Sometimes it is possible to want something too much. It can cloud your judgment and lead to decisions you will later regret.

Nothing fits this description better than Environment Minister Nick Smith’s Resource Legislation Amendment Bill, which has re-emerged this month in revised form after Select Committee hearings.

There are many good reforms in the Bill, including provisions to streamline national planning standards, and introducing a new 10-day consent process for minor activities.

Unfortunately, there are also many flaws. Others have focused on the Muldoonist centralisation of power, the problems with excluding appeal rights, and the lack of incentives to encourage efficient decision-making.

But these may not be the Bill’s worst offences. That prize may yet go to the price the Maori Party has set for its consent: the Bill’s iwi consultation provisions.

Of course, the RMA already contains extensive provisions requiring councils to consult with iwi in resource management processes. More substantively, councils may reach joint management agreements with iwi authorities covering local planning, consenting, and monitoring functions under Act - or even transfer their powers, including consenting powers, to iwi authorities.

But, absent such arrangements, councils are not required to consult with iwi on individual consent applications. Nor are councils currently required to involve iwi in monitoring compliance with the Act. In this, at least, iwi and non-iwi are treated equally under the law.

Some of this will change if the Bill’s new iwi consultation arrangements are implemented. Called Mana Whakahone a Rohe: Iwi Participation Arrangements (or MWRs for short), they are now much broader in scope than their pre-Select Committee form.

In the original Bill, the iwi participation arrangements set out a mechanism for iwi authorities to be consulted on RMA policy statements or plans.

The new MWR provisions extend iwi participation to the full suite of policy and planning, decision-making, and monitoring and enforcement processes under the Act.

Despite concerns expressed by some, the Bill does not make iwi involvement in individual consent applications mandatory. On this the Bill is merely permissive.

And given the disruptive potential of introducing mandatory iwi consultation on individual consent applications, councils would be ill-advised to go down this route.

Unfortunately, this may be cold comfort. As Auckland Council showed with its failed experiment requiring cultural impact statements under the transitional provisions of the Auckland Unitary Plan, councils can make bad decisions. Applicants for resource consents discovered to their dismay that iwi authorities in Auckland lacked both the necessary conceptual framework and the resources to make such a process legally or practically workable. It left property owners subject to arbitrary requirements from local iwi that were unpredictable, time-consuming and costly.

Yet the MWR framework in the Bill makes no allowance for council error, oversight, or a simple change of heart.  Once agreed, MWRs are not subject to time limits. Without the consent of both parties, they endure forever. A misjudgment by a council may bind its successors to unworkable iwi participation arrangements in perpetuity.

Unexpectedly, the Bill does make consultation with iwi over monitoring RMA compliance mandatory. the roots for this lie in the kaitiakitangi or stewardship concept enshrined in the RMA. However, elevating this to a mandatory consultation requirement for councils nationally is as unheralded as it is unnecessary. And it could prove expensive for ratepayers should councils feel obliged to fund the costs of iwi authorities exercising their consultation rights.

The process for forcing local councils to enter MWRs with iwi authorities is also a concern.

The Bill makes it mandatory for a local authority to agree an MWR when asked by an iwi authority. If asked by multiple iwi authorities, a council must agree to multiple MWRs. And it must reach agreement within 18 months.

But no guidance is given on just what a council is required to agree to. No timeframes for consultation are stipulated. Nor how or where the consultations must take place. Nor even what information must be exchanged.

Compulsory dispute mechanisms kick in if the parties are unable to reach agreement. But no clearly justiciable standards are set out against which disputed matters might be resolved. Instead the Bill’s guiding principles refer to concepts like “a spirit of cooperation”, “working together”, and “best endeavours”.

If the provisions were in a private contract they would be unenforceable for uncertainty. As it is, they are so vague and open-ended as to offend the rule of law - not to mention common sense.

Together, these problems risk added complexity that could dwarf any gains from the Bill’s other provisions.

Nick Smith may have been trying for two years to get his amendment Bill through Parliament, but if he took a step back, he would discover it has turned into something that neither his constituents nor common sense would want.  He should start again.