Govt urged to release list of fast-track projects

The Petitions Committee has formally recommended that the Government releases the list of baked-in fast-track projects to the Environment Committee.
The recommendation is not a mandate, but it is in line with what legal experts have suggested since the Fast-Track Approvals Bill was proposed. Forest & Bird’s Richard Capie presented a petition to this committee in August calling for the list to be delivered to ensure “good lawmaking”. 
As the October 18 deadline for the Environment Committee’s report nears, Victoria University Professor of Law Dean Knight warned not releasing the list to the committee would “make a mockery” of the parliamentary process.
On August 29, Capie presented the Petitions Committee with an early draft of the fast-track bill. Written by New Zealand First members during their time out of Government, the draft was brought to coalition negotiations under the title of Nationally and Regionally Significant Projects and Other Matters Bill.
It laid the groundwork for the fast-track bill currently before the Environment Committee.
Capie directed the committee to the final pages of the document, which included a redacted Schedule 1: an area of the draft Capie understood to be a suggested list of pre-approved projects. This design mirrored the eventual structure of the fast-track bill, which included a list of projects in Schedule 2 that would automatically be sent to an expert panel for approval should the bill become law.
Minister of Regional Development Shane Jones has championed the fast-track’s merits and confirmed to Newsroom that a list of proposed projects was included in the draft bill. According to other official documents released via the Official Information Act, at least four of these projects were mining-related, another of the same minister’s portfolios.
The draft’s listed projects included OceanaGold’s Waihi North Project and Macraes Phase Four, Bathurst’s Buller Plateau Project and BT Mining’s Rotowaro Mine Continuation Project.
The final list has not been made public, and was not presented to the Environment Committee as part of their scrutiny process for the bill. Capie’s petition hinged on the premise that withholding such information from the committee hampered their ability to conduct good lawmaking practices, and that committee members were entitled to review the entirety of the law they were meant to be appraising: including the bill’s list of projects.
Capie cited concerns raised about the fast-track’s structure and design by the Ombudsman, the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. He reminded the room that the Legislation Design and Advisory Committee had already recommended the list be delivered to the Environment Committee in an amendment paper, but this has not happened.
The Petitions Committee’s eventual verdict was split along party lines. Green and Labour party members agreed releasing the list would lead to better lawmaking, and encouraged the Government to grant this list to the Environment Committee alongside an extension of time in which to consider it.
National party members believed this was unnecessary, as the Environment Committee had already heard from submitters and experts. 
But Knight said this was not what good lawmaking looked like. In his view, good lawmaking would either see the bill returned to committee with the list included for scrutiny, or see the list of pre-approvals removed entirely. 
To put such projects before an approval panel without public participation and appropriate scrutiny would “make a mockery of parliamentary sovereignty”, he said.
Knight identified the entry point to the fast-track as crucial. It was hard to see how any project would be declined once it began the fast-track process, said Knight. The bill’s purpose statement and assessment criteria for projects all favour development, making rejection of a project unlikely in Knight’s eyes except for “the most egregious of circumstances”. 
Still, Knight proposed a hypothetical: imagine if one of the listed projects was a nuclear power station in Central Otago. What checks and balances would be at hand to prevent that project from going ahead, or at least to ensure it was properly scrutinised? 
“The short answer is: ‘very little’,” said Knight. A pro-development expert panel would assess the project with a pro-development metric, and after that, the only democratic hurdles in its way would be two short debates in the House, “where Government holds all the cards”, said Knight.  
Minister Jones has repeatedly compared the fast-track to the Covid-19-era bill put forward by the Labour Government, a piece of legislation he cited as inspiration for the current bill. Jones and his coalition partners have repeatedly used this comparison when faced with critiques of the legislation, though the two bills have a key difference: the way a project enters the pipeline.
Knight said the current fast-track’s design circumvents scrutiny and public participation, in contrast to the Covid-19 fast-track, which saw all listed projects scrutinised by a select committee before approval. 
Labour’s spokesperson for the environment, Rachel Brooking, said it was “crazy” the list hadn’t gone through the scrutiny process given that any approval would give private rights to companies listed in the legislation via a public select committee process. Despite the Petitions Committee’s recommendations, the bill was “still terrible”, she said. 
The Petitions Committee has no authority to mandate that the list be handed to the Environment Committee, but did make a formal recommendation that the House take note of its report.