Resource Management Act 1991 - 2007 Assessment of RMA's Performance

2007 Assessment of RMA's Performance

Rod Oram's paper 'The RMA now and in the future', presented at the 2007 Beyond the RMA conference assessed the RMA's performance over its first 16 years. The paper's main conclusions were the following:

• 'The effectiveness of the RMA is patchy. In rural areas it can cope with allocation and management of relatively abundant resources. But it cannot cope when resources, particularly water, are fully allocated. Nor can it cope with cumulative effects.... Under the RMA it is not easy for councils to declare a halt to further consents. And in urban areas, the RMA works well for small, local consents. But it is inadequate for dealing with wide area, long-term and strategic issues of urban development.'
• 'The efficiency of the RMA has increased.... And there may be more gains to come from the 2005 amendments, which put in place mechanisms to upskill council staff and for councils to share knowledge. But some 20 councils were still considered to be under-performing.... And there are still complaints by consent applicants about variable quality of staff, decisions and timeliness. The continuing lack of national policy statements and environmental standards are widely considered detrimental to the Act's administration.'
• 'The future of the RMA is highly uncertain. Almost all the development effort that has gone into it has focused on improving process rather than refining purpose. Thus, administration of the Act might have become more efficient but the legislation has failed to respond to greater pressures on the environment...or greater demands from the public for higher standards and more certain sustainability'.