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Lolly Scramble

October 12, 2024

I'm writing about the odious New Zealand Fast Track Bill – a lolly scramble for rich and influential people, which will give them the right to undertake major projects which evade pretty much all existing legislation and planning frameworks.


Let's have a look at the Queenstown lolly scramble (here's our local list of projects proposed to be Fast Tracked through consenting and here's the full list for New Zealand). The Davies family got two projects into the list of 149:

- Coronet Peak Village (several hundred houses, a commercial area and a gondola to Coronet Peak proposed for land currently zoned as rural).

- A tunnel through the mountains in the Remarkables Ski Field to access undeveloped terrain.

The Davies family business Trojan Holdings owns NZSki (Coronet Peak, the Remarkables and Mt Hutt ski fields), the Hermitage Hotel, the building housing the Queenstown Casino, Ultimate Hikes, and 40% of Bungy NZ, amongst other business interests. Estimates of Sir John Davies' wealth in 2019 were NZ$140 million. I don't know if this includes his Bombardier private jet.


Rod Drury is also associated with the Coronet Peak Village project. He founded the software accounting company Xero, but had previous tech successes which built his wealth. Rod is listed at Number 9 in the NBR rich listers with wealth of $1.3 billion, which makes Davies look poor in comparison.


Then there's the Gibbston Valley Resort proposal to establish 900 houses and a commercial centre on land currently zoned for resort use rather than residential. I wrote about this in June, concerned at the time about the potential for corruption to influence politicians in their choice of Fast Track projects. Gibbston Valley's initial resource consent was for a 200 bed hotel and a golf course. The company has increased the size and changed the type of development step-by-step, up to this massive proposed expansion.


Gibbston Valley is owned by Phil Griffiths, an American casino mogul who does not live in New Zealand. At least Davies lives in the Wakatipu and Drury in New Zealand. Phil calls himself 'the poster child for foreign investment into New Zealand', like we should be grateful to him.


Hang on, shouldn't we be grateful to all these people? They want to invest lots of money in building critical infrastructure, according to the government. That's why the government has proposed the Fast Track Bill. The point of the Bill is the government 'cutting through red tape and restarting our economy'. 'It's about jobs and growth,' Chris Bishop says.


The Fast Track Bill will allow applicants to bypass the usual consenting process and gain an exemption or approval from multiple laws including the Resource Management Act 1991Conservation Act 1987Wildlife Act 1953Reserves Act 1977Freshwater Fisheries Regulations 1983Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012, land access under Crown Minerals Act 1991Public Works Act 1981 and Fisheries Act 1996.


Too bad if the Fast Track projects decimate your community, or your environment. You aren't going to have any say about that, most likely. The only people/groups that can comment on short-listed projects are the following, and none of them have any actual say in the final decision:

  • relevant local authorities;
  • relevant iwi authorities;
  • Treaty settlement entities relevant to a project;
  • the landowners and occupiers of land where the project is and the adjacent land i.e. if you aren't immediately next door, you can't comment;
  • relevant Ministers of the Crown including Ministers of Arts, Culture and Heritage; Climate Change; Conservation; Housing; and Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti;
  • specified agencies or groups including Environmental Defence Society, Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society, and Infrastructure New Zealand Incorporated.


We should think ourselves lucky these groups can comment because, in the first iteration of the Bill, three government ministers got to pick which projects would go ahead and no one else would have a say. The nice government has changed the Bill (as a result of mass protest) to include a bit of consultation and expert panels looking at projects. The nice expert panels will give the list of commenters above a whole 10 days to put their comments in. How generous.


Too bad if the Fast Track projects don't include projects you think are critical to your community. For example, no one has been marching in the streets demanding a tunnel to increase the size of the Remarkables ski field, or for a gondola to Coronet Peak ski field, or even a gondola to Cardona ski field (and aren't ski fields a dying industry linked with tourism which has highly questionable climate credentials?).


Nor has anyone in the Queenstown Lakes been demanding housing in the middle of rural areas where there is no infrastructure to support homes - the locations lack sufficient roading, communications (both cell comms and internet provision are remarkably poor). There's no reticulated water, no sewage plants. There's no resilience in case of earthquakes – Gibbston will be cut off in an AF8 as the bridges fail either side of the valley.


Most importantly, there's no money in the Council to supply any of these infastructure needs because the Council is plain broke – we are hitting our debt ceiling. Can government require Councils to build infrastructure they can't afford to make these projects happen? No one, including the Councils, knows the answer to that question.


While no one has been marching for ski field expansion, people have been marching over the scaling back of the Dunedin hospital project, related to the need for hospitals in the Queenstown Lakes area. Our region doesn't have hospitals that can actually do anything. They are simply staging posts from which people are sent to Invercargill or Dunedin for proper care. One of the proposed Fast Track projects was a public-private partnership hospital in Wanaka; it didn't make the cut. Did it not have a rich enough or influential enough person attached?


What is as disturbing as the projects selected, is the speed at which the Fast Track Bill is being pushed through. The Bill was introduced in March and the government is intending to make it law before the end of the year. Projects were proposed mid year and the short list is already selected. Is this a good way to choose multi-billion dollar projects that will have decadal impacts?


Of course, we have inherited a tendency to legislation at speed from the previous Labour government, who pushed through innumerable pieces of legislation under urgency or in rushed time frames. When the COVID pandemic struck, emergency legislation seemed like a good idea. However, the continuing rush by Labour to pass bills started to appear megalomaniac, particularly once they were governing alone.


MMP, which I used to see as an excellent balancing mechanism for government, has failed us in the last two terms. The current coalition doesn't mean we get balanced and measured policy as a result of the triumvirate. Instead, the three parties seem to be allowing each other to enact their extreme views rather than coming to a middle-of-the-road solution.


The Fast Track Bill also reminds me of Labour's Shovel Ready Projects, Labour's answer to their fear of a crashing economy with rampant unemployment in the wake of COVID lockdowns. In Queenstown, we have the Shovel Ready motorway to nowhere – it wasn't ready at the time and it still isn't, nor is there any purpose in being able to bypass central Queenstown to get to...Glenorchy? Actually, this project will get people to Lakeview, a multi-billion dollar development where Queenstown ratepayers are subsidising the Australian owners.


The Auditor General found the $15 billion spend on Shovel Ready lacked transparency and was poor value for money. At the time, it was sold by Jacinda Ardern as "A once in a lifetime opportunity to invest in New Zealand."


Today, Nicola Willis says, "The Auditor General's findings are proof of Labour's "reckless and irresponsible approach to taxpayers' money." However, Willis's government doesn't appear to hear the Auditor-General's message that rushed legislation, and rushed projects, are problematic at many levels.


However, if you own land that gets a consent from the Fast Track Bill, will you care how successful or transparent your project is? Why would you care about community or environment as long as the dollars come rolling in? That's what it's all about, isn't it?

It's not like me to use this blog to ask people to do anything. However, this Bill way more than upsets me – I feel the lack of proper consultation means democracy is at stake, as well as community and environment.


If the Fast Track Bill upsets you, please consider:

- Signing the linked Greenpeace Open Letter to the companies proposing projects.

- Signing Forest & Bird's letter to the Environment Committee

- Lobbying your local MP or anyone in government with whom you have a connection.

- Taking other actions suggested here.


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