Auckland Council has proposed a plan change to the Hauraki Gulf Islands District Plan. Residents should have received a letter announcing the proposal and inviting submissions. Here are the documents:
Quiet Sky Waiheke has long campaigned for a plan change, to give effect to the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS). Unfortunately, this proposal doesn’t do that because council has chosen to deem that the “objectives and policies are outside the scope of the plan modification”, which means that the “proposed amendments aim only to clarify the existing regulatory framework…[and] will have no impact on future applications for helipads”. It goes on to add that “The proposed plan modification does not introduce or expand matters of consideration or change any standards. The plan modification does not propose a policy shift”.
Council’s approach is a clear and direct breach of RMA sections 55 (2) and 57 (2) which state that the objectives and policies of the district plan must be amended to give effect to the objectives and policies of the NZCPS. Although council (rightly) takes a dim view of others who breach the RMA, in this case it wishes to choose not to follow the RMA itself.
This ‘purposely narrow’ approach (as council calls it) means it has presented four invalid options (none of which propose to give full effect to the NZCPS) and evaluated them against each other. The evaluation of the recommended option states that, under the resultant rule, a wider consideration of NZCPS policies would not be permissible.
Because the scope of the NZCPS is wider than what the current rule can accommodate as a matter for discretion, Council says it will only incorporate those aspects of the NZCPS which wouldn’t require it to change the objectives, policies and activity status of the plan. Council wants to choose to not give effect to the NZCPS, but that option is not legally available to it. Section 55 (2D) (a) of the RMA states that “in all cases, the local authority must make the amendments…as soon as practicable”. The NZCPS was published fifteen years ago.
Council refused numerous times to admit that it hadn’t given effect to the NZCPS. Finally it has admitted it hasn’t, but now says that it won’t, because (this is paraphrasing) it would mean that the district plan would need to change in ways that would make it harder to gain consents for helipads and it doesn’t think there is policy backing for that.
It’s pure doublethink to believe that a government policy (the NZCPS) can’t be given effect to, because there’s ‘no policy backing for it’. Down is up for Auckland Council…at least for helicopter flights. And council takes this position even as it is in the midst of a process to change the district plan to notionally give effect to the NZCPS.
The only legitimate option is to give full effect to the NZCPS. That will require a change to the activity status, and a revision of the objectives and policies of the district plan. It will make it harder to gain consents for helipads. Because it will mean that more potential effects on the environment will need to be considered when applying for and processing them. It will mean a high level of protection for endangered and threatened native species and a precautionary approach with a high burden of proof. This is what Quiet Sky Waiheke wants. It is what we have campaigned for. It’s why the NZCPS was written and it’s why every other district plan in New Zealand has already undertaken plan changes to give effect to the NZCPS, long ago. It’s what the law requires. It’s what we should have had all this time, whilst council has been rubber stamping consent after consent (like this one).
We are drafting our submission and will post it here when it’s ready.
Quiet Sky Waiheke 