Fast-track regime would lead to ‘disasters’, Simon Upton warns

Thursday, 23 May 2024

The Government’s proposed fast-track consenting regime was “not credible” and would lead to disasters, parliamentary commissioner for the environment Simon Upton has told MPs.

Parliament’s Environment select committee has this week been hearing from a sample of 27,000 organisations and individuals who made submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill.

It would give ministers Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown and Shane Jones and the power to approve major infrastructure projects such as roads and mines, overriding both existing environmental laws and an expert panel that would be set up to advise them.

Upton, a former National Party MP, told the committee there was a case for a “one-stop-shop” to consider major projects, and fast-tracking consent applications “may be unobjectionable”.

“Yes, there are ‘Nimbys’ out there who use processes to slow things down,” he said.

But Upton said the bill's “most objectionable features” lay elsewhere.

“The most important is the systematic attempt that's been made to exclude consideration of the risk of environmental harm at every turn,” he said.

“Ministers are explicitly authorised to approve projects that would otherwise be prohibited or had been previously declined, after investigation, on environmental grounds.”

The ministerial panel that would make decisions was “required to give priority to the purpose of the bill, which is silent on the question of the environment,” he said.

Upton said the proposed regime appeared to be based on a view that excessive concern for the environment had held back desirable developments, but said no evidence had been put forward to support that.

“Fewer than 1% of all consent applications are declined and even for the more complex ‘notified’ ones, the decline rate is 7%.”

Upton said the proposed law would mean home owners who were at risk of flooding as a result of developments such as dams would have no right to participate in the consent process.

“If all you have to focus on are the benefits of development and the process is all about speed, risks are going to be missed and there are going to be disasters.

“At-risk home owners can at least go to the media if they're locked out of the hearing process. But wildlife can't do that, and naturally my principle concern is with what is left of our environment.”

Martin Williams, representing the Electricity Sector Environment Group , told the committee on Monday that the fast-track regime represented an opportunity to confront problems in the Resource Management Act before it was more fundamentally overhauled.

The group’s members include Contact, Mercury, Meridian, Genesis, Trustpower and the Wind Energy Association.

The “unbalanced, protracted, complex and resource-consuming” processes involved in obtaining consents under the Resource Management Act were the biggest barrier to the country doubling its renewable electricity generation and achieving its electrification and decarbonisation goals, he said.

The innovation in the bill was that it would create a “true one-stop-shop”, he said.

“That in itself is considered to be of substantial value.”

But the Electricity Sector Environment Group recommended that fast-track consent decisions should be made by the panel of experts that would otherwise be set-up to advise ministers, rather than ministers themselves.

“There is a real question whether there is any practical benefit in the joint ministers deciding,” he said.

“Do the ministers realistically have the capacity? If this bill works there's going to be a very large number of projects a year.”

That and the prospect of legal challenges meant there was a risk of projects getting stuck in a game of “snakes and ladders”, he said.