Let me ask you this: if fast-track is the answer, then why do we still have the Port of Tauranga problems?
Surely I don’t need to go through the fine detail of what is one of this country's most embarrassing modern travesties.
It's a story in which a successful business wants to expand so they can be more successful, and yet can't because the court process is never-ending.
The latest chapter of course involves local Māori wanting compensation.
It's not like this business is in nuclear waste or mine tailings. It's simply part of our main way of making money – exports. Selling things to the world.
If ever there was a case for an overarching “let's stop the BS and time wasting" law, the Port of Tauranga saga is it.
It's hard to know who is at fault more; those who started the scrap, i.e. local Māori, or those who allow it to drag, i.e. the judicial process.
But can you not mount a case that if a business cannot be allowed to be a business because they are hindered by argument and the process that allows the argument, at some point a line has to be drawn and an overarching authority (presumably the Government) comes in to settle the matter once and for all?
Arbitration is a possibility, including compulsory arbitration. I have for years argued for it in union disputes, especially the ones like teachers and nurses who are constantly scrapping with stop-work meetings and protests and days off.
State your case, claim/counter claim, if you're stuck then enter the referee and the call is made.
If fast-track was the solution it's patently evident in this case it isn't working and the port are in the fast-track process, having failed in the non-fast-track process. So all the processes and they are still no further ahead.
In my system the arbitrator would ask is this legal? Is this societally acceptable and is it beneficial for the country? I would ask that at 8.30am when the hearing starts and I reckon we'd be done by morning tea.
If an exporting nation can't expand to export more, how broken and backward are we?
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