Ideology unbalances economic and environmental factors

Opinion: When the Resource Management Act was developed by the Labour government in the late 1980s there was a strong focus on sustainable development. A common saying in vogue at the time was that good economic decisions should also be good environmental decisions.
Much of this was a reaction to the Muldoon government’s infamous National Development Act which had run roughshod over previous environmental and planning safeguards to facilitate the “Think Big” energy projects. These, in turn, had been devised in the wake of the 1970s oil shocks to attempt to secure New Zealand’s energy self-sufficiency in the event of another global energy crisis. However, by the time the projects came on stream in the 1980s, the immediate energy crisis had passed, leaving the projects uneconomic, with massive debts to be paid by the New Zealand taxpayer.