The Govt’s Fast-Track is being demolished by submissions to Parliament

• Bryce Edwards writes – 

The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation.

Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament about the bill. This is one of the highest numbers ever submitted about legislation, which reflects how community anger is growing against the controversial bill.

FastTrackWatch – The case for the Government’s Fast Track Bill

• Bryce Edwards writes –

Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform.

As part of a new series providing scrutiny of the fast-track legislation, this first column rounds up the commentary and arguments in favour of what the Government is proposing.

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.

Treaty references omitted

• Ele Ludemann writes  –

The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation :

The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty matters. . .

The work and advice from the TPOG obtained by the Herald under the Official Information Act may be of value to the New Zealand First-driven review of existing Treaty principles in legislation later this term.

But what will be left of any new Treaty clauses to monitor is an open question because of a radical direction the coalition Government is taking already, ahead of the review. . .

DAVID HARVEY: Who is Cranmer?

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Cranmer’s Substack yesterday featured this article from retired Judge David Harvey on the controversy over Te Mana o Te Wai statements in Three Waters and the news media’s outing of Thomas Cranmer.  It is republished here with the author’s permission. 

Writing as ““A Halflings View”, David Harvey says –   

Introduction

A commentator who has adopted the name Thomas Cranmer has been causing something of a stir with his articles which have appeared on Substack and Twitter. I follow Cranmer on Substack and enjoy his writing. He is thoughtful and thorough and bases his conclusions on hard documentary evidence.

In this piece I discuss the historical Cranmer and draw a few conclusions about the purpose of the identification of Cranmer. I am not going to discuss Cranmer’s real world identity. I know him and have spoken with him. But he has chosen to adopt a nom de plume which is something writers have done through the centuries, and I shall refer to him in this piece by the name he has chosen.

The exposes

‘Cranmer’ was the first to reveal TVNZ was paid $300,000 by a Government agency to air a series of climate change pieces. While sponsored content is nothing new or especially controversial according to Shayne Currie TVNZ will strengthen its labelling of such content on its Breakfast show. One can only speculate why it was that it took a “citizen journalist” to prompt this sudden and unexpected move to transparency on the part of our State broadcaster.

Little heed is paid to select committee advice that an immigration bill is not needed

Malcolm Harbrow, blogging on No Right Turn, has drawn attention to More petulance from Andrew Little

He reminds us that back in June, the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee reported back on the Inspector-General of Defence Bill, making numerous improvements.

But Defence Minister Andrew Little spurned the push for transparency and petulantly undid them.

Harbrow says it looks like Little is going to do a repeat performance.

THOMAS CRANMER: Three Waters Amendment Bill before Parliament

The new Three Waters amendment bill is intended to increase the number of water services entities to ten and introduce a Funding Agency but only makes a bad policy worse.

• Thomas Cranmer writes –

 The Three Waters legislation was back before Parliament this week in the form of an amendment bill which is intended to implement changes to the reforms announced by Prime Minister Hipkins and Local Government Minister Kieran McAnulty in April.

Those changes came about as a result of the new Prime Minister’s “policy refresh” which asked McAnulty to consider options for reform of the Three Waters proposal, including timing and sequencing, the number of entities and boundaries and alternative approaches for Māori representation and involvement.

The relevant Cabinet Paper from February suggested that alternative approaches for Māori representation could include replicating in the Regional Representative Groups the structure proposed for the Regional Planning Committees in the Resource Management reforms, ie imposing a minimum level of Māori representation but leaving it to individual entities working with their constituent councils to redesign the RRG in the way that works best for their entity.

Ultimately McAnulty decided to leave the issue of Māori representation within the structure unchanged, telling Q+A that it was “the right thing” that there was 50/50 representation of mana whenua and councils on each RRG. Indeed the minister went so far as to claim that the highly divisive co-governance component had been retained partly due to the Crown’s Treaty obligations.

THOMAS CRANMER: Act’s libertarianism comes under scrutiny with Van Velden’s bid for Auckland’s Tāmaki seat

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Act’s focus on incumbent Simon O’Connor’s views on abortion exposes the limits of its philosophy and raises questions of political opportunism. 

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• Thomas Cranmer writes –

Saturday saw the Act Party announce that its Deputy Leader, Brooke Van Velden would contest the National Party stronghold electorate of Tāmaki in the upcoming general election with the intention of unseating current MP Simon O’Connor, who has held the seat since 2011.

What was particularly noteworthy about the announcement was that Van Velden chose to begin her campaign by targeting O’Connor’s views on abortion.

“Over the past few years I’ve had a number of people in the Tāmaki electorate – especially women – say they do not feel represented by the local MP because of his anti-abortion views,” she said.

“I am pro-choice… I am pro-freedom… I want everybody in this electorate to feel like they can have choices over those fundamental rights.”

Leading with this issue seemed unusual, considering that New Zealand reformed its abortion laws in 2020 and the National Party leadership has made it abundantly clear over the past 12 months that they have no intention of revisiting the issue if they form the next government.

THOMAS CRANMER: Three Waters passes but at what cost?

The government has paid a huge political cost in pushing through the Three Waters legislation, and in doing so has exposed rifts within Cabinet and damaged the reputation of Minister Mahuta.  THOMAS CRANMER writes – 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a government with a reputation for profligacy resolved to spend so much of its political capital to push through the deeply unpopular Three Waters bill into law this week.  The full cost is yet to be tallied but from the look of their shell-shocked faces as they sat in Parliament, Labour MPs are starting to realize that a good number of them will be paying with their jobs when the general election arrives next year.

Even the once-imperious Minister Mahuta has been damaged by the passage of this Bill into law. Ignoring many valid concerns raised by opposition parties, councils, iwi and the public, the Minister pushed too hard in the closing stages of the legislative process. First, by expanding the scope of Te Mana o te Wai to cover geothermal and coastal waters, and then in the breathtakingly brazen attempt to entrench a point of policy into law.

Both issues were not understood by the Minister’s Cabinet colleagues, which left them woefully exposed when they were questioned by the media and opposition parties.

The effect is that the Minister looks less like an experienced lawmaker and more like a reckless chancer who pulled a number on her own parliamentary colleagues. Undoubtedly this has damaged Mahuta’s reputation at what could be a difficult time for her to navigate.

THOMAS CRANMER: A government humiliated

National’s deputy leader, Nicola Willis, applied one of the many lashings that the government received in the House this week:  ‘Today we have the grovelling back-down, but the stain on our democracy, the damage to our constitution, will remain.’  THOMAS CRANMER writes – 

As much as the government tried to maintain the line repeated by the Prime Minister yesterday that, “We voted for it as a team, we’re fixing it as a team”, the cracks in a divided caucus and dysfunctional leadership team were all too evident.

When Minister Mahuta, the chief architect of the Three Waters reforms, stood up in the House last Wednesday evening to respond to SOP 285 tabled by Eugenie Sage, she said that the amendment would test the will of the House. Perhaps only her closest confidants understood that the Minister intended to test the will of her own colleagues to a far greater degree than that of the opposition.

Whilst it is impossible to determine with any certainty what Labour’s caucus understood it would be voting for during the Committee of the Whole stage and who Labour’s chief whip took his instructions from when he applied Labour’s party vote in favour of SOP 285, the effect of Mahuta’s power play has been to expose the two rival camps within Cabinet which remain unreconciled following yesterday’s reversal.