How the land lies

The proposed Resource Management Act overhaul could give the government a chance to win back voters.

- JANE CLIFTON

The government's apparent campaign to get itself constructively T dismissed next election has gathered to a roaring pace, but two bollards have appeared that might derail it.

The polls now disclose that Labour will have to do all the heavy lifting towards its own demise, as National leader Christopher Luxon is losing traction with voters, his heady rise seemingly stalled.

And, despite an impressive suite of vote-repellent reforms, the government seems to have come up with an unintentional hit, in the unlikely form of the Resource Management Act (RMA) reform.

As semantically and philosophically challenging as The Complete Works of Shakespeare, but only a fraction as rewarding unless you are a lawyer charging by the quarter hour, the RMA has been more of a dead weight than the protector of the landscape it was designed to be. It has stalled much needed development and larded it with highly questionable fees. Residential-housing projects typically languish four to five years before qualifying to merely apply for consent.

Perhaps the legislation's worst failing is having seldom been applied in the same way for the same fee by any two authorities enforcing it.

For successive governments, reforming it has been the ultimate dreaded chore. Two dozen major amendments and thousands of tweaks over 30 years seem merely to have created a greater variety of inequities and inconsistencies.

But this week, up stepped Environment Minister David Parker, long since banished to the cabinet's naughty step for various unforced errors GST on KiwiSaver fees, being rude to farmers - with a blockbuster. His RMA rewrite won't galvanise water-cooler chit-chat, but it's a proposal that astonishingly few critics have yet carped at. Given the numbing complexity and inherent unpopularity of the project, this was up there with Samoa defeating Tonga in the league.