Petrels and Dolphins off Aotea (Credit: Far Out Ocean Collective)
Introduction
Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust (AGBET) thanks the Environment Select Committee for the opportunity to make a submission on the Fast-Track Approvals Bill (Bill). AGBET is a not-for-profit organisation that works with Aotea’s (Great Barrier Island) mana whenua and community to protect our island’s biodiversity, reintroduce lost species, eradicate rats and feral cats, and grow a sustainable, ecology-based economy. Our values as a Trust are to be a voice for biodiversity, foster open communication and encourage evidenced-based environmental discussion – with integrity, respect for mana whenua, commitment, innovation, trust and inclusivity.
AGBET strongly opposes the Bill. The draft legislation is anti-democratic, anti-transparency and creates vulnerability to corruption. It lacks any semblance of environmental protection, and in fact, removes existing protections.
Aotea | Great Barrier Island
Aotea | Great Barrier Island is unique ecologically and almost all of us who live here value that status either partly or wholeheartedly. The same applies to most of our visitors from near and far. The history of exploitation of the resources of Great Barrier Island by our ancestors serves as an important background to the need to reconsider many of the provisions of the proposed Fast Track Approvals Bill. It is less than 100 years since the cessation of the destructive industries of mining, logging, and whaling on our island; each of those relatively brief but violent assaults on the island teaches us a lesson about the need to tread with caution when seeking to gain wealth by harvesting natural resources. For example, logging in the late 19th century, but even more so in the early 20th century, was undertaken without any consideration of the environmental consequences, or the sustainability of the exercise.
There was brief consideration of sustainable forestry practices in the later 19th century, following European experience, but this was rejected. To be sure, wealth was generated from the massive quantity of kauri timber extracted, but it was enormously wasteful and destructive of the magnificent forests which existed on the island, and of the land on which those trees grew. Recovery from that particularly brutal extraction will take hundreds of years. Similarly, mining was brief but very destructive and generated very little wealth. We were appalled at the relatively recent proposal to resume mining on Te Ahumata (on Department of Conservation land), and as a consequence of the extensive public reaction to that ill-conceived and poorly researched and documented proposal, Aotea/Great Barrier Island was gazetted (by the previous National government) as a Conservation Park. To think that the half-baked mining proposal could in fact resurface under this new legislation is a truly devastating prospect.
Why AGBET opposes the Bill
The Bill is not about streamlining process, it is about circumnavigating environmental considerations: it purports to be a fast-tracked legal framework but it is not, it is an environmental destruction Bill that will overthrow almost all of the country’s environmental protections that have been established over the last four decades.
The Bill bears no resemblance to existing fast track processes: it places excessive and unfettered powers to approve projects in the hands of development Ministers. The advisory panels seem to be designed to limit public input and their timeframe for reporting is enormously constrained - given that their recommendations can be simply ignored by the deciding Minister(s) it is rather hard to see what their point is.
It excludes public participation: the Government’s objectives, as embodied in the Bill, are to exclude community voices and to over-ride the general law. Participatory principles have underpinned environmental management in Aotearoa for decades. This is especially significant as the Bill focuses on removing public input on the most significant projects nationally. It also reduces the opportunities for meaningful engagement with iwi and hapū.
It removes critical environmental protections: The provisions of the Bill give very little weight to the requirement to properly consider the environmental consequences of the proposal. The Bill gives just three Ministers the power to override all of our current environmental protection legislation with almost no input from experts in the field or people who live in the affected areas. The Bill gives the power to override even prohibited activities under the Resource Management Act 1991 – such as discharging raw sewage into the sea, pollutants into our already degraded rivers and noxious gases into the atmosphere – all of which are detrimental to human health and environmentally destructive.
The bill has no effective environmental protection provisions: although applicants are required to prepare environmental assessments, the ultimate evaluation of the project does not require any weight to be given to harmful environmental outcomes.
AGBET supports a resource management framework that enables New Zealand industry to operate and expand in a sustainable way. Enabling development and protecting the environment can be compatible. There is a lack of constraint and independence in relation to the referral and approval of projects. In addition, the tourism industry in New Zealand is critical for the economy, tourists flock to the country because of our spectacular natural environment and out “Pure NZ” image – mining in conservation land, polluting our rivers and seas, causing the extinction of unique and ancient wildlife, are the opposite of this image.
The Bill is contrary to the National Party’s environmental policy: which aspires to safeguard New Zealand's unique natural environment, native biodiversity, waters and landscapes for future generations. Addressing the urgent need for management of climate change should be at the centre of any government policy development; failure to do so will inevitably result in costs of a monumental scale. Prosperity will never accrue from projects where the balance sheet does not properly measure the negative costs. These costs may include many direct and indirect components. The latter may include reputational impact internationally, and contravention of international trade, climate change, and other commitments.
The bill lacks any real checks and balances to ensure transparency and accountability: Clause 25(8) suggests that Ministers are not required to give reasons if a project is approved, in circumstances where the decision rests largely in the discretion of Ministers, then it is difficult to identify where an error of law may have occurred. Ministers do not appear to be obliged to state any conflict of interest – this opacity invites corruption.
The bill ignores scientific monitoring which highlights the degraded state of our environment: it will encourage and/or permit continuation of industry sectors and land use practices which have degraded oceans, fresh water and biodiversity on private land for the last 30 years according to the government’s own monitoring reports. It will allow the continuation of sustainable and extractive model of fisheries management and marine ecosystem protection that has led to the collapse of scallops and koura, accelerating the path to extinction of seabirds and marine mammals including Maui’s and Hector’s dolphins and sealions.
Concluding Remarks
We must learn from past mistakes. The reason why we have a complicated process to go through in NZ in order to embark on major projects, such as mining, is to ensure that we do a better job than our ancestors of getting the balance right between benefit and harm. That balance will often be contentious, but the debate needs to be had. This new Bill appears to swerve off into a wildly unbalanced direction.
To achieve faster, cheaper development costs, the government has proposed an undemocratic and unnecessary bill which will:
Expose New Zealand internationally on trade and reputation
Sets no limits on, or thresholds for, environmental segregation
Tries to limit treaty rights and public inputs in decision making on projects
Leave decision making in the hands of three non-expert ministers.
In addition, to find that Schedule 2 (Listed Projects) is blank, and will remain so during the Select Committee process, is outrageous and unacceptable.
In summary, please reconsider this legislation. It is ill-considered, hasty, and deeply flawed. While it attempts to deal with frustrations caused by costs and delays experienced under existing legislation, it tosses aside a safe and sensible approach to facilitating projects that could enhance the lives of New Zealanders while protecting our precious and unique corner of the globe.