The bills to replace the Resource Management Act are now at select committee.
The best submissions are in your own words, but we have some key points below you may wish to include in your submission.
We are also encouraging local community groups like Catchment, Watercare, Landcare groups to make their own submissions. If you are involved with that important work, whether you are submitting in their name or your own, make sure to tell the select committee about the work you do. Local, grassroots environmental action is where the important work gets done and it's all too easy for MPs and bureaucrats to forget that when they write legislation.
Key points
- Freshwater Farm Plans are an open back door for a universal compliance regime (“Big Brother for every farm”).
- If Farm Plans stay, safeguards must be written into law, setting a sensible threshold so no one is worse off than under RMA consenting and limiting what compliance can be imposed by regulation, so future governments can’t expand requirements by regulation alone.
- Remove the old RMA Section 6 from the new bills completely. Land classifications are arbitrary, counterproductive, and impose undue compliance costs on landowners, whether or not they are called Significant Natural Areas, Outstanding Natural Landscapes, Sites and Areas of Significance to Maori, or anything else.
- Local communities are already doing the best environmental work through catchment, landcare, watercare groups and similar efforts. Legislation should support practical grassroots approaches.
Click here to make a submission on the Parliament website.
Submissions close on 14 February 2026.
You can also read the Groundswell NZ submission to the select committee here.
