The Govt’s Fast-Track being demolished by submissions to Parliament

The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation.

Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament about the bill. This is one of the highest numbers ever submitted about legislation, which reflects how community anger is growing against the controversial bill.

Background to the bill

The Government’s Fast-Track Bill has been created to help speed up and streamline the ability to build things in New Zealand. Everything from dams to roads to housing developments are expected to be put through this new mechanism which essentially bypasses New Zealand’s relatively slow and challenging resource consenting processes.

Most controversially, the new mechanism empowers three ministers to make the final decisions on infrastructure proposals. Those ministers merely have to be convinced that an application contains “significant regional or national benefits”. In agreeing to a project, the ministers can override the expert panel assisting them as well as existing environmental laws.

I’ve already written about the processes in these three columns:

1. The Government’s new fast-track invitation to corruption

2. Time for “Fast-Track Watch”

3. The Case for the Government’s Fast Track Bill

The Select Committee process

The Government introduced the Fast Track Approvals Bill into Parliament for its first reading in March. It now has to be examined by a select committee, which will report back on its recommendations on September 7.

The bill is currently being considered by the Environmental Select Committee, which has allocated six weeks to consider public submissions and presentations. However, due to the extremely large number of submissions, the select committee has had to cut back on hearing from everyone.

Of the 27,000 submitters, about 2900 have requested to appear before the select committee to discuss their feedback on the bill. Given these vast numbers, a decision has been made to restrict oral submissions to just 1100. The Committee has decided to allow appearances from 550 organisations who want to speak to the committee. They will get ten minutes each.

Regarding the individuals, 2,350 submitters have requested to be heard at the hearings, but only 550 appointments will be made. To decide who gets these, the committee has opted for a ballot to be used as a mechanism for random selection. Some higher-profile individuals, such as former MPs, will be automatically selected. All individuals are being allocated five minutes each.

The opposition parties have opposed curtailing the process, saying that the hearing schedule should be extended to accommodate all the requests.

Green MP Lan Pham says: “I think the fact that this bill runs across so much other legislation, and impacts so much of what we understand, and sort of like, the legislative baseline of how Aotearoa works, we thought that it was really important that everyone got to have their say” – see Giles Dexter’s RNZ report today, Fast-track submissions: Hundreds will miss out on speaking at committee

Similarly, Labour’s Rachel Brooking says that it’s even more vital to hear the submissions than usual: “one of the things that the bill does is stops public participation and processes where there normally would be public participation. So it's even more important that those people are heard”.

As the RNZ report explains, the chair of the committee – National’s David MacLeod – points out the Fast Track Bill has attracted an exceptionally high level of individual submissions that are essentially just duplicates of the templates that organisations like Forest & Bird and the Environmental Defence Society encouraged their supporters to send in. MacLeod says: “clearly, a form submission, once you've read one, you've read the whole lot. It doesn't particularly add more value to that process.”

The situation has been labelled “absurd” by veteran political journalist Richard Harman. In his daily email newsletter yesterday, Harman criticised “pressure groups” trying to “flood” the parliamentary process with low-quality submissions. Although the process should involve “depth and time spent questioning submitters”, according to Harman, this won’t occur.

Submissions mostly oppose the Fast Track Bill

It is clear that the vast majority of submissions oppose the Fast Track Bill—mostly because thousands of individuals have submitted them at the urging of various environmental groups. Of course, there is something of a dichotomy in which environmental groups oppose the bill and business groups support it.

Yet this dichotomy has been less apparent than might be expected. So far, several business and farmer groups have provided some critique and recommended significant changes to the bill.

The Employers and Manufacturers Association presented to the committee yesterday. Although they support the bill in general, they criticise it and say it is vital that the new processes are only temporary. This is best covered by Richard Harman’s article today, Our slow regional councils (paywalled)

Harman reports that Alan MacDonald representing the Employers Association at the select committee hearings, and said the real answer to the problem with consenting processes was to replace the existing Resource Management Act with a new environmental consenting process that had buy-in from all: “that’s something that we need to agree on cross-party and very quickly.”

MacDonald explained that his lobby group had been working with environmentalists such as the Environmental Defence Society to progress this, and he didn’t want to see the Fast Track Act deflect from this urgency. Therefore, he suggested that the legislation should contain a subset clause to ensure the Fast Track doesn’t become permanent or stick around too long.

The Association also expressed discomfort with ministers making final decisions on resource consents, saying that “We’ve had them in the past, and they’ve been challenged all the way to the High Court and beyond, where they have been gotten wrong on both sides of the House.”

According to Harman, MacDonald also criticised the bill in what it proposed for the makeup of the various authorities involved in the new consents process: “We do think that the panel and both the ministerial side and the advisory panel could do with a bit more balance, perhaps including the Minister of Environmental Conservation and also in the advisory panels.”

The presentation yesterday from Federated Farmers was also surprising. Although they support the Bill’s objectives, they have serious concerns, especially around excluding the public from the Fast-Track decision-making process. The farmers’ group emphasised the importance of “fair process” and the community’s ability to feed into decisions, especially if infrastructure projects involve private land use.

Harman reported that the Federation’s principal policy advisor, Natasha Berkett, said broader community consultation and debate were needed: “These types of projects don’t occur in isolation; they occur in communities… And, if people feel that land has been taken in an inappropriate way or a process has not occurred in an appropriate way, then there can be a lot of discord around that project. And that leads to this loss of social license and lack of support for the project as well.”

For more on business critiques of the Fast-Track, see Fox Meyer’s Newsroom article, Mining lobby: Fast-track bill’s ministerial powers ‘not unusual’ 

This reports that Meridan Energy, as with Federated Farmers, opposes the concentration of decision-making powers in Cabinet, “suggesting that the final say ought to rest with the expert panel.”

Likewise, for more on Federated Farmers’ submission and why they are reluctant to support it, see Fox Meyer’s Federated Farmers’ support for fast-track bill ‘ambiguous’

Environmentalists passionate opposed

Unsurprisingly, environmental organisations have been presenting the most passionate submissions against the Fast-Track. One group that stood out in their presentation yesterday was the Friends of Pākiri Beach, who have spent years trying to stop sand mining in the waters off their beach. They have had successes in the Environment Court but are concerned that companies such as McCallum Bros, who have also submitted in favour of the bill, will get the green light despite their previous failures to obtain consent.

The submission of the Friends of Pākiri Beach, amongst others, was covered yesterday in RNZ’s Pākiri residents would be 'crushed' if sand mining fast-tracked, committee told

For a more in-depth look at the campaign of these environmentalists and why they’re worried about the new bill, see Farah Hancock’s RNZ report, Why Pākiri locals fear the Government’s Fast Track Bill could steal away protection of their pristine coastline

But for the most passionate and articulate environmental submission on the bill, it’s worth reading Anne Salmond’s: My open submission on this radical, flawed fast-track bill

She concludes that New Zealanders, once they realise how the legislation favours companies over communities, will realise “that like the economy, Parliament is rigged in favour of the rich and powerful, and our democracy is broken. Around the world, we can see what happens when this kind of cynicism and anger is ignited. It’s a frightening prospect.”

Finally, one of the main objections to the Fast-Track is about the influence of vested interests and the need for more transparency in businesses lobbying ministers to get their projects pushed through. And today, Newsroom’s David Williams reports that there are good reasons to doubt that the processes will be transparent and above board – pointing to the interactions between one potential Fast-Track applicant and one of the ministers who will have the power to grant consents – see: Jones suggested fast-track bid at undeclared dinner

According to this report, the Minister for Resources, Shane Jones, had dinner with a coal mining company boss, Barry Bragg, on the West Coast in February. Jones didn’t record the meeting in his officially released ministerial diaries because he says it was an unscheduled “last-minute” event. Three days later, Bragg wrote to the Minister for Infrastructure Christopher Bishop and said: I had dinner with Resources and Regional Development Minister Shane Jones last Friday and he suggested I write to you to ask that the Te Kuha coal project be considered for listing in the fast-track and one-stop shop bill.”

The article also reports the response of Forest & Bird’s advocacy group manager, Richard Capie, who says the fast-track legislation “opens the gateway to unbridled lobbying” and “This letter represents the tip of the iceberg.”

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)