How to make your submission on RMA reform: the Natural Environment Bill and Planning Bill

This is a handy guide to help you make your submission before the deadline of 4.30pm Friday 13 February 2026. It covers what these Bills are, why you should submit, and how to do it.

Here’s our quick submission tool if you want to get straight to it!

What are the Natural Environment Bill and Planning Bill?

The Luxon Government is planning to get rid of our main environmental law – the Resource Management Act (RMA) and replace it with the Natural Environment Bill and the Planning Bill.

These new laws will govern mining, forestry, dairying, urban development and industrial activities across the country. And if they pass these bills as is, the rules will be stacked against nature and in favour of big business.

The Government is even proposing to force the public to pay corporations to stop polluting or harming nature. If Gisborne wants stronger rules to stop forestry slash destroying homes and rivers, ratepayers could be forced to pay offshore forestry companies ‘compensation’.

Instead of polluters paying for the harm they cause, they’d be paid. And that’s just the beginning. In these two bills the Government is also proposing to:

Put corporate property rights at the centre of our environmental law, putting the health of ecosystems and communities second to private profits.
Make it easier for companies to get permission to kill kiwi and other protected wildlife
Make it harder for people to stop environmentally harmful projects by restricting public participation.

What’s really at stake here is whether Aotearoa continues to have an environmental protection law at all – or whether it gets replaced with a corporate property rights law that protects profits at the expense of nature and people.

MAKE A SUBMISSION HERE

Why should you bother submitting?

Because nature, and future generations, cannot speak for themselves. They need your voice. Most native wildlife in New Zealand is already on the brink of extinction. Over half of our rivers are unsafe to swim in and in some areas, people can no longer even drink the water from their taps because it is too contaminated with nitrates. We urgently need a stronger environmental protection law to deal with the ecological and climate crises we face.

And because it works. Submissions are a key way we show the strength of public opposition – and how we make it impossible for politicians to ignore us. They might not always stop or change a bill on their own, but they are a powerful tool we have in the wider fight to defend nature. They show all political parties what New Zealanders will or won’t stand for. If no one makes a submission, then corporations are emboldened to push our political leaders even further to serve their interests at the expense of nature and people.

Two easy ways to make your submission now:

Use our speedy submission generator tool here. Just follow the prompts and you’ll be done in a few minutes.

2. Head straight to the Government website, fill in your contact details and have your say. We’ve compiled a list of some key points you can copy and paste to include in your submission and some links to learn more about the bills below.

Key statements you can include in your submission:

New Zealanders should not have to pay companies to stop harming nature and polluting the environment. This idea is unjust, unfair and dangerous to the environment. I oppose the compensation regimes in both bills (Clauses: NEB 111 and 122; Planning Bill 92 and 105) and recommend they be removed entirely.

I want stronger legal protections for New Zealand’s native wildlife, not weaker ones. Decisions about protected wildlife should remain with DOC, under the Wildlife Act. I oppose clause 128 of the NEB and recommend that it be removed.

The purpose of our environmental law should be to protect and restore nature. It should prioritise people’s right to clean water, a healthy environment and a liveable climate. I oppose putting property rights at the centre of these bills and allowing economic and development goals to override environmental protection goals.

Our environmental law should have clear, direct rules that restrict damaging activities (i.e resource caps). I oppose all barriers in the NEB that make it hard for Councils to use direct rules (including in clauses 60-65), such as the feasibility tests.

I propose giving Councils power to revoke or amend existing permits to avoid or remedy a breach of an environmental limit or when evidence of harm has arisen.

There are real biophysical limits to how much damage the environment can take, but the NEB treats these “limits” as flexible values that can be weakened for economic reasons, costs and existing degradation. I oppose this and call for the removal of all pathways that weaken science-based limits, including the infrastructure carve-out (clause 86) and the ability for councils to set lower limits.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi must be at the heart of environmental law, but these Bills replace the strong RMA Treaty clause with weaker provisions and reduce iwi and hapū involvement in consenting. I oppose this and I oppose allowing development goals to be prioritised over the Government’s duty to provide for Māori interests.

Everyone in Aotearoa has a stake in the health of our environment. But these Bills restrict who can take part in decisions about damaging projects. I oppose raising the public notification threshold and excluding people or groups just because they live outside the region.

MAKE A SUBMISSION HERE