Debates: finally complete, incomplete, and unwelcome

0:00Heko na i burangi te ney, natereo irirangi o a tearoa. Mr 분, massa kita and it's the culmination of years of hard work to replace the RMA once and for all.

1:00For 30 years the RMA has held New Zealand back from its full potential. Today we are scrapping it, breaking free from a system that has stifled opportunity and economic growth for too long. We are restoring the freedom for New Zealanders to shape their own futures by using property as they choose. A once in a generation shift towards growth, choice and prosperity. The Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill illustrate just how long it can take to develop, to draft and to pass into law, complex legislation. If you take your time to do it properly and don't resort to urgency. Consider this. In December 2023, not quite three years ago, the then brand new coalition government and just its second full week of parliament, repealed the Labour government's own reworking of the RMA. Chris Bishop. So it's better to just get off the books now, start again and that's what we're going to do and that's what the government is seeking. A mandate for from the parliament and with that, thank you very much for being a resistance speaker.

2:00That earlier legislation, also comprising a brace of bills, had taken David Parker some five years to get to completion. It lasted not quite four months on the law books. Having repealed it, Chris Bishop began from scratch again and as David Parker had, took time on it. So this week almost three years since work began, the replacement bills finally reached their own conclusion, just in time for the next election. This time round, if the government were to change, the current leader of the opposition has said there wouldn't be any wholesale repeal and replace. And I expect the legal drafters are greatly relieved. That wasn't the only business on Tuesday, but to make the week harder, the first debate wasn't actually one the government had planned or indeed wanted. It was an urgent debate after video was leaked to the New Zealand hero that appears to show a senior Ministry of Education official advising staff how to conduct curriculum feedback to and from the Minister's office while avoiding the official information act.

3:03From Labour, Duncan Webb and then the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford. We've got to be really mindful, she said, that this process comes before we start the formal process, which is the one through BACS, that is Ministerial Information BACS, and it is all formal public and transparent. They are running parallel processes, the real process and the formal process. That is duplicitous, and it's under this Minister's watch. Erica Stanford is presiding under a duplicitous process, which is not transparent. It's not honest, and she's saying that on one side of her mouth, I expect transparency, and on the other side of her mouth, she's doing the opposite. It's despicable, it should stop. And it was very disappointing to see that the Ministry of Education officials were making comments that were reported in the New Zealand hero today. It should be very clear and put on the record and handsart that not myself or anybody else in my office has ever directed or even suggested that anyone should not comply with the OAA or do anything other than fully comply with it, or should not be subverting it in any way.

4:12We began by saying that governments never quite run out of things they want done. The next laws will remain incomplete when this parliament ends, including five they didn't quite manage to finish off during last week's prolonged urgency. A rough count shows about 45 different proposed laws currently in process that will remain unfinished when parliament dissolves. Three new ones were added just today. Things that are on the government's agenda this week, though, include finishing off the agriculture compounds in veterinary medicines bill and the postnatal stable. A farewell speech from Act MP Brook van Veldon and on Wednesday, a debate into the many and fascinating rule changes proposed for the next parliament. But more on that tomorrow. You've been listening to the House. It's a fucker on our quake de furi. This program is produced with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clark. Mata wa.