Protest march against fast-track bill announced for Auckland

Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, Communities Against Fast Track (CAFT), Coromandel Watchdog, WWF-New Zealand and Kiwis Against Seabed Mining announced a ‘March for Nature’ on Queen Street in Auckland on June 8 to protest the Fast Track Track Approvals Bill and the Coalition Government’s War on Nature”.

That’s according to Russell Norman, director of Greenpeace Aotearoa“The Fast-Track Bill is the most damaging piece of environmental legislation any government has introduced in living memory. People are angry and it’s time to march.”

“New Zealanders care deeply about the natural world. Many of us have fought long and hard to end conservation land mining and oil exploration. We have successfully prevented the start of seabed mining and won crucial protections for forests, oceans and freshwater. We will not stand by and allow all of this to be dismantled by Christopher Luxon in his War on Nature,” says Norman.

This is what Nicola Toki, CEO of Forest & Bird, says“Along with the climate crisis, the world is facing a biodiversity crisis, and New Zealand already has the highest number of species extinctions in the world.”

“The way we look after our environment is something that all New Zealanders care deeply about. Therefore, resource management reform should receive broad public support. It must provide stability and security and must endure. The fact that tens of thousands of New Zealanders have lodged objections to the bill proves that this is not the case with this bill,” Ms Toki said.

“This bill is a lose-lose. It is failing our environment and our economy. This legislation is a step backwards for our country and should be thrown out.”

“New Zealand’s environment is already under serious threat from climate change and biodiversity loss. We need to recover, invest and protect what we have left, not open the gates to development that will make things much worse.”

Communities against fast track ( CAFT, a coalition of community groups from across the motu who oppose the bill), said spokesperson Augusta Macassey-Pickard“This bill will ensure that communities no longer have a say on projects in their rohe, projects that could have a devastating and lasting impact on their local environment. Our coalition represents the small communities across the motu who are fighting against seabed, coal and mineral mining, and fighting to protect our water, forests, biodiversity and ocean. This bill is a travesty that would return our beautiful country to the Dark Ages.”

Coromandel Watchdog’s Hauraki spokesperson Catherine Delahunty says:“The Fast Track Bill is a direct attack on the forests, mountains, waters and communities of the beautiful Hauraki Coromandel. We have a long and proud tradition of protecting our area from the destruction of gold mining. The bill attacks our rights to participate in these important decisions that will have intergenerational consequences and is a major attack on the rights of Tiriti. And government ministers’ attacks on the endangered frog species found only in our forests highlight the need to defend our unique biodiversity. We will join the March vigorously to let the government know that Hauraki Coromandel is too precious for mine.”

Kiwis Against Seabed Mining chair Cindy Baxter says: “Seabed miners like Trans Tasman Resources have been unable to get their projects across the line in Aotearoa because of the devastation they would cause to our ocean environment and the huge opposition to their industry. We fought them all the way to the Supreme Court, together with iwi and the fishing industry. Now they want to enter through the back door. Kiwis love their oceans and don’t want the South Taranaki Bight turned into an industrial zone. We call on the government to abandon this cruelty of a bill.”

WWF-New Zealand CEO Dr. Kayla Kingdon-Bebb says: “The Fast-track Approvals Bill is at the heart of this administration’s systematic war on our natural world and will put our country on a fast track to unprecedented environmental destruction. This anti-democratic bill concentrates power in the hands of three ministers and allows them to trample on the few environmental protection measures we have in place for our endangered nature and landscapes – while ignoring the concerns of local communities and tangata Whenua.

“When Aotearoa New Zealand is already in the midst of a climate crisis and thousands of our native taonga species are at risk of extinction, we cannot afford to give extractive industries like coal mining a license to destroy our protected landscapes and our endangering wild animals. and sabotage our international climate commitments.

“Our leaders are demonstrating that they are willing to burden future generations with unconscionable costs as a result of their climate inaction and allow our native taonga species to become extinct under their watch. But we will not tolerate that. We know Kiwis care deeply about our environment, and now is the time to show our government that this reckless bill will not go unnoticed or unopposed.”