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.
