RMA reforms aim to ease stock-grazing rules and reduce farmers’ costs – but Taxpayers’ Union wants even more changes

Buzz from the Beehive

Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken.

The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough.  Greenpeace says they go much too far.

In many ways the media that the experts wanted, turned out to be the media they have got

• Chris Trotter writes – 

Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also offered up 10 names for Jackson’s consideration.

The idea is not a bad one, especially in light of Labour’s success in bringing together a similar collection of experts to discuss the pros and cons of New Zealand signing up to Pillar 2 of AUKUS. It won’t work, however, if there’s only one song-sheet.

The Waitangi Tribunal Summons; or the more things stay the same

• Graeme Edgeler writes – 

This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than by them. Chhour is challenging a decision by the Waitangi Tribunal to issue a summons requiring her to give written evidence, as part of an inquiry into a government policy decision around Māori children in state care (the repeal of section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act).

This is rare. The Waitangi Tribunal has apparently not previously done this, but it’s also not wholly unique. Ministers frequently file written evidence in Court proceedings, and before Commissions of Inquiry. They just usually agree to when asked nicely, so no summons is necessary.

The media were given a little list and hastened to pick out Fast Track prospects – but the Treaty aspect is fascinating, too

 Buzz from the Beehive

The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts.

News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop released the list of the organisations which had been advised on how to apply for consideration under the Fast-Track Approvals Bill.

The Government’s new fast-track invitation to corruption

• Bryce Edwards writes- 

The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will cut “red and green tape”, allowing businesses to bypass the Resource Management Act in order to speed up economic growth and infrastructure development.

The legislation is extremely contentious, setting up a very politicised resource consent procedure in which the Beehive will unilaterally be able to greenlight business proposals, with little accountability or scrutiny. Critics say that this will lead to the prioritisation of economic growth over social or environmental considerations. The Government is hardly disagreeing with this, stressing that they are simply willing to make the “tough decisions” to turn around the economic and infrastructure deficits.

Maori push for parallel government structures

• Michael Bassett writes –

If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong.

Over the last few days we have seen calls from one or two Iwi for prior consultation with Maori before ministers submit suggestions to the fast-track consenting panel of experts who are to make recommendations back to government on how to proceed with projects caught up in the toils of our out-of-date Resource Management Act. Various loud assertions about “partnership” and Treaty rights have been made to justify Maori having separate entitlements to everyone else.

The case for a universal family benefit

One could reduce child poverty at no fiscal cost

• Brian Easton writes –

Following the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families have been added, the best known being ‘Working for Families’, introduced in 2005. The result of the various ad hoc incremental adjustments with confused objectives is a difficult-to-understand and poorly targeted system of family assistance.

As you might expect from such a Heath-Robinson arrangement, the outcome is inefficient in that it is both an expensive means of reducing family poverty and not very effective at reducing the worst child poverty.

A crisis of ambition

• Roger Partridge  writes –

When the Coalition Government took office last October, it inherited a country on a precipice. With persistent inflation, decades of insipid productivity growth and crises in healthcare, education, housing and law and order, it is no exaggeration to suggest New Zealand’s first-world status was at stake.

Resolving these daunting policy problems is difficult enough. But there is a deeper, more fundamental challenge confronting the nation. It is one of ambition and identity.

Have 308 people in the Education Ministry’s Curriculum Development Team spent over $100m on a 60-page document of nothingness?

• Rob MacCulloch writes –

In 2022, the Curriculum Centre at the Ministry of Education employed 308 staff, according to an Official Information Request. Earlier this week it was announced 202 of those staff were being cut. When you look up “The New Zealand Curriculum” on the Ministry of Education’s Website, you find a notice that, “We are preparing to close this site as we transition to Tāhūrangi”

But when you click on that site you get an incoherent jumble of chaos. At least it’s amusing – you can click on a “unit” that helps “students develop an understanding of the financial challenges faced by superannuitants in their local community”. That must get the youth of NZ excited out of their minds.

Can taxpayers be confident PIJF cash was spent wisely?

Graham Adams writes about the $55m media fund —

When Patrick Gower was asked by Mike Hosking last week what he would say to the many Newstalk ZB callers who allege the Labour government bribed media with $55 million of taxpayers’ money via the Public Interest Journalism Fund — and that journalists “sucked up” to the government — Gower’s response was brusque: “I’ll tell them pretty much this, mate: Get stuffed.”

It seemed a curiously contemptuous response from a broadcaster who had just told Hosking that taxpayers’ money dispensed by NZ on Air might be his best chance of making another television show after Newshub’s demise.

Gower added: “Yes, there was some money flicked around by the [Labour] government and I think most people would agree now that that had a branding problem for all of us but at the end of the day I’m not going to sit here and listen to people like that say that kind of thing after I’ve slaved my bloody guts out, alongside my colleagues, for 25 years, in my case, putting damned good news out there.”