RMA: "It was twenty years ago today..."

 

Crikey! Is it really 20 years since I wrote this cover story (above) for the Free Radical magazine? 

Sure is.

It was twenty years ago last month, and even then it was already well past time to put a stake through the Frankenstein monster of Simon Upton, Nick Smith and Geoffrey Palmer. And now (as the saying goes) a little girl still waits.

And twenty years since this piece first appeared, the RMA is still a current controversy ...

I'll post the whole piece here, below the fold, so you can find out what still happens when you want a bigger home for your grandmother's Morris Minor (there's only two pages more), but in the meantime you can

• download a PDF here of the whole piece, which you can then easily print and share — it's sadly still topical
• read a condensed version here that the Herald published without asking (but hey-ho)
• and read just a few of my responses to the tinkering and tepid "reforms" that both Red and Blue Governments have enacted (or promised) ...
• New Zealand's Persecuted Minority: Property Owners - July 2002
• RMA Reforms a Lane-Change, Not a U-Turn - June, 2005
• RMA Amendments: No Stake. No Property Rights. No Surprises - September 2004
• RMA surely don't impress Shania much - Herald, June 2005
• Q: Do you have an inviolable right to do whatever you want on your property? - May 2006
• What will it take for RMA anger to result in REAL change? - July 2007
• Fisking Nick Smith: "Gutting"? What gutting? - August 2007
• No property rights thanks, we're Tories - September 2007
• What would 'Party X' do about the RMA? - PART 3: Small Consents - September 2007
• What would 'Party X 'do about the environment? Part 2: 'A Nuisance and a BOR' - September 2007
• Urban housing, and why NZ doesn't really have it - Oct 2007
• Dirty dairying and dodgy drafting - Feb 2008
• No RMA reform that's worth a damn, with even worse promised - Aug 2008
• National's RMA Policy "like a chocolate-coated turd" - Oct 2008
• National's RMA Buzzword Bullshit - Oct 2008
• Real building reform? You have to be joking. - Nov 2008
• RMA to be reviewed to promote easier theft-by-government - Dec 2008
• Keep ‘em in the dark, and feed ‘em the RMA - Dec 2008
• Planners still stitching up home-owners: NZ cities world’s second-most unaffordable - Jan 2009
• RMA – what “shake-up”? - Feb 2009
• RMA changes: let’s all look at some examples - Feb 2009
• Overhauling the urban planning process, to make life easier for whom? - Oct 2010
• To Don Brash, regarding the RMA - July 2011
• Government finally plans to address unaffordable housing. But… - Oct 2012
• It’s time to put a stake through the heart of the RMA–and time a politician finally said that - March 2014
• “Avoid , remedy or mitigate” - Oct 2014
• So they’re “reforming” the RMA again? - Jan 2015
• RMA reform? Mush, without any details to give it form - Jan 2015
• How the RMA continues to protect polluters - Jan 2015
• RMA: From back when abolition wasn’t just a pipe dream… - Jan 2015
• ‘Coming to the Nuisance’? What’s that about? - July 2016
• RMA: After 25 years, time to euthanase it - Aug 2016
• Smith’s RMA reform: yet another chocolate-coated turd - Nov 2016
• Upton’s disaster continues to unwind - March 2017
• So the RMA is being reviewed again ... - March 2021
• "The National Party believes in private property rights..." - Nov 2021
• But the principles that made the RMA suck will all still stay the same ... - Nov 2022
• RMA: No wonder the lawyers like it. - Nov 2022
• So, what about that RMA replacement then? - Dec 2023
• "The RMA’s starting position is that you need permission. It is going to be dumped." But ... - April 2024
• "Under a better Resource Management system [sic], there would be no need for fast-track approval processes." - April 2024
• "...*if* Mr Bishop delivers on his promise." - May 2024