Trans-Tasman Resources has withdrawn its fast-track application to pillage the Taranaki seabed. Good riddance. As the fast-track panel pointed out, there was a credible risk of harm to protected species and uncertain environmental impacts, and TTR had done no work to clarify them, even when sent a clear message by the courts that they needed to. This was just a bunch of lazy foreigners wanting to pillage our natural resources, and relying on corruption to get their way. But it turns out that the panels the regime appointed were committed to doing their job.
Sadly, its unlikely to be the end of it:
Eggers says the company is now considering its options, but isn’t ruling out lodging a new application – especially if Shane Jones gets his way to amend the fast-track process to make ministers the ultimate decisionmakers.So, if you fail under one decision-maker, withdraw, then reapply, and get another one (and ideally, one who has publicly indicated both their bias and that they can be bought). That's not a proper process by any measure, but its what this corrupt, dogshit vandal regime has given us. The next government needs to not only end it, but legislatively revoke any "consent" obtained by such a corrupt abuse of process.
(And meanwhile, we've had a reminder today of the hazards of such ministerial decision-making, with the Waimea Dam - rammed through by Labour with a Muldoonist special law to overturn a court decision - turning into a complete financial disaster, and the farmers who pushed it are now wanting a handout to bail them out. Because of course they are. Because it turns out Ministers aren't great decision-makers, and make decisions based on lobbying rather than evidence or business-cases. Which is what scammers like TTR rely on. And meanwhile, the public inevitably gets left to pick up the tab, either direct (in the case of the dam), or indirect (in the case of TTR's proposed environmental destruction)).
