1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

1.1 The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the illustrative National Policy Direction (NPD) for the new planning system.

1.2 The Initiative is a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. In combination, our members employ more than 150,000 people. We conduct research to support sound public policy development in New Zealand, and we advocate for a competitive, open, and dynamic economy, as well as a free, prosperous, fair, and cohesive society.

1.3 The NPD will be one of the most consequential elements of the new system. The Planning Act 2026 and Natural Environment Act 2026 deliberately leave much of their operative content to the NPD and national standards. Those instruments will determine how the legislation's broad, unranked goals are reconciled, how environmental limits are set, and how regional spatial plans and regulatory plans constrain the use of land and natural resources.

1.4 This submission's positions are informed by the Initiative's February 2026 submission on the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, its April 2026 research note RMA Reform: Getting the New System Right, and its 2025 submissions on National Direction Changes (July 2025) and Going for Housing Growth (August 2025).

1.5 Since the illustrative NPD was published, the Bills completed their committee stages with amendments, including giving the Planning Bill a statutory definition of a competitive urban land market, a duty on councils not to restrict developable land artificially, and an independent urban land market officer with determination powers. The Bills were passed on 22 September 2026, received Royal assent on 30 September and most provisions entered into force on 1 October, albeit with a lengthy transition period. This submission therefore confines its requests to what the NPD and national standards can lawfully do under the Acts as enacted. Where we consider the legislation itself falls short, we record our concern and recommend amendment by a future Parliament rather than proposing anything inconsistent with the Acts.

1.6 We support much of the substantive direction in the illustrative document, including its:

• presumption in favour of enabling private land use, particularly its central purpose of recognising "private property rights where the presumption is that people can use their land without unnecessary constraints”;
• competitive urban land market provisions;
• prohibition of urban growth boundaries and connection requirements;
• protection of lawfully established activities; its proportionate treatment of the primary sector;
• avoidance of regulatory duplication;
• tiered approach to indigenous biodiversity; and
• absence of Te Mana o te Wai and its hierarchy of obligations.

These are material improvements on existing national direction under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA).

1.7 We understand the illustrative NPD to be just that – illustrative. It was produced fairly rapidly in response to early concerns about decisions left for future policy direction rather than made in primary legislation, and it indicates the direction an NPD might take once the new government has formed, if that government is similar to the one that provided the illustrative draft. Please read our comments and recommendations in that light. We expect that many of the concerns we raise here will already have occurred to the Minister’s staff and officials and will occur to any future government providing a more-than-illustrative draft NPD.

1.8 Our principal concern is that the illustrative NPD does not yet perform the functions the Acts assign to it. Section 54 of the Planning Act and section 79 of the Natural Environment Act require the NPD to particularise all the goals and to direct how they are to be achieved, including by identifying and providing for the resolution of conflict between them. As section 3 of this submission sets out, the illustrative document largely restates the goals rather than explaining them, and it defers most conflicts to national standards that do not yet exist, and that face no equivalent statutory discipline. Every gap of that kind reopens direct recourse to the goals under section 14(3)(c), which works against the funnel design and the promise of less litigation. Closing these gaps should be the central task in preparing the proposed NPD for statutory consultation.

1.9 That concern sits within the broader one from our February submission. Too much of the new system's operation sits outside the Acts. The concern is not that secondary instruments contain detail. They must. The concern is that the legislation contains few tests, boundaries or safeguards governing that detail, so a future Minister could rewrite the system's operative direction without Parliament amending the Acts.

1.10 The consultation asks four questions. Section 4 addresses the first, on the thematic structure. Section 3 and sections 7 to 14 address the third, on priorities, gaps, and trade-offs, following the consultation document's structure: the cross-cutting directives, each of the five themes, and the system-wide directives. Sections 3, 5 and 15 address the second and fourth questions: whether the document gives a clear picture of how national policy direction would work in practice and how it could be made more useful and effective.