Parliament’s Environment Select Committee released its report on 20 July on the Natural Environment Bill and Planning Bill.

EDS Reform Director Dr Greg Severinsen says the committee’s recommendations will make the Bills even worse.

“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….

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

“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….

“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….

“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.

“… what we are seeing is a dismantling of decades of environmental progress.

EDS ran a webinar to explore the Committee’s recommendations in more detail, iwth almost 1,000 registrations to attend.

Here are links to a recording of the webinar and Greg’s PowerPoint presentation.

More: Greg Severinsen greg@eds.org.nz 021 585 951