After some weeks of time, passion, and mahi, a small working group crafted and submitted our network's official submission on the Fast Track Approvals Bill.
KiC strongly opposes the Fast Track Approvals Bill.
As part of our purpose to “to help increase global collaboration and collective action on climate change” it seemed only right that Kiwis In Climate should put forward a submission on the New Zealand Governments current Fast-track Appraisals Bill (FTAB).
After it was first raised by members Olaf Adam and Kate Gunthorp who felt it was important that KiC submit on the FTAB a subgroup of six was formed.
Olaf and Kate drafted the first version that, following initial feedback and edits, was shared with the whole KiC group via WhatsApp. Following further valuable input from group members the final submission was sent in with the box requesting an oral submission ticked.
You can read the full submission here, but in summary our submission critiques the Fast Track Approvals Bill for overlooking critical environmental protections and climate risks, and potentially causing irreversible harm to our global reputation. We recommended narrowing the Bill's scope to essential infrastructure, mandating environmental assessments, and ensuring accountability and public engagement in the decision-making process.
“Kiwis in Climate strongly believe that, despite its ability to accelerate the deployment of critical infrastructure and renewable power generation, this Bill has the potential to substantially undermine Aotearoa’s decarbonisation efforts as it fails to take account for climate-related risks and impacts and ignores environmental issues. It cannot, and must not, proceed in its current draft form.”
After three weeks of oral submissions and with just two days to go we received a call from the Environment Committee asking if we would like to present our submission. Amongst the group we managed to quickly get ourselves sorted and Bryce Groves and Olaf represented us all as the very last oral submission they received at 3:15pm on the afternoon of Friday 7 June. You can watch it here.
For those who haven’t been following the FTAB in Aotearoa I highly recommend you get up to speed. It is a pretty outrageous piece of legislation that if passed in its current form, would see just three Ministers have complete power over the decision making of which projects get the green light, no engagement with locals, and the ability to override almost all current environmental laws.
As we expressed in the submission, we acknowledge the need to speed the development of infrastructure developments, especially those that decarbonise our economy, but this proposed bill is flawed on so many levels.
This article by the Spinoff does a good job explaining the proposed bill and why so many oppose it.
“There’s widespread public opposition beyond these high-profile groups and individuals, with 27,000 people submitting written submissions to the Environment Committee that is assessing the bill before it gets voted on again. This is way more than most bills. By comparison, the Marriage Amendment Bill which made same-sex marriage legal in 2013 received 21,500 submissions.
Nearly 3,000 asked to appear in front of the select committee to make submissions in person, but because of time constraints, the committee chair David McLeod said that only 1,100 people would get to do this – 550 organisations and 550 members of the public.”
It should be noted that the Chair of the Environment Select Committee David McLeod was stood down from his role on 22 May after it was discovered that he had failed to declare campaign donations.
Following our written and oral submissions on the bill, many of us KiC’ers based in Auckland also went along to the protest that saw an estimated 20,000 Kiwis turn out against the proposed bill.
Photo by Katrina Cooper
Here’s hoping our submission has an impact and we see the necessary changes made but there is no doubt you haven’t heard the end of the Fast-track Bill.
A huge thank you to Olaf who definitely takes away the MVP on this project, then also to Kate, Bryce, and Qiulae who all played critical roles in delivering a really well thought through and presented submission right in line with our purpose and values.
تعليقات