Fast-track expert panels won’t need sector expertise

Thursday, 11 December 2025

Expert panels ruling on fast-track consents will no longer need to have relevant industry expertise as a result of a last-minute change to a raft of amendments to the controversial consenting regime that were rushed through Parliament on Wednesday night.

The panels will only be legally required to have knowledge, skills and expertise in the relevant sector, such as mining or aquaculture, “if practicable”.

The change was introduced at the committee stage of the bill, which was passed under urgency, meaning it avoided the short period of scrutiny afforded to the legislation through a truncated select committee process.

Labour Party environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said the expert panels should now be renamed “probably-expert panels” and she could not see the need for the change.

Greenpeace spokesperson Gen Toop said there was a risk a lack of sector knowledge might result in expert panels taking at face value any inflated economic benefits applicants claimed from projects.

“It may mean they don’t get the scrutiny they require.”

Defending the further relaxation of fast-track checks in Parliament on Wednesday evening, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said the alteration was “in the ‘rats and mice’ category”.

“It’s really just in case there are panels that are stood up and, for whatever reason, you can’t find the expertise, knowledge and skills for the particular relevant application.”

The panels would still need to have environmental expertise, he made clear.

The Government has softened some of the other actions it had proposed to further liberalise the fast-track regime.

Brooking welcomed a separate last-minute decision to ditch a change that would have given fast-track consent applicants the right to challenge the appointment of individual members to expert panels, but said that idea had been “outrageous”.

“The idea that an applicant who’s already getting the special treatment of going through the fast-track process could then have some sort of determination over who the decision-makers were, was the opposite of robust decision-making.”

On the recommendation of the environment select committee, the Government has also watered down changes that reduce the amount of time expert panels will have to make decisions on individual consents, though the timeframes will still reduce from those that currently apply.

Resources Minister Shane Jones said officials had estimated the Amendment Act could reduce the combined processing and consideration times for fast-track consents by six weeks or more.

But the default maximum time for expert panels to make decisions after the deadline for comments on projects closes will be set at 90 days, rather than reduced to 60 days as originally envisaged by the bill.

“Just because they proposed something pretty outrageous in the beginning, a relaxation doesn’t make it enough time,” Toop said.

Commenting on the passage of the bill, Economic Development Minister Nicola Willis concentrated on what it might mean for any businesses intending to set up new supermarkets.

A clause now inserted into the Fast-track Approvals Act gives the Infrastructure Minister the ability to issue “Government Policy Statements” setting out their desire for certain types of developments, that expert panels would need to take account of in their decisions.

The first such statement notes the Government’s desire to promote greater competition in the supermarket sector.