5.1.2
Management of the Petroleum R esource: Pre-Publication
hibit a trade competitor from assisting an appellant, regardless of the merits of the appeal ;
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reduce the circumstances in which consent authorities must notify applications ; restore the Environment Court’s power to make an order for security for costs ; and remove the right to appeal to the Court of Appeal on questions concerning proposals of national significance.5
5.1.2 The Treaty clauses and sections 6 and 7 of the Resource Management Act
Claimants submitted that the ‘Treaty clauses’ in section 4 of the Crown Minerals Act and section 8 of the Resource Management Act (see secs 4.1.1, 4.1.2) are too weakly worded to ensure that people exercising powers under those statutes comply with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Ngāruahine claimants’ criticisms were summed up in their counsel’s submission that the effect of the clauses is to impose on people who are exercising powers under the Acts ‘what are essentially procedural obligations’ and, more particularly, obligations to consult Māori.6 Other legislation imposes a standard that requires Treaty compliance, and claimants consider that the Crown Minerals Act and the RMA should be amended
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so that all who exercise functions under them must act consistently with Treaty principles.7 Claimants also submitted that the ‘Māori protection provisions’ in sections 6 and 7 of the RMA (see sec 4.1.2) are far from sufficiently protective of Māori values, knowledge and interests. Those sections require decision-makers to consider, along with many other matters, ‘the relationship of Maori and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga’ and also ‘kaitiakitanga’ but the Act does not specify any circumstances in which priority should or must be given to those matters. Instead, decision-makers must consider all the matters identified in the sections and determine, in particular situations, which course will best achieve the Act’s purpose as set out in section 5. Counsel for the Ngāti Kahungunu claimants submitted that the sections ‘have little effect on preserving or developing the kaitiaki’s relationship with the environment, or protecting the transmission of the kaitiaki’s relationship from generation to generation’. The principal reason for this, counsel said, is that ‘the values identified are specifically qualified so as to
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be balanced against other competing criteria, including environmental effects and the wellbeing of other communities’.8
Counsel for Ngāruahine made the additional submission that the Crown’s policy of promoting exploitation of petroleum (a mineral which, under section 5(2)(a) of the RMA, does not have to be sustained to meet the needs of future generations) ‘predetermines’ that exploitation is in the ‘national interest’. That has the effect, he considered, on decisions
5. Ibid, paras 3.1–3.17 6. Document E28(g), pp 8, 15 7. Paper 2.55, p 4 ; doc E36, pp 2–3 8. Paper 2.55, p 12b
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