History
Historical summary by Principal Environment Judge R J Bollard
In 1926 the Bill which led to New Zealand's first town planning legislation was introduced. During the Bill's second reading, the then Minister of Internal Affairs responsible for the Bill insightfully observed that: "Cities and towns in the Dominion at the present time have no schemes of town planning and the sooner the controlling authorities have the power and set to work and draft such schemes the better for themselves and the people generally". Ground breaking as the 1926 Act was, however, it did not provide a right of appeal to an independent forum.
When Parliament first set up a system for appeals from planning decisions under the 1953 Act, it sought an entity that would travel to all parts of the country, look at planning schemes, and hear evidence on the spot, so that if people were unhappy with a local authority's decision, they could appeal to a body with expertise to deal with matters of a technical nature and knowledgeable about local body planning and administration. A judicial panel or board was constituted, with a person of legal standing presiding "to ensure that there is justice as between the people and the authority, to hold the scales of justice and to preserve the rights of the individual".
The following 50 years or so have demonstrated the value of having a system of appeals from local government decisions to an independent specialist body which comes to the locality, hears evidence, views the subject site in application appeal cases and gives judicial decisions with due reasoning. That value has been demonstrated in three ways - by the continuing volume of appeals which people have chosen to bring year by year; by the successive increases in the extent of jurisdiction vested in the appeal body; and, allied to that, the recognition of the present forum as a court, thus joining the two other specialist courts that exist in this country, the Employment Court and the Maori Land Court.
Harking back to the early days, appeals could be brought against decisions on the contents of planning schemes (particularly zoning), on planning applications, and on subdivisions. In less than 10 years the workload had increased to the point where an additional Appeal Board was needed. In 1967 a coherent system for controlling the taking, discharging and damming of natural waters was proposed in the Water and Soil Conservation Bill. The Select Committee decided that the Planning Appeal Board would be the right type of body to protect the rights of the individual and assist in facilitating appropriate land use practices and the multiple use of water. Parliament thus provided for appeals from decisions on water rights. Provision was later made for classification of natural waters, with appeals from classification decisions. The early focus on the rights of the individual was affirmed by provision for objections against taking of land under the Public Works Act.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, it was not only the number of appeals, but the manifold issues that arose which underlined the need for and importance of the appeal system. The input of Judge Turner and Judge Treadwell in the earlier seventies, augmented and further advanced when Judge Skelton was appointed in 1978 and Judge Sheppard in 1980, was of uniformly high calibre, and the respect those judges engendered through their decision-making, in conjunction with the judicial members who sat with them, laid the foundation for the long term and steady progress of the appeal system that has occurred since. In short, their judicial work contributed very significantly to the importance attached to planning and environmental issues and the principled assessment of them according to law.
One can look back to those heady days of the "think big" era - the Clyde power dam, the Kapuni ammonia urea plant, the Nelson pulp mill proposal that were the subject of appeals, and the applications for the Taranaki methanol and synthetic petrol plants that were also heard by the Planning Tribunal which replaced the former Appeal Boards when the 1977 Planning Act took effect.
By the late 1980s it was thought in some quarters that statutory planning and environmental controls should be consolidated under a new comprehensive piece of legislation. As a platform for reform the concept of sustainably managing natural and physical resources, with an emphasis upon looking to the effects of activities, took hold with the enthusiastic encouragement of Geoffrey Palmer as he then was. Hence, the Resource Management Act (RMA) came about with effect from October 1991. The work of the Planning Tribunal and later the Environment Court has proceeded apace since, in a climate of continually evolving case law, statutory amendments, and amidst modern social, cultural and economic conditions.
Many would no doubt say that the Court's decisions today are more complex than they were in the past. Certainly the RMA and instruments generated by it often demand a wide-ranging degree of consideration and analysis, with good environmental outcomes the constant objective in the context of sustainable management of natural and physical resources.
The appeal system over the years since the 1953 Act was introduced has embraced a multi-faceted cavalcade of notable events and progress down to the present, of which this brief overview conveys only a limited impression. Perhaps the foregoing may nevertheless lead some readers to reflect upon past years in the light of personal experiences, whether under the RMA or extending back to earlier days, and to look to the future with renewed commitment against that background.
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