Mayor rails against spending money on rules Government wants to scrap

Monday, 5 August 2024

A mayor is angry ratepayers in areas such as Greymouth have been stung with a $1 million bill to meet legislation the Government has promised to scrap next year.

A West Coast mayor is angry the region’s four councils could be forced to spend about $3 million to abide by regulations the Government says it will scrap next year.

It comes after Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard was accused of not following proper process when he announced in March that councils would no longer have to comply with requirements for significant natural areas while ministers replace the Resource Management Act (RMA).

Hoggard said the bill to suspend the requirement for councils around the significant natural areas, part of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity, was currently before Parliament.

“The select committee considering the bill is due to report back on September 30, 2024, and I expect Parliament to consider the bill shortly afterwards,” he said.

Grey District mayor Tania Gibson says she doesn’t want to waste ratepayer money on rules that are going to change.

Environment ministry officials would shortly begin consultation on changes, which Hoggard expected would take effect next year.

In the meantime, councils were to make their own decisions, keeping the changes the Government had signalled in mind, he said.

“We’ve clearly signalled our intentions for change and are moving as fast as possible. If I were West Coast ratepayers, I would be making it clear to their council about how they feel about spending all this money on something that is likely to need to be changed following the review,” he said.

Grey District mayor Tania Gibson said her council had already consulted with landowners affected by previous legislation and was now being forced to redo the process and identify more significant natural areas while writing a new combined district plan with the Westland and Buller district councils.

The district plan is currently being drafted and hearings on significant natural areas are set to take place this month.

Associate Minister for the Environment Andrew Hoggard says new rules will be in place next year regarding significant natural areas.

Gibson said mapping out new significant natural areas would cost ratepayers about $1m, and could end up costing them more when the rules changed again.

“Around $200,000 is a 1% rate rise for us. The new criteria that the Labour government implemented at the end of their term … would mean more private land essentially deemed an SNA and take the West Coast to over 90%-plus locked up.”

She wanted the Te Tai Poutini plan committee, responsible for creating the district plan, to delay this month’s hearings until the new legislation has passed. The committee held a workshop with a lawyer on Friday to discuss the issue and decided to ask the hearings panel to postpone to October.

It also decided to seek urgent meetings with the Crown to confirm its intentions and pass on the grave implications for the West Coast, both financial and social, if councils had to continue to legislate for significant natural areas.

Legal advice received by the committee said the adverse consequences of delaying the hearing would outweigh any potential benefit.

It also noted the committee could not make the decision to delay the hearings, but the panel’s commissioners could after a request from the council.

While the Government had proposed changes to identification and mapping requirements for significant natural areas, it had not proposed removing the need to identify them entirely, the legal advice said.

A staff report to the committee said the rest of the plan could be delayed a year as it would be difficult to deliver a coherent decision without the indigenous biodiversity chapter.

But the committee had a duty to avoid unreasonable delay and an extension would need to be sought from the minister, it said.

It would also cost money to delay the process, to cover commissioners, staff time and cancelled travel.

At Friday’s workshop, Te Runanga o Ngāti Waewae chairperson Francois Tumahai suggested removing the significant natural areas requirement from the plan. The lawyer said councils would be in breach of the law if they did that.

“I’m just grumpy that we’re going to go down a path … and it’s going to change,” Tumahai said.

“The frustrating thing for me is the ratepayers are going to have to cover this again.”