17 November 2025

The Bream Bay Guardians Society is warning the Fast Track Amendment Bill will further slash community engagement, giving applicants, the McCallum Brothers, an unfair advantage.

The McCallum Brothers Ltd is seeking to excavate more than 8.5 million cubic metres of sand at Bream Bay under the Fast Track Legislation. The company has indicated that it intends to lodge its application before Christmas, possibly once the Amendment Bill has passed.

Public submissions for the Amendment Bill closed yesterday. The Bill’s been introduced by Parliament to “increase supermarket competition”. However, its changes go far beyond supermarkets.

The amendments will directly affect environmental decision-making tipping scales in favour of the applicant, McCallum Bros – a NZ company that’s recently donated thousands of dollars to NZ First.

“The substance of the Bream Bay Guardians' argument is that the McCallum Brothers' economic case to mine sand doesn’t stack up.  Expert economist Hayden Green has publicly said the proposal is riddled with errors and omissions and won’t deliver significant national or regional benefits,” said Bream Bay Guardian’s Spokesperson Bruce Copeland.

The Amendment, if passed as is, will increase Ministerial powers, enabling the Ministers responsible to declare Bream Bay sandmining a matter of regional or national economic significance, forcing the expert panel to ignore other superior alternatives.

The bill also reduces mandatory consultation requirements. It could stop the decision makers from seeking external information from local experts including NGO’s and community groups that have specialist knowledge from decades of advocacy work at Pakiri.

“This is not a new project, it is the defeated Pakiri Sandmining project transferred a few miles up the coast, and re-presented as the answer to a crisis that doesn’t exist.  It was the Community, not Council or Government entities, that held McCallums to account at Pakiri, and now the Government is proposing to give Applicants a free pass.”

The Guardians has sent through one of hundreds of submissions made to Parliament against the Amendment Bill. The Northland trust, now urging Government to seriously consider the democratic participation before pushing through any further Fast Track reforms.