Fast Track Approvals Bill a good reason for tradies to stay in NZ — Paula Bennett

OPINION

Thank goodness we are giving our much-needed tradies a reason to stay in New Zealand. The hardest part of running your own business is when the work starts and stops and there is no certainty.

It is even harder when the reason it stops is because of a choked pipeline of projects due to consenting being unnecessarily held up for years. Of course, it is not just our tradies who suffer the ill effects — it is all of us. Much-needed infrastructure doesn’t happen. Houses don’t get built and jobs are lost in our regions.

This week the Government introduced the Fast Track Approvals Bill. Ministers will be able to approve projects once they have gone through an expert panel that may apply relevant consent and permit conditions.

Too often we hear of significant projects getting held up for years for ridiculous reasons. Often it is because there is an ideological desire to not see the project progress, i.e. Mining. Or it could be that the right people are not talking to each other, or personnel turnover that then sets the consenting process back. Or they find an insect on that stretch of potential highway.

Meanwhile, communities become ghost towns as jobs are lost and shops close due to no customers. Tradies head over the Ditch where there is a pipeline of projects on the go, and they have guaranteed work.

We lose power because we don’t support energy projects or approve new dams. We have more people homeless as houses aren’t built at scale. Tourists stop coming because our jewels in the crown like Queenstown don’t consent to new housing projects in a timely manner and much-needed staff don’t have somewhere to live.

We are blessed to be surrounded by the ocean and yet it took several years for King Salman to gain consent to move their salmon farm into deeper cooler water. We should thank them for persevering — too many give up and move offshore.

If we left it as it is the wheels of progress would continue to creak and grind and, as is too often the case, eventually grind to a halt. The fact ministers need to go to this level of intervention is an indictment of the process and too much power held in the hands of people and organisations that just want to stop everything.

We actually can have it all. Sound environmentally conscious projects that literally move us ahead and assist us as a country economically. And we all know the importance of that in these fiscally tight times.