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Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand. He worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before he travelled to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
Re your latest blog, you are in my respectful opinion half right.
When I was Minister for the Environment I introduced fast track panels to make faster and less costly decisions on significant projects. Until then NZ was outside the upper end of European benchmarks for midsized and above projects.
It worked. We stripped out an enormous amount of wasted cost and time.
We carried forward fast track into the replacement for the Resource Management Act (RMA) which also had complimentary measures like high level forward looking spatial planning, which would result in a lot of future protects becoming permitted activities.
Implementation agreements with major infrastructure players and council were provided for too. The infrastructure commission could (and should) play an increasing role. And keep an eye on Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). There are some low value roading projects in particular that need their scrutiny. Too much pork barrelling.
In electricity generation, we fast tracked consenting for wind and solar projects. The main problem in generation is lack of competition, not consenting. And the stranglehold that large gentailers have on the (public) water resource in our hydro assets that are the obvious hedge against intermittency for new wind and solar, but are held tight.
That said, in generation there is a conundrum. The just-in-time incremental additions to supply incentivised by the current rules-based market are unlikely to ever enable the large one-time investment needed to retire Huntley or build back up storage to firm intermittent renewables in a dry year.
That is why the former Labour – NZ First government initiated the feasibility and cost benefit analysis into Onslow pumped storage. Sadly that was irresponsibly canned by the new National government mere months before completion. Craven pandering to industry opposition. Ignorance is bliss.
The dry year and intermittency challenge remains. They are now seriously considering imported LNG, which will much much more expensive over time, and drive both electricity prices and greenhouse gas emissions higher. Madness.
On housing and land supply, we not only pushed lots of development proposals through fast track, we required well-served land markets through the NPS on urban development, and via change to the RMA requiring more intensity to be allowed by the council in growing cities. This initially had National support but Luxon bailed out during the election (Willis and Bishop both support it).
The Natural & Built Environment Act (NBEA) and Spatial Planning Act (SPA) pushed this harder. Urban land markets are becoming more liquid, and that must be pushed onwards. The infrastructure funding and finance piece remains under done. Our NBEA and the Spatial Planning Act were repealed in about two days.
This also repealed our version of fast track, which was stupid.
Their new version went too far, introducing the risk of corruption by enabling ministers to overrule proposed conditions, and the overriding of the underlying environmental laws.
That is what caused the backlash.
They have said they are no longer giving consent condition override powers, but their ability to override the law appears to remain. That is both unnecessary and terrible in principle.
It appears to be driven by some concerns about consenting some dubious irrigation projects like Ruataniwha, where they both disliked the conditions re nutrient discharges to rivers and inflexibility under the Conservation Act re land swaps/ offsets.
The water quality override proposed is in my view terrible.
The land swap issue is legitimate to consider but should be fixed by amending the Conservation Act, not by allowing ministers to overrule it.
Our fast track worked well and it was seen that way by both development and environmental interests. Most councils were ok with it too, although parts of the Auckland Council planning department weren’t.
The Hon. David Parker, MP.
This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
