By rare good luck, I found myself with a free evening. So, like any boy-mum, I did the obvious thing — watched Mean Girls.

One of my favourite scenes is when the new girl is marched around the cafeteria and introduced to the school “tribes”: The Band Geeks, The Jocks, The Cool Asians and, reigning supreme, The Plastics. Once you picked your tribe, that was it. No crossing over. Your entire school experience was locked in.

It strikes me that New Zealand’s Parliament isn’t much different.

Take the Resource Management Act (RMA). Every three-year election cycle, whichever tribe forms government feels compelled to “do something.” Out comes another National Policy Statement or yet another re-write of the RMA. Since 2011, there have been seven major changes to national environmental regulations. Not one has been left in place long enough to make a difference on the ground. What we do see are staggering costs — hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, rates, and levies — all for reforms that barely make it out of the starting blocks.

Last week’s announcements were just the latest round: tweaks around the edges that do nothing to tackle the deep failings of our resource management system, or the way it has been weaponised by activists.

The pattern is familiar. A National-led government frames reform around property rights and cutting costs. A Labour-led government swings hard towards improving water quality or environmental protection. Each pushes so far in its direction that the changes become politically toxic, unworkable, or both. The result? A pendulum that swings furiously but never moves us forward.

Meanwhile, the people most affected — farmers, councils, iwi, developers, communities — are left with uncertainty. Rules change faster than they can adapt. Long-term projects stall because no one trusts the current framework to last. And ordinary New Zealanders foot the bill for a cycle of endless reform that achieves very little.

Here’s the irony: with everyone so quick to demand the RMA be scrapped, maybe that actually means we’ve struck the right balance. I’ve always thought you know you’re close to fair when everyone’s grumpy.

But even if the balance isn’t entirely wrong, the process is. Meaningful reform can’t happen if governments insist on staying in their tribal corners. What we need is stability — rules that last not just through one electoral cycle, but through decades. That’s the only way we’ll get the certainty required for multi-generational infrastructure, resilient farm systems, and the environmental improvements everyone agrees are needed.

That kind of reform takes courage. It means leaving the safety of your tribe, sitting down with your political opponents, and hammering out a deal that no one loves, but everyone can live with. Geoffrey Palmer did this in 1991, and for all its flaws, the RMA has survived for 35 years. In political terms, that makes him a legend.

So here’s the challenge for today’s leaders: stop playing Mean Girls. Be brave enough to break free from your tribes, talk to the people you least want to, and find a version of reform that might actually stick. Because New Zealand deserves better than this endless cycle of expensive, short-lived fixes.

By Eve Harris

Eva Harris is Principal Environmental Advisor for Enviro Collective