The Resource Management Act of New Zealand

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Natural and physical resources are of significant importance to the New Zealand economy and its people. For this reason correct resource management is important to New Zealand. The current system used for resource management in New Zealand is the Resource Management Act (Parliamentary Council Office, 2014). The purpose of this document is to promote sustainable management of resources, both natural and physical, as New Zealand’s primary legislation on environmental management (EM). However, since the RMA was passed it has faced significant resistance due to mainly being expensive and overly-time consuming. In 2013 the Ministry for the Environment (MFE), the New Zealand government’s principal adviser on the environment, published a discussion document on improving the New Zealand resource management system (Ministry for the Environment, 2013). This report will look to summarise, evaluate and critically assess the MFE document looking to reform the RMA. Rather than cover the entire document, this report will focus specifically on the section regarding ‘more efficient and effective consenting’ and whether this proposed reform will lead to better EM in New Zealand.

Summary and Assessment of MFE discussion document

The MFE believe that the current system put in place for resource management, the RMA, could be managed more effectively and with greater efficiency. They believe that while the RMA in terms of decision making results in the correct outcome the processes leading up to this can be “long, cumbersome and inefficient” (Ministry for the Environment, 2013, p.9). The purpose of this discussion document is to improve the resource management system in New Zealand through identification of areas in which the RMA could potentially b...

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Ministry for the Environment. (2008). A Review of Council RMA Resource Consent Processing Performance. Retrieved from http://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/rma/review-consent-processing-performance-round-one-jan08/resource-consent-processing-performance-round-one-jan08.pdf

Ministry for the Environment. (2013). Improving our resource management system. Retrieved from https://www.mfe.govt.nz/publications/rma/improving-our-resource-management-system-discussion-document.pdf

Parliamentary Council Office. (2014). Resource Management Act 1991. Retrieved from http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1991/0069/latest/DLM230265.html

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