by Catherine Delahunty
Green MP Catherine Delahunty keeping busy over the Christmas break
In the first two weeks of the holidays it felt like most of the population of Auckland crossed the Kopu Bridge to bask in the stunning sunlight at the Coromandel beaches. I spent some hours over several days standing at the traffic lights on the Kopu Bridge handing out leaflets about the gold mining threat to hundreds of families with boats, surfboards, tents and fishing gear. About ninety percent of the cars rolled down their windows to take a leaflet with some leaning out to grab one before the traffic sped up.
People were very friendly if somewhat stunned to think that our Government could be planning to allow gold mining in this piece of paradise. It was obvious from the bridge traffic that a huge diversity of visitors come to the Coromandel for its beauty. Some were heading out into the Hauraki Gulf, some were going to the beach, some were off to the music festivals and some were going bush.
No one told me that they were going on holiday to sun bathe beside an industrial processing plant or a tailings dam or even a bulldozer. It reminded me of the first time I went up the Kereta hill and saw the sleeping islands, the green ranges and blue waters. Something happens to the minds of some us so we can never really leave. Whether you support the eco tourism economy or the healing second growth forests the value of the region is unquantifiable. The history of colonial destruction and dispossession of tangata whenua needs no repetition.
The Green Party petition to save our treasured places has been signed all over the region and my first film evening on the impacts of mining held in the small community of Opoutere drew a big crowd. Local action groups are springing up all over the country against the mining of national parks and other conservation land but nowhere is more passionate in its opposition than Coromandel. The umbrella group Coromandel Watchdog is gaining members by the day. In the 1980′s Coromandel Watchdog achieved huge support and were leaders in the Schedule 4 campaign and the ban on open cast mining north of Kopu Hikuai on the Coromandel. Gerry Brownlee should have let sleeping dogs lie.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Featured by Catherine Delahunty on Tue, January 12th, 2010
Tags: Coromandel, mining, Schedule 4
More posts by Catherine Delahunty | more about Catherine Delahunty
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Was it a sly love note?
An indelicate proposition?
A poem from his heart?
I’ll
never
know.
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What is forgotten is that the Coromandel ranges were devastated by logging and mining early last century and have returned to Catherines idilic vista in a very short timeframe.
With this generations insatible and unsustainable money borrowing, our children and childrens children may well be forced to dig up the gold to pay for our current grossly borrowing depended lifestyle.
At least they will have the historic knoweledge that the Coromandel will revert back to idilic, given time to do so.
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The classic cliched rejoinder: it isn’t a choice between mining and healthcare etc. It is a choice between need and greed.
Gerrit, the scale of what has gone before and what is necessary now is vastly different. Meanwhile, those who do place importance on the natural environment and live there should have a genuine role in the decision-making.
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Janine
Photos from the past gold and logging rush would suggest a far greater devastation then envisaged today.
Not that I’m saying that it justifies devastation (even if managed on a local level) today.
Just that with the the continued indebtness ($45 million per week), New Zealands future generation may not have much option but to retrieve the assests stored in places like the Coromandel.
Such is the legacy we are leaving the future.
While we rally against mineral exploitation we dont seem to care the predicament we are placing the future generations in.
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Of course that’s not the purpose. Any profits will be for overseas corporations, the only thing future kiwis will get is the cost of cleaning up the pollution and land subsidences.
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And, when you’ve raped and pillaged all there is to take, what then?
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fin,
Does not make sense. If the Greens are against any and all mining, meaning the asset can never be realised (cashed in) and it will be of no benefit to this, my children, my grandshildren or ALL furture generations.
Nobody can benefit from an asset if it cant be realised (exchanged) for goods and services.
Why would the profits go to an overseas corporation?
Heck there are plenty of New Zealand corporates that could successfully mine the asset and retain the money (through taxation payed to the state and dividends to the shareholders) for ALL New Zealanders.
What will be interesting when Maori corporates want to start mining on their land (not just the Coromandel which has very little Maori ownedland) to break the perceived shackles of poverty and dispair.
Will the Greens object?
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Driving through Ross there is a massive pit by the town and just south muddy holes on the moraine, I don’t think you would call it ugly , however. At the seal colony at Kaikoura parking was full last time i was there. Hooker valley is very busy as are tracks like the Routeburn, but these can be managed.
driving between Tekapo and Geraldine yesterday 10:30 to 11:30 I saw 10 commercial tour vehicles driven by (presumably) mandarin speaking Chinese (maybe a Korean) 2 service coaches (Great Sights and Newmans) and 1 (Adventure Tours) driven by a [(what are we called.....?)]
… now back to the “destruction of the Coromandel”….. (pray continue).
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I think the Kahurangi bit may have been part of a piece about Sir Douglas Myers. I forget what brand Doug Myers super yacht is but a google would show how much CO2 it spews.
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The government borrows tens of millions each week to fund government spend. Perhaps you’re arguing that the level of government services we have now aren’t really needed…
Which government services would you cut?
Hint: you’re going to need to cut billions worth per year, so think big ticket.
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BluePeter,
My personal choice would be:
* tax high incomes more
* lower the tax rate on low incomes
* remove schemes such as WFF (because simply taxing low incomes less is a more efficient way of redistribution)
* cut defence spending
* ration expensive medical treatments
* spend more on primary health care (which will likely save money in the long term).
* Restrict imports
and I could add a lot more things, but I have to go to work right now.
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A landscape pock-marked with mines, is no worse I suppose, than one that has aborted calves scattered across it, the way our New Zealand landscape, metaphorically speaking, does. All is grist for the mill, when wealth is to be had. Nothing, it becomes apparent, is sacred. Hooray for us! Brave new world.
The comment from jh (7:03) is a good one.
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>>tax high incomes more
Which will most likely to have the effect of lowering the overall tax take, meaning you’ll need to find even more cuts. It’s very difficult to get money out of wealthy people, and if you tax too highly, you drive people and business away/into recievership.
If high taxation was the answer, every country would do it. The reverse is true – moderate taxation grows the tax base.
>>lower the tax rate on low incomes remove schemes such as WFF (because simply taxing low incomes less is a more efficient way of redistribution)
Agreed.
>>cut defence spending
We still have obligations, such as peacekeeping. And we need forces for local work. There’s little to cut there anyway.
>>ration expensive medical treatments
A vote winner
Although I tend to agree. How would you ration?
>>spend more on primary health care (which will likely save money in the long term).
Agree, but that’s not a cut.
>>Restrict imports
On what? What would that do to our trade agreements? Again, that’s probably a recipe to decrease the tax take.
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WFF alone costs $2.7B each and every year.
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Some years ago, Brian Easton conducted an informal research for his Listener column about where people wanted their taxes to go. It was remarkably similar to Samiuela’s – they did want support for health, education and welfare and much less for armed forces. They didn’t mind paying tax if that was where it went.
You could also introduce a capital gains tax and hold back on stuff like mega-yacht races and the like. I’m not an economist and am not elected to make these decisions so asking me to make anything other than broad comments is a waste of time.
The principle however remains: we should be living within our means, investing in genuinely productive development (Green New Deal) and enabling our communities to be economically sustainable. Mining in our pristine estates does not address the real issues of economic or environemental sustainability. It is killing the goose for the imaginary golden eggs.
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BluePeter, aka Homo Economus misreads the call to “Dig for Victory” as a blast on a mining company’s hooter, rather than a rallying cry for home gardeners.
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How many of those who oppose mining have a cellphone? A computer? A bike?
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And Greens mustn’t fly in airplanes, eh Blue!
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Samuiela suggested:
>* tax high incomes more
I like the idea, but it depends on our ability to prevent tax-avoidance. One idea I like is the idae of taxing ‘status goods’ which are things that people buy to show off how wealthy they are. Normally when you put a punitive tax on something non-essential, consumption of it goes down, but this should be an exception. The problem is how to identify which things to put the tax on.
>* lower the tax rate on low incomes
makes sense, not just to directly give people more money in the hand, but also as an incentive to job creation.
>* remove schemes such as WFF (because simply taxing low incomes less is a more efficient way of redistribution)
I disagree, even though it would be good for me as a person with no children. WFF effectively gives people with chioldren a lower tax rate than those without children, which makes sense as they have more people in their family to buy food and stuff for, so less money left over after the essentials have been paid for.
>* cut defence spending
Maybe, but I’m not sure how much we can cut. After getting rid of the airstrike capability, I think we have less fat in our armed forces than most other countries.
>* ration expensive medical treatments
depends how you ration them. As someone who was born with serious medical problems, I’m not going to be in favour of cutting the sort of treatments that saved my life. It does seem that there is some spending on expensive treatments that have a low chance of success, and expensive treatments for people who won’t benefit from them for very long because they’re likely to die of something else soon, but it’s a question of how well a rationing system could identify these cases in advance.
>* spend more on primary health care (which will likely save money in the long term).
Yes, but it does seem to increase costs in the short-term. Maybe more of an emphasis on alternatives to pharmaceuticals would save money – it seems to me that there is a tendency to use pharmaceuticals as an alternative to non-pharmaceutical treatments because they’re automatically funded and have no waiting list.
>* Restrict imports
I presume you’re suggesting this as a way to reduce our trade deficit, because the long-term effect of a trade deficit is more foreign ownership and repatriation of profits overseas. I think we should look at it, particularly the across-the-board tariff that WTO rules allow us to impose in response to a big trade deficit.
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>>And Greens mustn’t fly in airplanes, eh Blue!
So mining is fine in other countries, then, just not this one?
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We don’t need new mines in New Zealand in order to build,
do we.
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…just other peoples’ mines!
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That’s fine. Digging up the earth and trees in China is fine. Just as well they don’t have a Green movement, eh. Where would you get your bikes….
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Those mines already exist, those products already exist.
You are supporting the digging of new mines in New Zealand.
I am not.
You also say that ‘mines in other countries are fine’.
I do not.
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http://www.calfeedesign.com/bamboo.htm
Still some metal on it though.
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Those mines already exist, those products already exist.
You are supporting the digging of new mines in New Zealand.
What about when existing mines run out?
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Recycle.
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StephenR – I’ve had the bamboo bicycle image on my desktop for ages
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Recycling can be useful for some applications, but not all. Also, the material will eventually “wear out” or be otherwise unusable.
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Gerrit,
I said that IF the govt (not the Greens) legislated that any profit from mining NZ was for NZ kids and their kids… then by leaving the minerals in the ground (for say 100 years) it would be like money in the bank. At that time perhaps the minerals would be worth a crap load more and those in charge might similarly legislate for their desendents, depending on their greed.
“why would profits go off shore?” you asked. It’s not a certainty, but I wouldn’t at all be suprised. Where do the majority of mining profits currently go?
Your Maori question is definately food for thought. Traditionally Maori have held similar veiws to Greens in regard to looking after the land. But with large treaty settlements, Iwi are changing from people of the land to people of profit. Tribes are becoming corporations. The coalition of the Right wing and Maori party should be a warning.
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BluePeter – I’ve a stable of 15 bicycles that are over 50 years old. Not looking to wear out anytime soon.
Anyway, bjchip says new cars will be recycled from old cars and you agree 100% with him
On reflection, it may be wise to get mining straight away in areas that will soon (see your earlier comments on SH1) be underwater, places like, say, the Kapiti Coast. Bring in the EarthScrapers, I say, and lay waste to those soon-to-be-inundated batches. Dig for Victory!
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I hardly think the potential for recycling has been reached yet! What is it? Maybe 1%? If that. Better to be mining dumps for minerals as well as not sending so much valuable stuff to be dumped.
Even computers can be recycled, re-used, mended and so on. We’ve a long way to go before we are so desperate as to have to mine national parks.
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Agreed Janine. The clamour for minerals is coming from greedy devils wanting to make money, not ‘provide essential materials for New Zealanders’.
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Mining provides a once-off cash injection. It will do nothing to fix the systemic problems we face (although it may help mask them for a while). Once the mining money is gone, we’ll be back where we started (if nothing else changes).
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I’m not sure I’d build a plane out of it. Or a rail bridge. High grades of steel required, you see.
Your bikes are built from non-renewables, I’m afraid. Should have been left in the ground. It is quite evil to use non-renewable resources, you see. Oil! Damn flying to Hopenhagen! On a steel plane! Neither should ever have been dug out of the ground, but I guess since they have, this business class seat is rather nice. And look at the view!
Mining. Leads nowhere good. Terrible.
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Fine by me, although I should warn them that they’d be wasting their money. The Coromandel , on the other hand, is large, lucrative and mostly empty. A few stoned hippies who don’t seem to understand where their dole money comes from, but nothing to worry about
Tally ho!
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Sift through those Kapiti Coast beach sands for pearls and diamonds that have slipped from the pudgy necks, wrists and fingers of the elite batch-owners, as they lay, toasting their bloated selves on their beach.
There’s not much to said, really, for hyperbole, is there:
It is quite evil to use non-renewable resources
If you really want to engage in constructive discussion, it’s best to rein in the false attributions. Of course, if you intend to simply make mischief, or insult, roll them out! I know I like to!
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Sift through those Kapiti Coast beach sands for pearls and diamonds that have slipped from the pudgy necks, wrists and fingers of the elite batch-owners, as they lay, toasting their bloated selves on their beach.
Wrong. The bach owners light their cigars with the pearls in summer, and their fires in winter.
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Mining provides a once-off cash injection. It will do nothing to fix the systemic problems we face (although it may help mask them for a while). Once the mining money is gone, we’ll be back where we started (if nothing else changes).
You can invest the money e.g. the super fund a la Norway. The fact it’s a one off doesn’t seem like a valid reason that this won’t generate sustainable wealth/welfare.
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Where as some of us cast ours before swine.
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This is Kapiti we’re talking about. You’re much more likely to be sandblasted
A few minor holes in a few National Parks isn’t a big deal. If it was large scale mining and caused long term ruination of the environment, I might agree with you. This is really a matter of degree.
For some, of course, it’s a matter of religion. Mining = evil, even though they are perfectly happy to use the products of mines located elsewhere.
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‘A few miner holes’ in a few national parks.
What are your thoughts about the Open Cast Lignite mine at Mataura, Blue?
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I’ve never heard of Mataura, so I have no thoughts whatsoever on it.
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Good Lord!
No thoughts!
No Matter.
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“Mataura has a meat processing plant, and until recently it was the site of a large pulp and paper mill. Mataura is also the setting for Dunedin crime fiction author Vanda Symon’s debut novel, Overkill”.
How on earth could I have missed this destination! Has anyone told the tourists!
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Sounds like an ideal place for a mine to me. A place nobody has ever heard of and most unlikely to ever see. In a few decades, you wouldn’t know the mine was ever there.
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Still no thoughts!
No matter.
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Greenfly wrote: “I’ve a stable of 15 bicycles that are over 50 years old. Not looking to wear out anytime soon.”
Bluepoeter replied: “I’m not sure I’d build a plane out of it. Or a rail bridge. High grades of steel required, you see.”
any smelter that can’t make high-grade steel out of low-grade steel certainly couldn’t make it out of iron ore, which is the other way of making it.
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BluePeter wrote:
“[Mataura] Sounds like an ideal place for a mine to me. A place nobody has ever heard of and most unlikely to ever see. In a few decades, you wouldn’t know the mine was ever there.”
there are two issues. One is that it would be a big open-cast mine, and therefore destroy a lot of farmland. The other is that the processing of the lignite from it would create a lot of atmospheric pollution (if they’re really clean about it, it will only be greenhouse gas emissions, but it will be even more greenhouse gas emissions due to the attempts to stop the other pollutants)
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Good point Kahikatea, though I’m reluctant to donate my BSA, Hercules and Triumph’s for smelting down to make Blue’s Bridge to Nowhere.
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The Standard doesn’t think much of National’s plan to put a bulldozer through Fiordland.
http://www.thestandard.org.nz/brownlee-bulldoze-road-through-fiordland/
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Respect! Cool bikes…..
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Mmm… they are nice Blue. A couple of Royal Enfields, and Ajax …tooled leather Brooks saddles, Swift bells, 28 inch wheels … the works!
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Greenfly – you might be interested to read this article… Interesting….> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29737-2004Dec2.html
Free trade ain’t exactly free.
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Thanks Mouse, I was and I did. I learned you should never to lend your precious bike to your son
I was given a Raleigh for Christmas 2008 – it was made in China
(You know, Burmingham, China). Cheap enough, I guess, but your article tells the story.
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Greenfly – funny… I brought my Daughter a Raleigh for Chistmas 2009, thinking it was made in Birmingham (until I read the fine print)… even funnier… I think I have ridden it more than Her.
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Gerrit said:
“What is forgotten is that the Coromandel ranges were devastated by logging and mining early last century and have returned to Catherines idilic vista in a very short timeframe.”
Looks can be deceiving. The regenerating forest will take hundreds of years before it begins to contribute anything like its former level of these benefits:
> water retention and purification
> biodiversity
> carbon sequestration
Kauri take a long time to grow eh?
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‘fly –
…. then
– you must have the bicycle equivalent of Jackson’s warplanes hangar!
Don’t, I beg you, ever consider recycling, but I suppose Southwards Museum might take an interest if you were ever to require divestment.
I recently sold my KHS titanium-framed mountain bike, which was very necessary at the time, but I’m now regretting a little – bought it second-hand, sold it to someone who absolutely needed one, so my only regret is that I miss a spin around the waterfront on the rare occasion we’re awarded a fine day in Wellington.
I guess the lack of a decent summer is going to settle my pining
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Katie – the bikes are safe with me. They’re grand old fellas, some in need of refurbishing, but all in their original livery. Riding them (one at a time) is a regal experience; their big frames and wheels make you sit up high, majestically (or ridiculously, depending on the rider) and they’re comfortable nicely sprung seats, fat tires and no need to race.
We’ve Ladies Bikes as well (Phillips are the most graceful), step-throughs with skirt guards and baskets on the front that you can fill with tomato and lettuce sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, a thermos of coffee and any roadside wild flowers you choose to stop and pick as you meander along the back roads.
Our summer too, has been soggy and blustery, so there’s been precious little cycling. Still time though and the weather’s on the improve.
Perhaps you’ll find a replacement for your bike and Wellington’s weather will right itself also
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