When National rammed its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law through Parliament last year, they expected it to be a rubber-stamp. Developers would donate "apply", committees would approve, and the public would be bulldozed out of the way for their bold new projects which would revitalise the economy.
It didn't work out like that. Rather than just blindly rubber-stamping things, the EPA and the approval panels actually tried to do their jobs properly, rejecting applications, inviting comment from affected parties to supplement the (often incomplete) information on environmental impacts, and imposing conditions to address them - as required by law. The regime is not happy with this. So they've introduced an amendment bill to increase ministerial powers, prevent court challenges, and cut the public out of the process even more. They rammed it through the House yesterday and sent it to select committee - which has allowed just ten days for submissions. Why? The submissions page notes that:
The Chairperson intends to discuss the bill timeline with the Members on the Environment Committee, with the aim of reporting back to the House by early December 2025. If the committee agrees, public hearings are likely to take place in the week of 24 November 2025.The regime has a majority on the committee, so "committee approval" means a partisan vote to shorten the process and cut the public out. They're basically bulldozing the fast-track.
And they're abusing parliament to do so. Bills are meant to be sent to committee for four to six months - and this one was. The House can shorten that process when it sends the bill to committee, but that's a "debatable motion", imposing a cost in parliamentary time. The Minister responsible for the bill filed no such motion, and made no mention of the planned shorter timeframe - so he nakedly lied to the House. This regime lacks the courage to do its dirty deeds openly.
Why the rush? Because the regime knows they are going to lose the election. So they have to try and get this through, and get projects approved to pay off their donors as quickly as possible. Normal parliamentary timeframes won't let them do that, so they're stomping all over our democracy to enable their corruption.
(This BTW is why a mere normal repeal of fast-track is not enough. It must not just be repealed, but all outstanding applications need to be dumped in the bin, and any consents purportedly "granted" by this corrupt abuse of process need to be legislative cancelled, with no compensation to the donors. We can not allow corruption to be rewarded. It is that simple.)
Given the importance of the bill, I really should submit on it. But given the abbreviated timeframe, I won't have time to gather evidence or craft arguments, and it is clear that the regime does not want me to. So instead I'm simply likely to say "I oppose this bill", and criticise their process while I'm at it. Anti-democrats like Rimmer and James Meager will no doubt sneer at this as a "low-quality" submission which adds nothing new. But they can hardly complain about a lack of real submissions if they don't give people the time to make them. And fundamentally, neither the regime nor parliament nor the committee are taking the process seriously, so I don't see why we should either. The only submission this bill - and this regime - deserves is "fuck you!". But of course it would be "unparliamentary" to say it so clearly.
