Chris Bishop’s big rewrite shows how far the state has drifted from competence

Saturday, 13 December 2025

Luke Malpass is politics, business and economics editor.

OPINION: When Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop stood up and presented his plan to overhaul New Zealand’s planning laws — a scheme two years in the making — he argued that more than any other set of laws, the Resource Management Act had held New Zealand back over the past 30 years.

In Bishop’s estimation, it had delivered the worst of both worlds: making development slow and expensive while failing to provide the environmental protection it was meant to. And overall, it has benighted the economy with uncertainty.

The way the changes have been received suggests there is widespread political support for the system to be shaken up. New Zealand is the same size as the UK by land mass, has only about 5 million people compared with 69m, yet has some of the most expensive houses in the world.

The Post covered the new planning system thoroughly earlier in the week. It involves scrapping the RMA and replacing it with two pieces of legislation: one covering planning and the other the natural environment. The idea is that the system is clearer, with far more standardised national standards, so that about half of all consents won’t be required.

The flipside is that environmental regulation and protections will be far clearer, much earlier in the process. Instead of arguing about “effects” and what “sustainable management” means, there will be concrete guidelines — yet to be set — about what is protected and where it is protected. Those standards and rules will be what most of the political debate ends up being about, rather than the structure of the new system itself.

As ever, the proof will be in the pudding, and this new system won’t really be in place until next decade.

But as an economic reform, if it delivers the expected outcomes, it will make the economy substantially more productive in any area to do with land and environmental management, building, development and infrastructure.

The fact that the Labour Party has been pretty quiet says it all — no one wants to be on the side of the RMA. Labour too wants to ungum the system and get the results of more development and cheaper housing.

The bill will go through a full select committee process where the differences will become more apparent, but they are likely to be at the margins.

Much was made of the “regulatory relief” part of the proposal — where some government actions will trigger relief for those affected (if some of your land suddenly becomes considered a “significant natural area”, for example). Labour will likely have some issues with that, but it is a small part of the overall package. The idea is that local regulators — mostly councils — will have to think carefully about where and when to apply these sorts of protections.

In a set of slides accompanying the launch, Bishop also noted that currently there is a first-in, first-served approach to resource allocation — meaning natural resources are often not put to their best use, and efficient resource use is not incentivised.

Bishop made no comment on which resources he meant — but water allocation surely comes to mind.

It also undoubtedly puts private property rights at the centre of it all.

There are also smaller but significant changes on the way — such as a national e-Plan where anyone will be able to look up land or a house and see what is allowable. AI will be utilised to help power it all.

And there will be a planning tribunal, sitting at a much lower level than the Environment Court — something similar to the Disputes Tribunal, where ordinary Kiwis will have recourse to low-cost justice if they feel they have been wronged by council planners.

Overall, the new scheme should make it cheaper, easier, faster and simpler to do something to your own land or propose a development, road, wind farm or anything else.

If it is pulled off, the economic benefit has almost certainly (and prudently) been understated by the Government. Many billions.

But the RMA is just one area symptomatic of a bigger problem: dysfunction in the New Zealand state. It is lagging behind other countries and not delivering the sorts of services the public expects.

Health is probably the biggest example, but that is a whole other complicated discussion.

Consider others: the many years it has taken to develop a national public transport ticketing system — tap on, tap off with a bank card — which is only just starting to be rolled out now, something other nations have had for years.

There are more straightforward areas where the Government has been making moves to be more effective and efficient. The first and most obvious for taxpayers has been Judith Collins’ push to digitise government more effectively. A customer-service app where you can access all government services, keep your records, driver licences, car registrations, land records, benefit payments and so on is only just being rolled out.

Collins has also, for the first time, moved to centralise government IT procurement and systems. It is mildly mind-boggling this did not happen years ago. The transition will obviously be difficult and almost certainly blow out in cost and time, but the long-term payoff should be worth it.

There are other signs of dysfunction. Last week the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet — an extremely important department with crucial constitutional and national security responsibilities — quietly released a Change proposal and final decisions on the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Organisational Structure.

Leaving aside the jargon-heavy title, it turns out the DPMC has been underfunded for over a decade, but the lack of cash has been disguised by its “hosted activities”. These include hosting NEMA (emergency management), the All-of-Government response to Covid-19, the Royal Commission into the Christchurch mosque terror attacks and others.

Those short, time-limited injections of money have essentially been subsidising the department’s core business, which includes the Cabinet Office, the Office of the Governor-General and national security — some of the core functions of the state.

The DPMC was created in 1990. It is distinct from the Prime Minister’s Office, which is the political side of the operation. No prime minister wants to be seen spending money on “themselves” (even if it isn’t really that and they should). The DPMC put together a proposed restructure after finding its financial model “unviable”. The papers were authored between November 2024 and July this year, and say more work needs to be done if it is invited to make a bid in the next Budget. It looks like it is being sorted.

More broadly, a big cash job that the Government does is paying out money in entitlements and services, and running quite a few of the latter. Benefits, NZ Super and healthcare and education are all paid for by the state, and the state is mostly good at it.

Services costs are things like schools, hospitals, defence, police — buildings, equipment and salaries for all the people working to provide those services.

But in the world of AI that is fast coming upon us, the burden is going to fall on the machinery of government and the public service to keep up with changes, integrate them, and offer citizens similar experiences to what they get from a bank, power company, Trade Me or any other decent app on their phone.

Governments hold a lot of sensitive information and are rightly cautious about how and when they adopt new technologies. But the pace has to be better, interactions with citizens better, and at lower cost.

Both Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis have talked about the need to fold AI more into government and across the economy as a tool for productivity — accompanied by more of a service mentality.

In the end, the state has to operate as a vehicle that keeps the peace, provides the entitlements determined by politicians, and enables people to live prosperous lives. Too often at the moment it tries, but gets in the way.

To keep public faith in institutions, politicians and even democracy more broadly, that will have to change in the coming years, regardless of who is in government.

These are not really partisan issues, but issues of competence and trust. And getting them right will probably bring significant political upside.