Ministers shouldn’t just rubber-stamp official advice

Newsroom reports:

In February, Finance Minister Nicola Willis had to decide if a majority Chinese-owned company’s acquisition of 15 hectares of South Island farmland was contrary to the national interest.

The land at Glenavy, in South Canterbury, about 30km north-east of Ōamaru, is where South Island Resource Recovery Ltd wants to build New Zealand’s first large-scale waste-to-energy facility – a huge furnace which burns rubbish and construction waste as an alternative to landfills.

Opponents of the $350 million waste-to-energy facility are critical of the finance minister for over-riding advice that it be mandated “feedstock” for the facility come only from the South Island.

“Special condition 7 only not special condition 6,” Willis wrote on the decision document. (Condition 7 is if the facility ceases to operate, the land must be “repaired”.)

Should the Overseas Investment Act be used to dictate where people buy feedstock from?

Newsroom asked Willis’ office: Why did she veto the condition? Was it because of lobbying from the company? If not, what other advice led to that decision?

Willis responded: “Having read the assessment report, I formed my own view which was that the Environment Court was better placed to assess any impacts through the resource management consent process. I do not recall having been lobbied on this matter.”

Hard to disagree.

It’s proposed the Glenavy facility would process up to 365,000 tonnes of municipal and construction waste a year – the equivalent of a fifth of the South Island’s landfill waste – and generate up to 30 megawatts of electricity.

Great.

The waste-to-energy facility could reduce methane emissions from landfills, the OIO report said. But it would still produce ash, of about a quarter of the original waste volume, and increase New Zealand’s carbon emissions.

But as methane emissions are not in the ETS and carbon emissions are, this will see overall emissions drop.