Ministers’ power addition 'opposed’

Press, 4 June 1984, Page 7

Ministers’ power addition 'opposed’

PA Chateau Tongariro A few Government members of Parliament opposed suggestions of extending the “Ministerial override” for national development planning. said the member of Parliament for Waikato, Mr Simon Upton, yesterday. The National Development Act should provide for a preliminary hearing on suggested big projects, he told the Young Nationals conference. The act gave insufficient time for public scrutiny and debate, he said. “There have been murmurings from within the Government to extend the Ministerial override when the Minister can ignore a Planning Tribunal decision

beyond the limitated cases provided for in the National Development Act.” Mr Upton said people were prepared to accept the curtailment of consideration of a project for urgency in the public interest, but they were not prepared to sanction “a system which could permit the speedy and final committment of a national resource owned by us all, not in the national interest but in the party political interest of the government of the day.” “I hope we are all sceptical enough about what power can do to people to realise it is not just nasty Labour governments who can be tempted out of partisan interest.

“I am not suggesting that we have seen such actions to date,” he said. Mr Upton said a “handful” of Government members, including the members for Selwyn, Miss Ruth Richardson. supported the idea of having an earlier hearing of social, economic, and environmental evidence before a proposed scheme became too advanced. A detailed summary of evidence should be published after the preliminary hearng, Mr Upton said. The check on Ministerial actions would be “a large reservoir of informed public opinion which he or she, in acting against the weight of evidence, would flout at grave political risk.”