Bob Edlin: Fast-track is hastening infrastructural work.....

Fast-track is hastening infrastructural work but (when it comes to te reo) it is keeping snail pace with Te Kāwanatanga

It is called Fast-track and it is in the business of providing a permanent approvals regime for a range of infrastructure, housing and development projects with significant regional or national benefits.

Fast-track is administered by the Environmental Protection Authority and can be found on the Environmental Protection Authority website.

News of its accomplishments can be found there, too.

This week Fast-track crowed:

Seventh fast-track housing development approved

The Ashbourne project in Waikato will enable the development of 518 new homes and two solar farms

The Ashbourne project is the 19th project approved through the Fast-track process and the seventh housing project.

But a PoO reader noted which organisation is running this country – published at the bottom of the press statement (and re-published here).

In big type (in te reo) it says

Te Kāwanatanga o Aotearoa

In small type it says

New Zealand Government.

The Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand explains:

The term ‘kāwanatanga’ is derived from a Māori-language version of the English word ‘governor’. There is no exact equivalent in Māori for this word, since traditional Māori society had decentralised forms of leadership, administration and social control that were quite different from the monarchic and bureaucratic systems of government developed in Britain. As a result, when the first representatives of the British government took up their posts in New Zealand, they needed new terms to explain to Māori the kind of administrative control they proposed to introduce.

But Fast-track is slow to catch on to the declared aims of the New Zealand National-NZ First coalition government, which is supposed to be implementing a policy to ensure all public service departments use their English name first.

The Coalition agreement called for English-first naming for departments and Crown entities, except those specifically focused on Māori affairs.

But there has been no great haste to implement the policy.

Only some agencies are prioritising English in branding, websites, and official communication to increase accessibility.

This enables the great bulk of the country’s citizens to easily comprehend what might happen at …

• Health New Zealand (previously Te Whatu Ora).
• NZ Transport Agency (previously Waka Kotahi).

Let the record show that the Department of Internal Affairs has changed too from Te Tari Taiwhenua.

PoO was led to believe the policy aligned with a broader plan to strengthen the status of English as an official language and ensure that communications are primarily in English.

The Government has argued that prioritising English makes services more accessible and easier to understand for the general public, noting that 95.4% of the population speaks English.

This rationale is readily appreciated, when you are told the objective is ease of communication and understanding by the great mass of citizens, not veneration of The Treaty.

But critics complain the changes are a social and cultural step backwards, threatening to diminish the profile of te reo Māori.

The Fast-track administrators perhaps have taken account of those objections and are in no hurry to join the English-first school of trying to be easily understood.

They are not alone.

The Treaty-sensitive branding at the top of this article is much the same at the branding which can be found on Te Kāwanatanga o Aotearoa website, too…

The which website?

Pay attention, dear reader. The New Zealand Government website.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.