PROGRAMME

3.00pm

Registration and information desk open

4.30 - 7.00pm

Welcome reception
ASB Theatre

8.30am

Mihi Whakatau

8.40am

Conference opening

Jesse Mulligan, Conference MC
Nadine Taylor, Mayor of Marlborough
Ben Farrell, RMLA President

8.50am

A brief 800-year history of Marlborough

Marlborough is a province of firsts, and lasts. Te Pokohiwi o Kupe, at the mouth of the Wairau River, was one of Aotearoa’s first sites of Polynesian settlement. On 17 June 1840, nine rangatira signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi at Port Underwood. This was the last of the South Island treaty signings. Three years later, on 17 June 1843, conflict erupted at Tuamarino, marking the beginning of the New Zealand wars. In 2014, Te Tauihu iwi settled their Treaty of Waitangi claims, completing historic treaty claims in the South Island. This is a brief 800-year history of Marlborough.

Dr Peter Meihana, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa/Massey University

9.20am

Panel: Climate change and natural hazards – reduction and resilience
Climate change is the most significant challenge we are facing. It is and will continue to impact everyone and will require careful thought and integrated planning based on incomplete knowledge to both reduce the scale of change and build our resilience. It requires understanding the risks to our communities, industries and the environment and making collective, integrated and equitable decisions on adaptation and actions to the changes already activated in the global climate system as well as future changes. Let’s discuss how we will rise to meet these challenges. From changing storm patterns, frequency and scale impacting our infrastructure, to effects on primary producers on crop types and dealing with pests and disease due to altered weather and temperature patterns, while continuing to provide for our communities and iwi well-being and needs. Can actions around renewable energy solutions, resource use and circular economies put us on a path towards reduction and resilience?

10.35am

Morning tea

11.05am

Panel: Future of marine management
New Zealand has the nineth longest coastline in the world. 96% of New Zealand is under water. 85% of New Zealand’s wildlife could be in its oceans. While our entire resource management system is data deficient, it is worse in the oceans: we often do not know what we do not know.

Properly managed, our oceans present opportunities. For example, aquaculture and renewable energy generation will be further developed. How can we better manage our coastal environment as well as take advantage of what the blue economy has to offer?

12.20pm

Lunch

1.30pm

Ministerial Address
Honorable Chris Bishop - Minister for RMA Reform

2.30pm

Pānui Matua: Be careful what you wish for!
We are currently experiencing significant change as the government seeks to improve planning laws and ‘end the culture of NO’. Whilst there may be general agreement that the current legislation is no longer ‘fit for purpose’, we must tread carefully and thoughtfully.

How do we ensure we continue to achieve taiao and community outcomes, whilst also informing and influencing reform and change? What role, if any, do we play as practitioners to ensure that the solution does not embed a new problem? As the perception quickly becomes the reality we are at a point in time which has the potential to make the biggest change to Resource Management Policy in our life time. I will discuss what authentic connection and delivery can look like. What tools we need in our toolbox and the broader implications of being left standing at the start line. Finally, I will pose the question, what will we use as our measure of success when it comes to RM reform? Hint, it is NOT process efficiency!

Rawiri Faulkner, Pou Toa Matarau | Ahurea Taiao, Group Manager - Culture, Environment, Settlements

3.00pm

Afternoon tea

3.30pm

Ministry for the Environment - update
An update from the Ministry for the Environment on the RM reform programme. Presenters from the Ministry will cover various aspects of the new system including the system architecture, how the two replacement Acts will operate, spatial planning, and the role of national direction.

4.15pm

Ministry for the Environment Workshop

With replacement of the RMA underway, MfE is keen to hear practitioners’ perspectives of how the system could work. Situated just after the MfE update on the replacement bill, this workshop will explore some of the building blocks of the new system.

Case Law update
A RMLA Conference staple: This workshop will provide attendees with an overview of and the opportunity to discuss recent and significant cases involving key environmental and resource management matters.

Wildfires under a changing climate – risk reduction and adaptation
This workshop will take one natural hazard, wildfire, and look to discuss how our changing climate will affect their frequencies and scale and explore options to reduce harm and build resilience for our communities and environment in the future. Recent data from Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa shows Blenheim as having the highest average number of very high or extreme fire danger days per year for 30 sites monitored between 2014 and 2023. What could we expect our wildfire future to look like and how can we respond?

Regional Spatial and Combined Plans – lessons already learned
Spatial planning and combined plans are nothing new, spatial elements are inherent in all our existing plans and several regions have combined plans. As the Government progresses its resource management reforms what are the lessons that have already been learned that we can utilise to help ease transitions? What are the opportunities that can be leveraged to make our plans fit to tackle natural hazards and climate change and ensure the resources that our economy and wellbeing are founded on are also resilient and are available for future generations? Times of change are unsettling and there is temptation to cling to the status quo, but change provides growth and opportunity, let’s explore the lessons we have learned from those that have already stepped into change.

Recognising and Protecting Cultural Values
Cultural values, cultural landscapes and sites of significance are part of what makes New Zealand unique. Resource management is inherently connected to our country’s cultural values, so how can we recognise those values and landscapes and protect our historical heritage and culture while continuing to provide for current and future generations? With resource management reform looking to make the line between heritage and resource management firmer what challenges will this present and how can we overcome these and look to positive futures?

Energy Matters: How to Catch Burnout Before It Catches You
A practical session for people who want to live and lead at the intersection of high-performance and wellbeing.

Burnout isn’t just about being tired. It’s the slow leak of energy, purpose, and joy, often invisible until we’re running on empty. It can creep in quietly, especially when we care deeply, lead others, or operate in high-pressure environments. In this session, we’ll unpack what burnout really is (and what it’s not), how to spot the early warning signs in ourselves and others, and what to do before it takes its toll. This session is ideal for everyone, especially those responsible for people, performance, or wellbeing—starting with your own. You’ll walk away with practical tools that help you feel more grounded, more energised, and better able to support the people who count on you.

5.30pm

Day one concludes

5.30 - 10.00pm

Taste of Marlborough
Wine Experience

7.00am

Regional Chairs Breakfast (invitation only)

8.20am

Welcome to day two
Jesse Mulligan

8.30am

Thought from the Court
Come and hear some current thoughts from the Environment Court.

9.00am

Keynote: Planning for the future - getting real about the law jobs that matter
Resource management law is not a magic wand – it is a bundle of law jobs. These jobs need to be done ‘well’. There are five law ‘jobs’ in resource management law that particularly matter: defining environmental problems; creating and enforcing legal obligations; administrative competence; dealing with trouble cases; and ensuring accountability. In carrying out and reforming these law jobs ‘well’ there is a need to: exercise legal imagination not wishful thinking; take legal calculability seriously; and aspire to the ongoing management of environmental quality not resolving the quality question for ever.

Prof Elizabeth Fisher, Professor of Environmental Law at the Faculty of Law Corpus Christi College

10.00am

Morning tea | RMLA AGM

10.30am

Panel: Water Water Water – fundamental freshwater futures
Freshwater, it has many forms, affects our lives in many ways and is core component of our environments. For Māori, freshwater is taonga, with deep cultural and spiritual relationships. So much has tried to be defined, discussed, legislated, unlegislated and yet we have still not found balance or reconciliation between the wellbeing of the environment and our basic human need to use this resource for our social and economic wellbeing. We are currently awash with political and legislative opinions which are increasingly divergent. Questions about the allocation, environmental limits, ecosystem health and decision-making may raise many perspectives and debates. What does not change is the fundamental fact that healthy freshwater underpins all our well beings irrelevant of what it is called or how we choose to define its priority. So how can we move into a future that recognises our inherent connection to freshwater and protects and enhances it while still enabling its use as a critical resource?

11.30am

Panel: Spatial Planning into the future
How can spatial planning be used to help us navigate the challenges of integration locally, regional, nationally and legislatively? Anticipating and responding to population growth, climate change and natural hazard adaptation and resilience? Provide for environmental protection and enhancement? Regional deals, special economic zones and new infrastructure value capture, what part can these types of mechanisms play in providing for well-functioning rural and urban areas which enhance our social and economic wellbeing? What are the opportunities and challenges with the proposed national standardisation for zoning? Resource management reforms are looking to spatial planning to enable development through building a strong evidence base to map major constraints, identifying existing and future infrastructure corridors, future urban areas, and growth and development opportunities, can they achieve all this? How does the spatial planning system help us to identify the critical choices needed for our changing environment?

12.30pm

Lunch

From 12.30pm

From ‘grave robbers’ to collaborators
In 2009 Rangitāne, in collaboration with Canterbury Museum and the University of Otago, repatriated koiwi tangata (ancestral remains) back to Te Pokohiwi o Kupe (Wairau Bar). This was a remarkable achievement particularly when we consider the very fraught history between the iwi and the archeological and museum communities. The repatriation afforded a unique opportunity to learn more about the day to day lives of Aotearoa-NZ’s first people. Since then, Rangitāne has worked alongside researchers to grow our understanding of the world tūpuna discovered, and the world we in the present must deal with. This session asks the question: how did ‘grave robbers’ became collaborators?

This fieldshop will take you on a tour of our local sites where you can hear the pūrākau, experience our cultural history and find the answers, followed by a visit to Astrolabe Wines Small Town Winery, Blenheim’s local urban winery and cellar door.

Kura Te Au (Tory Channel)
Kura Te Au (Tory Channel) is where Kupe killed the giant octopus, Te Wheke-a-Muturangi, causing its blood to run through the channel, turning the water red. In this drowned valley, the cool water and strong currents give life to ecologically significant marine sites along its margins and is a significant source of mahinga kai. It is a main thoroughfare for inter-island ferries, the centre of New Zealand’s salmon farming industry and the erstwhile home of Perano Whaling Station, the last whaling operation in New Zealand which closed in 1964. That alongside forestry, farming, tourism and other aquaculture Kura Te Au is a veritable cauldron of resource management issues.

Many Voices, One Vision – Te Hoiere Project
The Te Hoiere project is a nationally recognised catchment care programme working to restore the mauri of the land, waters, and coast in the area and implement the regional plan on the ground. This Field shop will include visits to multiple aspects of the project, including areas being restored as habitat for the Pekapeka bat, a native taonga species and New Zealand’s only native land mammal. Just as the Te Hoiere Project has brought together multiple parties including iwi, Council, farmers and Department of Conservation, this field shop brings together the past land uses, current efforts, and future aspirations for long-term outcomes for the area to benefit present and future generations to come.

Wine in a million!
How did Marlborough become a world leader in viticulture and Sauvignon Blanc? Instead of keeping the answer bottled up, this field shop will explore the journey that this region has undertaken over the last 50 years to end up as an internationally recognised wine producing area. The complex and never-ending resource management matters spanning freshwater, land, and spatial planning which have evolved to support this land use are unique to this area and this field shop is designed to be a robust discussion on past, present, and future issues facing the sector and region. Before you ask, yes. Wine is included in this field shop!

Sun and Salt
Most of the world’s salt works are close to the equator, but not this one! The very same high sunshine hours, low summer rainfall, and warm nor’westers which cause headaches for South Marlborough farmers are the crucial factors for success in New Zealand’s only solar evaporative salt field. Operating at Lake Grassmere/Kāpara-Te-Hau since World War 1, the fields now cover around 1,400 hectares. This field shop will include a guided tour of the area before moving on to explore the Seaview solar farm. Both locations comprise unique production systems spanning a variety of complex resource management issues which will only become more intricate with a changing climate. Don’t be salty about missing out, secure your spot today!

Wilderness Guides Cycling
Get your cycling fix during the conference without the hassle of bringing one with you!

Perfect for two-wheel addicts, adrenaline junkies, and those who are sick of making small talk - this field shop will take attendees from Blenheim through to Picton where Wilderness Guides will equip with a bike (and trail map) to suit any height or persuasion. There are multiple trails in the surrounding area, with expansive views through to the beautiful Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui, perfect for an afternoon out and about in the fresh air. Attendees can take their time or race each other back to the pub for a refreshing beverage. Suitable for most fitness levels.

Kaipupu Point Reserve
Perfect for those who like a high step count!

An exemplar in conservation efforts within a highly developed area, Kaipupu Point Sanctuary is located just out of Picton and between two busy port operations. A short boat ride will take attendees out to the sanctuary, where passionate volunteers will guide the group through the conservation area and discuss local restoration efforts. Then, attendees will have the opportunity to view Shakespeare Bay, highlighting the juxtaposition between the pristine natural environment and a working port. The wider area is chock-a-block with resource management activities within a small area and in the future, will house updated ferry infrastructure.

Tiny trains and vintage planes!
Embark on a voyage back in time and ponder the future of our region during this field shop, which will tour Brayshaw Heritage Park and the Omaka Heritage Centre. Both world class facilities, Brayshaw Heritage Park celebrates Marlborough’s diverse history with an exquisitely accurate historical living village, while Omaka Heritage Centre pays tribute to aviation feats of the last 100 years in minute detail.

Included in this tour is a miniature train ride – what more could you ask for?!

7.00pm - Late

Conference dinner and Annual RMLA Awards
Omaka Heritage Museum

Fly high with us to the annual conference dinner, where we will award outstanding contributions to resource management law while surrounded by incredible feats of aviation history. In keeping with our surrounds, this year’s committee invites all attendees to join in themed dress of “Golden Age of Aviation”. Think vintage furs, pilot uniforms, and glamour travel – no sweatsuits allowed! Further information will be released closer to the time, but we encourage everyone to start gathering their costumes now - protecting our environment by shopping second hand, borrowing from friends, or wearing something you already own. It can be as little or much as you like, or as a nod to the theme.

We can’t wait to see everyone’s creations!