The government lists all projects that applied to get the economy booming in the pandemic era under its hilarious "Covid Fast Track Consenting Act" 2020 Legislation. That law may, if you're lucky, lead to a few projects being started by the time the next pandemic comes around. Maybe sleepy Wellington, where few people go into the office anymore, but rather prefer to "work" from home, and now want a multi-billion dollar bail-out from tax-payers in the rest of the country to save their broken city, can tweak the legislation and relaunch it as the "Monkey Pox Fast Track Consenting Act". Otago University's Vice Chancellor Grant Robertson and his right-hand man, epidemiologist (whatever that is) Professor Michael Baker can be brought back to advise. Maybe Robertson can even ask for a consultancy fee on top of his already $629,000 salary, even though he has no PhD degree, research, nor teaching record that I always (obviously stupidly) thought was a requirement for Vice Chancellors. Anyhow, here's the list of projects:
Many of them didn't apply until last year. Why not? Maybe the requirements are so onerous, that applications need a huge amount of time to prepare? In that sense, this idea of quick decisions from a "fast track" panel maybe a con-trick. Take a project located close to where I live, so I know what's going on there: the Upland Road Retirement Village. Like many Covid Fast Track Act 2020 Projects, the application was sent in 2023. Not one spade, not one shovel, has been put in the ground for that project. It is sitting there, an overgrown pile of weeds. Last week, on 4 September, the "Fast Track Panel" sent the folks applying to build it "corrected documents" that "supersede & replace documents included in the decision of the Panel issued on 13 August 2024". Yet Covid began in January 2020. That's almost five years ago. And "fast track" documents are still flying back and forth? Are Wellington politicians seriously telling us that new Fast Track Laws are being passed in Parliament when work has not even yet started on projects under the old Fast Track Laws? Meanwhile, Labour and National are arguing whose fast track is better. Both parties are playing us for idiots.
Meanwhile, Jacinda Ardern has clearly fully "recovered" from Covid herself, fast tracking her own career outside slow-lane NZ. She was last seen at the Democratic Convention in America, advising Kamala Harris how to win elections when you're parachuted in last minute with nobody knowing a thing about you. To be fair, Biden does seem a little lost, just like former Labour Leader Andrew Little - both sweet-talked into standing down by Harris and Ardern, respectively. Seriously though, isn't it just silly to pretend the economy was kick-started during and in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, with "fast track" legislation dated 2020, when, if someone checks up on all the projects that applied under that law, it appears many have not begun? If five years since Covid started, not a spade has been put in the ground on a bunch of these projects - if that is fast - what is slow? Completed by 2050?