Photo: RNZ
Analysis - Ministers have somewhat lifted the curtain on fast-track approval conflicts after failing to convince the public to just trust it.
On Sunday Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop - and one of the trio holding the fast-track powers - announced the 149 projects he and his colleagues had selected, which were then approved by Cabinet to go into the legislation set to pass later this year.
The first of many questions he was peppered with was about conflict management.
While Bishop emphasised Cabinet Office processes had been followed and no minister considered a project they had a conflict with, there was no transparency over which ministers needed to recuse themselves from which projects.
On Friday Bishop went halfway to clearing that up by releasing which projects he, Shane Jones and Simeon Brown had conflicts to manage.
What remains behind closed doors is those Cabinet ministers who left the room at the point of final sign-off because they too had conflicts with projects.
The government had always planned this week to release the full and final report from the advisory group it set up to consider the close to 400 applications for fast-track.
On Sunday Bishop made no mention that more details about the conflict management process were coming this week.
RNZ understands the Cabinet Office would have eventually released it at some point months down the track, but the narrative and claims of shady deals had grown loud enough to warrant getting it out earlier.
There's been a rolling maul of criticism this year from environmental and anti-mining groups, public submitters at select committee, and opposition MPs about the power of the three ministers in charge, accusations of lobbying tactics at play, and conflicts of interest both perceived or otherwise.
The government responded to the first of those in August when the process was changed to take final decision-making power off ministers and hand it to an expert panel.
How important that panel's work will be was revealed on Friday in the full report from the advisory group.
It wrote that "it did not and was not" expected to undertake any assessment of environmental effects of any projects when considering them for referral to ministers.
All 384 projects considered were not weighed up in any way against environmental impacts.
In addition the group based its assumptions about projects solely on the information provided by the applicants.
While applicants were required to certify the information they handed over was true and correct, nothing was independently verified.
The advisory group noted that process wasn't unusual, but considered it worthy of putting on the public record.
On Thursday RNZ revealed more than $500,000 of donations have been given to the three governing parties from companies or shareholders associated with 12 of the 149 projects in the fast-track approval bill.
Jones put up an argument to Morning Report that political donations are public and declared appropriately.
"I think it's getting quite tiresome that people immediately leap toward the conclusion that something vile has happened," he added.
It is the case that some of the individuals and businesses who donated had also done so in previous years, and they did so knowing their donations would be made public.
The third criticism - conflicts of interest - has now also been responded to, at least in part, as the government tries to allay some of the fears and concerns being raised.
It won't do much to convince the likes of Greenpeace who were quick to react to the announcement, describing the fast track ministers' efforts to avoid conflicts of interest like a "sordid game of Twister".
The mining projects have been some of the more contentious aspects of the projects approved so far, and while the environmental impacts weren't considered by the advisory group the economic benefits were highlighted in the full report.
It noted "the significant annualised and total financial benefit of some of the mining projects was assessed sufficient by itself to justify a high priority ranking, in some instances constituting a measurable shift in regional and national GDP".
That won't appease many critics but given Bishop said "it's about jobs and growth" when justifying the fast-track legislation, it's ticking the government's KPIs.
