Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Well Think Big is back. For the first time in over 40 years we have an executive that is granting itself powers—Ministers granting Ministers powers using their parliamentary majority through a dodgy process under urgency to override some of the most significant environmental legislation we have. We've gone from unbridled power to unhinged power through the use of this bill. This is one of the most significant assaults on the environment undertaken by any Government in my lifetime.These Ministers are handing themselves extraordinary powers to approve projects that could include new coalmines mining on parts of our precious conservation estate and the destruction of the seabed. And if you're denying it and pretending that that's not so listen to your own Minister for Resources your own Minister for Oceans and Fisheries who is certainly saying he hopes that that's what happens. He wants coalmines. He wants the destruction of the ocean floor. He wants the destruction of our conservation estate. He actually wants the extinction of some of our endangered species. He has said so in this House and this bill grants that Minister the power to make it happen.The Minister responsible for this bill the Fast-track Approvals Bill is clearly doing what his coalition partners are wanting him to do on this—despite what otherwise would be his better parliamentary and democratic instincts—and in his own somewhat Potemkin blue-green visage that he's been pretending to have.Some of the key differences between this bill and either the COVID-19 fast-track legislation or the fast-track provisions that that Minister repealed earlier this year—which had been in replacement to the Resource Management Act (RMA) bringing back the RMA—is that this puts the power into the hands of Ministers to finally approve those projects.Under the previous fast-track legislation Ministers could refer projects to an expert panel but could not decide. And actually the vast majority of projects did get approved and they got approved quickly and they got approved sometimes with additional recommendations or conditions in order to make them either more sound or less risky or less environmentally damaging. But the vast majority of them went through both under the COVID-19 legislation and under the fast-track provisions that Minister Parker put through.What this legislation does is it gives those expert panels the ability to propose conditions back to Ministers who can then say Oh we don't like those. Have another crack. Keep coming back until we get an answer that we like." So yes you might say "You have the power to make those conditions" but the point is that the Ministers can then say "Sorry those look a little bit onerous to us. We don't like those. Have another crack." and the project's already been approved. We know that the Ministers want them and the Ministers get to decide that so those expert panels are completely toothless.This rides roughshod over not just the Resource Management Act—which everybody in this House including us agrees is a very flawed piece of legislation. We couldn't believe that this Government preferred to bring that legislation back into existence. It rides roughshod over the RMA. It rides roughshod over the environmental protections in New Zealand law including the exclusive economic zone Act the Wildlife Act the Conservation Act the Reserves Act. There is no acknowledgment in the bill of Te Tiriti beyond settlements. It contains weaker environmental conditions for applying for and approving consents. There is no mention of well-established environmental law principles such as the precautionary approach—no mention at all of that.Consenting panels can give more weight to the purpose of the fast-track bill over having to give effect to Part 2 of the RMA or other relevant legislation. It allows coal mining. It allows other destructive activities on conservation land. It allows seabed mining. It overrides projects that have already been declined by the courts on environmental grounds because they were so destructive they have no place in society.So my question really to those grinning members of the blue-green National Party caucus who are sitting there is: where the hell are you? Where the hell are you? The ghost of Rob Muldoon has inhabited the mind and body of Shane Jones and he is riding roughshod and exposing the blue-green caucus to be an absolute Potemkin village of toothless spineless people who have no say whatsoever in this bill."