It’s unacceptable that important roads that would help Kiwis get from A to B faster and more safely languish on paper in drawers rather than being built, just because getting consent takes so long and is so expensive.
It’s unacceptable that renewable energy projects that would help New Zealand meet our climate targets can take the best part of a decade just to get resource consent – and that’s before a single shovel goes in the ground.
The status quo is not an option. We have a housing crisis, an infrastructure deficit in the hundreds of billions of dollars, ambitious climate goals, and a stagnant economy.
The Infrastructure Commission estimates that the current consenting processes cost a staggering $1.3 billion every year just to get the consent paperwork sorted. Its study also shows that within a recent five-year period the time taken to get a resource consent for key projects has nearly doubled.
The Fast Track Approvals Bill will help speed up development, while protecting the environment.
Even the previous Government recognised that our planning laws make it too difficult to do things in New Zealand – so it developed its own fast-track process, which involved ministers selecting projects, just like ours does.
Our proposal uses essentially the same framework, but strengthens it.
First, it applies to regionally and nationally significant projects (rather than smaller ones) and it also creates a “one-stop-shop” process. So it doesn’t just deal with resource consents, it also deals with all the other things often needed for development, like conservation permits, heritage and so on. It makes sense to do all of that at the same time, rather than strung out over many years and with multiple different government agencies. That just costs time and money.
This one-stop shop will make a real difference. I recently met a housing developer who had finally received consent after a three-year process only to have an official turn up on the very day earthworks were to begin and demand a Wildlife Act permit. That process took more than a year to complete.
Such ineptitude would be funny if kids weren’t living in cars and a generation were not locked out of home ownership.
New Zealanders rightly care deeply about our natural environment and most people are in favour of development, as long as environmental effects are considered and mitigated against.
The good news is that the Fast Track Bill makes sure the environment is protected. If the Government selects a project to be fast-tracked – say, for example, a wind farm or a new road – the project will go to an expert panel of resource consent experts to apply environmental conditions and rules to the project. That’s exactly how the previous Government’s fast-track process worked, and ours will too.
I actually think our fast-track process will help the environment. The electrification of our economy presents enormous opportunities for New Zealand, but energy companies say our planning rules are the single biggest barrier to decarbonising our economy through more renewable energy. The Fast Track Bill will help fix that.
It just shouldn’t take eight years to consent a wind farm. We can grow our economy, cut our emissions and protect the environment all at the same time.
Some of the criticism of the Fast Track Bill has been overblown. It is not a licence to desecrate the environment. It is a sensible response to real problems that are holding us back from growth.
Some of the criticism has been more reasonable and we are open to sensible ideas and suggestions to refine the regime. The bill is currently at the select committee and we will be looking carefully at the feedback.
There are very few problems in New Zealand that wouldn’t be solved by a fast-growing economy. At the end of the day, the Fast Track Bill is about unclogging the arteries of our economy and making it easier for us to grow, while protecting the environment.
· Chris Bishop is the minister responsible for housing, infrastructure and Resource Management Act (RMA) reform
