National calls for revisit of hydro decision after gold mine Uturn

THE National Party has called on the Government to revisit the decision to refuse the Waitaha River hydro scheme, after it did a Uturn on the Waihi goldmine in Coromandel on Tuesday.

Environment Minister David Parker sent shockwaves through the West Coast in August when he rejected Westpower’s proposal to spend $80 million$100 million on a runofriver hydro scheme at Waitaha. It did not involve damming the river.

National says that should be revisited after OceanaGold got the green light on Tuesday to buy land to expand its Waihi mine, after the application was earlier turned down by Land Information Minister Eugenie Sage.

In August, the Overseas Investment Office received two new applications from OceanaGold to buy farmland totalling about 180ha near the current mine.

The decisionmaking roles were transferred to Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Associate Minister of Finance David Parker to ensure a fresh analysis of the application, and they said yes.

Ms Sage, who is also the Minister of Conservation and a Green Party list MP, was removed from the Waitaha decisionmaking role.

The decision was instead delegated to Mr Parker, who still declined it.

The Department of Conservation had earlier given the proposal a tick.

National Party list MP Maureen Pugh said it was time to reverse that decision.

‘‘It’s a low impact diversion of a small volume of the river into the power scheme tunnel, which returns to the river 2.8km downstream,’’ Mrs Pugh, a former Westpower trustee, said.

‘‘I am calling for the decision to be overturned for the benefit of the region — it’s a gamechanger for the Coast.’’

She said Ms Sage had repeatedly let her Green Party ideology get in the way of making sensible economic decisions.

‘‘The decision to override her in the Waihi mine situation is a vote of noconfidence in the Greens and shows how unstable the coalition really is.’’

Decisions like Waihi were seriously eroding business confidence, Mrs Pugh said.

Now that the Waihi mine expansion had been agreed to, Ms Sage must ‘‘remove her objections’’ and give the Waitaha project the green light.

‘‘The uncertainty caused by such stupid decisions such as the August stopping of [the] Waitaha scheme mean that the Prime Minister [Jacinda Ardern] should step in as leader and take the Land Information portfolio off the Greens.’’

Ms Ardern on Tuesday ruled out taking the portfolio off Ms Sage, saying the second application for Waihi had differed from the one Ms Sage rejected.

A spokesman for Mr Parker noted the Waitaha decision was made under the Conservation Act, not the Overseas Investment legislation, which was relevant to the Waihi decision.

Ms Sage said on Tuesday she was not involved in the decision by Mr Robertson and Mr Parker.

‘‘They assessed a different application and made an independent decision on the information in that application . . . I stand by my original decision, which I formed on the application I carefully assessed. I have no further comment.’’ — Greymouth Star. Additional reporting Business Desk