Stuff reports:
Meridian Energy is not revealing the amount it has paid Ngāi Tahu as it seeks to renew resource consents for its Waitaki Hydro Power Scheme. Last year Meridian signed agreements with Ngā Rūnanga o Waitaki (Arowhenua, Waihao and Moeraki), the Department of Conservation (DOC) and Central South Island Fish & Game which included financial settlements.The power company has applied to Environment Canterbury (ECan) to renew 18 resource consents to operate its Waitaki Hydro Power Scheme of six stations and 60km of canals for the next 35 years. Submissions opened on July 24 and will close on August 21. The current consents are due to expire next April.
This is what some call Greenmail. Renewing consents for a critical energy supply should be easy and routine. But the RMA isn’t, and so you have to buy off potential objectors.
Under the financial agreements, Meridian had said it would pay DOC $2.01m per annum over 35 years, or $73.5m in total, to maintain and restore the braided river and wetland habitat.Central South Island Fish and Game would receive $80,000 per annum, or $2.8m over 35 years to support the delivery of programmes relating to the research and enhancement of the sports fishery and game birds in the catchment.Based on the $180m figure, this would leave Ngāi Tahu receiving about $104m over the 35 years.
Sadly, Meridian, DOC, Fish and Game and Ngai Tahu are acting entirely rationally here.
Meredian need a resource consent to continue to operate the Waitaki Power scheme. The Waitaki Power scheme includes 6 dams that were built throughout the twentieth century, from 1928 through to the 1960s. In total, they supply 18% of the countries electricity and, importantly, over three quarters of our hydro storage capacity. While the dams are of course already built, resource consents need to be renewed around every 30 years to allow the continual operation.
Under the RMA, groups like DOC, Fish and Game and Iwi have the ability to hold up a resource consent application for years or decades. Meridian clearly view the cost of such legal challenges and delays can stretch into the hundreds of millions. In such a situation it makes logical sense to pay an organisation to support an application rather than pay a lawyer to fight them in court.
From the point of view of DOC, Fish and Game and Iwi, they have the power to do major financial damage to a company like Meredian. Clearly it is not realistic for dams producing 18% of New Zealand’s electricity to be torn down, but these organisations can use objections to the scheme to extract environmental and financial concessions. The incentive is not new and economists call it ‘rent seeking’.
If this is the cost of a reconsent, we can just imagine how much it would cost an electricity company looking to build a new power plant. And such a cost means less investment, and higher electricity prices for all Kiwis.
This isn’t a problem with individuals in these organisations but a problem with the RMA. The RMA empowers anyone to stop someone else doing something. It means investment is slow, uncertain and expensive. It means New Zealand is a less productive society.
The Government needs desperately to prioritise wholesale RMA reform to move New Zealand ahead. The fast-track approach is at best a short-term fix. It helps big business like Meredian, who may now be wishing they had waited 6 months before signing this cheque, but what is unseen is all the little investments that never happen because of the RMA and will never access a fast track.
While Meridian is paying a cheque of over $100 million, this practice isn’t uncommon in the RMA. A farmer looking to increase the size of an effluent spreading area will often be advised to access a letter of support from a local iwi, and the iwi will advise the farmer that the processing cost is somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.
It is a regulatory tax that is dragging New Zealand down.
Three policy options for consideration could be:
A law requiring any NGO, company or Iwi that receives money from a resource consent applicant to disclose annually how much they received
Ban payments from resource consent applicants to potential objectors. Allow them to directly fund remedial work that will satisfy the objector, but don’t allow a cash payment just for not objecting.
Remove the special status some organisations have under the RMA which means they get more weight if they object and hence applicants need to get them on board. Have all decisions based purely on the merits of the environmental issues, not on who is objecting
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
Honestly this maori black-mailing is nothing new. A friend who was born on, developed and ran a dry-stock farm in the NW Auckland region was held to ransom many times by so-called 'local iwi' whenever film-crews wanted to access the farm for film-making purposes. They expected payment in the tens of thousands each time, in order the land could be 'blessed' and 'protected' during the film-making, nothing more than voo-doo bone-shaking in my view, In the early days he simply told them to piss off, but I am not sure what happened in later times, say, since the 2000's. Other land-owners had to allow 'local iwi' access to any land they wanted to subdivide, in case there were sacred burial…
Just tried to comment on the latest post but no go. Someone or something is definitely fucking with this platform, probably a leftie daily bog mind slave.
Anyway, forget about the National doing anything about the the maori takeover, in fact it looks like they're right on board & pushing it further;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/525032/government-clarifying-functions-of-te-arawhiti-and-te-puni-kokiri
Talk about intentional obfuscation. How the hell are we, majority NZ, supposed to know what they're up to if they don't call these departments by there English names. Or is it just MSM being woke maorification arseholes as usual?
NZ being reliant on resources and land now under Iwi influence will come to a gradual stagnating slow down as Iwi insist on protecting all for the future generations of New Zealanders song so as to seek restitution to lift that lack of cooperation from the likes of “As mana whenua, has a duty to protect awa and the resources it provides for future generations of New Zealanders.”
Some people need to wake up as to what they voted for and accepted rather than now complain as to the realities due to the consequences. Either decide to reverse it all or just leave NZ is the only option now.
Barclay more or less has implied that its more important "....to…
Time that people learned to use the Protected Disclosures ( Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022
I'm not saying there's corruption here but - Hmmm
Good grief.... is there not an honest upfront political being of any color or creed, prepared to stand up and be counted.
Its theft..... outright theft.