Source: Choose Clean Water – Tom Kay
Government changes to national direction relating to the country’s resource management, expected to be announced this week, will advance ACT Party extreme ideologies at the expense of the health of the public and our environment, say freshwater campaigners.
Campaign group Choose Clean Water says a close reading of the Coalition Government’s cabinet paper on resource management reform provides a strong indication of what will be in the Government’s national direction announcement, and shows the National-led Government is adopting the extreme and incoherent views of ACT in their approach to environmental policy.
“The changes to national direction signalled in the cabinet paper cover more than freshwater policy but what’s proposed for freshwater is indicative of what’s coming across the board.
“The Coalition Government is making sure commercial interests can trump the public’s interests, and that supposed private property rights can trump the rights of everyone else in our communities to a safe, healthy environment to live in,” says spokesperson for the group, Tom Kay.
Choose Clean Water says the cabinet paper’s prioritising of ‘the enjoyment of private property rights’ in public policy is straight out of an extreme libertarian ideology and becomes incoherent and dangerous when applied to communities’ needs and the natural environment.
As the cabinet paper emphasises, the Coalition Government intends to ‘replace the RMA with resource management laws premised on the enjoyment of property rights as a guiding principle’.
It goes on to say, ‘land use effects that are borne solely by the party undertaking the activity would not be controlled’.
“The cabinet paper ignores reality. Prioritising ownership as it exists right now ignores the fact that property changes hands over time—so one landowner’s actions will affect a future property owner or community.
“The reality is that most land use activities will have an impact on the rest of the community and wider society, even those that may be confined within a property boundary.
“That’s why we have rules about what people can and can’t do, so that the needs of everyone—including future generations—can be managed and communities aren’t harmed by one person’s poor decision making.”
Additionally, Choose Clean Water says any national direction announcement that highlights ‘environmental limits’ should be met with skepticism.
It appears as though the Government has already agreed to take away existing essential environmental limits for freshwater.
The cabinet paper states, ‘Limits to protect human health would be set nationally, whereas limits to protect the natural environment would be set by regional councils, who may incorporate sub-regional perspectives (such as catchment groups)’.
“We have existing protections for rivers and lakes in the form of national bottom lines (environmental limits). The National Party introduced these in 2014 and they’ve been refined since.
“But the cabinet paper proposes to remove these existing bottom lines and throw this decision-making back to regional councils again. This means communities will be vulnerable to more pollution of their rivers, lakes and drinking water, such as from another predicted ‘dairy boom’ in Canterbury.”
“It’s dangerous to disconnect human and environmental health, and unrealistic to imagine you can protect people’s health without protecting the waterways they swim in, fish and collect food from, and rely on for their drinking water.”
Kay also says the group can also see the influence of commercial interests over public policy, such as allowing catchment groups to set limits as another way of weakening or removing limits.
“It just opens them up to industry capture, where agribusiness exerts massive influence to set weak standards that work for them. Catchment groups are currently largely dominated by these interests and aren’t set up to allow for what downstream communities might want or need to protect their health and livelihoods.”
“This is only a small example of what’s in the cabinet paper and there is more to be alarmed about in the Coalition Government’s proposals for our environmental policies. ACT’s dangerous ideology should not be the basis of our resource management system, and National Party leaders must push back on them.”
Notes:
For ease of understanding, we have included below key issues and associated questions that must be addressed by the Government. We have also included a list of quotes from the cabinet paper in question that demonstrate the Coalition Government’s adoption of ACT’s language and ideas.
ACT’s influence: Why is a National-led Government adopting such an extreme position like removing environmental limits from central government policy when the National Party brought such bottom lines in in the first place? (For example, with regard to the NPS for Freshwater Management, which included bottom lines in National’s 2014 and 2017 versions of the policy).
ACT’s influence: Should the public have to pay private property owners for regulations that might be necessary to protect public interests as the cabinet paper suggests? What is an example of an ‘unjustified restriction’ (i.e. “allowing affected landowners to seek recourse where it is found that unjustified restrictions are placed on them”)?
Property rights: Is the ‘enjoyment of private property rights’ a responsible or realistic principle to base a country’s environmental and resource management on given that what people do on their property impacts the wider community?
More pollution: Will removing environmental bottom lines from central government policy allow for more pollution to go into New Zealanders’ freshwater?
Commercial influence over government policy: How much have representatives from our most polluting industries, like intensive dairying, been involved in developing the Coalition Government’s changes to freshwater policy?
Māori concepts and interests: Why are māori concepts and interests, such as Te Mana o te Wai and tangata whenua involvement in decision-making, being attacked when they were supported by previous National-led Governments? (For example, with regard to the NPS for Freshwater Management, National’s 2011, 2014, and 2017 versions of the policy all included provisions directing tangata whenua involvement in decision-making).
From the Cabinet paper:
“replace the RMA with resource management laws premised on the enjoyment of property rights as a guiding principle.”
“Change is needed to ensure the resource management system better enables growth and development and better respects private property rights within the framework of a market economy, while also improving environmental outcomes.”
“Despite its original intent, application of the RMA has increasingly treated land use as a privilege rather than a right.”
“Turning this around requires changing the culture of “no” that has seeped into bureaucratic decision making in New Zealand…This culture has been worsened by a planning system that fails to effectively take into account the basic requirements a modern country requires to thrive: economic growth, property rights, and the rule of law.”
“A narrower scope: the new system will have a narrower scope of effects being managed, based on the concepts of externalities. This will provide greater protection of, and ability to use property as its owners see fit. It will set a higher bar for regulatory restrictions on property.”
“A single combined plan per region will be required that is succinct, respects property rights, and includes a long-term strategic spatial plan to simplify and streamline the system.”
“The new system will put development beyond question, so long as that development occurs within environmental limits.”
“The new system will be based on ‘externalities’, meaning land use effects that are borne solely by the party undertaking the activity would not be controlled.”
“The responsible minister would be required to prescribe limits nationally or set default methods for limits to be developed at the regional level, or both. Limits to protect human health would be set nationally, whereas limits to protect the natural environment would be set by regional councils, who may incorporate sub-regional perspectives (such as catchment groups).”
“This approach would be supported by stronger checks and balances on the use of regulatory powers through: … protection against regulatory takings: subject to further detailed design advice, the legislation will include protection against regulatory takings, allowing affected landowners to seek recourse where it is found that unjustified restrictions are placed on them”
A final note
The Government has already significantly weakened policy protecting freshwater, including by:
- preventing Regional Councils from following the existing National Policy Statement requirement to prioritise freshwater health in consent decisions,
- removing additional protections for wetlands from coal mining,
- weakening standards for intensive winter grazing,
- pausing the roll-out of freshwater farm plan,
- preventing Regional Councils from progressing the freshwater plan changes they had developed over the past four years with their communities,
- and making it possible for the Minister to change national direction with limited consultation.