So, what about that RMA replacement then?

So in the next day or two the Labour Government's RMA replacement will have been repealed. Abolished. Extinguished. Labour's two replacement bits of law -- the Natural and Built Environment Act and the Spatial Planning Act -- will be gone by Christmas. 

Yippee!

In their place, we're back to the RMA.

Damn. And blast.

Labour's two replacement acts were as unworkable as they are unsayable. The RMA is just unworkable (as the three-decade long housing crisis has established). But that's what we will be back to -- along with faster consents for government projects (little help there for you and I and your friendly house-builder) and the as-yet un-detailed dangled carrot of some kind of "better" replacement to come.

When will we get it? Some time.

What will it look like? Who the hell knows.

There's nothing like opaque promises to create expensive uncertainty in a market, like housing, in desperate need of cost cutting.

Anyway, I have a solution. It seems to me that one way to create certainty, stifle NIMBYs, effect a more rapid transition, and begin the restoration of property rights -- a simple way to kill four birds with the same stone -- would be to give legislative impetus to a thing called the Coming to the Nuisance doctrine. 

The Coming to the Nuisance Doctrine is a little-known but highly effective principle that was a feature of common law jurisdictions until partially killed by statute, and all-but euthanised by the judiciary. (See for example Sturges v Bridgman – the case of a confectioner and a busybody doctor.) It lives on, partially, in Lord Denning’s famous dissenting opinion against a couple bewailing cricket balls coming through their greenhouse after moving next to a cricket oval. 

Conveniently, there are a few posts already written to help you read up on the doctrine. As the first one explains, the Coming to the Nuisance Doctrine is the antidote to what the planners have done to our cities ...

** “The Coming to the Nuisance Doctrine is the only objective means of determining who has the right to continue using his property in the event of a nuisance. If zoning is to be replaced, therefore, it must be replaced with the Coming to the Nuisance doctrine.”

    ~ The "Coming to the Nuisance" doctrine: The antidote to zoning – CAPMAG

** "I refer you again to a simple book that’s been on my shelf for well over thirty years. Its solutions are comprehensive – one simple solution being to outlaw zoning --

"'If … there were no zoning or land-use control laws, there would be considerably more housing at considerably lower prices and in areas considered more desirable.'

"Both common law and the systems set up in un-zoned cities like Houston protect freedom and property owners far better than zoning, which has only been imposed for a few decades. The problems are evident, the solutions are known, yet zoning of every New Zealand city continues."

"Men are born free but nearly everywhere in zones. Why? Because (as my well-annotated copy told me so long ago) so many cronies benefit from it."

    ~ Zoning for Special Interests

** “… it’s practical to remove the RMA overnight… Here’s how it could be done. FIRST, ENACT A CODIFICATION of basic common law principles such as the Coming to the Nuisance Doctrine and rights to light and air and the like. 

“Second, register on all land titles (as voluntary restrictive covenants) the basic 'no bullshit' provisions of existing District Plans (stuff like height-to-boundary rules, density requirements and the like).
“Next, and this will take a little more time, insist that councils set up ‘Small Consents Tribunals…”
    ~ What would 'Party X' do about the environment? - PART 3: Small Consents

** “What sort of person moves next door to a chicken farm and then complains about the smell?
The sort of people who live in Inglewood in Taranaki perhaps, who come to the nuisance and then seek to make windfall profits from someone else's destruction.”

    ~ "What nuisance?" And who came to it?

** "What I propose is another simple modification to law that would allow New Zealanders to once again repair to the common law protections that 'The Hammer' had made possible. In particular, the codification of the common law principle of Coming to the Nuisance  ... which, on its own, would be a powerful antidote to the zoning that the RMA has entrenched -- perhaps the strongest possible antidote to zoning there is. Supplementary to putting property rights in the Bill of Rights, then, ‘Party X’ could promote the reintroduction of the Coming to the Nuisance doctrine for use as an absolute in neighbourhood disputes."

    ~ What would 'Party X 'do about the environment? Part 2: 'A Nuisance and a BOR'

** “The principle of ‘coming to the nuisance’ was established (and then sadly in some jurisdictions dis-established); as was the principle of a ‘bundle of rights’ being associated with land, and some of those rights being acquired over time by ‘prescription.’”

    ~Cue Card Libertarianism -- Common law