To deal with the proliferation of regulation & red-tape in NZ, which means you can barely go to the bathroom without getting permission, National's Chris Bishop & NZ First's Shane Jones told us they would "fast track" a bunch of selected projects. Around 384 projects have applied under this process. Of course projects must be completed faster in NZ. We've had enough of detractors like former failed PM Geoffrey Palmer wanting to bog NZ down in never-ending legal arguments regarding such matters. At some level, his way is driven out of self-interest - to create more work for Palmer. Its the same with his views on race relations: a never-ending story of ever more complex legal arguments with the ultimate purpose of giving Palmer more to write about because, unlike dumb-dumbs like you and me, he claims to be the only one who understands the "nuances". Give us a break. So its a shame to see that on the fast-tracking issue, Bishop & Jones took a good idea and stuffed it up. They sadly politicized it by wanting to give themselves powers to make decisions about which projects would be accepted. After 10 years of pleading with the Nats, including personally begging John Key, to take politics out of these decisions & leave them to an independent, objective cost-benefit determination, I confess to giving up. Bishop & Jones reverted to National & NZ First's bad old ways. They wanted to be big men, holding big power, deciding who got what. Now in an embarrassing back-down, they've reversed themselves. They've recommended changing the Fast-track Approvals Bill so "Final decisions on projects will not sit with Ministers but with an expert panel. This is the same as the previous Labour government’s fast-track process".
But they've got it wrong again. Why revert to another layer of bureaucracy by setting up a new Labour Party-style committee, staffed with the usual assortment of in-bred Wellington nobodies or dubious Kiwi "business leaders" with political connections? Will they put Paula Bennett on the panel? Or a property developer who donates money to National? What should they have done? The 384 projects should simply be referred to the NZ Treasury / Infrastructure Commission for evaluation & ranked highest to lowest in terms of benefit-to-cost ratios. Those institutions should send their ranking / recommendations to Cabinet for ultimate sign off. The rankings should be publicly available. Should Cabinet accept a project low on Treasury's rankings, then we'd know it was because they wanted their mates to get the job, unless some very good reason otherwise was presented. For National to adopt Labour's same fast-track "panel" process tells us one thing. Both National & Labour have failed to deliver for NZ and they still dont know how.
Sources: