Farce Track?

On picking winners, and trying hard to give a different impression.

Central Otago in the 1970s

I live close to Clyde, in Central Otago. There, in 1966, the now-defunct Ministry of Works began detailed investigation for a hydro dam on the Clutha River / Mata Au. In 1973 a committee known as the Calvert Commission started coming up with options for a dam, and in the face of local opposition, the government legislated protection for the natural level of Lake Wanaka as a sort of sweetener.

In those times, the government was dealing with stagflation. In part this was brought on by “oil shocks” originating in distant and deep-rooted geopolitical issues. The national economic model, in place since around the Second World War, seemed to be tottering under the strain. The government responded in part with a programme that became known as “Think Big”, an effort to build infrastructure in a bid to revitalise the economy.

There was a well-established electricity surplus back then, but after years of options development, the government decided in December 1976 on “Scheme F”, a “high dam” at Clyde. This was the biggest possible option. The need for such a big dam - and such big generation capacity - had to do with the idea of building a second aluminium smelter at Aramoana, near the Otago Heads and key export wharves at Port Chalmers. Both dam and smelter could figure in “thinking big”.

The Otago Catchment Board, a forerunner to the Otago Regional Council, was nonplussed and asked the Government to reconsider Scheme F. A predictable period of Wellington stonewalling then began. In late 1977 the government got a key win in gaining water rights it needed for the dam, but by 1978, the issue had transmogrified into an almighty stoush involving people up to and including the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Muldoon.

Local orchardists and NGOs started appealing aspects of the case to the Courts, primarily on issues of water rights and the admissibility of evidence about the end use of power. In some ways, and as is redolent today, these cases dragged the Courts into issues of policy, with which they were uncomfortable and even said so in some judgments.

The government was also unsatisfied with a perceived intrusion upon its policies, as well as with delays at Clyde. By mid 1979 Barry Brill, Under Secretary for Energy, indicated the need for “fast track” planning legislation. This became the National Development Act 1979, which was a bit like today’s Fast Track Act.

By mid 1982 the government’s position in the Clyde dam litigation seemed to be deteriorating. After a couple of visits to the Supreme (now High) Court, eventually the Planning Tribunal (the forerunner to today’s Environment Court) declined to grant the water rights needed for a high dam.

The government had had enough, and that September simply gave itself the rights by statute.

Sound Familiar?

Some of it might: uncertain international and economic conditions, signs of the nation’s political economy tottering, an increasingly impatient and shrill political contest that is clearly yet to settle on a viable response, big infrastructure proposals presented as economic talismen in lieu of more serious new ideas, local and national doubts about that, often inchoate, legal tugs of war, fast tracks and more.

Of course there are differences too. One that stands out is that the Muldoon government of 1982 had the courage of its convictions to take responsibility for picking a winner it wanted: a high dam at Clyde, among others.

The government openly ensured it got its Clyde high dam built, and took the consequences. In physical terms these included a need to spend huge and largely unforeseen sums dewatering nearby hillsides, but in the longer term it also bequeathed the nation what has become a key electricity generating asset, and now even something of a tourism drawcard. Politically the fallout eventually figured in costs up to Muldoon’s loss of the Treasury Benches in 1984, and more remotely even a change in national electoral systems over a decade later.

Too chicken to choose?

Today’s government does not show the same tendency for forthrightness - not even the more bullish like Shane Jones.

Instead the government is going to almost extreme lengths both to pick winners - to choose projects it thinks are needed for national development - while not being seen to. It’s only open about picking motorways.

Long time readers of Brenty’s Two Cents will recall that Bishop himself:

• Selected and wrote to group of 200 companies, and asked them “apply” to get into the Fast Track originally. This only emerged once recipients peddling their own projects became confused about whether Bishop’s letter was an “invitation” or a “request”.

• Attempted to completely insulate that “application” process from judicial scrutiny by doing it at Bill stage, and not after an Act was passed. The process was made to look like a normal administrative process, and was later almost copied into the law. But “applications” were not “applications” in the common administrative sense at all, and merely appeals for political patronage.

• Tried to make this look arms-length by appointing an “independent” “Fast Track Advisory Group” or FTAG to consider the “applications” - the first and perhaps only recent occasion on which private citizens “independent” of government have been openly asked to write a government law. Unsurprisingly, the FTAG’s choices were at times almost absurd.

• Gave up Ministerial decision-making on projects under public pressure, making a political virtue of doing so. In the meantime he ensured the governement retained total political control of who got into the Fast Track then by having the government choose 149 from about 342 FTAG-favoured projects almost arbitrarily. Never mind this probably broke Parliament’s rules.

• Retains that same control now, as explored in the last Brent’s Two Cents, through the open texture of the “referrals application” process.

• Retains control through the near-arbitrary way the government can “shuffle and re-shuffle the deck” - ie choose the order a large number of projects are heard by a small pool of realistic pannelists.

• Made brief attempts to rename the Fast Track in favour of its “one stop shop” element, one of the few times Bishop wheeled out the Prime Minister on these issues.

• Even went so far as to front a group of resource management professionals in September and talk up the rigour and environmental credentials of the Fast Track and new resource management system - in that kind of sitting-on-a-couch-looking-thoughtful-under-slick-and-dim-lighting kind of way so beloved of the conference set.

As I’ve commented before, the government has done always done an excellent job with the Fast Track’s political management, consistently plugging progress while de-emphasising the controversial elements. But as we’ve seen, some of these controversial elements involve going to extreme lengths, including disrespecting norms, both to pick winners and to conceal the fact. Like the Clyde Dam, some of these winners might change the face of regions for generations, for better and worse. Some of them might even do the same near Clyde! And all this without real debate?

How long can the plain sailing last?

Time will tell.

On 3 November 2025, a Fast Track Approvals Amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament. Select Committee submissions opened on 7 November, and closed 11 days later on 17 November. The unusually short period exploited a “loophole” in Parliament’s rules. The Select Committee itself will deliberate for just under three weeks, reporting no later than 5 December 2026. Anyone would think there had been a hurry.

Anyone would also think there was government dissatisfaction with the Environmental Protection Authority or EPA, the agency administering the Fast Track. In late September Shane Jones commented adversely on the EPA’s Fast Track performance, including that it had “missed the memo” on administering the Fast Track and criticising decisions as “astounding”. This drew an official rebuke the following week. Then on 4 November, the EPA head, Allan Freeth, resigned effective 30 June 2026. This was acknowledged bizarrely by Penny Simmonds but not Bishop.

The coincidental timing was hard to miss, so when Freeth himself said his resignation was unconnected with the Amendment Bill, I was personally skeptical. My view is that Freeth’s comment probably had less to do with truth and more with personal damage limitation: saying what needed to be said to have any chance of any good post in Wellington. But if Freeth’s comment was true, perhaps it had to do with something equally unpleasant, like the EPA having to incur loans to administer the Fast Track in the first place?

Meanwhile other government announcements danced with predetermining specific Fast Track projects while also misrepresenting automatic legal processes as a “major milestone”.

All of this was simply the latest round in all-but-nakedly picking winners. And to others’ credit at least they have gestured at accepting political consequences for such naked advocacy, separately saying “meet me at the ballot box”.

Returning to the Amendment Bill, which takes the picking and the misdirection up still another a gear. The Bill was presented as addressing an issue de jour and causing real pain to New Zealanders: a lack of supermarket competition. The government omitted to say among other things that the Bill would (and almost certainly will) also:

• Allow the government to further cement its control of what will emerge from the Fast Track by issuing policy statements about national and regional benefit.

• All but predetermine the approval of some projects by deeming that some projects have national or regional benefits, leaving panels with little to decide and going more than halfway back to Ministerial decision-making.

• Limit the information available to decision-makers, as well as further limiting the severely restricted scope for public participation, by restricting decision-makers’ ability to invite comments from people they consider “appropriate”. Local authorities will supposedly stand in for locals, but probably won’t be able to ask around, even if they have time.

• Limit the already severely curtailed appeal rights.

• Increase the scope for Zombie projects to return to the Fast Track by further weaking the referrals application process.

…just among other things. And almost amusingly, these were described as technical changes.

It’s getting a bit odd

Governments are allowed to want things to happen, and to try to make them happen. This is sometimes why they get elected instead of others, and sometimes why they are deposed.

It is not like the Resource Management Act is without issues. It is not like the people don’t want serious solutions to New Zealand’s economic woes, and infrastructure can obviously play a part in that.

So what’s the big deal with having a bit more courage in its convictions? With being more honest about the Fast Track? More, dare one say it, like Jones or even Muldoon?

Does the government feel barred by an ideology with a distaste for such government choices? Perhaps that idea gestures at a possible fissure in the coalition, with some so barred and others not? Or a Schrodinger’s compromise - a Fast Track both barring and not barring picking winners? Catering for all tastes of all coalition partners? Is the government simply unconfident in the Fast Track’s outcomes, which I predicted, and which are fast turning out to be, a set of “meh” projects sprinkled with occasional highlights and more than occasional disasters? Is it cynical enough to try getting away with promoting this same set of “meh”/highlights/disasters in substance, but taking the glory only for the good stuff and presenting the disasters as the law taking its course? Or is the government just unprepared - too chicken - to accept the political consequences of delivering much ado about no serious infrastructure, a la Kiwibuild(TM), as well as trashed norms and occasional environmental disasters? Is it unacceptable to pick winners that will make private enetities money? Or is it stranger still, something like Bishop recognising he is largely out front on the Fast Task, and wanting the good but not bad personally? Trying to personally retain a shot at the top job one day?

The Fast Track is fast losing even fig leaf status for a government who wants a particular set of projects to happen. It wants these things to happen to address a looming economic and political crisis. A government wanting things is okay, and efforts to address these issues would surely better be debated or celebrated than concealed. The government has said at times that the Fast Track is about “more yesses” for infrastructure. But for whatever reason, it is going to extreme lengths to give the impression it isn’t mainly just about “their yesses”.

A B - 22 November 2025