This bill amends the Resource Management Act 1991 to extend the duration of existing resource consents that would expire before replacement legislation is enacted. It is a five-clause bill providing a transitional extension to 31 December 2027.
Parliament advanced this bill under urgency (committee of whole house, first reading, second reading, third reading) — moving it through faster than usual, with less time than normal for public submissions.
These are claims MPs made in Parliament’s debate — not verified facts.
This bill amends the Resource Management Act (the RMA), New Zealand's main environmental and planning law, to extend how long certain resource consents remain valid. A resource consent is the permission needed to do something that affects the environment, such as taking water or building. Because the government is replacing the RMA with a new planning system, some consents would otherwise expire during the changeover. The bill automatically extends consents due to expire before a set future date, and reinstates recently expired ones where a replacement application is still pending, so holders do not have to reapply under a law that is being scrapped. It affects consent holders, applicants and councils.
It is a government bill introduced as a practical bridging measure during the wider RMA reform. Supporters argue it saves consent holders — including businesses, farmers and infrastructure providers — the cost and delay of reapplying under rules that are about to change, reducing unnecessary administrative burden. Critics may argue that automatically rolling consents over, particularly for activities affecting water, limits fresh environmental scrutiny that a renewal would normally bring.
See the Parliament.nz ↗ site for the full bill.