Mike Bain/cvnznews.com
The ACT Party is proposing changes to New Zealand’s planning laws that would prevent resource consent conditions requiring developers to participate in, or pay for, karakia and other spiritual practices.
ACT’s Infrastructure, Energy and Climate Change spokesperson, Simon Court, announced the policy, arguing that planning rules should focus on measurable environmental and physical effects rather than religious or spiritual beliefs.
“New Zealanders should be able to build a house, a solar farm or a factory without being made to take part in, or pay for, a religious ceremony as a condition of consent,” Court said.
The proposed amendments would exclude purely spiritual and religious effects from planning decisions, prohibit compulsory spiritual observances, and replace the concept of Te Mana o te Wai with freshwater standards based on measurable outcomes. Voluntary participation in spiritual or cultural practices would still be permitted.
Court said examples already existed where consent conditions required developers to engage with cultural ceremonies. He pointed to the IKEA development at Sylvia Park, where consent conditions required invitations to seven mana whenua groups to attend karakia and ceremonies at various construction milestones.
Similar conditions, he said, were attached to solar farm developments in Ongaonga and Ōpunake.
The move comes after the Government’s new Planning Act and Natural Environment Act received Royal Assent this week. Court acknowledged the new legislation was a significant improvement on the Resource Management Act because it did not explicitly carry over requirements relating to spiritual values.
However, he argued that simply omitting such provisions was not enough.
“Leaving a requirement out is not the same as ruling it out,” Court said.
He warned that spiritual considerations could still be reintroduced through broader cultural effects provisions, leaving councils and courts to determine where the boundary lay on a case-by-case basis.
Court stressed the proposal would not remove protections for heritage sites, urupā, archaeological sites, customary physical uses, water quality, ecosystems or rights established through Treaty settlements.
“The test is simple,” he said. “Is there an identifiable physical effect, place, resource or legal right? If there is, deal with it.
“If the claimed effect exists only as a spiritual proposition, it isn’t the planning system’s job.”
The proposal is likely to reignite debate over the role of karakia and spiritual considerations in New Zealand’s resource management system, particularly as no comparable prayers or religious observances from other faith traditions are commonly required through resource consent conditions.
