"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."
"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.
"Protection of property rights is amongst the chief reasons for which governments are constituted, yet successive NZ governments over recent years have not only ignored your property rights, but have actively sought to remove them. ...
"New Zealanders who once themselves understood the crucial importance of property rights now seem bemused by their lack, until perhaps they themselves find they can’t build on their own property, can’t cut down their own trees, can’t use their property in ways they always have, or find that control of their property has been passed to someone else … and that someone carries a clip-board and must be called ‘Sir’ … and we must pay that person for the privilege of asking them permission to do what we want to on our own land.
It’s not right.
"Author Ayn Rand once observed that when the productive have to ask permission from the unproductive in order to produce, then you may know that your culture is doomed. Aren’t we there now?
The productive have been asking permission from the unproductive in order to produce … and you haven’t been getting it, have you. Not without a fight. Not without iwi consents. Not without a large legal bill, and several weeks months spent with a consultant.
"There is a litany of projects across the country – projects both large and small --that have never and will never get of the ground – permission having been sought at great time, energy and expense, and permission never having been granted. The number of large infrastructure projects completed in the last ten years can be counted on the fingers of one foot.
"[And there are uncountable small projects, things that you and I would have once attempted], that are just stillborn; never to be tried, as people realise that there’s no point in planning projects and paying for consultants and for permission that will never be granted.
"And there are people who have now realised that their land is no longer their own, since ownership means nothing when you must ask someone else’s permission in order to use that which you own.
"It’s not right.
"We’ve lost our property rights, and we’ve lost the understanding of why property rights are important. What we’re losing is part of our heritage: part of what made the West rich, and part of what protected our freedom, our liberty, and our lives.
...
"The need for a legal framework protecting property has been long ignored or taken for granted by economists and legal theorists of all stripes, but its importance is slowly being re-understood by contemporary thinkers. Tom Bethell’s landmark book 'The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages' traces successes and disasters of history consequent upon the respective recognition or denial of property through the ages: Ireland’s potato famine, the desertification of the Sahara, and the near-disastrous US colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth can all be traced to lack of respect for property....
"Bethell identifies four crucial blessings of property that can't easily be recognised in a society lacking the secure, decentralised, private ownership of goods. These are: liberty, justice, peace and prosperity. The argument of [his] book is that private property is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for these highly desirable social outcomes.
"Property rights then give us a firm place to stand deserving of legal protection — a Turangawaewae. Their full legal and constitutional protection is crucial, in order to ensure that their protection is not taken away by arbitrary legislative fiat, as has happened over recent years. ...
"The most glaring recent example of the destruction of property rights by legislative fiat is that of the Resource Management Act (RMA). In all the nearly five-hundred pages of the RMA there is not one reference to property rights — not one! — yet it is people’s property and their use of it with which the RMA deals directly. ...
"Private property rights do not just protect us; they provide the strongest possible protection for the environment, since owners with clearly defined and secure property rights have a strong incentive to care for their own land. Our property rights act like ‘mirrors,’ reflecting back on ourselves the consequences of our own actions.
"[Properly directed, as the common law was once allowed to,] they also give us the power to act as guardians against abuse by others — specific legal power to act against those who would damage the environmental values of our property.
"As property rights are eroded however, people become less willing to invest in good stewardship because they are uncertain as to where the benefits of their labours will finally accrue.
"Most damage to the environment is the result of ‘the tragedy of the commons’ whereby people are encouraged to ‘take the last fish’ or ‘cut down the last tree’ because if they don’t, then someone else will. Property rights solves the ‘tragedy of the commons’ by defining ‘whose tree’ it is, and by giving secure legal protection to those planning longer range by planting trees.
"As Hernando de Soto argues, property rights extend people’s time horizons by allowing them to plan longer-range rather than shorter. In jurisdictions in which property rights are not secure, he writes, it will be observed that people will build their furniture before they build their walls or their roof. The reason for this is that without the protection of property rights, such short-term action is rational: property in such a jurisdiction needs to be kept mobile as property cannot be kept secure. As property rights become more secure time horizons become longer, and planning can become longer range."
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