Govt sits on fast-track consent official advice

The Government is sitting on official advice about its fast-track consent law as Parliament hears feedback on the contentious regime.

Briefings from Government agencies like the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for the Environment about the bill and impact of the proposed scheme weren’t made available to those who wanted to make a submission to select committee.

But Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop says the information will be released soon, and well before the environment committee reports back on the bill in September.

Tomorrow, the public begin appearing before MPs to have their views heard on plans to cut consent times for major infrastructure projects.

Critics say the law places unprecedented power in the hands of three ministers to approve major projects, and will reconsider unpopular schemes that have already been rejected.

Forest & Bird was among those who asked for DOC’s official advice on the bill under freedom of information laws, ahead of writing their submission. But the request, made in March, was rejected. DOC cited a clause in the Official Information Act which allows agencies to hold back documents set to be released publicly.

That release was to be part of a “document dump” of all advice, coordinated by Bishop’s office.

Forest & Bird raised a complaint with the Office of the Ombudsman, a day ahead of the select committee’s deadline for feedback. Last week, the watchdog advised that DOC believed the proactive release would occur “approximately a week before submissions closed, and that its staff had helped prepare documents for release within that time frame”. DOC then wrote to Richard Capie, Forest & Bird’s advocacy manager, to apologise for the delay.

Capie said the episode was “disappointing and disrespectful to Parliamentary systems”.

“The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the Auditor-General have raised material concerns, and tens of thousands of New Zealanders also submitted to the select committee, on the very significant changes proposed. But we’re doing that in the absence of some really key information,” he said. “That includes the list of projects and the advice that has been provided to ministers by their officials about what the implications of this legislation.”

The conservation group will appear before the select committee today on behalf of 13,489 members who made submissions opposing the bill.

Bishop couldn’t comment on what DOC had said. However, he is adamant that the documents – which total some 680 pages – are not ready for release, with legally privileged material required to be removed.

“It’s not really standard to release a whole lot of Government information, advice and briefings so that people can read it in advance of select committee submissions,” he said.

“Right from the start, I’ve instructed the officials to make sure this information becomes available. The simplest way of doing that is collating it all and put it online for anyone who wants it, rather than deal with each OIA [request] individually.”