Government hopes to speed up fast-track regime before Christmas

Tuesday, 4 November 2025

The Government is planning to make more than 100 changes and tweaks to the controversial Fast-track Approvals Act under urgency before Christmas, some of which would give ministers more influence over consenting outcomes and shorten the time frames for decisions.

Greenpeace executive director Russel Norman blasted the proposals, saying they had been introduced because the expert panels considering fast-track applications had been proved to take their job seriously and have “a mind of their own”.

Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop said officials had estimated the changes, set out in the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill, could speed up decisions by “six weeks or more”.

The bill would let the Government issue a “government policy statement” about the regional or national benefits of certain types of projects.

The expert panels set-up to rule on fast-track decisions would need to consider these before deciding whether or not to approve consents.

Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis said one way the Government would use that power would be to give effect to its intent earlier this year to speed up resource consents for new supermarkets to improve competition in the groceries market.

A draft government policy statement on supermarket competition states that it is interested in reducing “market concentration” in the industry, enabling scalable competition and helping provide a foothold for new competitors to enter the market and expand.

Another change to the Fast-track Act would give the Government the power to give a “general direction” to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in relation to its performance and “the exercise of its functions, duties, and powers” under the act.

Expert panels would need to issue a decision on each fast-track consent within 60 working days of receiving comments from submitters on the application.

The bill would further limit the range of individuals and organisations that could appeal a fast-track consent on points of law to the High Court.

The amendment bill was released by the Government on Monday evening in the wake of concerns voiced by NZ First deputy leader Shane Jones earlier this year that the fast-track regime was not “fast enough”.

Despite the proposed amendments, a preamble to the new legislation said it would “not substantially alter” the decision-making framework for fast-track decisions.

The Infrastructure Minister would continue to decide whether to refer fast-track applications to expert panels, with those panels continuing to make the “substantive decisions on projects”, it made clear.

Jones told The Post he was confident that the amendment bill would address his concerns.

He singled out the fresh limitations on appeal rights and the ability of the Government to give a general direction to the EPA as of particular importance.

Currently, any groups that are invited to make a submission to an expert panel on a consent application could appeal its decision on narrow points of law.

But the changes would restrict that right to organisations that had been invited by the Government to make a submission and the likes of affected land owners, local authorities and iwi, with environmental and other lobbyists appearing to have fewer rights.

“I fear that too many of them are getting involved just so they can appeal,” Jones said.

Jones described the announcement today that EPA chief executive Allan Freeth would step down on June 30 as “a great burst of sunlight”, making clear he thought the organisation had exceeded its remit and was an obstacle to the fast-track regime.

The EPA should not take it on itself to be “some kind of supernatural guardian of the natural world”, he said.

“They have a very modest role pertaining to the administration of the statute and the minister will have clear authority to set those expectations.”

The fast-track regime was “a one stop shop and unashamedly pro-development”, he added.

Labour RMA reform spokesperson Rachel Brooking said she “didn’t think anyone would be disagreeing” with the proposed changes as they affected supermarket consent applications, but labelled the other elements of the bill “strange”.

She was particularly concerned that the current right for fast-track expert panels to seek advice from anyone that they thought appropriate could be curtailed.

The amendment bill says they could still do so, but only if they considered relevant local authorities or administering agencies would not enable them to sufficiently address the matter concerned.

The changes could “further limit the small amounts of community input that can happen in the fast-track process”, Brooking said.

“The fundamental problem with the Fast-track Act as it stands is that the environmental protections are gutted through this process.”

Norman was concerned both by the additional hurdle to expert panels seeking input from whoever they chose and the proposed limitation on appeal rights, which he agreed would probably prevent Greenpeace appealing any fast-track consents.

The changes would discourage and put pressure on the panels not to seek wider comments on proposals, he said.

“These expert panels have had a mind of their own and have decided that to make a good decision they need all this extra comment from other groups. The Government is aghast at this.”

The Environmental Defence Society said the Government was “doubling down on its war on nature”.

“Although the bill is being marketed mainly as a targeted measure to improve competition in the grocery sector, and to deal with some ‘teething problems’, that is a cynical ploy to deflect from the bill’s actual effect in terms of its impact on the environment and democracy,” director Greg Severinsen said.

He described the requirement for expert panels to decide on consents within 60 days as a “ludicrous constraint” that would compromise the quality of information and decision-making.

The right for the Government to give general directions to the EPA would constitutionally problematic given the “whole reason we have the EPA involved in fast-track is because it is independent”, he said.

The Government said its intention was that the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill would get its first reading in Parliament on Thursday and would be referred to the Environment Select Committee for scrutiny, but that it would be passed “before the end of the year”.

Brooking said the time-frame meant the select committee would have very little time to consider the amendments.