Concerned about protests against Maui gas, and New Zealand’s reliance on expensive overseas oil, Energy Minister Barry Brill posed questions to the 1979 National Party conference.
The government’s answers to those questions would become known as Think Big, the architecture for which was enshrined in the National Development Act.
Brill asked: “Can we afford to wait for projects of vital national importance to find their way through the jungle of bureaucracy?
“Would it not be possible to identify a limited number of major undertakings as being essential to national development and give them first priority for hearing by the Planning Tribunal, excising appeal rights, extending the power of the tribunal to grant all the permissions needed by local and national authorities (but giving these authorities locus standi to appear and argue their cases to the tribunal) and limiting the tribunal’s power to the attachment of conditions to minimise perceived harmful effects?”
These sentiments were underlined by Cabinet Minister Bill Birch, who introduced the National Development Bill to Parliament.
“In the near future the country is likely to see a number of major developments that will be vital to our future economic well-being and that will contribute greatly to the government’s objective of achieving greater self-sufficiency in the production of energy and other resources.
“Long delays in obtaining consents and approvals for such projects are a real possibility under present procedures, and such delays could not only be extremely costly, but could also undermine the viability of the project.”
Catherine Knight’s history of environmental politics, Beyond Manapōuri, said the late 1970s and early 1980s “are indelibly associated with the infamous ‘Think Big’ projects of Robert Muldoon’s third National Government”.
(The interventionist policy poured billions of dollars into large-scale infrastructure initiatives – including the Marsden Point oil refinery, and the Clyde Dam – but plunged the country into a debt crisis.)
The rationale seemed reasonable enough, Knight wrote: diversifying our economy, stimulating overseas investment, and creating jobs.
But, she added: “The quest for economic self-reliance prevailed over environmental considerations, and what minimal protections for the environment existed in the legislation of the time were severely compromised by the National Development Act 1979.”
Fast-forward to today, and the Government’s plans for fast-track consenting are being labelled, basically, Think Big, Part II. (The comparison falls down, somewhat, because there seems little appetite to invest billions of taxpayer dollars.)
On Wednesday this past week, in a letter to environmental groups, the Minister Responsible for Resource Management Act Reform, Chris Bishop, outlined the Government’s plans for a new fast-track consenting bill for “locally, regionally and nationally significant infrastructure and development projects”.
Some of it comes pre-packaged – the bill will contain projects already approved, essentially. Ministers will be able to refer others.
“Referred projects will go to an expert panel, which will have limited ability to decline a project once referred and will apply any necessary conditions to ensure adverse effects of the project are managed.”
In a statement on Friday, after alarmed environmental groups released his letter, Bishop referred to a “permanent one-stop-shop fast-track consenting regime” to “make it easier to get things done in New Zealand across aquaculture, farming, energy and other industries”.
The minister’s office says the proposed regime builds on the existing fast-track process “in which appeals are on points of law only, and expert panels are only able to seek comment from the public if they have a specific reason to do so”. “Ministers will be working through this as part of the development of the legislation.”
Bishop told 1News: “The ability of every man and his dog to have their say on every proposal, that has made it too hard to do things in New Zealand.”
This comes after the repeal of the RMA-replacing Natural and Built Environment Act and Spatial Planning Act.
“Consenting of major projects costs too much and takes too long,” Bishop said. “This situation is stifling economic growth and improvements for the environment and the community.”
Sound familiar?
Environmental Defence Society chief executive Gary Taylor certainly thinks so: “It’s the National Development Act revisited but with knobs on.”
He worries ministers will get authority to override other legislation, like the Wildlife Act and the Conservation Act. They’ll be making decisions on everything from housing developments, to coal mines on conservation land, and gold mines on South Island high country stations, he believes.
The fast-track move is excessive, he says, and will upset much of middle New Zealand. “It’s an assault on democracy, and it needs to be pushed back hard.”
An unapologetic Bishop told 1News: “Yes, we are deliberately giving the executive, central Government, more power to make sure that we can cut through the thicket of red tape that has bedevilled infrastructure projects in New Zealand for far too long.”
Nic Toki, chief executive of conservation group Forest & Bird, says the fast-track will lead to a continuation of a death by a thousand cuts for the country’s environment, which already faces the twin crises of climate and biodiversity.
“We need to ask ourselves – do we want native birds flourishing, beaches and rivers you can swim in? Or do we want unfettered development and pollution?”
Otago University public law professor Andrew Geddis says the Government’s proposals seem to be modelled on Muldoon’s National Development Act, and are not without precedent.
“This fast-track ability has existed previously and is in the law even at the moment,” Geddis says. “This seems to be an extension and an expansion of it, and put it on a more permanent footing.”
He wonders about the selection criteria for projects deemed significant enough to be funnelled through the expedited approvals process, outside ordinary levels of scrutiny and oversight.
“As a public lawyer I always have concerns when you see an extension of executive power in this way. And the worry always is: with that expansion of power what safeguards and checks are going to be put in place to make sure it’s used properly?”
A few months into its term, the Government has ended electric vehicle subsidies, halted work on cycling and walking projects, and stopped feasibility work on the proposed $15 billion Lake Onslow pumped hydro – the latter, itself, dismissed as a Think Big project.
Offshore fossil fuel exploration will be re-started, it has been promised.
Environmental groups have called the Government the most right-wing the country has had when it comes to environment policy. “And that includes the Muldoon era,” WWF-NZ chief executive Kayla Kingdon-Bebb says, adding, “Gary Taylor is old enough to know.”
Why isn’t the Government, which professes to be on the side of industry, doing more to prevent climate change and biodiversity loss, Kingdon-Bebb asks, when, in the medium term, those existential issues are likely to wreak costly devastation on the country?
“It’s incredibly disappointing and short-sighted.”
Russel Norman, the former Green Party co-leader who now heads Greenpeace Aotearoa, says: “This is systemic – every direction you look, this is a Government that’s planning to wage war against nature.”
Climate scientist Dave Frame, a professor of physics at University of Canterbury, has a more measured take. He asks how wise it is to judge a Government on its coalition agreements.
“At uni we wait till people have completed the course and sat the final before we give them a mark on how they did.”
As he sees it, this Government is “trying to avoid the creation of widespread, rural poverty,” while making progress towards environmental goals. It’s balancing environmental economic aspirations differently to the previous government, which was more attuned to international voices when it came to climate change policy.
“We will be a little more muscular in terms of the assertion of our national interests than we have been in the past few years,” Frame says.
The Government has signalled an overhaul of freshwater management, including what Environment Minister Penny Simmonds calls a “re-balancing” of Te Mana o Te Wai, which puts the health of water bodies first when considering resource consents.
The environmental year ahead will be defined by the devil in the detail. “Balance” appears to be one of the words to watch.
Change and reform
Māori business leader Traci Houpapa, chair of the Federation of Māori Authorities, says the coalition Government was elected on a platform of change and reform, and has set an ambitious 100-day plan.
That plan, announced in November and expiring in a little over a month, had 49 points, much of which were stop-work orders on policies progressed by the previous government.
Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford says the problems this Government will be trying to solve are the same as those being tackled by the previous government: improving freshwater, increasing biodiversity, and reducing emissions.
Its direction will resonate more with farmers and rural communities, he says.
“There has been a real sense of frustration for the last six years that farmers were being asked to go too far, too fast, and the rules weren’t always practical, fair, or affordable. That caused a lot of disengagement and division in our communities.”
The Government’s policy programme, enshrined in the 100-day plan and coalition agreements, is dominated by a rolling maul of repeals, amendments, and windbacks.
Already, the so-called ‘Three Waters’ reforms have been repealed. Another likely rural vote-winner is the halting the implementation of significant natural areas.
The National-New Zealand First agreement promises to urgently review the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity, and replace the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, and associated standards, “to better reflect the interests of all water users”.
The Act-National agreement, meanwhile, commits the Government to a split-gas approach to methane and carbon dioxide, and “review the methane science and targets in 2024 for consistency with no additional warming from agricultural methane emissions”.
The approach to methane is one of the “practical solutions” pointed to by DairyNZ chief executive Campbell Parker. His industry is also pleased with the Government’s new direction on freshwater.
“We have been meeting with Government ministers to discuss the key issues we would like to see action on, to achieve positive outcomes for farmers.”
Sam McIvor, chief executive of industry organisation Beef + Lamb, accuses the previous government of taking a rushed and piecemeal approach to environmental policy and regulations, leading to deeply flawed rules “that are unlikely to achieve their stated environmental aims, while causing significant negative effects for sheep and beef farming”.
The new Government has already pushed back the deadline for regional councils to notify plans complying with the National Policy Statement for freshwater management to 2027.
Farmers are agitating for the Government to reveal its intentions for the likes of farm plans, winter grazing rules, and stock exclusions. (Under National, emissions pricing on agriculture seems unlikely until at least the end of the decade.)
“The government needs to have a thorough consultation process with the agricultural sector,” Beef + Lamb’s McIvor says.
“By engaging in meaningful discussions, the government can identify gaps, explore innovative solutions, and build consensus for effective policies.”
The Government needs to set realistic timeframes and regulations based on sound science, he says – policies that strike a balance between environmental conservation, economic viability, and climate considerations. Clarity on Government expectations and compliance will provide certainty for farmers, he says.
“These policies, if well-constructed, have the potential to withstand the test of time.”
Langford, of Federated Farmers, strikes a similar theme. “We want to see something that’s going to be enduring in the longer term to give us all some certainty.”
Another industry seeking stability about Government expectations and regulations is forestry, which has come under greater scrutiny in recent years because of the damage caused by slash. The National-New Zealand First agreement says regulations will be changed “to place a duty upon harvesters to contain and remove post-harvest slash”.
Don Carson, communications manager for the Forest Owners Association, says the industry appreciates these issues – “as long as they’re scientific and as long as they assess the real risk, then we’re fine”.
He urges caution in moving too quickly, though. “We, like the farming lobby, I am sure, are quite happy when they are objectively based, and not idiot regulations to appease a populace that doesn’t understand it.”
John Harbord, chair of the Major Electricity Users’ Group – whose members include dairy giant Fonterra, New Zealand Steel, and aluminium smelter owner Rio Tinto – says he’s optimistic of a “more nuanced and more balanced approach” from this Government.
It has signalled trade-offs and balance when it comes to renewable energy, reliability of electricity supply, and affordability, he says – a contrast to the previous government’s drive towards the country being 100 percent renewable for electricity generation. “Gas and coal play a crucial role in ensuring security and reliability of supply.”
Harbord adds: “I’m not expecting dramatic change this year.”
“We need to be thinking far more creatively rather than just jumping back to the early 2000s and pretending like nothing’s wrong.”
Marnie Prickett, University of Otago, Wellington
A quick correction. Remember when Traci Houpapa, the Māori business leader, mentioned the coalition’s 100-day plan? Initially, she’d said “100-year” plan. “That’s the Māori in me,” she laughs.
Houpapa says a short-term approach, in which major policies are scrapped every three years, does no one any good. “This is bigger than the Government of the day. This is about Aotearoa.”
While the coalition Government is setting policies to deliver on its election promises, she says ngai tatou te Iwi Māori – a collective term for Māori – have concerns. Farmers might have been spooked by the previous government’s pace of change but Houpapa says the rapid changes and reforms signalled by this Government might lead to the loss of good policy, good thinking and good planning, in important areas like freshwater.
“The state of our freshwater is good for everyone. It’s good for business and our economy, it’s critical for the success of our primary industries, which contribute significantly to the future of our country, it’s important for our communities, our cities, our towns. It’s an absolute no-brainer.”
Gary Taylor, of the EDS, has already opined about what he calls the new Government’s anti-environment bias.
Greenpeace has put up billboards in central Wellington calling the coalition “climate extremists”. Russel Norman explains: “Once you decide you’re looking for new fossil fuel reserves you are a climate extremist who’s talking about making the planet hotter than two degrees.”
(A 2degC increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels at which, scientists say, dangerous and damaging climate change will hit new extremes, with some earth systems passing irreversible “tipping points”.)
Marnie Prickett, a research fellow at the Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington, says weakening freshwater protections now ignores huge efforts by the public to get to this point.
To protect and restore fresh waterways requires consistent decisions, large and small, at farm-scale and nationally. That’s what Te Mana o Te Wai attempted to do, Prickett says.
Change would take time, but at least thousands of decisions would be made with similar intentions. Conversely, scrapping that hierarchy – re-balancing has the same effect of scrapping it, she says – can do huge damage in a short time.
“We can quickly degrade things that take decades [to clean up], if not irreversible.”
She mentions the massive increase in agricultural irrigation in Canterbury, which “has had a major effect on the health of waterways and people’s drinking water”, as an example of such degradation. She fears more large-scale irrigation could be on the way through the new fast-track.
The public has a clear vision for freshwater, Prickett says, including safe and ample drinking water. “It’s consistently healthy waterways, places we can swim in, places that our kids can get into and put their head under.”
Right now, however, our land uses are at odds with this vision. Wouldn’t it be better to put public money and research into land uses that respond to the freshwater needs of our communities?
“We need to be thinking far more creatively rather than just jumping back to the early 2000s and pretending like nothing’s wrong.”
The worst of it, WWF-NZ ‘s Kingdon-Bebb says, is Government policies will put the country out of step with global consumers and our key markets, which have huge concerns about sustainability and reducing carbon pollution.
Customers of Fonterra are already agitating for change – Nestlé’s climate targets are more ambitious than the dairy company’s.
What of the other crisis: biodiversity?
Bruce Clarkson, a restoration ecologist at the University of Waikato, and a regional councillor, explains its importance: “We’re talking about our bush, we’re talking about our native plants and animals, we’re talking about our nature – not the nature that’s been imported into our country by recent colonists.”
But fail to give them the space to survive, or protect them from predators, and they might be lost to extinction.
A third of our forests were cleared for agriculture, and 90 percent of our wetlands drained. About 4000 of our flora and fauna species are endangered or threatened.
A good many of our unique species live in low-altitude, coastal sites, which are under enormous development pressure, Clarkson says. In the Hamilton ecological district, where he lives, there’s only 1.6 percent left of the original ecosystem.
“Basic biology is that when you reduce and fragment systems down below 10 percent of their original extent you get an exponential loss of species on the landscape.”
That’s already a slippery slope to extinction. But the trajectory becomes steeper when you add the ongoing transformation of landscapes, and climate change.
Another pressure worrying Clarkson is budget cuts for the Department of Conservation, whose boss Penny Nelson has reportedly told staff that redundancies are looming.
In 2022, Clarkson wrote in a Policy Quarterly article: “While a national policy statement [on indigenous biodiversity] is not a silver bullet, it could be expected to assist in providing a more coherent and strengthened approach to solving the biodiversity crisis, particularly in relation to ongoing loss of biodiversity on private land.”
Of the promised review into the national policy statement, Clarkson ponders: “After having come to the logical consequence of 25 years’ worth of work you’re now going to just walk away from it? It’s just unbelievable, really.”
Briefings to incoming ministers reveal the worrying state of Aotearoa’s environment.
The Department of Conservation says its size and scale “is unaffordable on current baselines”, and its existing work isn’t enough to “drive improvements”. Meanwhile, Environment Ministry officials have warned the country isn’t on track to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, leaving the Government to decide whether to pursue greater cuts at home, or a bid to buy international carbon credits.
Environmental Defence Society and WWF-NZ mention, explicitly, they want to work constructively with the Government on environmental policy. So does Houpapa, of the Federation of Māori Authorities, the business leader who thinks in 100-year horizons.
“Māori will always partner; that’s what we do. Māori will always demonstrate good partnership because that’s what we signed up to when our tūpuna signed Te Tiriti,” Houpapa says.
But she warns: “If we’re prioritising the economy over the environment without understanding that they are intrinsically linked then we’re failing. Everyone is.
“We need to think about how our environment is an economic enabler – it supports life, commerce, business, the economy.”
Cross-party work on climate change has achieved much for the country in recent Parliamentary terms, Houpapa says.
“Was it perfect? No. Were we all happy all of the time? No.
“But what we did, was we focused on the kaupapa [purpose] – being the environment, the climate, and our country. That’s what we need to do now.”
A basic fact is that our current neoliberal model does not recognise that ALL activity depends on a natural environment functioning within planetary limits, and that human activity has, and is, resulting in several of the crucial planetary limits being exceeded. Reducing our resource and energy use to within planetary limit is a fundamental and essential necessity, not something to be balanced against private financial gain.
The Coalition Government appears to be rushing through a nationwide version of the Ecan Act 2010 when it comes to freshwater.
The non-notified Canterbury Water Management Strategy was afforded statutory primacy over parts of the RMA.
This resulted in the area of irrigated land in Canterbury doubling while not one of the CWMS enviromental targets for freshwater has been achieved 14 years later. To quote the previous CDHB Medical Officer of Health, “The Canterbury region has the highest levels of water borne disease and the highest levels of water pollution in New Zealand”.
Act in haste repent at leisure.
The fundamental problem is that everyone here including the author wants to maintain a modern lifestyle and that takes lots of energy all of which other than that contained in farm produce comes from energy that is either mined or manufactured. Every meal you sit down to contains something like 90% mined or manufactured energy required to harvest process package distribute then heat to eat. Yet the author is of the view that farm emissions need to be taxed even though farm emissions mostly come from renewable sources (animals eating grass) – a cow is a zero gross emissions system – the grass the cow eats absorbs as much carbon dioxide as the cow emits and a cow emits roughly 2% as much carbon dioxide annually as the average human – the latter of which is mostly from fossil fuel use.
Similarly, no matter how you travel about the place the energy enabling that travel is mined or manufactured. If Muldoon had not pushed Think Big through we would be in severe energy poverty or would be burning a lot more oil. None of this is helped by the fact that as a result of migration policies over the past four decades we have now have nearly twice the population to service. This leads us to headlines such as the recent one on RNZ “Rolling power cuts may hit this winter”. Expect the same people who are agitated about Think Big II to also get agitated when they cant turn the heater on this winter. So if you want to maintain a modern lifestyle and our politicians want to maintain an ever increasing population and growing economy and you want to cut fossil fuels from our energy mix you then must expect dams to be built and windfarms to be erected on hilltops and inshore coastal zones and solar panels to be put in all sorts of until now sacrosanct landscapes. Our big problem is that since Muldoon and the reforms of the 1990s under Douglas/Lange NZ has been lacking any coherent strategic vision for the future, it has been lacking a strategic investment program for public infrastructure and we have been running our existing infrastructures into the ground with the worthies in the Treasury telling governments for years that NZ had over capitalized its public infrastructure. Treasury also encouraged the “sale” of most of our public utilities so that government could spend the proceeds with the result that these vital functions are now run to maximise private profits not maximize service to the economy and society. Now we are about to see another knee jerk reaction to address the consequences of the foolishness of our political leadership over the past three decades. All the arm-waving and alarm expressed in this article is a wonderful example of our collective hypocrisy.
Collective hypocrisy? That certainly applies to our mainstream politicians. It also applies to many of my acquaintances who proffer their green credentials and profess a concern for our collective future – until the topic of their own GHG emissions comes up.
The harsh reality is that the global economy runs on energy, not on money. We are about to downsize. Our kids will be poorer than we are. We can do that collectively and cooperatively, or we can fight over it. I’d prefer the first option.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/122689734/sustainability-is-wishful-thinking-get-ready-for-the-energy-downshift
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01283-y
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-halve-energy-climate-catastrophe.html
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202307.0628/v1
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/calculating-nzs-renewable-electricity-gap
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/cheap-abundant-energy-is-the-problem-not-the-solution
A great reading list thanks Graham
The one on energy demand reduction is particularly pertinent – being somewhat aged – I can remember that we lived perfectly reasonable lives in the 1950’d and 1960’s with a much lesser level of per capita energy consumption. It also makes one ponder the direction electric vehicles are taking – it is all about more extreme consumption – searing acceleration – huge battery packs frightening top speeds -sounds like the dinosaurs strapping on jet packs to get to the comet impact faster! Toyota have the right idea small hybrids and micro-ev’s mixed with electrified public transport.
Mostly agree. The real problem with this 21st-century NACT approach is that there is no vision or coherent plan by government. calling this “Think Big 2” is an insult to the achievements of Think Big, which was all about energy independence and onshore value-added industries.
I know that projects like Clyde Dam were controversial with environmentalists and that ultimately all this led to the RMA. However, few could argue that the projects were ultimately successful and most are still in operation today.
By comparison, NACT’s approach will be piecemeal and focussed on “private sector solutions”. State-led solutions must be bad, right? Instead, we will end up with dozens of silly little projects like gold mines, increased wastewater discharges from farms, and last-gasp efforts to keep old natural gas fields alive. We could have had more solar, offshore wind, battery storage, investment in steel and aluminium, fast trains, coastal shipping and EVs….but I suspect in 20 years our tourism slogan will have to be “Mostly 50% Pure”.
spot on!
Can you substantiate any of your raft of claims? Sounds like made up numbers and statistics to me!
Can we please stop using terms like “environmentalist”? How about a more appropriate term such as ‘realist’ or ‘sane person’?
If we must apply epithets, what shall we call the dinosaurs who still cling to the childish delusion of endless GDP growth? How about those who still refuse to understand that the economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a healthy biosphere? Then there’s a bunch of people whose religion includes a tech fix for every aspect of our multiple breaches of planetary boundaries. Their wilful blindness, science-illiteracy and faulty logic betrays our young people to a miserable future.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/501086/climate-change-s-financial-impacts-hugely-underestimated-kiwi-researchers
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-planetary-boundaries-exceeded.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-life-earth-existential-threat-climate.html
“The fundamental problem is that everyone here including the author wants to maintain a modern lifestyle ” – in fact the fundamental problem is that everyone maintaining a modern lifestyle is incompatible with what the Earth can sustain, and the longer we continue to pursue that goal the bigger the crash will be when the decline comes. In reality the decline has already started, rise in the cost of living, growing disparity between rich and poor, collapse of infrastructure, the problems with supply chains, rising geopolitical tensions, the rise of right wing governments . . . At the same time emissions rise faster, forest, ocean, wetland, coastal and fresh water ecosystems are destroyed and severe weather events erode the soil. The failure of governments to listen to the science means the few steps we take, such as the zero Carbon Act and Te Mana o te Wai, can be swept away by ignorance and hubris. There is no economy on a dead planet.
bullseye.
and all that too!
though a modern lifestyle can be maintained on a fraction of the energy we presently use – our present societal and economic structures are shaped by the availability of cheap energy. Living well on a lot less will require adaptation but getting people to adapt before a crisis induces catastrophic change is the problem – we have four decades of misdirected investment in housing, transport and and infrastructure to unravel and no money left in the bank.
I think that the goal of being able to live a ‘modern lifestyle’ has long disappeared for many and that for those who are not yet affected the whole idea is not an issue. The gap between those able to live it up and those struggling to make ends meet is rapidly growing. Even many of those in the wealthy bracket who’s live are disrupted by the effects of global heating are clambering to back onto the ‘modern lifestyle’ bandwagon.
Hi Bill by a modern lifestyle I meant not living in a cave ie smaller home, less individual mobility more electric public transport, more local production a degree of self sufficiency and a lot less plastic junk imported from China. And generally we cant afford the rich – we need to get rid of personal income tax and have a multitiered GST with a minimal GST on essentials, ramped up to an eye watering on on fossil fuels, super yachts and cars that can do 200km/hr and we need an inheritance tax set at 80% of everything over $1M
It’s misleading to imply the campaign against the Clyde Dam failed. Govt sought a High Dam, as one of a series up the Upper Clutha. But they got just a single Low Dam.
The Upper Clutha and Kawarau dams did not proceed because they were simply not technically feasible due to (very) poor foundation conditions and the high dam at Clutha would have resulted in Queenstown being only accessible from Southland, Cromwell having to be completely relocated, and also evaporation losses became significant.