Select Committee Reports Back On RMA Replacement Bills – And It’s Shocking

20 July 2026

Parliament’s
Environment Select Committee has today released its report
on the Natural Environment Bill and Planning Bill. Together,
the Bills will replace the Resource Management Act 1991
(RMA).

“The Committee’s lengthy majority report
completely fails to address the massive concerns we had with
the Bills when they were introduced,” said EDS Reform
Director Dr Greg Severinsen.

“In fact, the
recommendations will make the Bills even worse.

“The
framework for regulatory relief is the most alarming.
Councils will still have to give compensation to landowners
when certain public interest protections are imposed,
including for areas of indigenous biodiversity and for
outstanding landscapes. Relief would be required where there
is a ‘significant impact’ on the reasonable use of
someone’s land, a term which the Minister gets to
define.

“There is no way councils could afford to
pay to keep existing rules, many of which have been in place
for a long time, let alone set new ones. According to advice
received by the Committee, it could cost ratepayers billions
of dollars to retain them.

“Vast tracts of
legitimate environmental protections will need to be erased.
Going through the process will itself cost millions, take
years, and involve armies of bureaucrats and lawyers at
council, Planning Tribunal and Environment Court
levels.

“The Bills’ framework for environmental
limits has been gutted even further.

“Ministers will
get to resolve conflicts between environmental limits and
economic development however they wish. There’s been a
doubling down on the idea that there should be no legal
hierarchy or prioritisation in the Bills, even for basic
protections like for water quality. Astonishingly, this
means that all reference to limits is being scrubbed from
the goals of the Bills entirely, lest they be seen as
something that actually constrains development
goals.

“When setting limits, like the amount of
threatened species’ habitat that can be cleared or how
much pollution can enter a river, there’s still an
explicit direction to balance the environment against the
economic aspirations of communities. That’s not a
limit.

“Exemptions to limits have been broadened
hugely as well. Instead of being limited to significant
infrastructure, the Minister can allow limits to be breached
for any activity if they are of the opinion that its
‘public benefits’ outweigh its harm, which could include
almost any form of development.

“And there are still
big barriers if councils want to regulate. Rules on land use
and inputs, like how much fertiliser can be applied to
farms, are not allowed at all unless non-regulatory measures
are looked at first. Heavy reliance is being placed on
voluntary actions. It looks like this has been written by
sectoral interests and will pit town against
country.

“Severe constraints on public participation
are still there too. People are almost entirely cut
out.

“Public notification of environmental consents
will be allowed only where they generate significant adverse
effects. Even then, people will have to reside in the
relevant district or region to submit.

“Where
councils choose to just paint by numbers by adopting
national standards, people will have no ability at all to
submit or appeal on the merits of plans. That leaves unique
and complex environments like the Mackenzie Basin and
Fiordland in an extraordinarily risky position, because they
need bespoke management.

“Concerns also go well
beyond environmental ones. The Regulations Review Committee
described Ministerial powers in the Bills as Henry VIII
clauses – meaning they essentially allow the government to
alter the effect of primary legislation. This warning has
fallen on deaf ears, with no changes
recommended.

“Ultimately, the majority
recommendations fail to fix the fundamentally flawed core of
the Bills. It is clear throughout the report that the strong
advice received from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the
Environment has been systematically
ignored.

“Let’s call a spade a spade: what we are
seeing is a dismantling of decades of environmental
progress.

“All this means the proposed system lacks
bipartisan support. The Committee’s report contains
scathing minority views from opposition MPs, which describe
the Bills as an embarrassment. The new laws may well come
crashing down if the government changes.

“It’s
also nonsensical that deep legislative reform is being done
at the same time as significant policy shifts and
institutional changes, including to councils that are
expected to implement all this. If we do everything at once,
the system may slow to a crawl or cease to function at all
as it descends into chaos.

“We need to hit pause and
give more serious consideration to creating a system that
will actually work. Unfortunately, that looks unlikely. The
Bills will now proceed to their second reading and the
Committee of the Whole, where members of Parliament will be
able to debate them in detail. We will be watching closely
for any further changes, especially a big item that has been
kicked down the road by the Committee – how the goals of
the two Bills are meant to interact with each
other.

“Next week EDS is running a webinar exploring
the Committee’s recommendations in more detail, and what
they might mean,” concluded Dr
Severinsen.

© Scoop Media