The New Zealand Initiative Supports Resource Management Reform Package As Important Interim Step

Scoop

2 days ago

The Government's announcement of sweeping reforms to national direction under the Resource Management Act represents an important interim step toward fixing New Zealand's broken planning system.
The reforms include proposed amendments to a suite of existing national direction instruments and several new instruments across three key areas: infrastructure and development, primary sector regulation, and freshwater management.
"We applaud Ministers for stripping out unnecessary consenting hurdles and bringing forward an NPS on infrastructure to speed up investment and housing supply," says Dr Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative. "But without similarly bold action to lower barriers in the grocery sector, New Zealanders risk missing out on the opportunity to open up the retail grocery sector to competition."
The reforms tackle multiple fronts simultaneously – from enabling granny flats and papakāinga housing to removing barriers for primary sector development and streamlining infrastructure projects. New national policy statements for infrastructure and renewable energy generation signal that the Government recognises infrastructure as vital to prosperity.
"We particularly welcome the focus on removing unnecessary consent requirements that have added cost and delay without meaningful environmental benefit," Dr Hartwich said. The Government's commitment to removing certain types of land from the National Policy Statement on Highly Productive Land reflects common-sense priorities.
"These changes represent a philosophical shift from discretionary control to enabling development," Dr Hartwich said. "The new National Policy Statement for Infrastructure sends a clear message that infrastructure is critical to our prosperity, not an inconvenience to be managed."
However, The New Zealand Initiative believes the Government can do more. The organisation's recently released proposal on Fast-Track Supermarket Entry and Expansion would perfectly align with the suite of reforms the Government has put forward.
"By integrating our Fast-Track Supermarket Entry and Expansion framework into this package, Ministers would remove planning, consenting and investment barriers all at once," the Initiative's Chief Economist Dr Eric Crampton added. "That single, coordinated pathway would finally allow well-capitalised new entrants to open a network of supermarkets well in advance of the final phase of resource management reforms being implemented."
The proposal would enable the market to discover what is possible in grocery retail by removing regulatory bottlenecks that have historically protected incumbents from new competition.
"Nothing we do now under the existing RMA framework will ever be truly sufficient, given the fundamental structural problems with the current regime," Dr Hartwich said. "But the Government is making meaningful progress while we wait for Phase Three's complete overhaul – and our supermarket framework shows how they could go further."
The organisation noted that the reforms align with evidence-based approaches to urban development and economic growth, including enabling mixed-use development and reducing barriers to productive land use.
"These reforms demonstrate that good policy can advance environmental outcomes and economic development simultaneously," Dr Hartwich said. "The question was never environment versus economy – it was about creating systems that work for New Zealand families and businesses."