The most incoherent promise?
Was ‘‘no new mines on conservation land’’ this Government’s most incoherent promise? It featured in the 2017 throne speech seemingly at the behest of the Green Party, the ‘‘supply and confidence’’ partner in the new Labour-led coalition.
Coalition partner NZ First was clearly opposed, and Labour seems silently to have regretted it ever since. The promise, like a pantomime horse animated beneath its costume by the Greens and NZ First, has spent the interceding years lurching in circles. Stage manager, Labour, has ignored its antics.
It wasn’t tackled in Labour’s late2017/early-2018 busy 100-day plan. And it didn’t crop up in the ‘‘year of delivery’’ either but that was a 2019 production and we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
In May 2018, Conservation Minister and Green MP Eugenie Sage promised to move toward policy to achieve the promise with a discussion document scheduled for September that year.
Snow fell and melted on the high passes and September came and went. The year turned. By September last year Sage changed her language, saying consultation would happen ‘‘in the coming months’’.
The promise was repeated in a minerals and petroleum strategy document in November last year, but the policy remained elusive. September of this year is now in sight, complete with an election, and Sage can’t quite bring herself to speak plainly. ‘‘The discussion document on implementing the no new mines on conservation land commitment is still being finalised and it will be released in due course pending Cabinet approval,’’ she said.
She could just as well have said that the back part of the horse wasn’t doing what the front part was telling it. Nobody said giving NZ First MP Shane Jones control of your furry hindquarters would make life easy.
In fact, the show unfolded like this. Sources say a draft discussion document for anticipated policy was written, first by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and Department of Conservation bureaucrats together, and later passed entirely to DOC staff. They also say it was around this time that Jones, as Regional Economic Development Minister, took a look and said his party wouldn’t allow it.
Since conservation land covers roughly a third of the country and mining provides important highpaying jobs in the regions, it was never likely to appeal.
As if to underscore Jones’ distaste for the promise, the Provincial Growth Fund, which he oversees, recently approved a $15 million loan to help restart the old Blackwater gold mine near Reefton. It’s not clear whether the Greens consider this a new mine; the last time it was active was the 1950s. And it’s also unclear whether it would count as ‘‘on conservation land’’: access is from private land though the mine tunnels under conservation land.
No doubt the discussion document could tell us; it’s understood to be stuck at party leaders’ level and as an election date is now fixed it appears to have been written out of this mandate’s script. But perhaps its lessons should linger.
First, since that throne speech, there have been dozens of new mines on New Zealand conservation land (National Park land has long been off limits). Or, more exactly, there have been dozens of approvals for mining activity. DOC refused to provide Stuff with the precise number (it suggested an Official Information Act request).
That industry has all happened within the existing hurdles, including consent conditions imposed by local authorities under the Resource Management Act and landaccess terms set by DOC. The Conservation, Wildlife and Crown Minerals acts all apply.
There are many reasons a blanket ban on such activity would be foolish, including that the effect of underground mining is quite different to surface pits.
It would also be costly to limit quarrying, when aggregate is needed increasingly for state-funded construction projects.
It’s also clear the kind of green future the Government is pushing towards will be powered by mineralhogging batteries. That lithium, cobalt, copper, molybdenum – it all comes out of holes in the ground.
Limiting New Zealand’s capacity to mine those minerals is the clearest folly of the ‘‘no new mines on conservation land’’ promise.