Making Money Real

I strongly oppose this bill.

I strongly oppose the manner in which Ministers who regard environmentalists as the audible portion of the roadway have arrogated to themselves the right to bulldoze every objection to what they personally regard as “necessary” roads and business activities. Local plans that prohibit environmentally damaging activities can be wholly ignored, experts who are nothing of the sort can be on the expert panels, and conservation land that belongs to future generations, NOT the Ministers this bill empowers to steal from them, can be opened to fast-track projects.

I note, with particular anger, the exclusion of the Minister for the Environment from the decisions. The people drafting this bill had so little regard for the environment that they excluded it from even being considered. The Ministers of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development get to call the shots.

The bill makes the extraction of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas) eligible for the fast-track (wrong-track) effort to continue “Business As Usual” until the environmental collapse wrecks all of human civilization. It fails to require projects to follow or even acknowledge the existence of climate targets. It renders policies regarding water standards and biodiversity moot if the presiding Minister deems a project’s importance to business to be sufficiently compelling.

The bill identifies that some projects will go directly into its fast-track process but does not confirm which projects get this treatment. The idea that we should agree to sign a blank check to allow any extraction from our environmental treasures that a corporate entity can persuade the applicable minister to provide is insanity. Without fully identifying those projects, this bill cannot be progressed in any ethical sense. There is no provision for consultation once those unnamed projects are fast-tracked. There is, in fact, no recourse whatsoever.

Calling this arrogance is inadequate, but there are no words I know of in this language that can fully describe people willing to sell out their nation to put a few more dollars in the pockets of their wealthy mates.

And that is not the only offensive aspect of this odious bill.

It bulldozes the rights of Māori under Te Tiriti and, by its timing, has made a joke of the obligation to consult appropriately with them as partners in ownership of the land. The interests of developers do not come ahead of Te Tiriti. The traditional collective ownership of Māori is very inconvenient to developers who are used to being able to pay a single owner for the right to rape the land. Let it remain inconvenient forever. It is one of the few protections that remain for New Zealand.

To fix these shortcomings:

• The Minister for the Environment must be notified of and agree to any projects given the “Green Light” by one of the Ministers who has been empowered this way.
  
  
• The expert panels must have experts who are, in some rational manner, qualified to understand the environment they are agreeing to destroy.
  
  
• The bill must include existing climate targets and plans in its considerations, and it must exclude the extraction of fossil fuels from the projects eligible for fast-track status.
  
  
• The bill must identify which projects will be fast-tracked through inclusion in the bill. No blank check can be signed off here. It must go back to the select committee until they can be confirmed and considered.
  
  
• The bill must provide that conservation land be excluded from the fast-track process, and local prohibitions must be honoured. 
  
  
• The bill must not permit projects to override environmental legislation and protections without the approval of the expert panel. The Minister does not get the final word on the environment.
  
  
• To bring this bill into agreement with Te Tiriti, it should have a clause that brings the rights of iwi and hapū into clear focus. It should be made clear that there is not merely a need to abide by the treaty settlements but also that the projects in question must respect the culture and taonga of Māori.

Overall, this is a train wreck of a bill (doubly appropriate given the transport minister’s attitude to the importance of rail transport for our nation) that seeks to bypass the Resource Management Act because the latter is too slow. The granting of extraordinary powers to Ministers who are intentionally ignorant of environmental risk and beholden to special interests is far too likely and, when it occurs, far too disastrous to this country to be contemplated.

Better implementation and streamlining of the RMA process would be preferable to this.

Do not progress this bill in anything like its current form. Fix the RMA instead.

---

The above is the text submitted.