RMA folio Photo: Bill McKay
While many people ease into Christmas, head to drinks, write cards and mentally check out, in its penultimate sitting week of 2025 Parliament is doing the opposite.
This is one of MPs' busiest weeks of the year.
Ten new bills across different portfolios were introduced, a matching number for Santa's reindeer (including Rudolf). Probably the most high-profile of them were three comprising the surprise arrival of the government's major shake-up of the Resource Management Act (RMA).
News of the legislation's arrival at Parliament took place during an lock-in event reminiscent of Budget Day, in which the government gave opposition MPs, officials and the media a couple of hours to familiarise themselves, before releasing a full outline of its RMA reform plan at 1pm.
The RMA is to be replaced by two new laws - one focused on development planning and one on the natural environment.
Those two bills were introduced this week, but the government opted not to progress them under urgency this week to give "members a good chance to digest them", Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop said.
Those two bills are moving through the default legislative process, so they won't pass until a few months into next year. They aren't scheduled to take effect until 2029.
To bridge the three-year gap and provide some certainty in the interim, the government began urgency with a third, RMA related bill - the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill.
"At the moment, consent holders face an unnecessary burden," Bishop told the House on Tuesday.
"Many of them are required to renew resource consents under the current system, even though the new system will be in place; that will streamline processes. It's our view that that is inefficient and unnecessary. So these are temporary yet urgent changes that will avoid uncertainty, stress, and cost."
The third bill extends resource consents that are due to expire before the new RMA regime is passed (end of 2027), and it reinstates and extends recently expired consents in cases where a replacement application has already been lodged.
The RMA was originally passed in 1991 by the fourth National government and was, at the time, internationally novel. More than 30 years later, there's general agreement that reform is needed. Where political parties' ideas deviate is how those changes should look.
Because the opposition hadn't had much time to delve into the details of the extension bill, their grievances on the bill included the use of urgency.
"Minister Bishop and Simon Court have been very, maybe 'collaborative' would be too strong of a word, but they've involved us at some points along the way in the resource management development. I want to give them credit for that." said Lan Pham, Green Party spokesperson for RMA.
"What was really disappointing with this was not having any heads-up about it at all. That would have been a really basic thing to do, right? If this is so important and urgent to the transition, just let us at least know about it, right? Then we can actually understand it.
"The fact that we've just got this bill, literally an hour or two before it goes through all stages in urgency, is absolutely unacceptable."
Governing party MPs seldom speak for long in the current Parliament, but under urgency they get very terse. This bill was set down for all stages under urgency, and coalition backbench contributions were barely elevator-pitches. Opposition MPs filled their allotted speaking times.
After a long evening in the Committee of the Whole stage, with Opposition MPs happy to slow proceedings, the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill eventually passed all stages about an hour into Wednesday morning. It's likely to be signed into law next week.
To listen to the audio version of this story, click the link near the top of the page.
RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
