Screaming works

Last month, the regime introduced the Conservation Amendment Bill, a steaming pile of shit which would allow it to sell off huge chunks of the conservation estate while opening up more of it to mining, development, and exploitation. Pretty obviously, this did not fit with the public's expectations and the value it placed on our natural taonga, and people started screaming about it. This week, after being challenged in the House, Chris Luxon tried to claim it was just about selling a few old buildings - but no-one believed him. And so just like that, the regime has backed down:

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka has announced the controversial exchange and disposal provisions for conservation land will be dropped from the Conservation Amendment Bill.

The minister said he never intended to dispose of vast swathes of the conservation estate, but acknowledged the public outcry over the bill. He took personal responsibility for giving New Zealanders that impression. “That’s on me – that’s on us,” he said at the Environmental Defence Society conference in Auckland. “We were not clear enough.”

Good. Our taonga places are exactly that - taonga, to be kept for future generations. No government has any right to sell or despoil them.

Obviously there's more work to do here. The bill guts regional boards, compromises Treaty settlements, and includes an odious "economic opportunities" clause in the department's functions which push it towards enabling rather than stopping the bulldozers. But stopping conservation land from being sold is a good first step. And if it helps drive a wedge between National (who want to get re-elected) and NZ First (who want to pay off their mining industry donors with public taonga) then that's a bonus. The sheer scale of public opposition has also opened space for a serious push-back - something the Greens have recognised - which could be leveraged into giving our taonga places greater protection. Hopefully people will push on that as hard as they can.

Meanwhile, the lesson in this is that if we scream loud enough, the regime backs down. Their desire to be re-elected is a weapon we can use against them. So keep screaming. Screaming works.

Orcs want to pillage Te Wāhipounamu

Te Wāhipounamu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a taonga of Aotearoa's conservation estate. So naturally, the orcs in the Beehive want to dig it up and despoil it:

The Green Party says the government's decision to grant a prospecting permit on heritage land is unacceptable.

It comes after a permit was approved within Te Wāhipounamu, one of the country's three UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The permit covers 157 square kilometres, and allows prospecting for all minerals except uranium.

Green Party list MP and resources spokesperson Steve Abel said heritage sites had long been ruled out for mining, and should remain that way.

But the problem here is that, legally, they're not ruled out for mining. Bits of them are, if they're national parks, nature reserves, wilderness areas, or other areas protected by Schedule 4. But Te Wāhipounamu includes land not protected by such status, and the New Zealand state has repeatedly rejected extending it. In 2017 Labour's Ruth Dyson put up a bill to explicitly protect World Heritage Sites by adding them to Schedule 4. National voted it down. And in 2023 the Greens put up their own bill, which (among other things) would have protected all state land managed by DoC under Schedule 4. Labour voted that one down. And in 2025, when stewardship land on the west Coast was reclassified, Tama Potaka refused to extend national parks or further protect land within Te Wāhipounamu. Which rather invites the question of whether he knew about this application, and whether he made his decision in order to advantage the applicant. But given that its going to court, I guess we'll get to find that out...

What this tells us is that we need greater protection for taonga land and ecosystems. Once this tyrannical, destructive regime is voted out in November, the next government needs to make it a priority to protect our natural heritage, as part of the project of undoing every shitty thing that it has done. And that means urgently expanding national parks and fully protecting World Heritage Sites under Schedule 4. In the meantime, I guess we've just got to hope that any exploration activity permitted by this "consent" is delayed.

Submit!

The Environment Committee has called for submissions on the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill. Submissions should be made tot he link above, by 4.30pm on Wednesday, 11 March 2026.

(Yes, they're going with a middle-of-the-day deadline rather than the usual midnight one, in an effort to make it just that much harder for people to submit. Because that's the sort of "democracy" we are now).

There will no doubt be proper submission guides from various NGOs in due course, but the TL;DR is that the bill does exactly what it says on the label: destroys the Ministry for the Environment. While the regime is pitching this as a minor, technical change, part of folding it in to a new mega-ministry, the effect will be to silence the voice for the environment, reduce it to a budget line and an internal debate within an overwhelmingly development-focused agency, avoiding embarrassing notes in Cabinet papers with formal warnings of environmental impacts and consequences. And of course it will enable the shreds of that voice to then be quietly cut.

This is how the regime sees the environment: something which should be kept out of sight and out of mind, while the big boys pay to play with their bulldozers. I don't think kiwis feel this way. And if you don't, submit, and tell them so! Sure, the regime will ignore you and pass the bill anyway, because autocrats gonna stomp on your face. But speaking up still matters. National hates headlines like "100,000 oppose bill; government passes it anyway", they hate everyone seeing that everyone hates them, and that's why they try so hard to stop people submitting. And that's why we have to. Every voice raised against this bill imposes a political cost on the regime. It encourages the present-opposition to commit to restoring an independent MfE, and it encourages other voters to vote out the regime and get one which respects the environment.

An avalanche is made up of pebbles. Be a pebble, and help crush this government. Submit on the bill.

A victory for the environment

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)).

100% pure vandalism

Aotearoa is in the middle of a giant environmental disaster, caused by climate change. So naturally, the regime thinks this is the perfect day to introduce a bill to disestablish the Ministry for the Environment. Because nothing says "we care about this problem" like shutting down the agency which warns us about such things and devises policy to avoid them.

While some staff will be merged with other agencies to form the regime's new development and infrastructure ministry, they will very much be sidelined, taking a back seat to the new agency's core functions of housing, transport, and local government. The rest will simply be sacked. Which means all that policy expertise will be lost to Aotearoa forever, and will take decades to rebuild. Which is the point. National wants to silence the institutional voice for the environment, so they don't have to admit in their cabinet papers that MfE told them it was a terrible idea with terrible consequences. So they're going to just rev up the bulldozer and crush it all, so nothing can stand in the way of them bulldozing everything else.

Again, this dogshit vandal regime has to go. The question is how much of Aotearoa they'll outright destroy before we can get rid of them.

Two defeats for the regime

There's been good news over the weekend, with two significant defeats for the regime's programme of environmental destruction. First, there's the draft decision of the Fast Track Panel to reject Trans-Tasman Resources' plans to mine the Taranaki seabed, on the grounds that there was a credible risk of harm to protected species and uncertain environmental impacts. The panel found that these significantly outweighed any economic benefit. It's only a draft decision, and TTR gets to comment on it, but it seems unlikely they will be able to overturn these findings unless they present significant and credible new evidence. Which means that one of the flagship projects of fast-track - a dirty mining project which has already been rejected by the Supreme Court - is dead. Good riddance.

Secondly, there's the news today that despite the regime bending over for the oil industry and repealing the offshore drilling ban, they're just not coming back, and will instead leave Aotearoa to small, bottom-feeder companies - which in turn may lack the resources to properly explore any permits they are granted, or to meet remaining cleanup obligations. Which means that National's desired levels of drilling seem unlikely to happen. Good riddance to that too.

Both the corrupt, Muldoonist fast-track program and the equally corrupt courting of the oil industry were absolutely central to National's policy programme. And neither seems to be working out the way they want. Which hopefully means they cause only limited damage before the election allows them to be repealed and the "consents" granted under them overturned.

Climate Change: The sin of cheapness

Tairāwhiti has a problem. Thanks to decades of forestry strip-mining the land, every major storm washes down sediment and slash from the hills, covering fields and smashing bridges. And as we saw last month, major storms are happening more often and getting worse...

Tairāwhiti also has a solution: a transition programme agreed with farmers, foresters, environmental groups and the wider community, which would see the hills replanted with native trees to prevent erosion. But to do it, they need government funding: $359 million over a decade - $36 million a year - which will be matched by $241 million from the community. And it should be a no-brainer, because the damage it averts is estimated at at least four times that much. In 2023 the damage from flooding was a billion dollars alone...

But of course, the government said "no". It turns out they have infinite money for landlords, for tax cuts to the rich, for -ve BCR roads in Auckland, or for war-toys - but nothing for actually protecting people from real risks, even when it is profitable to do so.

Its stupid. It's short-sighted. And its simple cheapness. The government just... doesn't want to pay. But if they won't, then its worth asking the question: if the government won't pay to protect people from real risks, why do we even fucking have it? What is it for? And if the answer to that is just "giving more money to rich people and Shame Jones' corrupt mates", then maybe its time we did away with this bunch and got a new one?

Gas is still dead

The National regime, with its outdated fossil thinking, is desperately trying to revive the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile, that industry seems to be voting with its feet: one of my regular checks of the gas permit map, and comparison with the permit spreadsheet, shows that OMV has surrendered another two offshore exploration permits: 57075 and 60092. So of the nine offshore Taranaki exploration permits which existed when I started tracking this, seven have been surrendered, and only one is still active, and it expires in 2028.

(If you're wondering why I say nine offshore permits but the spreadsheet shows ten, its because the government was forced to grant another one under pre-ban rules by the courts in 2023).

The bad news is that National has converted Todd Energy's Karewa exploration permit off Kawhia into a mining permit. Which is weird, because the exploration permit had expired in July 2023, but NZPAM conveniently sat on an application to convert it for the last two years. Then, Todd Energy apparently applied again in May, and had it granted in just two weeks. Which seems... unusual. And only possible because of Labour's bad faith in banning new permits, but allowing existing ones to be extended and even converted, rather than guillotining the industry like it needed to do, which allowed the application to hang around until National had changed the law.

But on the plus side: Todd Energy's permit may simply end up as an accounting fiction, used to boost the nominal value of the company while the gas stays in the ground. Any possible development isn't going to happen until the end of the decade at the earliest, and there simply won't be a market for gas by then. And of course there'll be plenty of time between now and then for the next government to reimpose the offshore ban and legislatively revoke their permit. Which in itself ought to deter any development, because the risk of wasting a shit-ton of money is simply too great. The only question is how much this zombie industry is going to shamble around groaning before it finally realises it is dead.

Naked corruption

When National passed its corrupt, Muldoonist fast-track law, they were criticised for accepting donations from fast-track applicants. You'd think that after such criticism, and the consequent effect on the reputation of our state, they might have ceased the practice - but of course not. Instead, they're still taking money from people whose cases they will later be deciding on:

Ministers Shane Jones and Chris Bishop continued to make decisions about several fast-track projects despite their respective parties receiving donations linked to the applicants.

One political scientist says such donations could be perceived as a conflict of interest and erode public trust in government.

However, both ministers said that donations to parties were not considered to be a conflict.

"The long-standing approach of the Cabinet Office to donations to political parties is that they are not generally treated as resulting in a pecuniary conflict of interest for individual Ministers belonging to the party," a statement said.

Which is a transparently self-serving approach. The stooges in DPMC, eager to please their political masters, may say it, and the politicians, out of self-interest, may (pretend to) believe it - but no member of the public does. No ordinary person outside the Thorndon Bubble believes that company managers, with legal obligations to their shareholders, give free money to politicians and expect nothing in return. And no-one belives for a moment that the politicians take tens of thousands of dollars and then says "fuck you" to the people who gave it to them. They reserve that attitude for us plebs, the people who vote for them without giving them enormous gifts.

NZ First has taken $121,680, and National $58,897.25 from fast-track companies. We should call these "donations" what they really are: bribes. And we should call the practice what it is: naked corruption. That is actually a crime in Aotearoa, and its time these ministers went to jail for it.

We don't need the fast track to kill fossil fuels

RNZ has a story this morning about the expansion of solar farms in Aotearoa, driven by today's ground-breaking ceremony at the Tauhei solar farm in Te Aroha:

From starting out as a tiny player in the electricity system, solar power generated more electricity than coal and gas combined for the first time over summer, albeit only for a few days, according to the Electricity Authority.

Overall, solar farms generate just 2 per cent of the country's power now, but by 2030 Meridian Energy thinks it will be 7 to 8 per cent.

Which is roughly what we generate with wind ATM. Or gas. In fact, solar will overtake gas in terms of generation capacity within two years. Here's MBIE's breakdown of generation capacity to 2023 (excludes hydro):

Source: MBIE, Energy in New Zealand 2024, p24.

Look at that beautiful exponential curve for solar! And it gets better: total solar capacity in December 2024 was 573MW. There's another 463MW currently under construction, and 130MW which will start building in August, all of which will be built by the end of 2027. Throw in a couple of hundred MW of distributed generation, and there will be more solar than gas. The same is also true of wind, which has 262MW under construction and scheduled for completion by the end of 2027, and there's 300MW of batteries under construction to remove the need for peaking power. All of which means that we're going to be burning a lot less gas in a couple of years.

And the kicker: this has all been done without National's fast-track bill. The government has claimed that its corrupt, Muldoonist, anti-environment law is necessary to boost renewable energy, but clearly it is not. So when big generators claim that the world will end because their latest big stupid project has been rightly refused resource consent, they are lying. We don't need to allow corruption or compromise the rule of law in Aotearoa to get a green future; the market is pushing that perfectly well. Instead, Contact is fighting over who gets the money from that revolution: them or someone else. And none of us should really give a single wet shit about that. There's plenty of other wind projects waiting to be built, and we'll just build them instead.

Good riddance

The proposed Waimate garbage incinerator is dead:

The company behind a highly-controversial proposal to build a waste-to-energy plant in the Waimate District no longer has the land.

[...]

However, SIRRL director Paul Taylor said the sales and purchase agreement to purchase land from Murphy Farms, near Glenavy, lapsed at the end of last year.

The company gave no indication of where the plant may be located now it had lost the land.

So, South Island Resource Recovery may have got itself placed on National's corrupt fast-track list, but that list specifies the exact site, so they can no longer use it. And while they could find a new site and re-apply, they'd need to spend years gathering the required environmental data for the new site to support an application. Which means in practical terms that the whole thing is dead. Until of course it pops up in a new small town with a low-capacity local authority to start the whole scam again.

The corruption list

Yesterday the navy lost one of its newest ships in an accident. And so obviously, National used it as cover to release its list of projects to be rubber-stamped under its corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law. When the list of invitees was released, I called it "a who's who of New Zealand's dodgiest companies". The final list is a who's who of our most corrupt. Those willing to bribe ministers or simply trample all over our democracy is order to get their projects (briefly) approved.

Trans-Tasman Resources is there, with their seabed mine which has already been rejected by the Supreme Court and which would prevent the construction of a vital offshore windfarm. As is the South Island garbage incinerator, Oceana Gold's giant Waihi gold mine, and a host of other dirty mining and irrigation projects. Plus a bunch of housing developments to pay off the property developers. All wrapped up with a tiny amount of infrastructure and renewable energy projects for PR purposes (except: there's NZ's dodgiest solar farm company's Warkworth project; and a bunch of projects in the Mackenzie Country, which independent panels have already decided is not an acceptable place for solar farms; and a bunch of the wind projects are already consented).

Some of these filler projects might gain consent through the normal RMA process. The fact that their promoters have chosen to piss in our faces and shit on our democracy by pursuing fast-track authorisation tells us something ugly about them and their corporate mindset. And they need to be punished for that choice. So I'm not in favour of drawing any distinctions when the next government inevitably revisits this. Repeal the law, revoke all their consents without compensation, and make them do it properly or not at all.

The good news is that while the bill will be law by the end of the year, and the government thinks it will have the first approvals early (really mid) next year, there's really only an eighteen-month window for construction and profit before the next election and a potential change of government and policy. Every month of delay due to legal action, protests etc against these projects narrows that window. And if its narrowed enough, it will become too risky to start for fear that consent will be revoked and money wasted. So, we may not have to do too much against the worst of them to stop them - provided the left wins the next election.

I've posted before about the legitimising effect of the RMA process. Given the potential for protest, occupation etc, whether these projects proceed is ultimately a matter of public consent. But by choosing to pursue this process, these companies have basically surrendered any prospect of that. I hope they are made to regret it.

National's self-serving secrecy protects corruption

One of the many problems with National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law is that the entire process is designed to cut the public out of decision-making and prevent us from having a say. The bill was rammed through its first reading under urgency, its time for submissions was ludicrously short given its complexity, and we won't even get to see the list of projects the government wants fast-track until the committee-stage - by which time there is nothing we can legally do to oppose them. And when the list of those invited to apply is a who's who of New Zealand's dodgiest companies, some of which are run by government donors or relatives, that simply fails the political hygiene test.

The Official Information Act is meant to be a solution to this. And someone has in fact asked for the list of projects. But surprise, surprise, the government is refusing to release it. Their reasoning however is a little weird:

Bishop’s response went on to explain that because decisions on the bill are yet to be made, “releasing the list of applicants at this time would impact the orderly and effective conduct of executive government”, and “result in extensive lobbying, even campaigning, both for and against applications ahead of Cabinet consideration”. Bishop explicitly feared “attempts would be made to influence Cabinet Ministers”.

The problem here is that there is already "extensive lobbying". its just that its been done by corrupt companies desperate to have their projects fast-tracked (sometimes in secret dinners with corrupt Ministers). But Bishop doesn't have a problem with that. Instead, what he's worried about is "lobbying" by the public. Or, as it is normally called, public participation in government. Promoting that is one of the purposes of the OIA, not to mention an obligation of the public service. By shutting us out and cloaking its dirty dealings under a veil of secrecy, National is simply enabling its own corruption. And we should regard it and its law as permanently tainted by this.

Naked corruption

There's been all sorts of corruption swirling around the government's Muldoonist fast-track law, with various donors invited to apply. And now we have another case, with a donor demanding specific amendments to help it in a legal dispute:

A NZ First donor wants Fast Track legislation to free up permanently protected land for quarrying.

J Swap, a company involved in quarrying, wants land protected under QEII covenants to be available to quarry. It donated $11,000 to NZ First in December, after the coalition was formed.

It also gave $5000 to NZ First's Shane Jones in August 2023 and $3000 to National's David MacLeod in September 2023.

One of J Swap's related companies is currently involved in a long-running court case trying to pry open (permanently protected) QEII covenanted land for a quarry. They've lost every round. But if the select committee chair they donated to approves their amendments, then three Ministers, including one they donated to, can solve that problem for them. Of course, interfering with QEII covenants would be a massive government over-reach - its private property, and you'd think ACT would have something to say about that. But this company apparently thinks its possible, if you pay NZ First enough money.

This entire incident shows the problem with fast-track in a nutshell. Its just a nexus for corruption, in law-making, and in decision-making. We should throw it in the garbage bin. And if we don't, well, we're clearly going to need a specialist Anti-Corruption Commission to sort out the resulting mess.

National's bulldozer dictatorship bill

This National government has been aggressively anti-environment, and is currently ramming through its corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" legislation to give three ministers dictatorial powers over what gets built and where. But that's not the only thing they're doing. On Thursday they introduced a Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and the Order Paper says they'll be ramming it through its first reading on Tuesday. Obviously, this bill is about removing environmental protections which currently stop farmers from shitting in rivers and chainsawing native bush. But its far wider than that.

The RMA has an extensive system of national environmental standards and national policy statements, which are supposed to guide the plans and policies made by local authorities to cover matters of national importance. As I pointed out when Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard purported to "suspend" one by press conference, there is an actual legal process required to change these. This requires either an independent board of inquiry, or, if control-freaked by a Minister, notification, consultation, an evaluation and decision-making according to legislated criteria. The bill basically guts all that.

Firstly, of course, it removes independent boards. These decisions will be made by Ministers, and only by Ministers, strengthening their role as a nexus of corruption in the system. Secondly, while those corrupt Ministers will still be required to notify the public of what they want to do, we won't be allowed to have a say. An objective criteria that we be given "adequate time and opportunity to make a submission" is replaced with a squishy one of "what the Minister considers to be adequate time..." We've seen what that means to National in their constant abuse of Parliamentary select committee submission windows to prevent public engagement.

As for evaluation, there'll be a special stove-piped process for these Ministerial diktats. They will still be required to assess effectiveness, environmental and economic (but not social or cultural) impacts, and reasonably practicable alternatives. But there's no longer a requirement to assess costs and benefits, or the risks of acting (or not acting) when information is uncertain. Worse, the requirement that national directions be "the most appropriate way to achieve the purpose of this Act" is removed; in fact, they will no longer be required to serve the purposes of the Act (or the other matters identified as important in the RMA) at all. And, as the final insult, there will no longer be a requirement to give reasons for the decision. This is likely cribbed from National's previous attacks on refugees, and like those, it is a recipe for legislated arbitrariness - a bulldozer dictatorship.

Finally, decision-making. Under the current law, if Ministers decide to control-freak, they must still decide on the same basis as a board of inquiry would, taking account of the purposes of the Act and other matters of national importance (including ti Tiriti), and the submissions and evidence received. That's all gone. So, in deciding on environmental standards and policies under the RMA, Ministers won't need to consider the purpose of that law, legislated matters of national importance, other important values, or ti Tiriti. None of that will matter. Neither will what we say - Ministers won't be required to consider it at all. The clear implication is that Ministers will be making decisions counter to those purposes and values, counter to ti Tiriti. And with the concentration of powers making the Minister a nexus for corruption, it basically replaces the legislated values with the Minister's bank balance.

Oh, and the Minister won't even have to do that if they're changing a national direction for a bunch of reasons, including "chang[ing] the time frame for implementation" - meaning Ministers can indefinitely delay things on a whim, without notification or consultation.

As I said, this is basically a bulldozer dictatorship, which will gut our environmental protections for the benefit of vandals and polluters, while enabling Ministers to corruptly enrich themselves in the process. It is contrary to our values and to our constitutional norms for decision-making. It should not be allowed to pass. And if it is rammed through, it must be immediately removed, under urgency, by the next government.

27,000

That's the number of submissions received on National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track legislation. Except its higher than that, because the number doesn't include form submissions, such as the 15,000 people who supported Forest & Bird's submission, or the 14,000 who supported Greenpeace. And so many people want to appear in person that the Environment Committee has had to split into two subcommittees to hear them all.

For those wondering, its not the Most Submissions Ever. That goes to the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill (which banned torturing gay kids to try and turn them straight) received over 100,000 (including 68,000 form submissions). And there were 88,383 on the Water Services Entities Bill. But its definitely up there as one of the largest bills ever, and shows that the public care about environmental legislation. Which means trouble for the government if they continue down their present path, because that's a lot of people motivated to stop them.

Secrecy undermines participation

The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse?

“It's not really standard to release a whole lot of Government information, advice and briefings so that people can read it in advance of select committee submissions.

Well, maybe it should be. We're meant to be a democracy, after all - and that means the government both publicly justifying its decisions, and enabling us to participate in them. Enabling that is literally what the Official Information Act is for: "enabl[ing] more effective participation in the making and administration of laws and policies" is right there in the purpose clause. And its there precisely because of government secrecy and over-reach during its last bout of Muldoonism.

Purposefully delaying OIA responses so that everything can be released all at once may be more efficient. But if done with the intention, or even the foreseeable consequence, of delaying public participation by what the Minister has proudly said is the only opportunity we will have is utterly contrary to both the text and the spirit of the Act. The government knew there would be interest in this. They knew that this information would be needed for people to make effective submissions on the bill. And they should have planned for an early proactive release from the start precisely to enable that. If they didn't, they're incompetent. And if - as the article suggests - the Minister instructed them to delay, then he is guilty of a conspiracy against both the Act and our democracy. But once again: unlike overseas laws, our OIA has no teeth, and there are no criminal penalties for such behaviour (let alone ones with a penalty where conviction would result in a Minister losing their seat in Parliament, and thus their job). If we want a transparent and accountable government, putting such penalties in place needs to be a priority.

A who's who of New Zealand's dodgiest companies

Submissions on National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law are due today (have you submitted?), and just hours before they close, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop has been forced to release the list of companies he invited to apply. I've spent the last hour going through it in an epic thread of bleats, and its basically a who's who of New Zealand's dodgiest companies.

In addition to the seabed miners who have been rejected by the Supreme Court, and the coal miners who have been rejected by the Environment Court, there's also:

• The irrigation company which poisons the local water and doesn't want to pay easement fees to use DoC land;
• the scrapyard company which can't be bothered getting resource consents, and whose scrapyards regularly catch fire;
• A company which wants to build an "equestrian centre" in Canterbury. I guess we know why they're on the list then;
• The Australian mining company whose plan to mine the barrytown flats has been rejected multiple times;
• The Auckland property development company who just happen to have a member of their family in the National caucus.

The last one so obviously fails the political hygiene test that you really have to wonder how it got through. Or maybe National really is as shamelessly corrupt as NZ First?

These are precisely the sorts of projects which should be going through robust processes to assess their merits and consistency with environmental bottom-lines. Instead, all of that is going to be bypassed, replaced with a Muldoonist rubber-stamp, so that the coalition parties can raise funds through corruption. Which just makes it all the more necessary for the next government to review every "consent" granted by this process, and legislatively cancel every one which should not have been granted.

National's total reversal on marine protection

In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed to consult iwi, in violation of the 1992 Treaty settlement on fisheries, resulting in a threatened court case and ACT - ACT! - pulling its support. The bill then sat on the order paper for the next nine years while first National, then Labour, tried to do what should have been done in the first place, and negotiated with iwi. For six of those years, when Labour was in power, National would ask about the bill regularly, suggesting strongly that they still supported it.

...and now, they've killed it:

The Government has given up trying to establish the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, with Cabinet scrapping the bill proposing the marine reserve.

It’s almost a decade since former Prime Minister John Key first announced plans for a 620,000sq km sanctuary at the United Nations in New York in 2015.

Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones said in a statement Cabinet had decided to pull the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill from Parliament’s order paper, stopping further progress on establishing the sanctuary.

He argued the current marine reserve around the Kermadec Islands, which extended 12 nautical miles, was “ample” to preserve the environment and marine life.

Worse, yesterday Jones mentioned "manganese nodules in the Kermadecs" in response to a question on seabed mining - so it seems that National has gone from wanting the EEZ around the Kermadecs to be effectively the marine equivalent of a national park, to wanting to mine it - a total reversal.

The lesson here: we can't rely on National to respect Te Tiriti, and we can't rely on them to protect the environment either. If we want people to work in good faith towards those outcomes, we need to vote for someone else.

The return of Muldoon

For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and consultation rights. The backlash to his secrecy forced him to pass the OIA. His top-down control of Cabinet by holding the finance portfolio gave us a since-unbroken norm that the Prime Minister cannot also be Finance Minister, because it is too great a concentration of power. His abuses of the "elected dictatorship" and election "victories" where he won fewer votes than the Labour opposition laid the basis for our modern constitution and MMP.

All of which now seems awfully familiar. People are noting the similarities in abuse of the parliamentary process, and in the steamrolling through of pet projects. And now there's another one: "legislating" by press-release, with Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard purporting today to "suspend" the Significant Natural Area provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity:

Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).

The problem is that there is an actual legal process required to change a National Policy Statement, requiring public notification and submissions, and a board of inquiry or independent report. The government hasn't done any of it. And until it happens (or the government rams through an amendment under urgency), the law is still the law. Muldoon learned that the hard way in Fitzgerald v Muldoon; you'd think both Ministers and public servants would be aware enough of that case to stop Hoggard from making a similar mistake.