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 and work on because he claims to be the only one who understands the "nuances" of it all. Give us a break. So its a shame to see that on the fast-tracking issue, Bishop and Jones went and took a good idea and stuffed it up. They sadly politicized the whole thing by wanting to give Ministers the power to make decisions about which projects would be accepted.
After 10 years of pleading with the Nats, which includes personally begging John Key, to take the politics out of these kinds of decisions & leave it to an independent, objective cost-benefit determination, I confess to giving up. Bishop and Jones reverted to National & NZ First's bad old ways. They couldn't help themselves. 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 yet another layer of bureaucracy by setting up a new Labour Party-style "panel", 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 maybe a property developer who donates money to National?
But they've got it wrong again. Why revert to yet another layer of bureaucracy by setting up a new Labour Party-style "panel", 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 maybe a property developer who donates money to National?
What should they have done instead? 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 process with an expert panel of nobodies tells us one thing. Both National & Labour have failed to deliver for NZ and they still don't know how.
Sources:
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/huge-interest-one-stop-shop-fast-track-bill
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
10 comments:
How true Professor, how true!
Magnificent offering yet again Prof Robert MacCulloch. When the names and reason of 384 proposals are public , not just the provinces , and industries , It would be interesting for NZCPR to table them and then interested individuals could give a public person ranking . When the professionals have tabled , we can evaluate the public preference and perspective against the politically inspired wish list. The other important issue is the regional spread of the proposals because the capacity to undertake is as important as the project.
We should all cringe when the word expert is brought up - as the saying goes: “Ex” is an unknown quantity and “spurt” is a drip of water under pressure. Therefore, “ex-pert” is an unknown drip under pressure. Put iwi on that expert panel and that translates to vested interest veto, no more, no less.
The suggested alternative: Put to the "NZ Treasury / Infrastructure Commission for evaluation & ranked highest to lowest in terms of benefit-to-cost ratios" and pass the results to Cabinet for ultimate sign off is quite honestly a practical, elegant and democratic solution.
As for the Palmer thoughts on the matter, did he not manage to engineer the whole Waitangi Tribunal/ Treaty balls up - sorry that does not give the chap a high degree of credibility or kudos.
I hope they'll be consulting with Greek Orthodox Lesbians this time?
However I now understand it is worse because the "expert panels" will include Maori Development and Te ao Maori expertise in place of Mataurangi Maori which means Maori per se will get disproportionate say and opportunity to sway when deciding which project wins fast track approval . I say remove the apartheid from NZ.and remove the Waitangi Tribunal.
Kickbacks always determine policy regardless of which troughers are pulling the strings. They’re all lowlife parasites.
40 % of the fast track applications are for housing. That will help us all get back on track buying and selling houses to each other.
Very productive .
Bishop has publicly denied concern re . co-governance. He insists it is not a main issue. Totally disingenuous, In one meeting, participants warned him that National support would suffer from this attitude - which proved to be the case in 2023.
Bishop may delude himself and try to deflect the rest of us from it but fact is it is not going to go away unless it is shoved out forcibly. If National does not awaken to this fact pretty damned quickly it could well be their death knell. Panels spiced with a dose of iwi are, strangely enough, co-governance via the back door however you dress it up.
I think these changes show the power of NZ's version of "the Swamp". To have it reverted to essentially Labour's version , really means the bureaucrat's version.
This sort of thing has been very evident in policies/actions in other Departments as well.
As for Chris Bishop --he is in the wrong party.
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