No straight thing can be built of our crooked timber. We can and will err, even with best efforts and intentions.  

In engineering, a fail-safe is a design feature that, when something goes wrong, forces the system toward a safer state.  

Getting everything right in a new resource management system, and all the national direction that follows from it, seems impossible. The job is too big. 

Why not consider some fail-safes in the legislation? 

Resource management reform deliberately took a thin-framework approach leaving a lot of detail to later in the process. There are principled reasons for it. But it increases risk. Change the Minister or government and national direction can shift sharply.  

Even without politics, councils can get zoning maps wrong at the outset. And conditions can change more quickly than zoning plans.  

Under the old resource management system, Section 32 at least gestured toward cost-benefit assessment. The new one does not even do that. It risks imposing restrictions whose private costs exceed any public benefits. Although the legislation provides some “regulatory relief”, it is far from comprehensive.  

Two fail-safes, set in primary legislation, could limit the harm. 

If too little land is zoned for a particular use, that artificial scarcity shows up in inflated prices where zoning is too tight. A persistent price difference between otherwise-similar properties on either side of a zoning boundary would provide that signal.  

Primary legislation could require councils to approve private plan changes extending the boundary when that price signal is strong, after factoring in infrastructure costs. Ideally, ample zoning would make this provision redundant. But if zoning created too much scarcity, there would be a fail-safe. 

A second fail-safe could ensure cost-benefit thinking. Under the legislation, some kinds of costly restrictions imposed by the new planning system trigger “regulatory relief” for owners. But many such restrictions are not covered, and the relief provided could be inadequate.  

British planning rules allow property owners to serve purchase notices on the council: If restrictions make it too hard to use the land, the owner can require council to purchase it.  

A stronger version of that provision could be an excellent fail-safe. 

It is impossible to get zoning “right”. Fail-safes do not eliminate mistakes. But they do make those mistakes less costly. Good ones can even discourage mistakes from happening in the first place.  

The Select Committee should consider these kinds of fail-safes.