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Opinion: During the pandemic restrictions of 2020-2021 the Jacinda Ardern Labour-led government was often criticised as New Zealand’s most authoritarian peacetime government ever. However, it paled in comparison with the repressive 1975-1984 Muldoon National government.
One of the Muldoon government’s more notorious pieces of legislation was the National Development Act, pushed through Parliament in 1979. The act was developed to enable the swift introduction of the “Think Big” energy projects that National had campaigned on at the 1978 election to create “410,000 jobs for your children and your children’s children”.
However, the legislation aroused considerable opposition because of the widespread additional powers it gave the government to override established planning procedures to facilitate national development, its lack of environmental safeguards for protecting natural resources, and the speed and lack of consultation that surrounded its introduction. Of nearly 350 submissions made on the legislation, only five were supportive.
The National Development Act became a cornerstone of opposition to the Think Big energy projects, spawning the Campaign for Open Government group led by the distinguished former Ombudsman Sir Guy Powles. It was eventually repealed by Labour in 1986. The aftermath of Think Big led the fourth Labour government to undertake a major review of resource and planning law to ensure there could never be a repetition of something like the National Development Act. That resulted in the Resource Management Act, introduced by Labour in 1989, and eventually passed by National in somewhat modified form in 1991.
The RMA, as it became known, sought to balance economic development with environmental sustainability. It replaced 54 pieces of often contradictory planning and resource legislation with a single, comprehensive Act. However, the RMA was never really embraced by National which saw it as basically too pro-environment, and therefore anti-development. After 2008, the Key National-led government made several attempts to gut the principles of the RMA but was unable to get the agreement of support partners Act and UnitedFuture to do so.
Nevertheless, over the years the RMA came to be seen as too cumbersome and prohibitive. It was, funnily enough, the Ardern Labour government that finally repealed it, introducing the Natural and Built Environments Act in its place. However, that was not to last – that legislation was repealed by National in late 2023 as part of its first 100 days action plan, and the RMA restored, at least for the time being.
The current controversy surrounding the Government’s plan to establish a fast-track consenting regime for major infrastructure projects turns the clock back to the days of Think Big and the National Development Act, with little acknowledgement of the history.
Under the latest plan, final approval for designated major projects will rest with three ministers – Infrastructure, Regional Development and Transport – based on the recommendations of an expert panel that those ministers will appoint. In reaching their decisions, the ministers will be able to bypass existing legislation such as the Wildlife, Conservation and Reserves Acts, as well as many other aspects of planning and resource management practice.
It is therefore no surprise that the plan has invoked memories of the Muldoon government and the National Development Act, and aroused afresh many of the concerns that were prominent at that time. Yet the Government, for reasons of blind ignorance or sheer wilfulness, seems determined to ignore the lessons of what happened then, somehow arrogantly (or naively) believing things will be different this time around, because they are in charge.
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It should never be forgotten that the National Development Act was the mechanism by which the Think Big energy projects were established. Nor should the massive level of public debt those projects incurred, which successive governments were burdened with paying off, be forgotten either. Think Big and its aftermath are powerful examples of what can go wrong when a small group of politicians, who think they know best, deliberately curtail due process when it comes to making major decisions and instead take that power upon themselves.
There is no reason to believe the current trio of ministers proposed to be the final authority under the Government’s plan will be any different in how they go about things from those of the Muldoon government in the early 1980s. Or that the long-term outcome will be any different. As has often been said, those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.
So far, the Government is showing no sign of listening to, or even acknowledging, the gathering storm of political, legal, environmental and community opposition brewing because of this new legislation. Though it is understandable that the Government is keen to streamline planning processes for some major infrastructural projects, the blunderbuss approach it is adopting is almost certain to backfire. There was already wariness in some environmental and legal quarters of the coalition’s commitment to sustainability which will only be intensified by the way it is proceeding now.
On a wider canvas, National spent all the 1980s and the early 1990s trying to live down the negative legacy of Think Big and the National Development Act. Even so, there remained a lingering suspicion, now bolstered by the explicit views of Act and New Zealand First, that National has never really been fully committed to environmental sustainability. Its current actions simply confirm that doubt.
We now look set to repeat the mistakes of the early 1980s because a small group of today’s politicians think they know best. Yet, if ever there was a time for wiser leadership to learn from the past and convene a genuine multiparty conference to develop durable, balanced planning and resource management law that protects legitimate rights and the environment, but also offers reasonable long-term prospects for development, now is surely it.
But, sadly, the chances of the Government doing so are next to zero. To them, ticking off another short-term action point on the Prime Minister’s latest quarterly plan is far more important, and all that matters.
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Peter Dunne was the leader of United Future and served as a minister in former National and Labour governments. More by Peter Dunne
9 Comments
There is a major difference between current changes to the RMA and ‘think big’ projects (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Big for a list).
‘Think Big’ was a program of projects built and financed by the Government of the day, with attendant changes to resource consenting to allow the Government to proceed with them. The current changes to the RMA apply only to the consenting of projects, all of which have no Government ownership or subsidy. This is a substantial difference.
Resource consenting reform was a major part of both coalition agreements which came in turn from party manifestos. Put simply, the Government is doing what it was elected to do.
As with most legislative changes, the select committee process will allow opponents to have their views heard.
‘During the pandemic restrictions of 2020-2021 the Jacinda Ardern Labour-led government was often criticised as New Zealand’s most authoritarian peacetime government ever. However, it paled in comparison with the repressive 1975-1984 Muldoon National government.’
I wasn’t here during Muldoon’s terms as PM, but I was during Ardern’s. PM Ardern had a notion of ‘who we are’ as a people which proved to be incorrect and when she realized it, she resigned. Now that we have a ‘back on track’ government desperately seeking to hold onto a dead past, we can see the difficulties Ardern had in keeping up the fiction that she didn’t need leadership, only followership.
Of course, it’s not just NZ, or in Trump’s America, the problem is global.
Well I have lived through both…
Muldoon took to authoritarianism due to healthy debate within his own Caucus. A series of National MPs realised that the decisions being made were mistaken, so started making life more difficult for him in the house. It was then that he began passing law via Order in Council instead. Contrast that with Ardern who (yes there was a delay of perhaps a few weeks, but she did do it) appointed Simon Bridges to head a special Committee to review the Covid response. And those hearings were broadcast, so we could all see what was happening. Totally different from what Muldoon did.
In planning law, Muldoon held his cards incredibly close – largely the decisions were made by he and Birch alone. Even the whole Cabinet was left out of the process. This is what Dunne is referring to here.
I lived through the Muldoon Governments as well. I agree with your assessment of them but in an earlier post here I have pointed out that comparing what the Muldoon Governments did with planning laws with current RMA reforms is not valid.
Right on Peter!
“We learn from History that we don’t learn from History “
The Aral Sea provides a dramatic lesson of the dangers of authoritarian decision-making without proper consideration of sustainability and long term environmental consequences. It had been one of the largest inland water bodies in the world, around 110 times the size of Lake Taupo. It had a thriving fishing industry employing around 40,000 people. In the 1960s, authorities in Moscow decreed that water from the two rivers feeding the Aral Sea should be diverted for irrigation, mainly of cotton crops. As a direct result, the sea dried up and almost disappeared. In 2005, I visited the fishing village of Moynaq that had been on the shoreline. It was now about 130 kilometres from the water, and many large fishing vessels were now just stranded hulks in the sand alongside the town.
It is stated in the article that final approval for designated major projects will rest with three ministers “based on the recommendations of an expert panel that those ministers will appoint.” This is not quite correct because the three ministers concerned are entirely free to ignore any recommendations given by their expert panel. It really is a dictatorship against the environment – more like the Brazil of Bolsonaro than New Zealand.
I haven’t got a file for Peter Dunne, maybe I will open one.
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