‘I hope I’m getting across how worried I am,’ one expert told The Spinoff. 

Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, the Environmental Defence Society and the World Wildlife Fund have issued a warning to New Zealanders about the government’s plan for a fast-track consenting bill: no community will be safe from potentially life-changing developments.

Minister for RMA reform Chris Bishop wrote to interested parties on January 31st, laying out his plan to introduce the framework – which will speed up local, regional and national development projects deemed significant by the government – by March 7th. 

The recipients, including environmental groups, territorial authorities and tangata whenua, were given until Monday to provide feedback.

It’s a quick turnaround, indicative of the speed with which the government plans to move these priority infrastructure projects forward.

Consent applications under the existing resource management framework must identify anyone likely to be affected by the development, and address the impacts it will have on nearby ecosystems, natural resources and communities.

But this proposal demonstrates a clear prioritisation of commercial interests over environmental protections, Forest & Bird’s group manager for conservation advocacy, Richard Capie, says. “The Minister has been very clear – commercial interests come before other values, whether they are ecological values, water quality, the biodiversity of an area or the carbon sequestration value of an area.”

In the name of economic prosperity

According to Bishop, the proposed fast-track consenting law will be a “one-stop shop” for significant infrastructure approvals. This will include the consents currently gained under the Resource Management Act, but may also extend to authorisations needed under mining, conservation or wildlife legislation. The new law will be stand-alone with its own purpose, which is yet to be announced. 

This means the Resource Management Act’s purpose, to promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources, may not apply.

Marnie Prickett, a research fellow in Otago’s Department of Public Health, says it’s an alarming proposal. “It will have major consequences for our environment and our communities, but also for our democratic processes,” she says. “This isn’t normal, everyday bill-making – this will bypass environmental law that we have had in place for 30 years.”

“I hope I’m getting across how worried I am,” she adds.

The draft text of the bill has not been released yet, making the 12-day consultation period even more tokenistic, says resource management expert Mahina-a-rangi Baker. Baker has a PhD in environmental planning and teaches Māori resource management at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. 

“Will some of the environmental protections from the current consenting framework be bypassed in the fast-track process? We assume so,” she says. “But how is it fair to New Zealanders that we don’t even know the answer to that, less than a month out from the bill being put to the House?”

In minister Bishop’s letter to interested parties, he noted the process will prioritise locally, regionally and nationally significant infrastructure and development projects. But what qualifies as “significant” has not been shared. A few initial projects will also be listed in the bill.

Under the fast-track process, ministers will be able to refer projects for acceptance. An expert panel will then consider them, but its powers will be limited. The panel will be able to apply conditions to manage adverse impacts, but will only have “limited ability” to decline the consent.

Richard Capie says this will give ministers near-unprecedented authority. “The government is centralising power in a way that we haven’t seen since the1970s under the auspices of kick-starting the economy,” he warns.

He’s not the first to make the link to the 1970s. Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking has called the proposal “Muldoonist”, a reference to the controversial 1979 National Development Act which allowed Cabinet to consent to major projects without consulting the people likely to be affected. 

That law was promoted by Muldoon’s government as being a “one-stop shop”, with all the various resource consent requirements for a project rolled together.

Sound familiar? Critics of this government’s proposal think so. 

“They’re leaving these big infrastructure projects, which have consequences for huge groups of people, to the whim of a single person,” Prickett says. “The proposal cuts out tangata whenua. It cuts out the community. And it leaves the minister open to lobbying by private interests.”

Baker agrees. She says everyone has an interest in ensuring infrastructure can be built efficiently and as cheaply as possible. But cutting corners doesn’t help anyone in the long-run.

“Important questions are addressed under our resource management laws that will be missed,” she warns. “For example, are we safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of our environment? Is consenting the discharge from a wastewater treatment plant directly into a waterway going to limit the capacity for that waterway to support life? These questions need technical analysis – they are not political assessments.”

The government has rejected the Muldoon comparison, arguing they are building on a short-term law passed by the Labour-led coalition government in 2020 to approve “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects in as few as 25 days. That law, which was repealed in July 2023, served as part of the COVID-19 economic recovery effort.

But that framework was “fundamentally different,” Capie says. “It did not centralise power with ministers in the way this government is proposing. It had checks and balances in place, and we were able to engage with several consenting applications.”

In a key difference to this proposal, the 2020 Act left decision-making power with the expert panel. The minister for the environment or minister for conservation could refer a project for consideration, but they did not have the power to greenlight it themselves.

The law also directed the panel to consider any potential environmental impacts, as well any applicable national environmental statements or policy statements. It is unclear whether the new proposal will contain similar requirements.

But while it vested decision-making power in a panel of experts, rather than an individual, some experts say the 25-day timeframe meant it still failed to properly analyse potential projects.

“Large-scale projects have intergenerational consequences, so fast-tracking them will always be unwise,” Prickett says. “We need to carefully develop future-proofed infrastructure, especially with climate change on our doorsteps.”

Treaty settlements protected 

In his letter, minister Bishop assured interested parties that the new law will “contain specific protections for Treaty settlements and other Treaty-related arrangements and commitments.”

According to Mahina-a-rangi Baker, this is nowhere near sufficient.

“I see it as disingenuous to point to Treaty settlements and say that somehow satisfies the Crown’s Te Tiriti obligations,” she says, adding that they are not sufficiently detailed to inform decision-makers of sites that need to be considered or protected.

Each new development warrants a response from local Māori. “Say we’re talking about a large-scale roading project, and there’s a number of mahinga kai sites around – sites that are important for gathering customary kai. It’s unlikely that a Treaty settlement would include a map identifying every site that should be protected.”

The issue is compounded, she says, by the fact that Treaty settlements have been drafted with the Resource Management Act in place. That existing framework directs developers and decision-makers to identify and engage with appropriate Māori groups. Drafting this law without similar requirements would undermine those protections for tangata whenua.

And as for the 12-day consultation period? “There has been no opportunity to engage in this as a Treaty partner,” Baker says. In her mind, the government is too caught up in efficiency to make decisions that will benefit wider New Zealand. “They want to give the public a sense that they’re achieving something within their 100-day action plan, without actually doing the homework into what will happen as a result of the policy.”

But Forest & Bird’s Richard Capie has an even grimmer view, noting that this proposal has always been on the cards. “It is not about speeding things up,” he says, “it is about enabling things to happen at the expense of the environment.”