"Chris Bishop’s primary responsibility is reforming the RMA. ... The bureaucratic class has magnificently undermined his agenda."

"[Chris] Bishop’s primary responsibility, other than completing Steven Joyce’s highway from Warkworth to Whangarei, is reforming the RMA. ... [G]iven how central the reform of the Resource Management Act has been to this government, it defies comprehension that National didn't arrive with a draft ready to go. ...

"The excellent folk at the NZ Initiative have done an analysis of the two proposed [replacement] laws [which eventually emerged]: the Natural Environment and the Planning Bills. Nick Clark, the researcher, concluded, '...in the translation from principles to legislative text, something has gone wrong. Key elements have been weakened, complexity has crept back in, and an extraordinary amount of the systems' substance has been deferred to secondary instruments that do not yet exist.' ...

"The desire to place property rights at the heart of the legislation has been superseded by placing mana whenua into their customary central role in managing the land. ...

"[Also, i]f passed, these bills will not be the final word. That will be left to ‘secondary legislation’, or regulation; binding rules made by the minister of the day that determine how the law is to be applied. The proposal is for parliament to delegate its authority to the executive with minimal oversight. This time next year, Minister Swarbrick could use this secondary legislation to mandate her own vision into reality.

"Did we vote for that? ...

"[T]he bureaucratic class ... has magnificently undermined his agenda. This should have been self-evident thirty months ago ... "

~ Damien Grant from his post 'Chris Bishop has emerged as the main pretender to a shaky crown. How shall we assess his performance?'