Two draft fast-track decisions have been released for projects in the South over the past couple of weeks.
Contact Energy’s Slopedown wind farm, near Wyndham, was given approval with conditions earlier this month, while the Ayrburn Screen Hub in Queenstown was also given approval, albeit with a string of conditions.
West Catlins Preservation Society Inc spokeswoman Natalie McRae said the legislation was entirely weighted in favour of the applicant.
"The purpose of the Fast-track Act and the wording is so strong that the panels are almost hamstrung," she said.
"Reading our decision, we beg the question of what fast-track projects, if any, will fail under this legislation? The Fast-track Act is almost dictatorial and leaves not-for-profit groups like ours with no hope."
She said the views of the local community were outweighed by government ministers who were in positions of power.
The Fast-track Act replaced the Covid fast-track legislation and she said the Fast-track Act left no room for the little guy.
Carlyn Stewart, who works on a family farm close to the wind farm development but did not get to comment as it was not adjacent, said the government had created a system that could not be declined.
"Based on the panel's decision in the Southland wind farm case they had no intention of doing that [declining it] anyway," she said.
The wind farm panel said the benefits of the project outweighed all environment concerns but there was no analysis of the benefits, she said.
Experts giving evidence were given lots of weight but surely the panel were the experts, she said.
"Being that the national and regional benefits are a huge part of the FTA you would think that a complete analysis of these [benefits] would be an essential part of the process."
Neil Green, of Queenstown, had been able to comment on the Ayrburn Screen Hub application.
The panel said in its draft decision the application would not have been approved under the RMA.
Mr Green said that just summed up the Fast-track Act and how badly weighted it was towards the applicant.
"What we're seeing is that the fast-track legislation, which was promoted as a means to deliver infrastructure with ongoing regional and national benefits — that process has really been hijacked by, in our case, a property developer who has failed all previous attempts to get intensive proposal property development through the process," he said.
"So the application of the fast-track legislation basically allows people to get around and make some mockery of things like the district plans and spatial plans."
Mr Green said the development could have been any construction in Queenstown as it was a property development.
"The panel has said the actual act of building them will create regional benefit. But they could be building those buildings anywhere — not because of a film studio. So it really has distorted the process.
"The fast-track legislation has completely skewed the pitch."
Under the Ayrburn proposal, it had become a really undemocratic process, and a bypass mechanism rather than a fast-track essential process for infrastructural projects, he said.
When contacted, Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop said fast-track legislation aimed to accelerate consenting processes for major projects with regional and national benefits.
He said it was working well. Fourteeen projects had been consented so far, many of them having had significant time reductions compared to the RMA.
Environmental conditions were imposed rigorously, he said.
The wind farm has imposed conditions around ecology and land management to increase protection of Jedburgh Station. It had also had to operate a bat management plan and a community fund.
Ayrburn also had a raft of conditions around the construction of houses.
