Submissions on the Resource Management Act’s replacement – the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill – close at 4.30pm on 13 February with the Environment Select Committee.
Find out more information on the process on the Parliamentary website here.

There are two Bills – a Natural Environment Bill and a Planning Bill. You can make a single submission that covers both bills, you do not need to make separate submissions unless you want to.

The Environmental Defence Society have hosted two webinars on the key features and risks of the Bills, both of which are available to watch on the EDS website – webinar one and webinar two are here. We recommend you listen to at least one of these webinars to get a good overview of what is being proposed with these two new Bills – and what the main problems are.

In addition, the Government is proposing to reform local government. 
Submissions on a discussion document outlining proposed major changes to local government close on 20 February with the Department of Internal Affairs. A link to the discussion document is here.

EDS has produced their own submission and a submission template that you can use to form the basis for your own, which we have done with our own draft submission that you can download here as a Word document. We recommend you use this to develop your own submission. Feel free to cut and paste, or copy the entirety of our submission, to turn into your own. You will see that the majority of it replicates the EDS template with the addition of our own sections highlighted in yellow so you can see them easily. If you want to tailor these to make your own points and use your own examples that would be great.

The NZ Arboricultural Association (NZ ARB) has also produced a template that you can use to form the basis for your submission – you can download that here.

As EDS says “Our detailed draft submission highlights significant flaws in the bills. These include the provisions for regulatory relief, problems with environmental limits and highly constrained legal standing. There are many other problems, both substantive and drafting errors, which we have canvassed. The Bills have been rushed so are far from acceptable in their current form.”

We have already seen that this Government is not interested in protecting nature or trees. It is essential that you make submissions on these Bills if we are to have any chance of influencing the law that we will have to live with for decades to come. Please make a submission – numbers count and we need a huge outpouring of submissions from the public in order for the Government to amend these damaging and dangerous proposals.