There is a three-headed monster hunkered down in the Beehive. It squats on a huge pile of campaign donation gold collected from multinational corporations desperate to mine and destroy the forests, rivers, and mountains of Aotearoa. A ring of smouldering environmental regulations is strewn on the streets of Wellington. Late at night, as Parliament sits under urgency, the monster emerges to scorch the earth across Aotearoa.
The Luxon/Peters/Seymour Government, elected at the end of 2024, has studied Lord of the Rings and has chosen the Desolation of Smaug as its policy handbook.
As the Earth faces month after month of record scorching temperatures, the three-headed monster is scratching its head to figure out how it can dig up more oil, coal and gas to add to the fire.
As species after species face extinction, this Government states repeatedly that if species go extinct, then that is the price to be paid for mining.
I’ve been describing it as a ‘war on nature’ because the anti-environment policy agenda is so extensive and intensive. It is unlike anything seen before in this country.
It can be challenging to keep up with this many environmental attacks coming from different Ministers and in different stages of development. To make it clearer, I have tried to list all the anti-nature policies below, provide some background, and give an indication of their stage in the policy process.
This updates and replaces a piece I wrote back in May and I’ve added developments since then including the introduction of the first RMA Amendment Bill; the failure of the last ETS auction; the donations scandal enveloping the former chair of the select committee; the weakening of fuel efficiency standards and a few other things.
1. Fast track approvals bill is a fast track to destruction
The premier vehicle for the government’s anti-environmental war on nature is the Fast Track Approvals Bill, currently before Parliament’s Environment Select Committee. This Bill has been well traversed elsewhere but it is worth noting a few salient features.
Three cowboys, no environmental constraints
The Bill gives three individual ministers – Shane Jones, Simeon Brown and Chris Bishop the final say on approving pretty much any project they like with almost zero environmental constraints. These three Ministers need have no particular knowledge or expertise on the projects and their environmental impacts. They can approve projects that would drive a species to extinction, pollute rivers, or increase climate pollution.
Three cowboys
There are panels who will provide advice to Ministers on individual projects, however these panels are handpicked by the Ministers and the Ministers are free to ignore the panels’ recommendations anyway. The Ministers have publicly and clearly voiced their disdain for environmental considerations.
No public input
There is no opportunity for the general public to input into fast track decisions. A limited group of people get invited by the panel advising the Ministers to make comments on the application. The general public is not even told that an application has been made.
But of course, those who have connections to the Government will have plenty of chances to lobby the three ministers at fundraising dinners and suchlike.
This results in poor decision making. One of the things about public submissions is that information comes to the surface that was otherwise hidden. In the Pakiri sand mining case for instance it was revealed through public submissions that the sandmining company was not telling the truth about its actual sandmining practices and that its expert had overestimated the annual sand replacement by a factor of ten.
Under this new regime it isn’t what you know, or whether you have a good project, it’s who you know. Shane Jones suggested to a coal mining company executive that he should apply for fast track approval, while attending a dinner with the executive. The dinner was not declared on the Ministerial register of events as it was required to be, and after being caught out Jones agreed to update his public diary register.
Court decisions overturned
This process can overturn court decisions in which projects have already been declined due to environmental impacts.
This is patently the case with the South Taranaki seabed mining proposal by TransTasman Resources which was rejected by the Supreme Court. Independent judges and lawyers who tested evidence in open court found that the applicant simply couldn’t demonstrate that their project wouldn’t cause immense harm.
But this open process in court is set to be overturned by closed hand picked panels giving advice to three Ministers who will make decisions with zero public scrutiny and zero requirement to meet environmental standards or even understand the projects. It’s banana republic stuff.
Blocking renewable energy projects
One of the impacts of this kind of Government-by-Ministerial-Fiat is that that rational and evidence based decision making is put to one side in favour of individual favours.
An example of this is the conflict between seabed mining and offshore wind in the south Taranaki Bight. Offshore wind companies have stated that if sandmining is approved it will prevent them going ahead with a large-scale offshore wind project. A normal rational decision making process could look at both but in this case it will come down to which companies can woo the three Ministers the best.
Donations scandal in the committee
The Select Committee was originally chaired by David MacLeod, a National Party MP from Taranaki. He oversaw the early part of the process, including choosing which of the tens of thousands of submissions opposing the Bill would be heard by the Committee. He has now been removed as it was revealed that he had received $180,000 in illegally undeclared donations. He has been referred to the Police by the Electoral Commission to determine if he should be charged with committing a ‘corrupt practice’ under the Electoral Act. Watch this space.
So that’s bad, but it gets worse. Some of those undeclared donations he received were from a major shareholder in Trans Tasman Resources, a seabed mining company that has stated publicly that it intends to apply to use the fast track bill process to overturn the Supreme Court’s rejection of its project. So some of the secret donations were from pretty interested parties…
But wait, there’s more. The Minister overseeing the Fast Track Bill, Chris Bishop, who will also be one of the three decision makers in the Fast Track Process, was Chair of the National Party Campaign Committee at the last election. In this role he had knowledge of many of the donations coming into the Party. Many of these donations can be kept secret from the public under electoral finance laws. So Bishop, while making decisions on individual projects worth large amounts of money to the applicants, is likely to know which applicants donated to his National Party campaign, but the rest of us will only know some of the donations which are publicly declared.
Democratic deficit and conflicts of interest
A key part of the Fast Track Bill is the list of projects that will automatically be entered into the fast track process by virtue of being listed in a schedule to the Bill. The problem is that the list in the schedule in the Bill is currently empty. The Government intends to develop this list in a parallel process, with no public or select committee oversight, and then introduce this list as an amendment to the bill after it comes back from the select committee – during what is referred to as the committee stage of the process. Hence public submitters will have no opportunity to provide feedback on the list. Plainly the Government seeks to avoid the uproar that will arise when the general public sees the actual projects that the Government wants to bulldoze over the normal process.
The adhoc group that is assembling this list, the Fast-Track Advisory Group (FTAG), is stacked with Government cronies and rife with conflicts of interest. As journalist Andrea Vance explained about three of the members:
This fast-track advisory group (FTAG) is chaired by David Tapsell, also chairman of the Pukeroa Oruawhata Trust Board, which received significant funding from the previous government’s Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), overseen by Jones.
Rosie Mercer is chief executive of Marsden Maritime Holdings, which owns a stake in Northport Ltd. Northport wants fast-track for its expansion. Jones is a vocal supporter of moving Auckland’s port to the Whangārei Harbour site. Mercer also served on the PGF’s independent advisory panel, selected by Jones.
Vaughan Wilkinson has a long association with Jones. A former Simunovich Fisheries executive, he is now a general manager at Sanford. The seafood company was invited by Bishop to apply for fast-track.
Corruption
Finally, this is a process which is wide open to corruption, as corporations pushing projects that cause environmental harm seek to be placed on the fast track list, with a virtual guarantee of approval.
Ministers could be corruptly influenced by bribes in cash or in kind, by jobs for their families, by jobs for themselves post-politics, or by campaign donations. Advisers who provide access to Ministers and determine which corporations get onto the list will be equally incentivised to act corruptly.
Already some of the companies that Ministers have invited to apply for fast track have been revealed as their donors, and no doubt there will be many others. Mining company executives have had secret dinners with Ministers that were only revealed by accident and journalists asking questions. How many secret dinners will we never find out about?
Summary
The New Zealand Treasury analysis (hardly renowned for its environmental concern) was summarised by journalists as:
The Bill ‘could diminish local voices, violate Treaty of Waitangi commitments, significantly impact human and environmental health, open legal risks for the ministers involved, provide an unprecedented back door for prohibited projects, and erode the value of conservation land’
This single bill, if it proceeds and if businesses have the gall to use it, will cause widespread harm. It could include seabed mining, incinerators imposed on local communities, mining most everywhere including the conservation estate, marine farms everywhere, industrial irrigation driving water pollution, etc etc etc. It is a war on nature but it is also diminishing democracy and opening the door to corruption.
The report back date on the Bill has been delayed to October 18, no doubt due to the huge wave of opposition.
2. Dismantling freshwater protections
One of the truly remarkable things about Aotearoa is the scale of ground and surface water pollution and its impact on biodiversity and human health. This government’s war on nature is set to make it worse.
Things are pretty bad already
The Ministry for the Environment concluded that ‘Most of our indigenous freshwater fish and freshwater bird species… are either threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened’. Intensive industrial dairy has poisoned the well across much of the South Island – Canterbury, Otago and Southland have poisoned rivers and groundwater.
Land and Water Aotearoa found that ‘There is not a single monitored lake shallower than 10 metres in very good condition.’ Environment Canterbury in 2024 found nitrate levels increasing in 60% of the wells it tested. Many parts of the North Island with intensive dairying such as the Waikato are also heavily polluted.
Under pressure from the environment movement and the majority of New Zealanders, the last government brought in a series of national regulations to place some constraints on agribusiness pollution, particularly the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. Agribusiness virulently and vociferously opposed these regulations.
The new government is setting about undoing these regulations with its war on nature.
Delaying regional freshwater plans
This began in December 2023 when Andrew Hoggard, the former head of agribusiness lobby group Federated Farmers and now Associate Agriculture Minister, announced that regional councils would be given a further three years to update their freshwater plans to make the plans consistent with the new national regulations introduced by the last government.
The purpose of the delay is to weaken or remove the national regulations before the regional councils develop their new regional freshwater plans which must be consistent with the national regulations.
Replacing the National Policy Statement
He also announced that they would start the process of systematically weakening the national regulations by replacing the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management (NPSFM) with a weaker version.
Removing rules on intensive winter grazing
This was followed up in April 2024 with the announcement of an amendment to the RMA which will remove the rules controlling intensive winter grazing. This Bill was introduced in June.
Intensive winter grazing is a widespread practice in Otago and Southland in which feed crops are grazed intensively through winter. This results in cows, often pregnant, living in mud sometimes up to their bellies with massive sediment flows into rivers and lakes. The sediment smothers freshwater ecosystems.
Putting irrigation ahead of safe drinking water and clean rivers
Also included in this amendment to the RMA is a direction to regional councils that a national regulatory instrument called Te Mana o Te Wai must not be applied to the assessment of individual resource consent applications. Te Mana o Te Wai states that, when making decisions on the allocation of freshwater, the needs of ecosystems come first, the needs of human health second, and other commercial uses such as irrigation come third.
Te Mana o te Wai was the foundation for hearing panels rejecting applications to take water and cause more pollution in Hawkes Bay and Southland recently. Giant dairy polluter Fonterra and agribusiness lobby groups objected to this use of Te Mana o Te Wai and appealed the decisions.
The new Government aims to ensure that commercial users can get first consideration ahead of ecosystems or human health. This also means the lessons of the world’s biggest crypospridiosis outbreak in Havelock North are abandoned .
Freshwater Farm plans to be weakened or abolished
Alongside this Freshwater Farm Plans, which were a requirement for agribusiness managers to plan to reduce their water pollution, will be weakened if not abolished altogether.
As you can see it is an intensive and extensive attack on the rules protecting freshwater as part of the broader war on nature.
3. Removal of requirement to identify important areas of biodiversity
A large part of New Zealand’s remaining biodiversity is on private land with very little legal protection, which is leading to dramatic losses. This happens through wetland drainage, agricultural intensification, subdivisions etc.
Even as recently as 2009 Landcare Research reported that ‘Agricultural intensification over the past 10 years has led to the highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation.’ Landcare Research was deeply unpopular with the government and agribusiness after making this finding.
In response to the widespread destruction of biodiversity on private land the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity was introduced in 2023 after many years of discussion and consultation. The purpose is ‘to maintain indigenous biodiversity across Aotearoa New Zealand so that there is at least no overall loss in indigenous biodiversity’. A part of this national policy statement is a requirement for councils to identify ‘Significant Natural Areas’ in their area as a precursor to providing for their protection.
The idea of rules to protect biodiversity ran up against agribusiness, the key driver of the ‘highest rate of native vegetation loss since European colonisation’, and hence Federated Farmers deeply opposed these rules.
As part of the RMA amendment bill introduced in June 2024, the Luxon Government plans to remove the requirement that councils identify ‘’Significant Natural Areas’’, and hence biodiversity on private land will not even be identified let alone protected so its destruction can continue unabated.
4. Transport – more motorways, fewer cycleways and less public transport
Land transport is New Zealand’s second biggest climate polluter after agribusiness and yet this government has embarked on a radical policy agenda to increase pollution. The war on nature can be illustrated just by listing some of the initiatives:
Cuts to public transport
They have cut funding to public transport, walking and cycling and increased funding to motorways as part of the draft Government Policy Statement on land transport. Auckland Council pointed out that entire suburbs would be left without access to public transport as a result of the cuts and that fares would increase.
Across the whole country this draft policy statement will lead to more transport pollution and fewer trips by public transport walking and cycling. It also centralises much of the decision making around transport by preventing Councils from building cycleways alongside roads funded by central government money.
As part of the draft policy statement they removed climate as a requirement for consideration in transport decision making.
Impact on young people
They have removed the subsidies for young people to use public transport at discounted rates, not only making the cost of living crisis harder for them and their families but pushing them towards car transport.
They are moving to force Councils to increase speeds around schools in spite of the mountain of evidence that this will lead to more injuries and deaths. This not only increases injuries, it discourages families from sending their kids to school by bike or foot because they know that speeding cars are more dangerous, which means more traffic.
This sits alongside the attacks on traffic calming measures such as raised pedestrian crossings, which the NZ Herald has been busy providing misinformation about. Many Councils are resisting the idiots in Wellington, thank goodness, and are lowering speed limits anyway.
Interisland ferry funding removal
They cut the funding for the interisland ferry terminals and cancelled the new ferries which have lower emissions. The ferries connect the train network as well as the roading network.
Kiwirail lost its Climate Bonds certification as a result and will repay the $350m it borrowed plus interest.
The cost to the Government of breaking the ship build contracts is thought to be in the hundreds of millions. The current cost of the whole project which will now deliver nothing is at least $484m. It’s an expensive mistake which a future government will have to fix.
Ending subsidies for low-emissions vehicles
They ended the subsidies for low emissions vehicles resulting in a collapse in EV and small car sales and once again Ford Rangers at the top of the list (guzzling gas and killing pedestrians and cyclists).
While we can’t simply replace traffic jams of internal combustion engine cars with traffic jams of electric cars, nonetheless EVs are part of the low carbon solution.
Removing council’s transport plans
The Government has moved to end Wellington’s transport plan with its focus on public transport walking and cycling and move towards more cars. There remains uncertainty as to the future solution but clearly they want more cars.
They abolished the Auckland Regional Fuel tax of ten cents a litre which was used mostly to fund the building of the first stages of the Eastern Busway and new commuter rail carriages. The Eastern Busway has now been reduced in size, as the fourth phase is unfunded.
They cancelled the Auckland light rail project. This project was troubled, with the previous government heading down the most expensive track, but there are still better options than just cancelling it.
Weakening fuel efficiency standards
The Government has announced that it will weaken the fuel efficiency standards on imported vehicles. This means New Zealanders will be locked into vehicles that cost more to run and have higher greenhouse emissions.
There’s even more but you get the sense of it. Their transport policy will increase climate pollution and making climate change worse is of their war on nature.
5. The war on dolphins, seals and marine life
The government’s war on nature is not only being fought on land. It extends to the oceans too.
Marine biodiversity
The majority of Aotearoa’s biodiversity is to be found in the oceans around us and the main driver of biodiversity destruction in the oceans is the fishing industry.
This is particularly the case for practices like bottom trawling, where heavy nets are dragged along the ocean floor destroying corals and sponges in order to catch fish near the bottom.
Over the last decade the environment movement and the majority of New Zealanders have been slowly pushing governments towards improving oversight of the fishing industry and restrictions on their most destructive practices. But the new government wants to go backwards…
South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation
There is an obscure inter-governmental organisation called the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) that is meant to regulate fisheries in the international waters of the South Pacific.
The other countries in this forum are trying to restrict bottom trawling because of the immense harm it causes. As the last country actively bottom trawling in the international waters of the South Pacific, New Zealand is opposing these constraints, but under the last government had agreed to some modest restrictions.
The new government has changed its position, opposing protection of vulnerable coral habitats from trawling, and does not support any kind of restrictions on bottom trawling.
Cameras on boats
After the various scandals led to a 2016 Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Primary Industries’ regulation of the fishing industry, the then National Party Government agreed to implement cameras on boats to better monitor illegal behaviour such as fish dumping, dolphin killing etc.
These cameras were finally rolled out over the last few years to about 120 fishing vessels and have so far resulted in a dramatic increase in reporting of dolphin and bird killings and fish dumping. They led officials at the Ministry for Primary Industries to introduce new regulations to lower the number of birds drowned on hooks.
But Shane Jones, Minister of Fishing and recipient of seafood industry campaign donations, doesn’t like them and wants to review them. Another option the government is canvassing is to hand them over to Fishserv, the fishing industry owned company that oversees the Quota Management System.
None of these are good options but where it ends is still unclear.
Increasing catch limits and killing more seals
In spite of the collapse of numerous fisheries the Minister of Fisheries decided to increase catch limits.
The population of one of the species, the southern bluefin tuna, has collapsed 92% since the height of fishing madness in the 1960s. This follows the collapse of orange roughy fishery, hoki, scallops, crayfish etc etc.
And with regard to killing endangered New Zealand sea lions the new Government decided there would no longer be an upper limit on the number of sea lions that the fishing industry can drown in trawl nets.
This will no doubt be the tip of the iceberg as more change emerges from the Minister.
6. Increased climate pollution
Aside from the long list of policies above that will increase climate pollution (e.g. transport), the government has introduced other policies to increase emissions.
Restarting offshore oil and gas exploration
The global battle against fossil fuels has both a supply and demand side.
On the demand side are the battles around fossil fuel electricity generation and internal combustion engines vehicles.
But the supply side is also critical because, as the International Energy Agency found back in 2021, we can’t afford to bring more fossil fuel supply online if we are to avoid catastrophic warming. The head of the IEA said: “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – from this year.” We know that once oil companies spend vast amounts to find and develop new fossil fuel reserves they will continue to sell them into the global fossil fuel market.
Hence the decision by the New Zealand Government in 2018 to stop issuing new offshore oil and gas exploration permits was a critical step forward in the global fossil fuel battle. Other countries have now joined this movement and there is a growing group of governments and civil society groups supporting a Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty.
The announcement by the Luxon Government that it will restart the issuance of offshore oil and gas exploration permits is a global leap backwards. Government officials estimate that if the Government does successfully restart oil and gas exploration it will result in another 51 million tonnes of climate pollution by 2050.
The Government is looking to subsidise the industry by providing insurance against future policy changes. They are also looking to remove the requirement that oil companies provide a clean up bond to cover future clean up costs. These clean up bonds were introduced after Tamarind oil company went bankrupt leaving the taxpayer with a $443m bill to clean up after them.
The Government is falsely claiming that the recent electricity shortages are linked to the 2018 decision to stop issuing new permits for oil and gas exploration. This is an argument that is transparently false – it takes decades from seeking a permit, to possibly finding gas, to developing the gas field, and bringing it onstream if that is feasible. And there is no guarantee that gas will be found. The real challenge and opportunity for New Zealand is to decarbonise its energy system.
Also they plan to make it easier to start coal mines.
Changing the way methane warming is measured
Methane is a superheating gas – over 20 years it is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing planetary warming and its concentration in the atmosphere is rising rapidly. It has driven about 30% of all warming since the industrial revolution and the biggest anthropogenic source of methane is agriculture. However it is relatively short lived and hence scientists have identified cuts to methane emissions as a critical pathway to avoiding climate disaster.
However, the global livestock agribusiness lobby does not want to cut methane emissions and hence has a policy agenda to change the way that the climate warming of methane is measured. This is to make it look like methane causes less warming than it really does. Agribusiness likes to focus on ‘no additional warming’ levels of methane emissions, grandfathering existing methane emission levels.
Technically they want to move away from the global standard accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a standard called GWP100. They want the world to adopt a standard called GWP*. Under GWP* New Zealand’s agribusiness methane emissions can be redefined as not causing ‘additional warming’ because they are static! Agribusiness likes GWP* because they won’t need to cut emissions.
The New Zealand agribusiness lobby groups are part of this project, and now they have the former head of Federated Farmers in Government as Associate Agriculture Minister, they have their chance to push it. The Government has established a panel to identify the level of methane emissions that would be consistent with ‘no additional warming’. Surprise surprise.
Both the Climate Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have concluded that there is no basis to review the science around the measurement of the warming effect of methane. But that won’t stop the Government giving it a go.
More cash for magic bullets
The New Zealand Government has given hundreds of millions of dollars to look for magic bullets to reduce methane emissions from dairy cattle and other livestock. So far no magic bullets have been discovered but the new Government has thrown another $18m at this greenwashing.
The purpose of all this is to avoid having to cut emissions by doing things that actually work like reducing fertiliser use and stocking rates.
Zero Carbon Act – greenwashing law retained
It is noteworthy that a Government conducting a war on climate and biodiversity policy has kept the Zero Carbon Act (ZCA) in place. But there is a good reason for that – the ZCA was largely a greenwashing exercise as was revealed once it was tested in court.
When Lawyers for Climate Action went to court to try to use the ZCA to actually force emissions cuts on the government, the Climate Minister, James Shaw, went to court to argue that the Paris Agreement climate goals referenced in the ZCA were merely ‘aspirational’ and not binding on the New Zealand government.
This was in spite of Shaw saying publicly that the ZCA made the Paris target legally binding on the government. Shaw won the case and the climate lawyers lost. The new Government is very fond of the ZCA because it is just ‘aspirational’.
No price on agribusiness climate pollution
One final piece of the puzzle is pricing agribusiness emissions in order to financially reward emission reductions. This was delayed throughout the course of the last government by the He Waka Eke Noa process – a collaboration between polluters and the government to come up with a pricing mechanism that polluters would accept. Of course agribusiness would never accept any pollution price (polluters never do) and He Waka Eke Noa was always a tactic of predatory delay by agribusiness. So the new Government has disbanded it and legislated to make sure agribusiness emission will not be priced under the Emissions Trading Scheme.
ETS Collapses
The Government has stated that the Emission Trading Scheme is the cornerstone of their climate policy. Yet the last auction, in June 2024, resulted in zero bids. Market participants have rightly understood that the Government has little interest in putting a price on emissions.
Draft Emissions Reduction Plan
The result of all this is that the Government’s draft emissions reduction plan released on July 17 will not meet the emissions reduction targets to which New Zealand has committed. In fact the so-called emissions reduction plan is projected to have a similar impact on GDP while cutting emissions by less.
7. Once more dear friends, into the breach
So that is my read of the state of play of their war on nature.
Some things the Government will struggle to achieve such as reversing the ban on new oil and gas exploration permits as oil companies will be leery of coming back knowing that they will face massive civil society resistance (again) and regulatory uncertainty. The cameras on boats programme looks safe for the moment.
Any attempts to use the fast track law to drive through projects like seabed mining will likewise face determined community opposition.
We will need to mobilise people power to challenge the government’s agenda and to challenge any corporation that tries to use the new fast track process. It is a bit bleak after six years of a Government that claimed to take climate and biodiversity seriously but delivered so very little.
But the truth is that real gains only ever come out of a mobilised civil society and achieving a mobilised civil society is exactly what we have to do. It was ultimately the community fighting back that brought the reign of Smaug to an end.
On Saturday the 8th of June we came together in our tens of thousands in the March for Nature. We showed the world, and ourselves, our determination to stand up for nature. And that determination will not only stop many of the attacks from the current government but will lay the foundation for future gains.
So get into it!
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