National’s flawed RMA ripoff still failing

• lprent
• 7 years ago
• Categories: housing, im/migration, local government, maori party, marama fox, national, nick smith, same old national
• Tags: GE, polity, resource management act, rma

Politik reports this morning that the “Maori Party threatens Government”

Last minute negotiations between the Maori Party and the Government are continuing as Environment Minister Nick Smith bids for the party’s support for his landmark Resource Legislation Amendment Bill.

Maori Party Co-Leader, Marama Fox, told POLITIK last night that unless the party gets Smith’s agreement to change a clause in the Bill relating to GE-free regions, the party will withdraw its support for the Bill altogether.

Basically it sounds like Nick Smith is doing his characteristic shuffle to try to weasel out of previous commitments. The fool is incompetent and a disgrace as a minister. Mind you, the Maori party appear to wish to look like suckers.

It has been negotiating with the Maori Party for nearly two years now, and it was thought an agreement had been reached.

But the Maori Party were surprised by the final draft of the Bill and are arguing that it does not meet their demands to remove the power of the Minister to over rule local authorities who declare themselves GE free.

“There are some things that we would still like to negotiate with the Minister, because the drafting does not completely match the anticipated decisions that we came to and the agreements that we came to around policy,” Fox told Parliament yesterday afternoon.

“So in good faith today we are going to vote for this, on the guarantee that we continue to have those conversations to put forward the policies of not just the Māori Party but yes, regions such as the Hawke’s Bay, regions such as Te Tai Tokerau, and regions within Te Wai Pounamu, which are advocating for a GE-free stance.”

Ah good faith bargaining with National’s Nick Smith. What a concept!

Over the last eight years, the central government has proven itself to quite incompetent at balancing between the demands for a clean NZ and the dirty demands of the farming and immigration industries. And Nick Smith tends to be in the centre of the worst excesses of incompetence. The most extreme instances were

• The central government takeover of Environment Canterbury, apparently so that they could plunder the water resources for more intensive dairying, resulting in a catastrophic drop in water flows and rapidly worsening water quality. The recent Nick Smith response to concern about poor water quality was to drop the standards of water quality to ensure that more waterways can be destroyed and then indulging in duplicitous lying about why community groups were leaving the Land and Water Forum.
• The central government policy of having rapid low skill immigration on top of a flood of kiwis returning to give the largest ever nett migration into New Zealand. While the policy settings for this and immediate tax revenues are in the hands of central government, they have trying to demand that local rate payers pay for their incompetence in building infrastructure and housing to support it. Nick Smith has been in the forefront of doing fuck-all for housing, preferring instead to concentrate on dubious PR exercises about building shonky housing on shakey ground.

Nick Smith is usually knee-deep in dubious duplicity with every portfolio he is involved in and to every group he ‘works’ with. I am surprised that the Maori Party fell for it. However they apparently got what they thought were significiant concessions for the Iwi.

They probably need to look at those more closely again.