Planners trained by the CIA?

Far North-based Labour list MP Shane Jones is beginning to wonder if the North's planners were trained by the CIA.

"It's a fair question, given their propensity for assassinating opportunities for economic growth," he said.

"The North may or may not get a super council, but it needs to be pro-solutions, pro-economic growth. For a start our leaders need to set the agenda rather than allowing themselves to be dictated to by planners and bureaucrats."

Specifically he had had a "gutsful" of delays and dashed hopes over establishing new industries such as fish farming.

"These opportunities are always opposed by the ill-informed and the nimby brigade," he said.

'As far as fish farming goes, I accept that some boaties, including me, may be inconvenienced, but the pleasure I derived from boating ought to play second fiddle to our desperate need for jobs in the North.

"It is grossly unfair that a dairy farmer can set himself up with virtually no compliance costs, but a fish farmer needs a treasure chest just to wade through the paperwork before he puts the first peg in the water."

Mr Jones accused the Northland Regional Council of failing to show leadership, and to adopt an ideology of expansionism.

"It's not as though we're short of ocean space," he added.

"We ought to be diversifying our exports, and fish farming ticks all the boxes."

The Canterbury Regional Council had been replaced by the Crown because of ineptitude, and the commissioners had made some very sensible resource decisions. The same approach was needed in Northland.

"These kinds of developments, long promised by the current government, have not eventuated," he said.

"And this isn't just a Maori issue. These wasted opportunities are affecting the entire North. Let's hui, let's minimise the paperwork, and focus on paving the way for investment, industry and export revenue.

"Apparently we're not allowed to mine in the North. Rubbish. And we're not allowed to farm fish. Ridiculous," he added.

"Expansionism, that's the way forward."

He had been advised by NIWA that getting to the point of making a commercial fish farming investment required $15 million, per species to be farmed.

"That's a strikingly high figure, and if it's true it makes it even more important to simplify the process for developing a fish farming industry," he said.