Your front door is your business: Chris Bishop unveils generational planning economic reform
Tuesday, 9 December 2025
ANALYSIS: About 15 minutes into his presentation into New Zealand’s new planning system, Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop went on a self-described rant about the sort of things councils currently, but will no longer, approve.
“What colour a house is, is not part of the planning system. What style façade a house has - not part of the planning system. Which way the front door faces … not part of the planning system.
“Which way your front door faces is an important decision - for your and your family - not for a local council.”
But rants aside, the announcement was massive.
“This is the single largest economic reform in a generation,” Bishop said during a speech launching New Zealand's new planning system.
He is right.
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Government proposes RMA overhaul to infrastructure, freshwater, housing
Reforms will hinge off being able to do what you like, with your own land
It will be considerably simpler, more standardised and - the Government hopes - lower cost than the current Resource Management Act.
The headline numbers on the new system are pretty straightforward. The RMA will be dissolved and replaced by two different Acts: The Planning Bill and The Natural Environment Bill. The former allows for planning and regulating land use while the latter establishes a framework for protection, management and use of the natural environment.
1100-plus planning zones over 67 councils will be collapsed to 17, set across 17 regions around the country.
The current system costs an estimated $1.3 billion in compliance per year. The Government hopes that will be slashed. Almost half of current consents are expected to not be needed under the new system.
There will be much more direction from central government.
The new planning laws will take a lot of things out of council hands - internal layouts of houses, subjective landscaping decisions and so on will no longer be covered. Only outstanding natural landscapes and that sort of thing will be protected.
Having your view ruined or your business affected because someone wants to set up a competition will no longer be in scope of the planning system.
Noise, vibration and shading, however, will still be in scope.
In other words, using the planning system to screw the scrum in your commercial favour will be far more difficult. And far fewer parties will be able to complain about new developments.
Officials estimate nearly half of all consents and permissions will no longer be needed under the new plan, while it will save the country tens of billions over the coming years (although those sorts of numbers are always pretty rubbery).
The overall view of this is to put property rights more centrally into the planning system.
“This is a once in a generation shift towards choice, freedom and opportunity,” Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop said.
A new planning tribunal will provide low cost recourse for people to take on council decisions. And there will be one national e-Plan, which will use AI in time, where people can check what they can and can’t do with their property.
The bills will be tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, and submissions and consultation will run until the end of February. Deputy prime minister David Seymour, speaking at the announcement lock up, encouraged people to submit, saying that no bill was perfect and the Government wanted it to go through a full select committee process. This was reiterated by Bishop, who also asked for buy-in from the industry.
The overall politics of this are straightforward. The RMA - and the need to overhaul it - is a binding glue of the Coalition Government. NZ First was very keen on fast track to get big projects going. National and ACT have been more invested in the new overhaul.
Building stuff takes too long, costs too much and is too complicated and takes place in a system that hasn’t been much good at protecting the environment, is the shared view.
The key change is that the enjoyment of private property rights is the driving principle that the system is then shaped around, rather than the system making up a pile of rules and whatever is left over being the space for property rights.
There is more than a lick of ideology here - minister after minister talked about enjoyment of property rights as being a key part of being a Kiwi - not being the gift of state and local government planners.
“Gone are the days of every man and his dog having a say over what you do with your own property,” Bishop said.
Crucially, councils may have to “provide relief”, (i.e. compensation) if they affect people’s property rights. But this is mostly for schemes such as where land might be protected because it has great natural beauty and so on - not for managing externalities.
The poorly-defined and highly subjective ‘sustainable management’ approach of the current system will be scotched and replaced by a goals-based system. The new bill lists goals across housing, environment and so on. If it isn’t in the goals, it will not be a part of the new system.
The National Environment Act will set the new policy direction and standards around the environment, water storage, wetlands, freshwater stands and so on.
The Government is looking at starting a national environmental regulator, with a regional footprint by 2029, with a greater emphasis on enforcement of environmental limits and standards.
The Government is very clear on what it wants to achieve in this overhaul. And the new bills are large. The new Natural Built Environment Bill is 292 pages, while the new Planning Bill is 452 pages long. There will no doubt be gremlins, oversights and problems in these new bills, and there is much to pick over in the coming days and weeks.
Government attempts to simplify any legislation that is large and complex is always fraught with difficulty. In some ways, that is the very story of the soon-to-be-defunct Resource Management Act.
The degree to which the Government is able to achieve that will be a marker of how effective the new legislation and system will be.
The structure is one thing, but it will not be until down the line when the Government’s new standards are set that the rubber will really meet the road for both environmental protection and new zoning regulations. That is where the real fight will be - over the content of the new rules.
Bishop and ACT Party under secretary Simon Court have done a tremendous amount of work on this. It looks to have a significant amount of internal logic and seek to be a pro-growth system that better protects the environment.
It will not be for everyone. For those who view councils’ role as democratically elected representatives creating and enforcing the character of areas and regions on behalf of the people, this will not be welcomed. For those who are anti-development or NIMBYs, this will also be largely unwelcome.
The growth side of it looks pretty solid, from a political point of view, the way the environmental laws and limits work will probably determine how smoothly it passes into law.
If the Government gets this right, it will almost certainly be the biggest and most consequential reform it does in this term.