The Government has proposed a new Bill that has the undue power to override almost every environmental law that has been established in Aotearoa over the past four decades. This bill will give them the power to sneak destructive development projects in through the back. The Fast-track Approvals Bill is a Minister-controlled and obscenely undemocratic piece of legislation designed to give environmentally damaging projects the go-ahead with little or no consideration of the potential long-term environmental and social impacts. The Select Committee is calling for submissions from the public, and we have until 19 April to have our say.
As advocates for food sovereignty and security, we see this Bill as a further threat to the ability of Aotearoa to sustain food-secure communities into the future. It is clear that the aim of the Bill is to prioritise economic opportunities at any environmental cost, including further degradation of the natural resources that growers, food producers and all of us in Aotearoa depend upon, such as freshwater, healthy soils, access to land and a healthy atmosphere. We are also concerned about the limited capacity for tangata whenua and other affected authorities and experts to provide comment on projects destined for approval.
We understand that many of our members and followers will be as outraged and anxious as we are about this legislation, which the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) is calling ‘constitutionally questionable’. We have prepared a template for you to use in preparing your own submissions, whether as individuals or from your organisation/small business. We have used the submission prepared by the EDS along with information from Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, the Ministry for the Environment, and NZ scientists to inform this short submission template.
Please feel free to copy and paste, but remember that a submission is most impactful when it speaks to your own context and specific concerns.
Further action:
Sign the open letter from James Shaw
Read the EDS submission for much more in-depth content and inspiration for your own submission. They have also released a submission template.
Listen to the webinar on the EDS submission on the Fast-track Approvals Bill
Submission template
SUBMIT HERE
Submitter Details
Full name: [the name of your organisation, farm, business etc or your own name]
Address for service: [the registered address of your organisation, farm, business etc or your own address]
Contact: Name(s) of contact(s) - only necessary if you’re submitting on behalf of your organisation, farm, business etc.
Email: [contact email]
Introduction
[Your organisation, farm, business etc or name] thanks the Environment Select Committee for the opportunity to make a submission on the Fast-track Approvals Bill (Bill).
[Add a sentence about your organisation, farm, business etc or yourself here. What do you do? Where do you live? Any other context you’d like to add?]
[Name of your organisation, farm, business etc or ‘I’] strongly oppose(s) the Bill. It is clear that the aim of the Bill is to prioritise economic opportunities at any environmental cost, including the further degradation of natural resources that growers, food producers and all of us in Aotearoa depend upon for our livelihoods.
Why [Your organisation, farm, business etc or ‘I’] oppose(s) the Bill
Here are our key points - feel free to expand upon these or list your own.
To grow local, nutritious food for our communities, we rely upon a healthy environment. Both the global environment and te taiao (environment) of Aotearoa New Zealand are under extreme stress, with freshwater quality, biodiversity, solid health and the climate all on the decline. The Bill presents blatant and unacceptable disregard for these life-sustaining systems, with little to no consideration of environmental impact required.
The Bill is plainly not about speeding up the process. There may be some time savings, but by far the main impact of the Bill is to disempower the public and affected parties, and to bypass any meaningful testing of environmental effects.
The purpose of the Bill is completely one-sided - it only recognises regional and national benefits and not environmental effects, but it takes priority over all other considerations.
The Bill provides only extremely limited opportunities for tangata whenua and other affected authorities and experts to provide comment on referral of projects to the fast-track pathway and then projects destined for approval. Ten working days is a completely insufficient and unreasonable time period for consultation with those who are allowed to have a say (for example, iwi authorities and local government) and there is little room for comment from groups, organisations, experts and others who will be affected by the decisions under consideration.
The Bill provides development ministers with decision-making powers beyond those any politician should hold within parliament - it is anti-democratic and nonsensical.
The ministers are under no obligation to take advice from experts on the environmental impact of projects referred to the fast-track process, another mechanism restricting the opportunities for informed input.
The Bill is inconsistent with Aotearoa New Zealand’s international obligations under the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which commits us to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the Convention on Biological Diversity which commits us to conserving biodiversity. There is no requirement for considering the potential emissions of projects, which we find unacceptable for any new legislation amidst a climate crisis.
Furthermore, the Bill explicitly refers to “development of natural resources, including ... petroleum”, paving the way for oil and gas exploration and extraction.
There are insufficient criteria to exclude projects that could be environmentally detrimental. Even projects that involve prohibited activities under the RMA -the most environmentally dangerous activities in sensitive locations - and mining in national parks and marine reserves are not excluded, and the Ministers can choose to approve them regardless of the Expert Panel’s recommendations.
The intent to favour commercial interest over community and environmental wellbeing is clear in the purpose of the Bill. We believe this will be at the detriment of the natural environment and the health of our people.
The Bill is also inconsistent with the government’s own stated goal of evidence-based decision making (s17F of your coalition agreement).
Concluding points
We submit that the Bill should not be passed. A robust and inclusive discussion about RMA reform is instead needed.
We urge you to slow the pace of all environmental law reform (including repeal of both the Natural and Built Environment Act 2023 and Spatial Planning Act 2023; proposed changes to the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity 2023 (including ceasing implementation of new Significant Natural Areas); and replacing the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020) to allow for proper democratic consultation and consider advice from environmental experts.
We wish to be heard in support of our submission (you can add this if you would like to speak to the select committee kanohi-ki-te-kanohi (face-to-face) at Parliament or via video conferencing)
