One of National's primary policy goals during its time in power was to remove democracy from the RMA by removing notification and appeal rights while allowing Ministers to dictate local plans from their office in Wellington. This agenda was so extreme that they were unable to gain the votes for it for years, despite reliable footstools as coalition partners. But finally, earlier this year, the Maori Party sold out and let them do it. The changes only came into effect a month ago, so their impact hasn't yet been felt. But they're bad enough that Environment Minister David Parker has promised to roll them back and restore democracy:
The Government will attempt to reverse a National-led law change that has removed the public's right to participate in discretionary resource consent processes, Environment Minister David Parker says.
The Resource Legislation Amendment Act 2017 also removed the right for applicants and submitters to appeal discretionary resource consent decisions made by district councils.
[...]
Parker told Stuff this week removing public notification and appeal rights was going "a step too far" for applicants and submitters.
"We still think that was wrong. We are intending to have some reform of the Resource Management Act and that would be one of the things that we would fix," he said.
Sadly, it'll take a while, because the RMA is a complicated piece of legislation. On the other hand, there's usually at least a bill a year tinkering with it in one way or another, so it should be easy enough to put the changes in the next one. But unlike National, Labour won't be ramming it through under urgency.
Meanwhile, while they're restoring democracy, maybe they could do something about ECan as well? Apparently they can't hold an immediate election because National's dictatorship dragged its feet on setting electoral boundaries (which were set before the earthquakes and will not take subsequent population shifts into account). But they have nearly complete discretion to sack the appointees, or to appoint new people to replace them. Removing National's dictators from office ought to be a priority. As for their replacements, if they can't yet hold a proper election, holding some sort of poll and appointing the winners would seem to be a more democratic solution. Because its simply unacceptable for Cantabrians to have an illegitimate local government where half the members have no democratic mandate and were specifically appointed to thwart the will of the people.
