The Environmental Defence Society (EDS) has filed its submission on the Resource Management Amendment Bill 2019 with the Environment Select Committee of Parliament.
“We are broadly supportive of the proposed amendments, many of which roll back bad changes made last year,” said EDS CEO Gary Taylor.
“The Bill removes provisions giving Ministers excessive powers and repeals provisions that many submitters to the previous Bill considered unworkable. It also creates a new plan-making process for freshwater reform. We support those provisions and most of the technical changes proposed.
“EDS has made suggestions for other amendments to be added to the Bill including:
• The creation of a Freshwater Commission to provide implementation oversight for freshwater planning
• Giving the Environment Court power to
decide notification appeals
• Widening the Minister
for the Environment’s ability to call-in plans to include
regional policy statements
• Enabling resource
consent applications by recidivist RMA offenders to be
refused
• Including climate change mitigation in
section 6 as a matter of national
importance
• Further changes to better enable public
participation in resource management processes.
“EDS
will be appearing in support of its submission,” Mr Taylor
concluded.
The EDS submission is available here.
Submissions on the Bill are due on 7 November.
ends