Press Release

Libertarianz Environment

Don't Review the RMA!

Talk of yet another 'review' of the RMA gets at least one person incensed. "It's appropriate on April Fool's Day to be discussing 'reviewing' the RMA because the whole RMA is a joke. It's not another long-winded 'review' that the RMA needs," says Libertarianz spokesman Peter Cresswell, "it's a stake through its heart."

Reviewing it "yet again" really is a joke, he says - a sick joke. "People being jailed for cutting down their own trees is a joke. Watching Taniwha and other life-forms delaying infrastructure projects is a joke. Effectively nationalising beachfront property from Waihi to Papamoa is an obscene joke," he says angrily.

"But having the review run by David Benson-Pope . now that really is a joke. It does show that this Government has a sense of humour even in adversity, but it also shows us the review itself can't even be taken seriously."

"The RMA is a joke." repeats Cresswell. "If it had not jailed people, stopped the development of countless projects and stolen the property rights of every New Zealander, I would be laughing. But it has," he says, "and I'm not."

Cresswell explains that under the RMA "trees, rocks, sand dunes and mud puddles have rights . but human beings don't. The fact is that the RMA doesn't protect property rights - as every property owner already knows; in fact in 456 pages it fails to mention property rights once! And as cases like as cases like the polluted Tarawera River show us, neither does it protect the environment. The act is an obscene joke," he says. "It has to go."

"Many years ago author Ayn Rand observed that when the productive have to go cap in hand to the unproductive in order to ask permission to produce, then you will know that your society is doomed. That's where we are now," says Cresswell, "and that's why the RMA must go. It's empowered a Gravy train full of planners, consultants, and lawyers; it's empowered so much of the "Browntable' stand-over tactics seen in recent years; and it's empowered the greatest theft of property rights since the war. It's got to go; time to drive that stake right through its heart."

ENDS

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