Why Oppose the Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill

Principles at Stake

• Evidence-based decision-making: Major projects must be assessed on full, independent evidence — not political claims of “benefit”.
• Environmental protection: Fast processes must not override the duty to protect ecosystems, coastal and marine environments, and threatened species.
• Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Partnership, active protection, and informed decision-making cannot be reduced to late-stage notification.
• Public participation: People affected by major projects must have meaningful opportunities to be heard and to appeal defective decisions.
• Democratic accountability: Ministers should set broad rules, not close down scrutiny or pre-determine outcomes for favoured projects.

What the Bill Does Wrong

• Uses supermarkets as a Trojan horse: Most of the Bill has nothing to do with groceries. Supermarket referrals are already possible under the existing fast-track regime.
• Expands ministerial influence over outcomes: Government Policy Statements and pre-deemed “significant regional or national benefit” bind panels to political framing before they even see the evidence.
• Strips panels of evidence powers: Expert panels lose discretion to seek further information or invite technical, cultural, or environmental experts when applications are incomplete or contested.
• Reduces appeal rights and time to respond: Compressed timeframes and limited appeals make it harder for errors, omissions, and unlawful reasoning to be challenged.
• Weakens Treaty practice: Pre-application consultation is replaced with notification, while tight timelines and reduced evidence pathways make genuine partnership impossible.
• Allows approvals without infrastructure: Projects can be consented even when essential roads, services, or networks do not exist — pushing risk and cost onto councils and ratepayers later.

Why This Matters

• High-risk projects get lower scrutiny: Seabed mining, large extraction projects, and major infrastructure could proceed on thinner evidence and weaker challenge.
• Communities lose their voice: Shortened processes and fewer appeal routes mean local impacts are heard less, later, and with less ability to change outcomes.
• Te Tiriti obligations are undermined: Notification and rushed timelines do not meet the standards of partnership, active protection, or informed decision-making.
• Councils inherit unfunded liabilities: Fast-track consents without aligned infrastructure planning create pressure for emergency rates rises and reactive spending.
• Public trust erodes: When a Bill is sold as “lower supermarket prices” but actually restructures environmental decision-making, people lose faith in Parliament’s honesty.

What Real Reform Requires

• Split the Bill: Put supermarket provisions in a narrow, standalone amendment and debate them honestly on their merits.
• Protect expert panels’ independence: Restore full powers for panels to seek information, commission advice, and test claims from applicants and agencies.
• Maintain robust appeal rights: Ensure affected communities, iwi, hapū, and stakeholders can challenge flawed decisions in appropriate forums.
• Strengthen Treaty practice: Require early, resourced, and genuine engagement with Māori, with enough time and information to shape outcomes.
• Link projects to real infrastructure: Prohibit approvals where essential supporting infrastructure is unplanned or unfunded.
• Use the right tools for supermarkets: Address grocery competition through Commerce Commission recommendations and planning instruments (such as National Policy Statements), not by weakening environmental law.

If You Care About Nature, Process, and Truth in Law-making

This Bill must be fixed before it becomes law. Speed can never substitute for evidence, participation, or protection of the places we rely on.

If you believe fast-track should still be fair-track,
If you believe Treaty partnership requires more than notification,
If you believe Parliament should say openly what a Bill really does,
Then this Bill must change.

“Fast-track should never mean bypassing the very safeguards that make development lawful, just, and trusted.” — Ukes Baha

Read the full submission: Submission to the Environment Committee: Fast-track Approvals Amendment Bill