The fast-track bill has now had its second reading in Parliament, raising concerns for tangata whenua and climate activists.
Former Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty (tangata tiriti) chairs Watchdog, an organisation which opposes the expansion of mining in Waihi. The expansion is one of 49 projects proposed in the bill.
But she said despite 27,000 submissions on the bill and 20,000 people marching down Queen Street protesting the bill, that opposition still wasn‘t heard.
Delahunty said the government wasn’t listening, which was why activists had to take their fight directly to the corporates.
“I think the fast-track bill is an abomination,” Delahunty said.
“To me there‘s a direct line between the Doctrine of Discovery from the 1500s from Europe which said all land we come across, we can take and extract resources from and suppress the humans there.”
The Doctrine of Discovery is a Catholic Church concept used by popes to justify Christian colonial conquest. The concept has been linked to the British colonisation of New Zealand though many historians disagree.
Much like the Treaty Principles Bill, this is a dark moment in our history, and I believe it can be turned around and must be turned around.
— Catherine Delahunty
She said it took Aotearoa back to pre-1970s in terms of the ability for communities including tāngata whenua to participate in issues relating to the future of the taiao.
Fast-track as a colonial project
Although there were a few projects on the critical fast-track list that would benefit Māori such as papakāinga, housing, and a biomass project in Kawerau, Delahunty said those projects could have gone ahead anyway.
“They don’t need a fast-track because they have projects their communities support,” she said.
“This is about silencing dissent and allowing for extractive industry.”
While the government modified the bill that was going to give all decision-making power to cabinet ministers, now there will be an expert panel. There is no requirement for there to be even one Māori on the panel; they only need expertise in te ao Māori or Māori development.
Although Māori landowners would be consulted and have a right to say no, the legislation protected infrastructure of electricity projects, facilities or networks for, say roading, which took away the rights of people to protect their whenua, Delahunty said.
“The real issue, I think in terms of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is that which is not properly referred to in this act in any coherent manner,” she said.
Delahunty said there was no requirement to protect tāngata whenua land because only 5 per cent of the land in the country was Māori-owned.
“All of Aotearoa is Māori land and, if that can’t be questioned, if development on that cannot be questioned by the hapū and iwi of this country because they don’t “own it”, that’s a colonial project in itself. "
Waihi goldmining project poses risk to conservation forest
The Waihi North Mining Project by Australian-Canadian owned company Oceana Gold was top of mind for her given the open cast pit as well as as plans for an underground mine beneath the Wharekirauponga conservation forest.
The forest is culturally and environmentally significant and is home to a species of frog estimated to have been around for 200 million years.
She said the mining was unnecessary as there was enough reusable gold above ground.
Delahunty said her group had prepared to go to court and had been working on preparing evidence for two years. The company had applied for resource consent but agencies who had been assessing the project said it didn’t provide enough information.
When we have a biodiversity and climate crisis, dreadful wars, hideous, colonisation still going on in places like West Papua, Kanaky, Palestine, all [the government] can come up with is ”who can we sell something to?”
— Catherine Delahunty
“Now all of that’s been dropped because they’re going to use the fast track to get away from having to be held to account,” she said.
“Apart from this so-called expert panel of whoever the government decides as an expert.”
Delahunty has given evidence in courts for 40 years over environmental hearings and on other issues and said her groups mostly lost but it did allow other voices to be heard.
She said it was never ideal because the companies could pay for the lawyers, and buy in their experts. “It’s never been a level playing field but this bill takes away the playing field altogether.”
Zombie projects back from the dead
“I’m also really concerned about the zombie projects,” she said, “the ones that we refer to as zombie projects because they were already rejected.”
Delahunty said the government had brought projects back from the dead like Taranaki seabed mining which had been fought against by Ngāti Ruanui, Greenpeace, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining. It was rejected by the Environmental Protection Agency and repeatedly rejected in courts but now it can go ahead through fast-track without a hearing.
Another project on the fast-track list, the Tukituki Water Security Project, would dam the Tukituki River “so that a small group of people could make more money out of horticulture and agriculture”.
Ngāti Kahungunu won a court case to stop the project under its earlier name, the Ruataniwha Dam.
