Fast Track Legislation

CKM member Don Quick wrote a group submission to the Fast Track legislation which was sent to Minister Chris Bishop in February this year. There were 27,000 submissions with 2,900 requests to speak to the committee. The committee chose to hear from 1100 organisations and individuals who made unique submissions, of which one was CKM. Below is the text of the original letter and the subsequent presentation to the Select Committee.

LETTER TO MINISTER CHRIS BISHOP.

Sir,
We reply to your letter of 31/01/2024, addressed “Tena koe”. In particular, we address the process of your letter, which appears to us to lack  good faith. It appears to betray the intentions expressed in what you write. Your process amounts as much to an assault on our democracy,  that your Government claims in its coalition agreements to uphold, as the content of your letter amounts to an assault on our environment, to  which, as Minister Responsible for RMA Reform you are responsible. Using a Māori form of address is odd for a Minister in a Government whose policy is to use English as its primary form of communication. The use of this form in your letter thus suggests cultural  misappropriation, disrespect and a colonialist attitude.
“Tena koe” does not specify who you are addressing except as being an individual. If you were addressing ‘Dear Voter’, as would be appropriate in a democracy like ours, that would be fine and good. However, the form of address you use invalidates any response by a collective, such as ourselves, who would be addressed as ‘tēnā koutou’. You have not given notice of this letter in any truly public way; you have required feedback within a tight fortnight; and you have released the letter over a period of public distraction with Waitangi Day. With such limitations on participation, it is very hard to know how to make any contribution; hard to know in what way and to what extent any contribution will be “valued”.
With some difficulty, I sought your letter online and initially found not the letter itself but an apparently frank summation of its intent by Anderson Lloyd, environmentalconsultants, who suggest that the letter is addressed to “stakeholders”. In a general sense of course, everyone in
New Zealand’s democracy is a stakeholder in “New Zealand’s prosperity”, to quote your letter. In contrast, the content of your letter clearly indicates that your concern for our prosperity is in a business sense, prioritising “locally, regionally and nationally significant infrastructure and development projects”. The stakeholders in this context would be well defined as anyone with a ‘legitimate interest’ in the business at hand, i.e. with a primarily pecuniary interest recognised at law. As you say, this will be a “one- stop shop process”; a process by which vested interests principally will prosper.
The whole process of your letter indicates that your own interest in writing, rather than hoping for “our valuable contribution to policy development”, is to seek our endorsement of the fully-formed intentions that you openly express in the letter. You reveal little of how those intentions will affect either the voting public or the “environment” that supplies those resources which you intend to manage. This is a continuance of the kind of ‘trust-us-we-know-best’ process that has led many Māori people to distrust the intentions of successive colonialist governments, that have failed to live up to their promises.
We, Climate Karanga Marlborough, consider that what you, in your letter, say you are planning will constitute an assault on our natural world; that is, the environment which you mistakenly consider as an ongoing provider of resources with which business can continue to progress as usual. The fast-track regime, of which you do not specify particulars, will be under a standalone Act, by which ministers will be able pre-emptively to determine project referrals, priorities and decision-making. This is day-to-dayrule by dictate not by any form of participatory or contributory democracy. There are no apparent ‘checks and balances’ to fast-track authority other than an “Expert Panel” with limited powers and of uncertain make-up. If made up of political appointees, it will provide little to no check on the consenting power you propose, potentially leading to litigation and even a slowing of the consenting process.
You do not specify what you mean by the “adverse effects” of a project. The adverse effects with which we are concerned are the effects of industrial activity on the natural environment: pollution, climate warming, ocean heating and acidification, biodiversity loss and a neglect of caring for Papatūānuku and the wellbeing of all her children. - There is not even a mention of concern for the natural environment in your letter. - These all constitute an assault on our environment, which the content of your letter continues to promote.

Yours, Climate Karanga Marlborough.

TEXT OF VERBAL PRESENTATION TO SELECT COMMITTEE.

Whakataka te hau ki te uru,
Whakataka te hau ki te tonga.
Kia mākinakina ki uta,
Kia mātaratara ki tai.
E hī ake ana te atakura,
He tio, he huka, he hauhū.
Tīhei mauriora!

E mihi ana ki te Runga Rawa Nāna nei ngā mea katoa,
E mihi ana ki ngā mana whenua.
E te hunga mate, haere, haere, haere.
E te hunga ora kua hui mai nei tēnā koutou, x3.

Nō tauiwi ahau, nō Ngāti Pākehā, nō te tangata Tiriti.

Ko Don Quick taku ingoa.

I have been resident in Aotearoa New Zealand since 1979. I still consider myself to be  a manuhiri in this land, but I have 2 Kiwi children and I use greetings and a karakia in Māori not out of appropriation but out of love and respect for te reo Māori and tikanga Māori.
The karakia promises the dawning of a clear day after the storms have died down.
I submit today  on my own behalf and on behalf of Climate Karanga Marlborough, whose written submission you will hopefully have read. I won’t repeat it save to say that we recommend that you do not pass the Fast Track Bill through its first hearing, because we strenuously object to the hurried process and poor consultation in introducing the bill and to the process of the bill itself, as we consider both processes to be anti-democratic. We consider that the bill is not only out of touch with the desperate reality of the climate, environmental and planetary crisis that humanity is facing but also that it will, if passed, subsequently contribute significantly toward the ongoing crisis.
When I first came to New Zealand, I believed it to be a nation characterised by what I saw as values of democracy, fairness, egalitarianism, hospitality, pragmatism and trustworthiness set in a clean and green environment. It has taken me 45 years to realise how colonialist my first notions were and how much the realities of our nationhood lag well behind our aspirations.
As a nation, New Zealand has made 3 great promises: the first as a contract  between 2 peoples in Te Tiriti o Waitangi; second, in the course of two world wars as a consequence of that treaty; third, in the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015. The second promise, as a commitment to colonial ‘sovereignty’, was kept in full, disproportionately by the Māori people, for whom the wars did not, as Tūhoe and other tribes justifiably maintained, constitute ‘their’ fight. The treaty promise remains to be properly  honoured on the Pākehā side. The third promise is currently being dishonoured: the Fast Track Bill, introduced by the present government is evidence of this. Such promises are part of our national integrity.
In the face of climate breakdown, even the threat of extinction, the integrity of our nation as a people is primarily at issue. In declaring the primary issue for voters in last year’s election as the “broken economy”, the National Party threw a dead cat on the table, distracting us all from the real issues of  climate breakdown and broken promises. The financial economy in NZ is no more broken than in any other capitalist-based and so-called  democratic economy in the world, but our political economy is marked by growing inequalities and inequities as a consequence of prioritising the dollar over the welfare of people and the land.
It is in the name of the ‘economy’ and “the delivery of infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or mational benefits” (undefined) that the Fast Track Bill is being rushed through by the government over a matter of weeks. In so doing, the government is turning its back on those long-standing values of fairness, equality, equity, integrity and a clean, green environment.
In contrast, the RMA, which the Fast-Track Bill seeks to circumvent, was the end-point of 6 years’ democratic debate and the work of 2 governments of different political leanings. It established uniquely an integrated and principled legislative framework with the express purpose of promoting the “sustainable management of natural and physical resources”. The Fast Track Bill barely mentions the natural environment.
I maintain that this government does not have the mandate it claims to turn its back so summarily on such legislation in favour of the dictates of 3 power-hungry ministers under the influence of money-hungry private industries and their lobbyists. This government’s actions constitute a continuing failure to adhere to the values and keep to the promises of TeTiriti o Waitangi.
I have just turned 78, have a terminal diagnosis and this will probably be my last chance to declare my allegiance to the values that can still make Aotearoa special. We will surely have to reevaluate the nature of our democracy, but I still believe in the dawning that my introductory karakia promises, despite the current government having turned its back to it.

E ai i ki te whakataukī, ka ora te whenua, ka ora te tangata.  
E ngā rangatira, tēnā koutou.