EPA: Enabling poor accountability

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, October 4th, 2010 - 16 comments
Categories: accountability, democracy under attack, democratic participation, transport - Tags:

When National announced it would create an ‘Environmental Protection Agency’ and a short-cut resource consent process for projects of ‘national significance’, the implications were clear. The new agency and process would be used to override local opposition. Sure enough, that’s what’s happening with Waterview.

The controversial Waterview project was the first project to be put into the EPA’s fast track. At $1.4 billion it’s the country’s biggest ever roading project requiring 54 resource consents and 7 land designations. The public were given just four weeks to submit their views.

It’s an insult, clearly designed to prevent people with genuine and complex concerns from having time to do a proper job in their submissions. The Auckland Council asked the deadline for submissions to be extended by just two weeks. No dice.

When National demanded a cheap version of Labour’s Waterview project, they got a re-design that saw only parts of the route underground. The rest will be above ground. Surprise, surprise – it’s the rich houses that get the tunnels under them. Poor families’ houses get bowled.

National’s cost-saving demands have resulted in more corner-cutting: a ventiliation building won’t be underground anymore, it will tower 8m over the remainents of a local park; the pedistarian and cycle route won’t go the whole length of the motorway; rather than filtering emissions from the tunnels, they’ll just pump them out 25m high shafts.

These petty cost savers all amount to broken promises and loss of environmental value for the local community. They require well thought out objections to show that they are inadequate and shouldn’t be consented. But the Government has calculated that giving the public just 20 days to submit will prevent people having time to do that.

Anti-democratic, penny wise/pound foolish, and cynical – it’s John Key’s National Government in a nutshell.

16 comments on “EPA: Enabling poor accountability ”

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  1. outofbed 1
    4 October 2010 at 10:52 am

    They are still building major roads?
    must have discovered huge oil reserves in the world somewhere that we don’t know about..

    Public Transport
    Coastal Shipping
    Its not hard is it?

  2. roger nome 2
    4 October 2010 at 1:16 pm

    Ah rightist authoritarianism – colonising the commons for hundreds of years. Now, are “we the people” going to put up with it? I mean – if a bunch of peasants in 12th century England can stand up and demand fairness for all (many of thier demands were acceded to sme years later), why are we information age cyborgs (see Donna Haraway) so useless at sticking up for ourselves?

    • mcflock 2.1
      4 October 2010 at 3:01 pm

      um – didn’t those peasants come to a sticky end? I mean, good on them for trying, though.

      • Draco T Bastard 2.1.1
        4 October 2010 at 4:26 pm

        Some of them did but the Magna Carta came out of it which is arguably the base of our present liberal democracy.

        • Mac1 2.1.1.1
          4 October 2010 at 10:16 pm

          Draco T, the Magna Carta was the result of dispute between Barons and the King, was it not? I don’t think your average peasant, even an anarcho-syndicalist collectivist a la Monty Python, caused your average Baron to lose a wink of sleep, save if he was exercising his Droit de Seigneur.

          • mcflock 2.1.1.1.1
            5 October 2010 at 4:12 pm

            MC was 13th century – I was thinking the peasant’s revolt under Wat, which was even later if I recall my studies correctly.

            The Magna Carta under John had some nice things in it for rich folk, the most significant at the time being tax relief. Knowing the NZ parliament, we’ll get the tax cuts while habeas corpus is quietly erased…

  3. Jeremy Harris 3
    4 October 2010 at 9:28 pm

    Don’t forget they are also spending $800,000,000 widening SH16 in a related project…

  4. Armchair Critic 4
    4 October 2010 at 9:51 pm

    It’s not just roads. Many of the projects to go through this process will be about water.

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