Black sand battle
The mining stoush threatening a community on the North Island’s rugged west coast
An ashen February sky has descended over Taharoa, bringing a feeling of foreboding. If the green hills that surround the village are The Shire, then the vast, black pit stretching hundreds of metres inland from the beach must be Mordor.
This is the Taharoa ironsand mine, where millions of tonnes of black sand have been dredged from the dunes and hills over more than four decades. It has provided iron ore for Asian steel factories and jobs for local Ma¯ori, who own the land.
To the Nga¯ti Mahuta hapu, this isolated area south of Ka¯whia Harbour is wa¯hi tapu, or sacred. Buried in these dunes are the bones of warriors who fought some of the great battles between Te Rauparaha’s Nga¯ti Toa and Waikato tribes in the early 19th century.
Two hundred years on, another war has broken out – this one over allegations of mistreatment of workers, disrespect of tikanga Ma¯ori and allegations of corporate greed.
Locals are mystified as to how a Wellington businessman has gained control of the mine, leaving them with no say in how the company is run.
The E Tu¯ union has taken a complaint to the Employment Relations Authority alleging the new managers have arbitrarily removed allowances, while a local action group has gone to the Ma¯ori Land Court, claiming the incorporation that owns the land has failed to protect wa¯hi tapu and the environment.
There are claims that workers have been threatened with their jobs if they speak out.
Already, at least 16 of the 170-strong workforce have been laid off and it’s feared there are more redundancies to come.
The discontent comes less than a year after the landowners took a majority stake in the mine after years of ownership by Australians.
The mine was opened by then government-owned New Zealand Steel in 1973.
In a deal with landowners the Taharoa C Block Incorporation, the company gained access to the estimated 300 million tonnes of ironsand concentrate in a 1600-hectare area – the country’s largest deposit.
In return, it provided jobs for locals, built a road, a village with 65 houses, as well as a hall, school and shop.
It meant that Taharoa – previously accessible only by boat or horse – was finally connected to the outside world.
‘‘At that time, people were finding work in town and would stay there,’’ says Kale Pompey, whose grandparents owned land at Taharoa.
‘‘The original intent of the mine, as my grandparents understood it, was that it would be a means for which our people would be able to gain work to bring people home.’’
Workers were on a ‘‘pretty good wicket’’ says Maxine MoanaTuwhangai, a former chair of Taharoa C Block.
‘‘They would pay for your children to go to boarding school. Anybody who worked there got training to become qualified tradespeople. There was lowcost housing provided.’’
According to Pompey, the relationship between the company and community deteriorated over time, especially after NZ Steel was taken over in the early 1990s by Australian company BHP, later renamed Bluescope.
Another source with tribal links to the area, who asked not to be named, says the Australians brought a ‘‘colonial corporate approach’’.
‘‘They had no idea how to deal with indigenous people and rode roughshod over concerns of hau ka¯inga (local people)’’.
This included allegedly telling workers to move pegs marking sacred sites so the sand could be removed.
In 2013, Bluescope said it was adding two more ships to its operation (the ironsand is piped as slurry to a buoy 3km offshore, where it’s transferred to freighters). The company expected this to double exports to four million tonnes.
The mine had at least another 15 years left in it, the company said.
But steel and iron ore prices plunged and in 2016, after declaring a A$47 million (NZ$50m) half-year loss on its New Zealand operations, Bluescope put the mine up for sale.
It came as a surprise to locals when, in April 2017, it was announced that a new company had bought the mine. Known as Taharoa Mining Investments Ltd (TMIL), it was 60 per cent owned by Taharoa C Block.
For the first time, the mine was in local ownership.
But C Block shareholders were perplexed by the structure of the new entity. It was 40 per cent owned by Melrose Private Capital, which in turn is owned by Wellington businessman Wayne Coffey.
Coffey is a former timber industry lobbyist turned tourism entrepreneur who was hired a few years ago as C Block’s chief executive, looking after its commercial assets.
The deal gave management control of the mine to Coffey – the majority shareholder has no say in the running of the operation.
People hounded C Block committee chairman, Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr, for an explanation. They viewed Coffey’s roles as chief executive of C Block and managing director and shareholder of TMIL as a clear conflict.
‘‘It makes no sense,’’ says Verna Tuteao, who has ancestral ties to Taharoa. ‘‘How come the 60 per cent owner has no representation on the management body? We get no answers.’’
Moana-Tuwhangai, who hired Coffey when she was chair, describes the situation as a ‘‘takeover of sorts’’.
‘‘They’ve bought the mining operation, they’ve agreed not to have any say in what happens and Wayne and his mates can do what they want – they pick the directors, they do everything.’’
Patrick Maikuku, a kauma¯tua who has led blessings at the mine site since the 1970s, expressed his view this way: ‘‘It’s a conflict, [Coffey] is looking to our business so he can make money for his business.’’
Barclay-Kerr would not answer questions on the structure of TMIL and subsidiary Taharoa Ironsands, which operates the mine, saying only that the companies had experienced directors and highly qualified senior management.
Coffey would not be interviewed, saying in a statement the allegations against him and the company were ‘‘well-rehearsed opinions and halftruths’’.
Just a few weeks after taking over, the new management closed the wet plant used for mineral separation and laid off 16 workers, some of whom had been there decades.
Another 11 support workers were let go.
Coffey says that when TMIL bought the business it was ‘‘distressed and facing probable closure’’.
It has since been turned around, he says, with ‘‘long overdue’’ changes made to put it on a more stable footing.
Barclay-Kerr says ‘‘we probably would have ended up with no mine and no jobs’’ if the cuts weren’t made.
He says that under the old agreement, if the mine closed the people would be unable to use their land for the duration of the mining lease, another 30 or 40 years.
‘‘The new mining agreement says if the mine is unsustainable, the land immediately reverts back to use of the owners. That was the big one for us.’’
Taharoa Ironsands and TMIL are yet to release annual reports, but BarclayKerr claims that the ‘‘successful turnaround of the business’’ is proof that the governance and management arrangements are working.
But workers were stunned when they were told last year they would no longer be paid an integrated work allowance worth more than $200 a week, which had been in their contracts since 1984.
Coffey has argued that the allowance doesn’t apply to the new company. But the union, which has taken the case to the ERA, says the allowance is covered by the multi-employer collective agreement, which doesn’t expire until May.
Workers have complained that they are being doubly penalised – they are paid the allowance but then it’s taken off them and placed in a holding account, meaning they are assessed for tax and things like child support at the higher, gross, rate.
‘‘Very disappointed to see the company treat the workers like this when they are making millions of dollars in profits,’’ someone posted on a workers’ Facebook page.
Joe Gallagher, a senior organiser for E Tu¯ , claims Coffey made the decision without consultation.
‘‘He put the money in his lawyer’s trust account – he said ‘if I’m proved wrong, I’ll give them the money back, but if I’m right I’m keeping it’.
‘‘The money’s been sitting there for over eight months, it’s nearly half a million bucks. It’s a lot of money to take off people.’’
Last week, about 30 workers travelled to Wellington for a preliminary ERA hearing, which became tense when Coffey accused the union of going to the media.
E Tu¯ is taking a second complaint, of ‘‘unlawful preference’’ over a plan to sell the company-owned houses back to workers, but only those not in the union.
The houses, on Ma¯ori land, are in varying states of disrepair and Gallagher says the company is trying to flick them off to avoid maintenance.
‘‘[Coffey] said ‘I don’t want to be managing state houses’,’’ Gallagher says. ‘‘But they are part of the mine site, part of the community, some of these people have lived in these houses for 25, 30 years.’’
Workers pay just $27 a week rent, but the company has raised rents to ‘‘market rates’’ of $300 to $400 for those who’ve been made redundant and want to stay on.
Coffey says the company treats staff generously, with average pay of $150,000 a year plus benefits, and pumps $50m into the local economy.
Workers are also upset that mining is taking them ever closer to tapu areas, as the company looks for new deposits.
One such area is called the Tauwhare Reserve, where bones are reinterred.
The idea of mining around the remains of their t¯ıpuna is horrifying for many workers.
‘‘One of my whanaunga [relatives] was told to dig directly next to some bones,’’ says Pompey. ‘‘My cousin said no and he found himself on the chopping block when they did the 16 redundancies.’’
Maikuku says workers asked him to investigate in September, as they were falling ill after being made to work in tapu areas. They claimed pegs marking Ma¯ori reserves had been moved.
He says he was stopped from entering the site by the former mine manager.
‘‘He put a trespass notice on me, when I’m an owner of that whenua. I said ‘what are you trying to hide?’ They knew they were doing wrong so they didn’t want me to go up there.’’
Maikuku says contractors have been brought in to work in areas locals won’t.
Tuteao has formed an action group and asked the land court to investigate the C Block committee for its lack of kaitiakitanga [guardianship].
‘‘Since the committee purchased the operation, mining Tauwhare has shamelessly continued and at a rate that it will be levelled while we sit and talk,’’ she said in a statement to the court.
She also raised concerns about a lack of action by the committee to keep the community informed when 4000 litres of diesel spilled from the plant into Wainui Stream in August last year.
The complaints remain under investigation. Barclay-Kerr did not respond to questions about mining in tapu areas.
Tuteao says Taharoa C Block bought a ‘‘dead duck’’ and now it is failing to deliver what it promised the people.
‘‘We had expectations the things that matter to us beyond the commercial stuff, the cultural things, would be attended to, but they haven’t – it’s worse under their watch.’’
Pompey believes Coffey’s management style is ‘‘very cut-throat’’.
‘‘What we’re seeing is real aggressive businesspeople who will do anything to make a good profit.
‘‘They want to get everything they can out of our land, out of our whenua and get the money and ‘see you later’.’’
Taharoa was ‘‘buzzing’’ a couple of years ago, Pompey says, but is now like a ghost town. People fear the ko¯ hanga reo and primary school will close if more workers are laid off.
Workers are too scared to speak out, he says.
‘‘If you’re seen to be opposing the mine management then you’ll be on the chopping block in the coming redundancies.’’
He believes there is only about five years left in the mine, and people should start looking for new work.
‘‘My personal feeling is they can go – they’ve done enough damage here, they haven’t kept to what my t¯ıpuna intended for them to do. They can leave, before they absolutely destroy it.’’
The new mining agreement says if the mine is unsustainable, the land immediately reverts back to use of the owners. That was the big one for us. Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr