Mike Hosking

Let me ask you this.

If fast track is the answer, if fast track is the answer, then why do we still have the Port of Tauranga?

I mean, surely I don't need to go through the fine detail of what is one of this country's most embarrassing modern travesties.

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.

Latest chapter, of course, involves local Maori wanting compensation.

It's not like this business is in nuclear waste.

or mine tailings.

It's simply part of the main way of making money, exports, selling stuff to the world.

That's what we do.

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's at fault more, those who started the scrap, i.e.

local Maori, or those who allow it to drag, i.e.

the judicial process.

But you cannot, I mean, can you not mount a case

that if a business cannot be allowed to be a business because they are hindered by one, argument, and two, 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.

Arbitration is a possibility and compulsory arbitration at that.

I for years argued for it in union disputes, especially the ones like teachers and nurses constantly scrapping with

Stop work meetings and protests and days off.

State your case.