"The fact is that the RMA doesn't protect property rights and nor does it protect the environment. Instead it gives money and power to planners and consultants while destroying both property rights and the environment." #QotD

2004 cover story for

"The fact is that the Resource Management Act doesn't protect property rights -- as every property owner already knows -- and nor does it protect the environment -- as cases like the polluted Rotorua Lakes and the Tarawera River show us. [Instead] it give money and power to planners and consultants while destroying both property rights

    "Little wonder, really, as anyone familar with the concept of the tragedy of the commons already knows -- that without protecting property rights, you just

~ me, writing 16 years ago in ''It's Time To Drive a Stake Through the Heart of the RMA'

"The solution is simple: Don't tinker with the procedures for acquiring a Resource Consent. Don't tinker with the Environment Court. Don't 'recraft' the RMA. Don't 'streamline it, don't 'fix' or 'reform' it. 

    "Instead, drive a stake through its heart. [Draw up transitional measures] to reinstate the common law protections of property and environment -- and then get the hell out of the way."

          ~ me, writing 16 years ago in the NZ Herald

"The RMA has given unelected power to busybodies who now consider they have rights over other people's property... Remind me again how the RMA is 'permissive' as [some consultants] call it, and 'far-sighted environmental legislation' as Nick Smith has described it.

          ~ me, writing 15 years ago in the NZ Herald

"New Zealand has had nearly a decade under the RMA, under planning legislation that abolishes property rights and provides no environmental protection...In doing so we have ignored eight centuries of common law that protects both.

~ me 18 years ago, writing on 'New Zealand's Persecuted Minority: Property Owners'

Cartoon by Nick Kim

 

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