du Plessis-Allan he likes what he sees.  

He says it will liberate the country from the burden of bureaucracy and complication. 

Fuge says the changes should provide much needed pace to infrastructure development. 

LISTEN ABOVE  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we've got our first look at the proposed RMA reform,
and it is significant. Around twelve hundred planning zones in
this country will now be reduced to seventeen. Councils will
be kept out of many building decisions on private properties,
and instead they will be expected to compensate homeowners for
decisions like imposing heritage status. A key focus is on
getting infrastructure built faster and cheaper, and on that subject,

(00:20):
Mike Fusures, the chief executive at Contact Energy.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Morning, Mic morning.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
See, I'm well, do you like what you see?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Absolutely? We think it is a well I termed it
a COVID type outbreak of common sense. It's going to
liberate this company country from a whole burden of bureaucracy
and this complication.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
What is more significant to you, is it saving money
on consents? Is it speeding up the consense or is
it giving you the certainty that you're going to get.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
A yes, it's last two. It's that the consenting process
itself is expensive and very burdisome for small, smaller companies,
and we acknowledge that, but it's the pace, it is
a pace of building infrastructure we need to continue for
us we need to continue building condurable energy as quickly
as we can to make up a short ull of

(01:09):
en generous country from the collapse of the gas industry.
We need pay Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
How much faster do you think is going to make it?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
I think it will take years off. But the critical
thing is where the devil is in the detail is
the appeal rights, so that it doesn't once you've got
a consent, you're not then bogged into a bogged down
in a very lengthy court process. And so if we
have absolute clarity and clarity on that, this country has
a one off opportunity to really get going.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah. Well, I mean what can you do about that though,
because that's that's a right to anyone, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
What's that that's a being able to being.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Able to appeal that?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well? No, the I think that the Look, there's a
couple of things which are important. That one is the
intent of the legislation is clear, so if anyone does
wander off to court, judiciary have very clear direction about
where the intent of the legislation is. The second thing
is the number of interested parties. It's been restricted to
actually parties who don't have a passing interest or opinion.

(02:08):
We've all got opinions. It's parties who actually are affected,
and I think that's a critical It's not just every
curtain twitter that happens along. It's actually affected parties that
can have a comment.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
So if you're wanting to build I don't know, I
mean any one of you electricity generation projects, who are
you likely to have to go and speak to.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
So it's affected parties. So you will obviously you'll one
first thing, you'll do the right thing. You'll be responsible,
you will take care of the biodiversity, you will make
sure you're doing the best thing as a good citizen.
That's number one. Number two, it's the affected parties who
have a higher threshold of being affected. So it might

(02:52):
be neighbors, it might be if there's going to be
a bit of noise during construction that you have to
go and talk to people are affected by that. But
it's not someone four hundred miles down the road in
Wellington who's just got an opinion that your solar farm
or wind farm shouldn't be built.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, fair point, Mike. One of the estimations was that
we spend about one point three billion dollars each year
and this is just on infrastructure trying to get these consents.
Does that numbers sound about right to you?

Speaker 2 (03:21):
That sounds quite accurate, But I think there is a
much larger loss in the speed and the imposition that
the absolute snail's pace we take to get infrastructure through.
Look when I started as a CEO in Australia, I
got a consent for a solar farm in six weeks,

(03:42):
and now solar farms in this country look as though
they're going to take the best part of two years
under the old legislation. This should break that open. For
goodness sake, it's renewable energy. It is done with good
and noble purpose. We should be celebrating this stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Brilliant news. Mike, thank you so much, appreciate it's a
good day. Mike Fuse, Chief executive Officer of Contact Energy.
Heither please ask Chris Bishop what they're going to do
to stop the extortion by certain groups demanding money for
consultational consents. Now, I think what Hamish is referring to
there as EWI I think this is a valid question
because if you've been following the story of IKEA, you'll

(04:17):
know that the RMA consent required all the man offenda
were to come around and you know, do prayers and
be there for the spades in the ground and all
that stuff, and Chris Bishop himself actually criticized that. So
the question is is he putting a stop to it.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
For more from The Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks that'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.