The Never-Ending Suburban Dream: Dr Nick Smith's purported determination to make housing more affordable by "reforming" the Resource Management Act has been widely derided as little more than a National Party recommitment to the urban development model of the 1950s and 60s. In short, to quote Peter Dunne, "a developers' charter".
THE LAWYERS and the environmental lobbyists are already
gnawing at Dr Nick Smith’s proposed changes to the Resource Management Act
(RMA). Forewarned by the National-led Government’s first, abortive, foray into
environmental law reform back in 2013, a forearmed Opposition has this week
re-joined the battle with renewed energy.
The United Future leader, Peter Dunne, has warned against
turning the RMA into a “Developers’ Charter” – a potent political riff upon
which his parliamentary colleagues have been only-too-happy to extemporise.
Has the Prime Minister, rubbing shoulders with 1 percent of
1 percent of the 1 Percent at Davos, given equal heed to the venerable Member
for Ohariu? Given that few politicians’ appreciation of middle-class New
Zealanders’ tics and tells is stronger than Mr Dunne’s, if John Key isn’t
paying attention to him, then he should – and soon.
Not that, in the brutal numbers game that determines whether
a piece of legislation succeeds or fails, Mr Key needs the endorsement of Mr
Dunne. The parliamentary arithmetic of environmental law reform requires no
complicated figuring. The Act Party’s grace-and-favour MP for Epsom, David
Seymour, has already signalled (well in advance of any actual shouts of
“Division called for!”) that he will be supplying Dr Smith with the single vote
necessary (in addition to National’s 60 votes) to ensure the passage of the
Government’s environmental reforms.
Which is, when you think about it, extraordinary. With sixty
MPs, National’s current parliamentary caucus is, by historical standards, a
large one. It is also slavishly obedient.
Outside of the armed forces and large private corporations,
it is remarkable to find a group of sixty strong-willed individuals who can be
relied upon absolutely to do exactly as they are told. Especially remarkable
when doing exactly what they’re told could very easily cause the seats that a
number of them hold to change hands.
Readers of a certain age will recall National Party MPs like
Mike Minogue and Marilyn Waring, Simon Upton and Ruth Richardson, who were
willing, in the absence of any acceptable compromise, to cast their votes
against their own Government’s policies.
It has been a very long time indeed since a National Party
politician “crossed the floor” in any kind of procedurally meaningful context.
For many years now absolute caucus discipline has not only been assumed – it
has prevailed.
Such robotic compliance is not good for the health of
National’s caucus; the wider National Party organisation; nor, ultimately, for
that of parliamentary democracy itself. Voters need to believe that there are
at least some MPs whose definitive allegiance is to values and principles more
enduring than the arguments of their Party Whip. On matters crucial to both the
social and the natural environments, the practice of representative democracy
should rise above the crude calculations of purely partisan arithmetic. It
should be about reason and science; about being persuaded by the evidence and
securing the greatest good for the greatest number.
Replacing New Zealand’s much admired RMA with a “Developers’
Charter” would be about none of those things. On the contrary, it would be
about using the legislative process to advance the interests of a section of
New Zealand society which has, for more than sixty years, grown extremely
wealthy (and dangerously influential) by convincing the National Party to
continue following a model of sprawling urban development, based on the
single-story detached dwelling and the private automobile. As a template for
sustainable urban growth, it was already out-of-date when the First National
Government adopted it in 1949.
Economically-speaking, the model only works by transferring
vast public subsidies into the bank accounts of the private land speculators,
property developers, builders and roading contractors who are its indefatigable
champions.
Unfortunately, the greed of this corrupt system’s
beneficiaries has led them, like all racketeers, to jack up their prices to
unaffordable levels. The consequential crises, both social and environmental,
are dominating the headlines.
The solution to the problem of unaffordable housing is not
to gut the RMA, as the urban-sprawl lobby would have us all believe, but to
make it fit for the purpose of managing the introduction of a more rational,
sustainable and affordable model of
urban development. Since this model will, inevitably, require massive
investment from the public, it must
also be answerable to the public.
Peter Dunne understands this – even if Dr Smith and Mr Key
do not.
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 23 January 2015.
