Justice for all?

The Government’s draft reform of the Resource Management Act is vague and vacuous, but its intent is stoking fear throughout the country.

- JANE CLIFTON

Those becalmed in lockdown could do worse than swap their jigsaw puzzles for Parliament’s fiendish three-dimensional version, the reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA).

Online hearings are underway into the draft of a new law, which will have to mesh in with a companion law on climate change and with numerous other not-quite-finished reforms, including water management, local government, and housing acceleration.

Confoundingly, what’s being looked at here is an “exposure draft” of the Natural and Built Environments Act (NBEA), which means it’s at a stage where vital pieces of the puzzle are not yet included. So far it’s mostly sky.

The environment select committee hearings therefore also offer linguistics experts a unique chance to measure the lack of specificity in politicians, bureaucrats, and experts. This may be the least specific talkfest in Parliament’s history.

To say that few submitters can figure out what the NBEA will do, who it will be done by, or to, and who will check that it has been done would be a wicked understatement.

The number of times the self-protectively vague preposition “around” is used, in place of more exacting words, such as “of”, “to”, “for”, “from” and “about”, is off the scale.

Labour’s Angie Warren Clark can be excused for five “arounds” in a single question during the hearings. She couldn’t ask questions directly “about” anything in the bill because, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there’s no there there.