Last Straw

No Right Turn on the NZ National Party’s plans to gut the Resource Man­age­ment Act, and take NZ back to the Mul­doon years:

How would National change this? Firstly, they would amend the defin­i­tion of “envir­on­ment” to include only “nat­ural and phys­ical resources” — so exist­ing rights to amen­ity val­ues such as peace and quiet, clean air, clean water, or an unim­peded view would cease to exist, while local bod­ies could no longer seek to pro­tect their social envir­on­ment by con­sid­er­ing e.g. the effects of traffic, or the effects of visual pol­lu­tion from excess­ive advert­ising. Secondly, they would aim to pre­vent “vex­a­tious and frivol­ous” objec­tions by allow­ing the Envir­on­ment Court to require secur­ity for costs before con­sid­er­ing any appeal (so no appeals unless you are rich like them). Thirdly, they would replace the exist­ing call in power with a more reg­u­larly used “pri­or­ity con­sent­ing” regime, which would see decisions made by a gov­ern­ment body rather than an inde­pend­ent board. There’s some other nas­ti­ness — remov­ing the Min­is­terial veto over coastal per­mits (so effect­ively the crown won’t own the coast any­more in any prac­tical sense), and estab­lish­ing an “Envir­on­mental Pro­tec­tion Agency” as cover for pur­ging MfE (who National doesn’t trust) — but the driv­ing prin­ciple is to shut local com­munit­ies out of decision mak­ing, and pre­vent any­one — unless they are rich, of course — from mount­ing any chal­lenge. And the net res­ult will be open slather for developers, and large pro­jects fois­ted on local com­munit­ies, just like they were under Muldoon.