In April 2020, US tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen published an influential essay called It’s Time to Build. It argued that the multiple institutional failures of the pandemic revealed a fundamental weakness in Western democracies: they had failed to maintain the basic infrastructure required to function in a crisis.
They lacked the housing, medical facilities and manufacturing resources the emergency called for, and this wasn’t because of a lack of money: there was plenty of cash for endless financial bailouts and wars. The problem was political, Andreessen believed.
The legal and regulatory systems made it almost impossible to build anything. The West used to be at the forefront of innovation, nation-building and economic growth, but now its economies were stagnant, its infrastructure crumbling.
In 2024, a trio of UK policy analysts wrote the essay Foundations, a deep-dive into the deterioration of the UK economy, and came to much the same conclusions: over-regulation – especially in the housing and energy sectors – made it almost impossible to invest or build, and this was slowly strangling economic growth.
The political scientist Francis Fukuyama recently coined the term “vetocracy” (rule by veto) to describe the elaborate planning and consent processes ubiquitous across advanced democracies in the 21st century, in which decision-making became so fragmented no one can get anything done.
The coalition government feels these arguments in its bones. The obstruction economy, bloated bureaucracies, red and green tape – these are the real enemies of growth. The first step in economic recovery is using the power of government to get government out of the way; investment will follow, capital will flow, productivity will soar and flowers will bloom. It’s time to build.
Fast-track solution
Viewed from this sunny perspective, the Fast-track Approvals Bill championed by Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop can only be a good thing. The country is in dire straits, the government has a persuasive theory of What Has Gone Wrong and What Must Be Done, and it is moving swiftly and decisively to put things right.
Bishop has now unveiled 149 development projects to be listed in the bill. Once the law is passed, the projects go straight to an independent panel to be approved or declined, bypassing a host of existing legislation and consent processes, most of them based on protecting the environment. The panel will have the power to attach environmental conditions to approved schemes.
Eden Park will be upgraded and given a retractable roof, a lack of which is evidently crippling the nation’s growth.
The bulk of the projects are housing developments – up to 55,000 homes – and infrastructure projects: bridges, roads, the odd rail corridor. There are 22 renewable energy projects and 11 mining projects. Eden Park will be upgraded and given a retractable roof, a lack of which is evidently crippling the nation’s economic growth.
It’s notable that so many of the applicants are government agencies ‒ particularly Waka Kotahi ‒ looking to circumvent the regulatory process. There’s a live argument within left-wing policy circles in the US – partly inspired by the Marc Andreessen essay – about government over-regulating itself, and this being a root cause of public sector inefficiency.
Green benefits
If a future Labour-Greens government wants to transition to a green economy, it will need something very much like Bishop’s fast-track bill to deliver the necessary renewables infrastructure before the end of the century.
What could go wrong? Beehive strategists sometimes draw up “risk registers”: a list of all the things that might bring their government crashing to the ground. The fast-track bill and perceptions of corruption should be at or near the top of National’s list.
It is unusual for Parliament to pass legislation that directly benefits the commercial interests of specific private companies, and almost unheard of for it to do so in a way that circumvents existing laws and legal processes.
At Bishop’s press conference where he unveiled the projects list, journalists asked him about the conflicts of interest arising from firms that made political donations then submitted projects for approval to the same parties or ministers they’d given money to. Bishop responded that he’d sought advice from the cabinet office and they’d advised him that donations don’t create a conflict of interest.
Iffy aroma
But cabinet office guidelines around these issues seem increasingly vague, and the public gets to decide whether these deals pass the sniff test. Some of them already have a certain fragrance – like the Winton Group’s housing development in Papakura. That company had previously requested exemption from zoning laws and local body consenting from Kāinga Ora and was declined.
The same project is now included in the fast-track bill – and one of the company directors is former National cabinet minister Steven Joyce, and chair Chris Meehan is a significant donor to the National Party. It looks an awful lot like well-connected companies paying money to political parties that then pass laws circumventing standard legal processes.
Bishop hopes that some of these projects come online early in 2025.
The best-case scenario is that lower interest rates combined with soaring business confidence and unleashed consumption send the economy roaring back into life next year, and these projects deliver on their promises and turbo-charge that growth, generating a sustained boom. There are more houses, more jobs, more retractable-roofed stadiums for everyone.
But it will take only a few false steps for this to turn into the coalition’s version of Three Waters, or KiwiBuild, or both: an ongoing liability in which the government cuts so much red tape it finds itself tangled up in allegations of crony capitalism – and the voters decide it’s time to build a new government.
