The Fast-Track Approvals Bill has faced significant opposition for various reasons
by Gary Taylor and Shay Schlaepfer
(Environmental Defence Society)
Comment: The Government’s u-turn in August that expert panels, not ministers, should make final decisions on fast-tracked projects, was a calculated move aimed at dampening opposition to the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. It partly worked, minimising perceptions of ministerial bias towards applicants who have funded political campaigns.
And now with the list of 149 scheduled projects including swathes of infrastructure and housing developments which could address our infrastructure deficit and housing shortage, one might be left thinking, is the bill really that bad?
Certainly the Resource Management Act is clunky and slow. But it does include its own fast-track provisions which are working well. One difference with the Fast-Track Approvals Bill is that it embraces permits under other legislation, such as the Conservation and Wildlife Acts, creating a one-stop shop for approvals. Arguably, that’s not a bad thing. Unfortunately, it’s not the end of the story.
There are three main reasons the bill is bad law:-
1. It bypasses environmental and climate considerations
The purpose of the bill as currently drafted is to “provide a fast-track decision-making process that facilitates the delivery of infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or national benefits.”All decision-making is subject to this purpose, elevating its status within the bill.
Environmental and climate considerations are edged out of this framing, becoming incidental matters that have less priority. That will make it very hard for decision-making panels to say no to projects that exacerbate climate change or put threatened species at further risk, provided that the project will result in regional or national benefit.
There are no environmental bottom lines. Even activities that are currently prohibited in local or regional plans or contravene water conservation orders can get approval.
The Government has been clear that the bill is about getting New Zealand moving and cutting through red tape. In this context that means circumventing environmental safeguards. It prioritises the economy, at all costs. There is no balance, so bad projects will get approved along with the good. The bill is only as good as the worst project it enables.
2. It prevents public comment
The bill dispenses with almost all opportunities for local communities to be involved in decisions affecting their environment. Public, or even limited, notification of projects is not allowed.
Panels are only required to seek comment from the following:
- Local authorities
- Iwi authorities
- Treaty settlement entities
- Customary marine title groups
- Protected customary rights groups
- Land owners/occupiers (including those adjacent)
- Various government ministers
- The Director-General of Conservation
- Requiring authorities having designations on the land or adjacent land.
- Outside of this list, it is discretionary whether you’ll be invited to provide feedback on a project. That means that unless you live next door to a project, you’re not entitled to have your say.
That is irrespective of whether the project will, for example, involve multiple trucks passing by your house, emit air or noise pollution in your neighbourhood, completely change your rural outlook, clear adjacent native forest or drain your local wetland.
Those representing the public interest, such as the Environmental Defence Society, also don’t have an automatic say, even if the project has widespread negative effects on the environment. This is a significant curtailment of participatory rights from that provided for in existing fast-track laws which have worked fine and have already reduced consenting timeframes and have approved over 80 projects.
Shay Schlaepfer
3. It lacks strategic direction
The list announced on Sunday is a grab bag of ad hoc projects that just happen to be available for the picking now. They include massive housing developments outside of local councils’ planned growth areas, coal mines that are inconsistent with our climate obligations and free-trade agreements and water storage to facilitate agricultural intensification where we already have water quality problems, and a highly questionable waste to energy plant. There is no strategic thinking going on here.
The inclusion of Trans-Tasman Resources’ (TTR) seabed mining proposal on the list not only has environmental risks that have already resulted in consents being declined but is also contrary to the Government’s own intentions for offshore wind energy. New legislation establishing a bespoke regime for offshore wind is expected to be introduced to the House this year. As the two activities are incompatible because they use the same marine area, the inclusion of TTR on the list makes no sense. The legislation is picking winners with no coherent strategy in place.
Can it be fixed?
Yes. Fast-track legislation has some utility in streamlining consenting, especially for projects that serve the public interest in an economic and environmental sense. Existing fast-track legislation has proven that it can work.
But if the Fast-Track Approvals Bill is to have any credibility it needs to be amended so that environmental and climate matters are appropriately considered and weighted, and to provide for public participation. And pending resource management reform needs to adopt strategic spatial planning to chart a clear way forward.
Without these changes, any projects proceeding through the process will be subject to legal challenges and risk losing social licence – even the good ones. Left unchanged, the bill should not proceed.
Gary Taylor CEO of the Environmental Defence Society.
Did any of the government coalition partners mention this draconian legislation in the election campaign? I recall Shane Jones deriding “Freddie the Frog” but I don’t recall mention of a Fast Track Approval Bill that bypasses the select committee process by Jones or Chris Bishop of National. As such the Bill is dishonest.
The Fast-Track Bill is profoundly anti-democratic and part of the National-led government’s War on Nature. It has the same DNA of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners) bill, which was the illegitimate spawn of Muldoon’s Soviet “Think Big” programme. Yes, New Zealanders want more affordable housing. But they didn’t give the coalition the license to pollute our rivers and drinking water and to cause cancer from higher nitrate levels.
Well, sorry, but it was bound to happen! After decades of progressively more draconian planning bureaucracy inhibiting even the most trivial of developments, something was bound to happen.
Now, the new legislation is a complete over-reaction to the problem, but what else could they do to break down the barriers to progress erected by those unelected stuffed shirts intent on empire building and preening their own self-importance?
In effect like the whitewash Labour received at our last election – something had to give!
I support the opinion that people should be free to do what they want to do with their own property, unless there is convincing evidence that it is detrimental to someone else or their property.
Public property and natural resources that belong to all citizens in common are another issue. Utilization, development, exploitation and privatization of communal resources and assets should have the agreement of the majority of the citizens.
Climate change is (and always has) occurring and human activities probably have some influence but the influence of New Zealand citizens is statistically very small and almost insignificant. The belief that reducing our CO2 emissions is going to “save the planet” is delusional.
What we really have is a debt problem that will result in a very serious economic and social crisis, that increasing the creation and borrowing of fit currency created from nothing cannot solve.
Selling off more of our communally owned natural resources and public assets will delay but not prevent the inevitable consequences.
Do we have a housing shortage or more demand for houses than supply?
Excessive regulations and compliance costs increase the price of homes but excessive immigration and increasing the amount of fiat currency that can be borrowed significantly increase the demand and prices.
Homes are also less affordable because the real value (purchasing power) of productive workers wages and salaries has decreased for the past 40 or 50 years.
The price of a home in relation to wages and salaries is 3 times or more what it was in the 1970s.
The standard family home of the 70’s was a a 3 bedroom one on a quarter acre section.
What are being built now are tiny units crowded together with no yard or even space to park a car. These are the slums of the future.
I am not prejudiced towards immigrants but allowing so many new people to come here increases the labour supply and reduces the wages. New technologies also reduce the demand for human workers and their remuneration.
The price of homes increases with more demand and it costs more to buy less.
Increasing the population also increases the costs of infrastructure, education, medical services and other social services funded by taxation and debt.
Is all of this immigration improving the social and economic well-being of New Zealand citizens?
The facts indicate that people were better off in the past when there were less of them.
Good jobs were plentiful, secure and well remunerated.
Decent homes on a proper section were available and affordable.
Infrastructure was adequate.
Education and medical services were accessible and affordable.
People were more friendly and cooperative.
There was much less crime, domestic violence and social dysfunction.
The costs of government welfare and social services were affordable.
One reasonable income supported a family of 4, that is now struggling and burdened with debt, that 2 incomes cannot provide for.
There are 3 ways to increase economic growth and GDP.
1. Produce and sell more goods and services to willing buyers who can afford to pay.
2. Borrow and spend more fiat currency, that is created from nothing but has to be serviced and eventually repaid by the efforts of productive workers.
3. Sell off existing assets and spend the money leaving nothing for future generations.
We are not productive enough to fund what we want “the government” to do.
We have borrowed more than the productive working people can repay or even keep servicing.
The “fast-track” proposal is to sell off our communal assets and spend the proceeds.
That will appear to work in the short term until the money has been spent and there is nothing left to sell.
We are spending out children’s “inheritance” and leaving them with a burden of debt so that we can live beyond our means and the politicians can pretend to be giving us things we have not earned and cannot afford.
Government decisions are supposed to be “for the common good” of the citizens.
The decisions of people in our Labour and National party governments should have improved the physical, mental, social and economic well-being of the majority of the citizens of New Zealand instead of benefitting a wealthy and politically influential minority at the expense of the rest of the people.
The decisions that are being made by the people with influence in this National government might be better that those of the previous Labour one but probably not for the majority of citizens and those of future generations.
This was the introduction of a BBC 4 set of six lectures on “A Question of Trust”;
“1. ‘Without Trust We Cannot Stand’
Confucius told his disciple Tsze-kung that three things are needed for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler can’t hold on to all three, he should give up the weapons first and the food next. Trust should be guarded to the end: “without trust we cannot stand” . Confucius’ thought still convinces. Weapons did not help the Taliban when their foot soldiers lost trust and deserted. Food shortages need not topple governments when they and their rationing systems are trusted, as we know from WWII.
It isn’t only rulers and governments who prize and need trust. Each of us and every profession and every institution needs trust. We need it because we have to be able to rely on others acting as they say that they will, and because we need others to accept that we will act as we say we will. The sociologist Niklas Luhman was right that ‘A complete absence of trust would prevent [one] even getting up in the morning.'”
How can we trust a coalition government that marginalizes science and puts in place strategies to prevent public participation?
This “fast track” government will be a one term government, but it will leave a toxic legacy that will reach far beyond its three year term.
The people of Canterbury lost trust in ECan as a result of John Key’s ECan Act 2010. There is no evidence that this trust is being regained under a set of councilors and senior managers who continue to put their self interest before the interests of the region they have been elected or employed to work for.
A cunning lot – Iwi, Treaty. etc all able to have a say. What about NZFFA, Fish and Game and others?