PETER WILLIAMS: Iwi with their hands out before Otago development

No dooey until there’s more hui

The Fast Track Approvals Act is supposed to be a panacea for development. But as Port Otago and a leading logistics company are finding out, it is far from smooth sailing because of one issue – the requirement in the Act to consult with iwi, and then to probably to pay them for the privilege.

The story goes like this.

Port Otago, owned by the Otago Regional Council, operates from Port Chalmers, twelve kilometers outside Dunedin along a windy and narrow coastal road. There is a rail link but most of the freight to and from the port is transported by road.

Dynes Transport, headed by the entrepreneurial Peter Dynes, has formed a joint venture with Port Otago to build Southern Link Logistics Park on forty hectares of land, adjacent to the railway line at Mosgiel, just south of Dunedin.

Southern Link would be an inland port, a place where goods are brought to from their place of production to be loaded into containers and then transported to the ship - mostly by train. Conversely inland ports are where containers are brought to for unpacking and distribution after unloading from the ship.

Because inland ports are built on large tracts of flat land, they’re not constrained for space by the often small narrow coastal strips around a seaport. They’re a vital part of the country’s supply chain infrastructure.

The land that Southern Link is planned for was formerly a privately owned farm. Peter Dynes bought it for his company with a view to building the inland port there.

As he sees it, it’s a no brainer. It would take 19,000 truck movements off the streets of Dunedin and the road to Port Chalmers each year meaning less traffic congestion and road damage.

It would also encourage industrial and production investment in the region on land prices considerably cheaper than the usual going rate of $650 a square metre over the hill in Dunedin itself.

The Dynes and Port Otago Southern Link JV have applied for consent to go ahead under the Fast Track Approvals Act which has as its stated purpose “to facilitate the delivery of infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or national benefits.”

The land that Peter Dynes bought for the inland port was never part of the Ngai Tahu settlement in 1998 and to the best of his knowledge has never been land owned by Maori interests for as long as land titles have existed in this country. It was freehold farmland before a zone change to make it commercial and industrial.

But there are roadblocks in the Fast Track Approvals Act. Section 11 says that any applicant for a fast track approval “must consult any relevant iwi, hapu and Treaty settlement entities.”

Remember this Act was passed only last year by the current Coalition Government, a government which pledged to “uphold the principles of liberal democracy, including the rule of law and property rights.”

Section 11 has given three Runaka in the Otago region, all members of Ngai Tahu, an opportunity to insert themselves into this development.

In a letter to Port Otago boss Kevin Winders, the chair of Otakou Runaka Nadia Wesley-Smith writes “we do not consider there to have been any meaningful engagement with the three Runaka in respect of the project to date. Accordingly, at this stage, the three Runaka have no choice but to oppose the referral application and the project more generally.”

But she wants to open negotiations and includes a “Process Agreement” as to how they should proceed.

Part 2 of that Agreement says “The Southern Link JV acknowledges that due to its significantly greater resources compared to the Ka Runaka parties, that unless Southern Link JV provides support to Ka Runaka parties, any discussions and negotiations between the parties will not be fair and reasonable. Therefore the Southern Link JV agrees to provide reasonable funds to support Runaka staff, members and governance to engage with Southern Link JV on relevant matters, support Ka Runaka parties to engage appropriate external parties to advise and support the Ka Runaka parties and meet administrative, travel and logistical costs.”

Remember this. Ka Runaka is part of Ngai Tahu. In the last three decades the South Island iwi has turned its $170 million dollar settlement into $1.66 billion with extensive interests in forestry, fishing, property, tourism and agriculture. There’s every chance some of its businesses will use the Southern Link to move produce to Port Otago.

One of the Runaka which is a signatory to the letter is Moeraki in North Otago, also part of Nga Runaka o Waitaki which took Meridian Energy to the cleaners for over a hundred million dollars last year in return for them granting water rights to generate electricity. The chair of Moeraki is Justin Tipa, also the elected kaiwhakahaere - or chair - of TRONT, the full Te Runaka o Nga Tahu.

Yet these three Otago based Runaka have the gall to say that the Southern Link JV has significantly greater resources!

That is surely untrue. Port Otago, if listed on the sharemarket might generously be worth $300 million based on its property portfolio and most recent profit of $30 million.

Dynes Transport and various subsidiaries is privately held and fifty percent owned by the Richardson Group of Invercargill. But the two JV entities together will not be worth anywhere near $1.6 billion and “do not have significantly greater resources compared to the Ka Runaka parties.”

So for these Runaka to be wanting money to discuss and negotiate the project is yet another example of the omnipresent “taniwha tax.” Meridian succumbed to it last year.

The Southern Link JV is probably going to have to pay up as well if it wants the inland port to go ahead.

The Coalition Government talks big on unblocking development. But then it writes legislation encouraging more hui and less dooey.

Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Subscribe to Peter William's Substack here

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