Still a fast-track to cronysim

"To deal with the proliferation of regulation & red-tape in NZ, which means you can barely go to the bathroom without getting permission, National's Chris Bishop & NZ First's Shane Jones told us they would 'fast track' a bunch of selected projects. ... So its a shame to see that on the fast-tracking issue, Bishop and Jones went and took a good idea and stuffed it up. They sadly politicised the whole thing by wanting to give Ministers the power to make decisions about which projects would be accepted. ...
    "They couldn't help themselves. They wanted to be big men, holding big power, deciding who got what. Now in an embarrassing back-down, they've reversed themselves. ... changing the Fast-track Approvals Bill so 'Final decisions on projects will not sit with Ministers but with an expert panel.' This is the same as the previous Labour government’s 'fast-track' process.
    "But they've got it wrong again. Why revert to yet another layer of bureaucracy ... staffed with the usual assortment of [cronies,] in-bred Wellington nobodies, or dubious Kiwi 'business leaders' with political connections? ...
    "What should they have done instead? [Ed: Well, obviously they should get rid of the proliferation of regulation & red-tape. But in the meantime ...] the 384 projects should simply be referred to the NZ Treasury / Infrastructure Commission for evaluation, & ranked highest to lowest in terms of benefit-to-cost ratios. Those institutions should send their ranking / recommendations to Cabinet for ultimate sign off. The rankings should be publicly available. Should Cabinet accept a project low on Treasury's rankings, then we'd know it was because they wanted their mates to get the job, unless some very good reason otherwise was presented.
    "For National to adopt Labour's same fast-track process with an expert panel of nobodies tells us one thing. Both National & Labour have failed to deliver for NZ and they still don't know how."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Fast Track Approvals Bill: Chris Bishop & Shane Jones Took a Good Idea & Turned it into a Dog's Breakfast.' To which Labour's David Parker replied here.