Adjournment Debate - Video 6

[@allisondoak9425]

Now if I were a wealthy land owning Epsom voter I would be very concerned about the 'scrap the RMA' slogan. The RMA as a piece of legislation is more significantly important to those people's lives than it is to poorer people. The existing use rights, the scheduling, the protection from reverse sensitivity effects, the existing consents, the zones and environments that they have invested into are protected by this legislation and through this legislation they as landowners are the greatest influencers of the policies and plans that come under it through the consultation processes, and through the submission, hearing and environment court processes. The RMA has existed for nearly 30 years, the average person in Epsom was a child when this was introduced. That's near three decades of professionals, of developers and of those landowners learning to utilise this framework, that's near 30 years of tax and rate payer investment in policy frameworks. Think of the chaos it would cause to throw this out. The member has no understanding of the free market he professes to love. To shock the market with mass deregulation during a housing bubble, at a time when productive land needs to be replaced as it is taken over by residential growth that's insane. To burden councils with the cost of replacing their entire policy frameworks at a time when rates are high due to inflated house prices and when councils are picking up the shortfall of government in infrastructural investment is insane.

[@Kefecopter]

desperate times calls for desperate measures