New Zealand has just completed a COVID-19 delayed national election, where politicians suggested repealing New Zealand’s planning statute — the Resource Management Act of 1991 (RMA) — would instantly solve the country’s housing and development problems. While all political parties agree the RMA will and should be repealed, there is little evidence that politicians understand the issues that must be resolved before a replacement can be successfully fashioned.

The descent of the RMA from cutting-edge legislation — the first attempt to achieve a version of sustainability — to election scapegoat highlights the ambivalence communities exhibit when economic aspirations meet environmental realities. The RMA promised much, including creating a faster, cheaper and more integrated planning system, while also identifying and mitigating adverse environmental effects. When this system failed to emerge, the government responded with endless amendments to ‘fix’ the RMA, which only succeeded in creating new problems. The RMA did produce some environmental improvements, but not in a progressive and consistent manner. The Act’s woes can be partly attributed to successive governments declining to play their role in the Act’s three-part mandate, leaving regional and city/district councils to each implement their version of the RMA. Inevitably, variable interpretations of the RMA’s provisions by different local authorities produced new complaints from the business sector and yet even more amendments.

New Zealand is a highly urbanised country, with some 86% of its population living in urban areas. Given this, it was surprising that the RMA effectively made urban New Zealand a footnote in the statute. The term ‘urban’ appears a mere six times, primarily in definitions,  and ‘city’ not at all in the 804-page Act. Section 5, which defines the Act’s central philosophy of sustainable management — basically sustainable development, without the economic and social elements — only mentions communities. No urban issues, beyond a nod to heritage preservation, are identified in section 6 as a Matter of National Importance. This urban blindspot has created issues in producing effective plans and planning administration systems for urban areas, from an almost completely environmentally-focused Act.

Further issues arose from the RMA’s focus on achieving uniformity. Regardless if the resource consent sought was for a medium-density housing complex or to take water for an agricultural use, all followed a common process that required an assessment of environmental effects. Like much of the RMA, it looked good on paper but proved challenging to implement. Identifying the environmental effects of discharging waste to land or water tended to be easier than trying to do the same when the application was for a building to intrude into a sideyard. In the past, New Zealand’s planning system had had significant permissive provisions with a house requiring no specific planning approval if it met the development performance standards set out in the district plan. The emphasis in the RMA on environmental effects saw these standards become more complex and demanding with little evidence that this created better urban outcomes.

Gradually, more activities became subject to resource consent processes. Inevitably a new cadre of RMA lawyers and consultants emerged to oversee and advise on the complex and weighty assessments RMA processes required. Local authorities, as neoliberal policies demanded, sought to recover more of the cost of planning processes. As a consequence, the cost and time required to undertake a development ballooned. That made the RMA a convenient but simplistic scapegoat for urban development pains, particularly in Auckland, the closest to a metropolitan centre that New Zealand has. Its growth issues can be traced back to the 1900s so it is doubtful that the RMA was really the demon that created its unaffordable housing stock. Equally, the open and consultative approach so admired in the RMA at the outset provided a voice for communities. Urban residents in particular were quick to organise opposition to developments they disliked, such as attempts to introduce higher- and medium-density housing in inner-city suburbs in Auckland and Wellington. Recently, the government intervened with a National Policy Statement to try to compel provision for such developments. However, the existence of third party appeal rights leave local communities with some ability to continue to contest such developments.

It is against this backdrop that the process of RMA reform has begun. The landslide victory of Labour in the elections will allow them to govern alone, signalling that it will be their vision of replacement that will dominate the process.

To be continued…

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Dr. Caroline Miller is an Associate Professor in the School of People, Environment & Planning at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.