Feeling that perhaps I am one of those people he criticises as ‘people who in the one breath chant “more jobs, more jobs” and then in the next breath say “but don’t do that, or that, or that”, I thought I would ask Mr Joyce a few questions about why he and the National Government are saying ‘we won’t’ to a prosperous and sustainable Aotearoa.

Mr Joyce criticises those who say ‘you can’t explore for that there’. In actual fact, those of us who are deeply concerned about the Government’s risky ‘drill it, mine it’ agenda for our country are not saying ‘you can’t’ without providing alternatives that will both keep our valuable clean green image intact, and provide a more  sustainable economic path for Aotearoa.

As the Greens have been pointing out for a while, if we were to secure just 1 per cent of the global renewable energy market in the next five years, we’d create a $5.8 billion industry with 60,000 more green jobs. Short term risky exploration ventures will not create a long term stable economy for New Zealand. And with the Government boasting in its recent briefing to incoming Minister of Economic Development that we have one of the lowest royalty rates in the world, how can we take their claims of the economic benefits to New Zealand seriously?

So Mr Joyce, why won’t you and your Government commit to a modern and sustainably prosperous economic plan for Aotearoa, when the opportunities to do so are so viable?

Mr Joyce criticises those who say ‘you can’t build that there’. I wonder if he is referring to the vast expansion of new motorways planned which he himself presided over while Transport Minister? In the recent briefing to the incoming Minister of Transport, data revealed a transport budget blowout of $ 1 billion is expected as oil prices remain high. Is this smart economic planning? As Julie Anne Genter, fellow Green party MP and transport spokesperson said in a blog last week ‘As oil prices rise, people turn to buses, trains, walking and cycling, but this Government is planning to blow the budget on uneconomic motorways’

So Mr Joyce, why won’t you and your Government invest in sustainable transport options for Aotearoa giving Kiwis real choices which will be better for our economy and contribute to healthier lifestyles and a cleaner environment?

As it’s a large part of the Minister’s economic plan, he is also no doubt referring to those of us who criticise asset sales as the ‘you can’ts’. As my colleague Russel Norman revealed on Wednesday, the Government is planning to sell off assets which are earning four times more than the cost of capital tied up in them, some of which, according to the Prime Minister himself, have returned 18.5% shareholder profit over the last five years. Why won’t the Government implement smart economic decisions like a temporary earthquake levy for Christchurch, or a capital gains tax which would unleash capital to be invested in innovative productive Kiwi businesses?

So I ask My Joyce, rather than focusing on the ‘can’ts’ why won’t you and your Government focus on real solutions like renewable energy, green-tech, or smart transport that would deliver for Kiwis.

The Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill proposes to set up an environmental management regime for certain activities in New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone − the area of sea, seabed and subsoil from 12 to 200 nautical miles offshore − and the continental shelf beyond that. The activities covered by the Bill include seabed mining, some aspects of petroleum activities, and energy generation carbon capture and storage. The Green Party welcomes greater regulation of activities in this zone, however we have serious concerns with the Bill at present and will work constructively with the Government to try and improve the legislation.

It’s vitally important the public has a say on this bill, which I fear sets up a framework to allow controversial deep-sea oil drilling in New Zealand waters, which risks a disaster similar to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. You can make an online submission to help people send in a submission advocating for protection of our ocean.

The Government has sold New Zealand cheaply to oil drillers with a $25.4 million seismic survey subsidy, the forth lowest royalty rates in the world, and now legislation with no environmental bottom lines. Oil drillers will benefit from this legislation while the public and environment faces all the risks from a catastrophic oil spill.

Send an electronic submission here

And when talks failed to get the agreement of protestors for the mine to go ahead, the Peruvian Government declared a full-blown state of emergency, including removal of the right to freedom of assembly:

Local residents and authorities in the northern Peruvian region of Cajamarca say they will continue to protest the Conga gold mine, despite the state of emergency declared by President Ollanta Humala.

The 4.8 billion dollar Conga gold mine project, to be run by the Yanacocha mining company, is backed by the government of Humala, a left-leaning former army officer who took office in July.

Yanacocha operates the largest gold mine in Latin America, 25 km southwest of Conga, and is owned by the U.S.-based Newmont Mining and the Lima-based Buenaventura corporations.

Peasant farmers, backed by local and regional authorities, environmental activists and independent experts, say the Conga mining operation would cause irremediable damage to four high mountain lakes, and deplete their water supply…

The 60-day state of emergency was imposed by Humala after Prime Minister Salomón Lerner failed – after 10 hours of negotiations Sunday in the city of Cajamarca, the regional capital, 160 km from the lakes – to convince the demonstrators to call off the protests, which have brought activity in the city to a halt for two weeks.

This has the potential to get very ugly indeed.

Kevin Hague: Does the Minister agree with the resource consent commissioners when they said “it is abundantly clear that large scale mining is poised to invade the entire Denniston Plateau coal reserves which if unchecked, will totally destroy the ecosystems which are present.”, and does she not believe it is essential that the access agreement that is being applied for is publicly notified?

Hon KATE WILKINSON: In relation to the public notification, I can advise that if the department intends to grant the Denniston concession application, then public submissions will be invited, and the public can be heard again should it reach that stage. (my emphasis)

But yesterday, Kate Wilkinson told Forest & Bird the Government will break its promise to give New Zealanders a say, and that a decision on an open-cast coal mine on Denniston Conservation land can go ahead without public consultation.

There’s a chocolate fish for anyone who can authenticate any other instance of the lead Party in a potential Government breaking a pre-election promise before the new Government is even formed.

The company’s hometown operations in Russia have resulted in the city of Norilsk becoming one of the most polluted places in the world. Many years of especially high emissions of sulphur dioxide and heavy metals from Norilsk’s mining and smelting activities have inflicted massive lasting damage on the forest, vegetation, and waters surrounding their operations. International NGO, the Blacksmith Institute, has labelled Norilsk the “City of Horror” saying that heavy metal pollution in the area is so severe the soil itself has platinum and palladium content high enough to mine.

The 200,000+ people who live in the vicinity of the company’s industrial operations are continuously exposed to high concentrations of pollutants in the air, soil, and water. Health problems and illnesses among persons subjected to prolonged exposure to sulphur dioxide, nickel, and heavy metals are well established. Children and infants are especially vulnerable to high levels of air pollution.

How bad is it? Levels of air pollution in Norilsk exceed the maximum allowable levels on 350 days out of each year. On 280 of those toxic days, the levels of harmful substances in the atmosphere were five times over the maximum allowable concentrations in Russia. On 70 of those days, the levels were ten times over the maximum.

The Norwegian Superannuation Fund divested of their holdings of Norilsk in 2009.

Why does our Superannuation Fund, who has signed up to the same set of ethical principles as the Norwegians, continue to profit from this company?

.,

Thought you might like the video of my questions in the House about mine safety. You might like to consider whether you think the Minister is answering the questions or evading their main points!

It’s effectively the companion to our release today.

Essentially what I am saying is that while National was dismantling the structure and regulations that maximised underground safety during the 1990s, they were being repeatedly warned by experts that this would cost lives, yet paid those warnings no heed. In 1992 they did away with the check inspectors – effectively one leg of a 3-legged stool, and in 1998 they sawed off more than half of one of the other legs by closing down the Mines Inspectorate.

This was coupled with a change to regulations. The Health and Safety in Employment Act in 1992 repealed the strict and mandatory safety rules for underground mining in the Coal Mines Act 1979 and replaced them with nothing, leaving underground mining largely unregulated. No new regulations were introduced until 1999, but the new rules incorporated a fundamentally different approach. Instead of being mandatory and universal, the new regulations generally contained a qualifier “where practicable”. The idea of practicability has embedded within it the idea of “affordability”, which is highly specific to an individual mining company and mine. Thus a safety measure that may be practicable for a substantial and well-founded mining company like Solid Energy, may be impracticable for a smaller and cash-strapped company, perhaps like Pike River Coal. I believe that the Terms of Reference for the Royal Commission may well not be broad enough to capture this.

I make the point that Labour had nine years in which to restore the ‘triangle of safety’ inspectorate structure and the universal, mandatory regulations that had previously ensured safety, but did not. Now this Government has had repeated opportunities to do something but has turned them all down. Now they say they will wait for the findings of the Royal Commission before doing anything – 2013 at the earliest. Could it be they would prefer to not have their inaction on mine safety connected with the Pike 29 before the General Election?

And in the meantime, every day, workers go underground into mines that we know operate in a regulatory framework that does not do all that it could to maximise safety. That seems to me to be fundamentally unacceptable.

You might wonder why I tabled the 1995 submission of Mr. Brazil, a Mines Inspector and underground mining expert, at the end of my questions. Here’s a quote from his submission:

“Furthermore the Health and Safety in Employment Act is being used as a manipulative device to eliminate management structures and many historically formed mining codes of practice that were firmly established in the heart of previous legislation, much of which has proved successful over 100 years. Should this situation be allowed to continue without intervention the end result can only be the escalation of potential for further disaster”

How many more?

Some people went all the way to the Glass Earth/Newmont drilling rig high in the forest park and occupied it for a while. The rest of us with our babies and banners walked for an hour and a half up the beautiful Parikiwai Valley near Whangamata.

The gold company is making contradictory claims about this drill site which is a DOC “special area”. They have said it’s looking highly prospective and could offer the kind of pickings that have been found at Martha Hill because it’s part of the same geological area. They are also saying “there’s not much so far and nothing may come of this”. These comments are designed for two audiences. The first is designed to encourage investors that Glass Earth and Newmont are an active company which will make them lots of money. The second is the response to protests and is designed to allay any concerns while the drilling proceeds. Neither of these comments clarifies what is really going on in the southern Coromandel.

Glass Earth and Newmont want to extend the Waihi mining activity into the conservation land and the coastal areas around Whangamata. They want to drill across the region with minimal scrutiny by the local residents. The price of gold is hovering around $1500 an ounce and makes exploration and even underground mining in steep country where there are currently no roads an attractive prospect. Open-cast mining is the easiest form of mining but hard to sell. When the gold price is low open-cast is the viable option, but right now the price makes underground gold mining worthwhile.

So the risk of mining beneath Schedule 4 is a real possibility. As the people of Whangamata say, Schedule 4 was a political line that was drawn just south of Thames. It was not an ecologically logical line. We have a simple message for Newmont and their colleagues, “We love Coromandel, no more mining, stop the vandals”. Tangata whenua of Hauraki said it best of all – “No more mining north of Waihi”.

Blackball speech – Time for a Green Change

30^th April 2011

(speech as delivered was slightly different)

E nga mana, e nga reo, e nga iwi o te motu, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa.

It’s great to be in Blackball again this year to be part of this great Mayday mix of food, entertainment and politics. Thanks to everyone involved in the organisation.

I very much appreciated being part of this afternoon’s opening of the memorial wheel for the Pike 29.  I couldn’t be here on Thursday, having earlier promised to attend the Service and Food Workers Union event in Nelson for Workers Remembrance Day, but I want to add my voice to those mourning the guys who were lost to our community in the mine. No reira, e nga mate, haere, haere, haere ki Hawaiki Nui, Ki Hawaiki Roa, Ki Hawaiki Pamamao. Apiti hono, tatai hono. Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate.

It is a national disgrace that these guys will now only be brought from the mine as an inadvertent consequence of some future decision based on commercial grounds.

I know on Thursday Helen Kelly spoke about the responsibility of employers to provide a healthy and safe workplace. I am certainly going to be monitoring the Royal Commission of Inquiry to see that it fulfils its responsibility to determine whether Pike River Coal did all it could to meet that responsibility but also that successive governments did all they could to create and maintain a framework for mining to occur that would achieve maximum workplace health and safety. I guess it’s no secret that I believe shortcomings will be found on both of those grounds.

And that’s not a surprise. I spoke last year about the central idea in capitalist economic theory in which big capital extracts as much profit as it possibly from people’s labour and from the environment, which it regards as “raw materials”. It’s an amoral process, in which if costs can be reduced, they will be. This National Government sees its fundamental role as allowing this process to occur with as few obstacles as possible, and at the same time dismantling the role of the State, to create fresh opportunities for profit maximisation.

Since I spoke last year, the Government has kindly provided me with yet more examples:

• The new law allowing workers to be sacked for no reason at all within their first 90 days of work
• The new law denying trade unions right of access to their members’ workplaces
• Wave after wave of attacks on beneficiaries
• Effectively nothing to create new jobs, thus maintaining high demand for jobs and keeping wages low
• No new state houses (despite the waiting list of 10,000)
• Tax changes that greatly benefited the rich while leaving the poor worse off
• Ongoing dismantling of our ACC scheme and preparation for its privatisation
• Significant cuts to DOC’s budget, with nearly 3,000 species on the endangered list and in the International Year of Biodiversity
• The Minister’s refusal to agree to new marine reserves

There’s also been progress towards the TPP, the free-trade agreement being developed with the United States and others. We have mostly been attacking it because it will involve compromising on important NZ laws, allowing tobacco companies, for example, to sue the NZ Government for smokefree initiatives, and requiring changes to our patent laws to allow big pharmaceutical giants to maximise their profits at our expense. But some of you may recall that last year I also made a critique of free trade agreements and globalisation in general: fundamentally these are about lowering national boundaries so that big capital has access to the cheapest labour and cheapest natural resources wherever they are in the world.

In that light you may want to note a couple of other developments:

• The Government changing well-established employment law because Warner Brothers didn’t like it
• The Government issuing an oil exploration permit (which requires drilling) to the Brazilian company, Petrobras, which has a poor safety record, without it having to submit any plan to deal with an oil spill, and without there being any realistic way at all of dealing with an oil spill.

In both cases, you may observe that these companies take all the profit. All we get is the wages, in return for all the risk.

Last year I outlined the Green Party’s overall approach to turning things around. We say that the relationships between economy, environment and people need to be reversed. Rather than people and the environment serving the economy, we need to re-engineer a smart economy as a set of tools for achieving our goals of environmental protection and a fair, just society.

Over the past week or so we have fired off an opening salvo in this election campaign with a leaflet with the theme ‘Looking Forward’. In part that reflects that long-term thinking that the Greens are well known for. But it’s also meant in the sense of “what are you looking forward to?” We are asking everybody to engage in thinking about what they most want to see – effectively setting those environmental and social goals we want to achieve. There’s been an extraordinary diversity so far, but also some really consistent themes.

Closer to the election the Greens will issue a number of concrete and robust commitments that we will advance in the next Parliament if you give us your party vote (and remember that’s what we campaign for, not the electorate). In the meantime, here’s some of the things we would do if we led the next Government:

• Increase the minimum wage (and index it to the median wage, along with MP salaries)
• Compulsory quality standards for all freshwater streams, rivers and lakes
• Recovery plans for all threatened species in NZ and realistic support to help DOC achieve that in partnership with communities
• Building resilience in rural areas by relocalising economies (encouraging local food and energy production,  local goods and services and Government services)
• Plan for energy independence from oil
• Return to a planned system for making electricity generation decisions in which all the alternatives are considered and the ones that are best for the public are chosen
• Reprioritise Government spending (less on roads and more on “nice to haves” like education and health)
• Repeal the anti-worker laws
• Cancel the plans to sell SOEs and privatise government services
• Retain our economic sovereignty by much tighter restrictions on foreign ownership of NZ land and assets
• Incentivise research and development to help build a clean tech economy that delivers higher wages by making higher value products, at no net cost to the environment
• Help make the 100% Pure brand real, by reducing taxes on people’s work and replacing the revenue with new taxes on waste (including Carbon emissions) and resource rentals
• Create green collar jobs by directing both public and private investment into areas that are job-rich and help protect and restore the environment
• Build 6,000 new state houses
• Legislation to require rental properties to be healthy and warm
• Extend our home insulation scheme to schools and other public buildings
• Introduce a capital gains tax to redirect investment into productive activity rather than housing speculation and fund other policies like first $10,000 of income tax free, progressive electricity pricing, extending the WFF in-work tax credit to beneficiaries, reinstating the training incentive allowance
• Incentives for new and more diverse forestry
• Encourage businesses whose profits are retained in the communities where they were obtained
• Encourage community- and cooperative-owned businesses
• Sharing the cost of rebuilding fairly by a temporary levy on those with higher incomes rather than making the poor pay by service cuts or are kids pay through more borrowing

That’s a programme that would provide immediate benefit in the places and for the people who need it most, but maybe more importantly would put in place the correct relationships between economy, environment and society and establish a virtuous cycle whereby the whole system would continue to improve. And it’s all practical, and achievable by reprioritising spending and tax reform. Big business would hate it!

The fact is that NZ faces big challenges. National is steering the ship with blinkers on and without using the radar. If it is re-elected, its programme – whether through ignorance or malice – will be an acceleration of these policies that have done so much to unravel NZ’s social fabric and benefit a few to the cost of so many. The Greens have chosen to focus on hope for a better society and on a programme of practical, achievable and fiscally responsible steps that will be good for you, for me and our planet. Party vote Green!

•  The Commission should include someone who is nominated by workers, so that those who work in underground mines, both now and in the future, can be confident that their interests have been taken fully into account, and so the Commission’s work has a reality check: what actually happens isn’t necessarily the same as what should happen or what is recorded;  
• The Commission must provide an opportunity for the families of the men killed in this disaster to have a say. Having their voices heard may well be important for their grieving, but they also may well have information and evidence that others don’t about the mine. We were pleased to hear that the Government will provide support so that families can present to the Commission; 
• The Commission’s outputs need to reflect two levels. If it’s possible to reach conclusions about the immediate causes of the disaster first, then release of these findings as soon as possible will be most helpful for the grieving families, provided that this does not weaken or compromise the broader analysis of any systemic problems.

The Government has done pretty well so far in responding to this tragedy, and we hope that will continue with a Royal Commission that is best set up to accomplish its mission.  

On the other hand the blame game has started, with some people, either through ignorance or malice, trying to pin responsibility for the disaster onto conservationists generally, and the Green Party specifically in some cases. It’s understandable that people will be looking for quick and simple answers and casting around for someone to blame. But some of what I’ve heard so far has been both ignorant and offensive.

Myth 1: Because of concerns about conservation, PRC was forced to use underground mining techniques, rather than open-casting, which was their first choice (and much safer).

Peter Whittall and other commentators have been making the point pretty strongly that open cast mining was never an option or considered in this location. The Brunner coal seam runs underneath the Paparoa mountain range. In contrast to areas further up the Coast (like Stockton) where the seam lies near the surface, making open cast mining viable, the Brunner seam lies a long way below the surface. Even though the seam is 7m wide (quite big) removal of more than 150m of ‘overburden’ to get to it is not viable at all.

Myth 2: There would have been a second ventilation/emergency exit shaft, except that it was not dug because a single blue duck was sighted at the location.

This is also completely false. So far, Pike River Coal has applied for 1 ventilation shaft and 4 emergency exit shafts. All applications have been approved. The ventilation shaft is now operating. None of the emergency exit shafts have yet been dug because, according to the company, the extent of the mine is not yet large enough. There are no outstanding applications, although in PRC’s work plan for the year they indicated an intent to apply for another emergency exit shaft, which might also have a ventilator fan. Incidentally, the Blue Duck habitat is nowhere near where the exit shafts would emerge when built.

Of course there are differences of values and beliefs between miners and conservationists (and environmentalists, given coal), but those differences have played no role in this tragedy.

It is tempting to want to attribute blame, whether it be to the mining company, or to the rescue/recovery effort. And blame may eventually be attributed, after an inquiry, and I hope the one the Government has promised will be a genuine one that has terms of reference wide enough to cover all possible wrong-doing.

But for now, let’s not try to attribute blame. Let’s celebrate the heroism of one man, Daniel Rockhouse, who almost incoherent and barely able to walk from the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, managed to drag his workmate Russell Smith out of the mine.

Without Daniel’s help, Russell Smith would almost certainly have died in the mine.

There will be a time for recriminations, for finding out who is responsible, and possibly criminally culpable, for this disaster. But that time in not now.

Now is the time to celebrate the heroism of Daniel Rockhouse whose brother is still trapped and possibly has died in the mine, but who risked his own life to save his mate.

We walked up to the drilling rig with banners to express the simple message of “No More Mining” and “Coromandel – Too Precious to Mine”. Our group includes representatives of both the local residents and ratepayers from Opoutere and Onemana (the next door community where another round of drilling is also imminent).

As we explained to TV3, the real risk is not the drill rig. It is the Newmont incursions into the southern Coromandel as they look to mine around and within the conservation land and steep coastal catchments near Whangamata. Whangamata is at risk because if Newmont establish industrial scale mining (underground or opencast) in the region they will be trucking the ore and waste rock back to Waihi to the processing plant and the tailing dump via Whangamata itself!

So the first protest of the new campaign has been held and Coromandel people are hoping for the support of everyone who loves the area. There are drill sites being cleared in rare frog habitats which are on the DOC estate between Waihi and Parikiwai Ecological Area. There’s a big drilling rig due any day at Onemana. Newmont also has a big exploration permit between the Kauaeranga Valley (home of Jeanette Fitzsimons and my family) and the Puketui recreational area.

When Gerry Brownlee came to Thames Hauraki, iwi gave him a clear message, “No more mining north of Waihi in the Hauraki rohe”. Amen to that!

I’ll never be able to write satire like Danyl and Scott. But someone in the Green Party has enormous talent and can write satire.  Whoever it was who submitted this satirical piece to the Sunday Star-Times, and convinced the editorial staff that it was actually written by the Mayor of Whanganui – well done!

Dear Lord, has New Zealand got rocks in its collective head? This can be the only sane conclusion after the government’s gratuitous backdown last week on granting prospecting licences on what is known as “Schedule 4″ land.

Apparently Schedule 4 land is really pretty. Mostly inaccessible, but really pretty. Lots of ferns and fantails and stuff. Even snails. But it’s more than pretty, it’s magic.

It must be, for it has the unique ability to turn normally rational commentators and politicians into gibbering fools. So much so that, last week, one increasingly tabloid paper stamped the words “Saved!” across photos of the various sites.

Whoever you are, Micael, you are the ultimate satirist – taking the piss out of your alter ego, and putting the final nail in the coffin of those who want to destroy our natural heritage forever for 30 pieces of silver.

Go Micael Lhaws – the Green Party’s very own Secret Agent Man:

Some of it’s obvious, like the layered approach to everything. In the surface layer John Key has the job of being relaxed about everything (except those situations that call for ‘mild concern’ in the emotional register), and generally smiling and waving a lot. This gives the impression of a traditional National Government that understands that its prime objective of retaining power is usually best met by not doing very much. Beneath this level, however, there is a deeper layer of hard right ideological zeal, where many of the Government’s actions are clearly oriented towards maximising the efficiency with which big capital can extract profit from the environment and from labour, along with other articles of faith like privatisation and reducing the role of the State.

Then there’s the scary balloon tactic, that they seem to use for almost everything. An extreme version of  their plan is “floated” drawing public fear and ire in equal measure, and then when Government announces a much-scaled back version of the idea the theory is that the sense of relief  that things won’t be as bad as first thought mutes further effective opposition. My guess is that they rather fell over themselves on this with Schedule 4 mining. Their initial plan was exactly this: they were going to propose a green light to mining in half a million hectares of the most precious conservation land, of course intending that what they actually mined would be much less than this. But then they had internal Cabinet conflict and developed the two category approach: three areas with a green light and everywhere else slated for further investigation (read: mining if things work out with the first phase). Again, no doubt the plan was to trade away Great Barrier Island, but they left themselves too big a problem, because with just 3 areas proposed none of the others stacked up: Coromandel too politically sensitive, and Paparoa hard to mount a case for underground mining of low grade coal in a National Park.

Bait and switch is similar, and some people have theorised around mining that the plan all along was to distract the public with big mining plans, while the real plan was something else – increased powers for the Minister of Economic Development over public conservation land, for example. Probably there has been an element of this, but those who argue it was the main purpose are overlooking the aggressive way in which both Brownlee and Key invested political capital into the mining plans.

A personal favourite of mine is the false dichotomy. Nick Smith and Gerry Brownlee gave us plenty of examples, like “greenies are hypocrites if they oppose our mining plans, because they all want to keep their cell phones and laptops”. Classic! Easy enough to deconstruct and demolish for readers of this blog, I’m sure, but likely to be superficially persuasive to those without the time to do that.

And of course the mining debate has seen the usual dirty tricks: for example serial use by Government members from the Prime Minister on down of a quote from Metiria applauding a refusal of an extension to a mining operation in Golden Bay as if she had been praising the approval of the Pike River coal mine under Paparoa National Park (which we opposed), despite this having been unambiguously corrected in the House.

There’s more, but you get the idea. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to see John Key this week saying two themes emerged from the public consultation over mining: opposition to the Government’s plans to mine in Schedule 4 (agreed, that was indeed a very strong theme) and public support for increased mining elsewhere in the public conservation estate. Excuse me? Just 1.5% of submitters supported this, and 99% of submitters opposed further mineral surveying work because they thought it would lead to pressure for increased mining. Then Gerry corrected his Boss, saying that actually this wasn’t the basis for the mandate for increased mining they are claiming. Instead they are going to ignore this and rely on some poll results (which actually show a minority of New Zealanders favour more mining).

This bizarre claim of a mandate cannot be the advice they have received from Crosby-Textor, and I wonder if perhaps there is some sort of public holiday happening in Australia, which could explain the flaky political management being shown. In the face of the strength of the 2precious2mine campaign and the incredibly strong public opposition the only sensible political response is to cauterise the wound with a complete backdown.  To instead fight on, as the Government is attempting, is to invite one’s opponents to wreak further damage. I, for one, fully intend to take up that invitation.

Today the Green Party is preparing to celebrate with hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who stood up against the mining of Schedule Four conservation land. The Government has acknowledged the more than 44,000 signatures on a Green Party petition, the 40,000 people who made submissions and the 40,000 people marched in the streets to say “No Mining on Schedule 4”.

We’d like to acknowledge all the fantastic volunteers who worked so hard for this victory. We also want to pay tribute to the coalition of groups we have worked with in the “2 Precious 2 Mine” coalition and all the citizens who told the Government they could not mine National Parks and other sacred places.

The mining industry will still try to find a way to access coal and gold, but they have been sent a strong message from the population. The core values of Tangata Whenua and communities have been expressed. The Government has realised they cannot afford to ignore us on this issue.

All New Zealanders value the natural environment of our country because it is part of our identity. The phrase “future generations” is not empty for us. Our children’s children are entitled to a healthy relationship with the natural world that will support them if we protect it.

Speaking personally, one of the highlights of the campaign was traveling by bus with the Coromandel people to join the Auckland march and seeing the huge range of people filling the whole of Queen Street and speaking with a single voice. As a veteran of the Coromandel campaign in the 80s, it is hugely rewarding to see that people power across the nation can save many of our sacred places.

There are parties being organised around the country tonight. But wherever you are raise your glass to the mountains, the rivers and forests. If they flourish we flourish. And raise your glass to the people who participated in this campaign. It was all worth it!

If you’re in Wellington come on down the the Back Bencher tonight. More details here.

High on the mountain the unstable tailings dam sits at the base of a series of degraded areas which were abandoned in 1973 by Norpac Mining.

Higher up the track piles of waste rock fill a whole gully and there is physical damage to the stream coming down the steep mountainside.

Old mine equipment and old underground shafts are scattered around the valley. The invisible pollution from the shafts, waste rock and tailings dam (acid rock drainage) has destroyed the life of two streams and continues to pollute the waterways downstream.

This couldn’t happen in the 21st century I hear the miners cry. However mining the Coromandel hills will always involve huge problems. The mountains are very steep, the rocks are very fractured. Debris flows occur on sites like behind Thames township and on Mt Te Aroha. High intensity rainfall with flash flooding and erosion is the norm, not some exceptional freak event.

To mine these areas you have to build roads and truck vast quantities of rock out for processing, thus industrialising the forest and walking tracks, or you have to do what they did at Tui and dump your processed waste on site.

You have work out how to seal acid mine drainage in fractured rocks with water flowing through the area and that means more than sealing mine shafts and may not even be possible.

The Assessment of Environmental Effects on the proposed clean up of the Tui Mine site concedes “it is not realistic to expect any remedial works to completely remediate the site in the short term. Complete remediation of the site may not be possible even in the long term”.

In the meantime “Glass Earth Mining” are prospecting in the forests adjacent to another beautiful area near Whangamata, the Parakiwai Reserve. They are claiming that the another Martha Hill open cast gold mine could be worth developing in this area.

We are also expecting the Government to announce the results of the Schedule 4 land removals consultation very soon. Coromandel people are in no doubt that whatever the political game the conservation estate is being eyed up for rape and pillage. We live with the risks and costs of previous mining. We do not benefit from it.

We know there is huge support to protect our area from any major mining developments. We  know  the price of gold in particular is dazzling the mining companies who are keen to expand into the lands north of the Schedule 4 boundary at Kopu/ Hikuai.

What we don’t know is how far this Government wants to push us. Our communities have spoken clearly. We don’t want another Martha Hill,  we don’t want anymore Tui Mine contamination and we don’t believe in the “surgical underground mining rhetoric”. As for coal mining in the Paparoa National Park? How unpopular does this Government want to be?

Saturday’s march in Invercargill in opposition to the Government’s mining plans was highly significant. More than 400 people took part – the largest number on an Invercargill march, at least in the last 20 years, and in temperatures of 5 or 6 degrees. That such a number would come out on a wintry Saturday afternoon tells the Government a couple of things. First, the heat and strength of the opposition to mining conservation land will not dissipate as it had hoped. The enviroment and conservation movements are rediscovering the direct action knowledge and skills that had grown a little rusty, and the protests will grow in size and vigour rather than diminish.

Secondly, while it’s all very well to get record numbers of people onto the streets in Auckland or Nelson, say, to do so in Invercargill will shake the Government’s confidence even more. In advancing their plans they have made a major miscalculation, and have made unwarranted assumptions about the kinds of people who live in rural and provincial New Zealand. Far from the acquiescent drones, grateful for any jobs or economic activity, that John Key assumed, Southlanders and other rural New Zealanders actually care passionately about protecting the special places like Rakiura (Stewart Island) that they love. In fact some Southlanders, like those from Nightcaps, know only too well the hellish deal that mining usually offers a community: jobs in return for environmental cost and compromised health, with all the profit going somewhere else.

It was a great privilege to be able to speak at the rally, alongside former Invercargill MP Lesley Soper, Shortland Street actor (and local) Bonnie Soper and local environmental hero (and occasional Frogblog correspondent!) Robert Guyton. It was also good to be part of an event that had been so well-organised, by Dave Kennedy and others. I particularly liked the fact that the first part of the march was silent, but for amplified recordings of bird calls – an emphatic statement of our love for these places and our implacable opposition to their desecration.

Yesterday I spoke to Alana Barrett who has moved out of Nightcaps because she and her daughter both tested high for lead levels. But she mentioned the open cast mine dust contained more heavy metals such as arsenic and boron and that aluminium has been found in the local waterway. So the underground mine turned into an open cast mine right next to the town and the Takitimu mine itself went from producing 13,000 tonnes of coal to producing 170,000 tonnes of coal per year in the last three years. The mine is elevated above the town on District Council land (which makes the consent issues quite interesting) and smoke and dust are ongoing problems.

The company Eastern Corporation of Australia claim to have spent money on sprinklers but the Nightcaps residents are not happy. Contrast this with Gerry Brownlee’s modern and surgical mining claims. The plan is to develop the Southland lignite mines. This is low grade coal and whether they make it into urea or sell it to pollute other countries, none of it helps our tally of greenhouse gas emissions. And we should be listening to the Nightcaps community when they tell us that coal mining is dirty and is making people sick.  On Saturday the Green Party will be supporting the anti mining march in Invercargill because we want to hear from all the Southland communities.

“So I guess my prescription is to say that a partially listed model where you have access to the capital that you need, similar to the Air New Zealand model which I think is a good model, is a really important path for a company like Solid Energy.”

Mr Palmer thought there would be little political risk for the Government in its second term, were it to win one, in going down that track with a company such as Solid Energy.

“This can be, with the right sort of management and the right sort of capital, one of New Zealand’s most important companies. It should be,” he said.

Yes, that quote is from the Sydney Morning Herald.  I can just imagine the executives at the foreign-owned mining giants like BHP Billiton drooling all over their shoes at the prospect.

Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee was quick to see the political risk, and slap down tread lightly on Palmer:

But Brownlee said any sale of state-owned assets would occur only if the Government was elected on that mandate.

”The government has made it very clear we not selling any assets until we go to New Zealand and say that’s our plan.”

What a hopeless response from Gerry!

Solid Energy is hard enough to control as a State Owned Enterprise.  It is already wanting to start coal seam fires in the Waikato to convert coal into gas, with consequent pollution of both the air and the water table.  It is also wanting to mine the dirtiest coal of them all, lignite, on a far greater scale in Southland.

Let Solid Energy loose on the sharemarket, especially given National’s proposed relaxation of Resource Management Act constraints, and who knows how much environmental damage Solid Energy will do.

We need a clearer response to the Solid Energy privatisation proposals, Gerry.  Yes, or no?

And we want it now!

Quoting the U.S. Geological Survey, Good reveals that a tonne of ore might yield a little over 4.5 grams of gold. A tonne of circuit boards -‘electronic scrap’ – on the other hand, might yield more than twice that amount, over ten grams, depending on the age of the equipment.

A tonne of discarded mobile phones could contribute not only 300 grams of gold, but also 140 grams of copper and 130 grams of silver

So why would you mine the planet, destroying ecosystems and communities, when we could and should be mining the so-called ‘waste’ stream?

Michael Braungart’s ‘Cradle to Cradle’ approach already provides a template, advocating for product and process design based on the principle that ‘waste equals food’ as it does in Nature.

We can and in some cases do design products that provide ‘nourishment’ for something new, either as safe ‘biological nutrients’, or as ‘technical nutrients’ that can circulate within a closed loop industrial cycle, ‘upcycled’ rather than re-used (if at all) for low grade uses.

The ideas are there, the technology is fast evolving, it just takes some political will and an acknowledgement that 19^th century solutions will not resolve 21st century challenges.

That’s the low down from a series of economic reports commissioned by Forest & Bird as part of their submission into the mining of Schedule 4 consultation.

It seems that the true economic benefit of digging up the minerals in Schedule 4 is only $100 million, which comes to only $36 per voter. The potential tourism losses of up to $6.1 billion, in exchange for $100 million in economic benefit, kill any notion that this is a good idea.

Metiria has had her say, and NoRightTurn has also waded into the debacle.

Given how determined Gerry Brownlee is to see some economic development, it’s a shame we have to add digging up our National Parks to the list of Government growth strategies with a negative cost benefit.

How about we research how to acheive prosperity without growth?

Do you need any economics savvy to write policy for this Government?