Following months of work by the Green Party and community and environmental organisations, Parliament will have the opportunity to pass legislation to protect public conservation land and waters from mining.
Green Party conservation spokesperson, Eugenie Sage’s Crown Minerals (Prohibition of Mining) Amendment Bill was pulled from the biscuit tin ballot of member’s bills this afternoon.
“We call on the Labour Government to back the Bill so it can finally fulfil its promise to ban new mining projects on public conservation land,” says Eugenie Sage.
“Mining on Papatūānuku for gold, coal and other minerals can have devastating impacts on nature. And yet it has been more than four years since the Prime Minister promised through the Speech from the Throne that, “there will be no new mines on conservation land.”
“Since then, the Labour Government has chosen to prioritise the reclassification of conservation land that is stewardship land, above protecting conservation land from mining. Now is the time to rebalance priorities in favour of protecting nature.
“More than 15,000 people signed the Green Party’s open letter calling on the Government to uphold its promise to ban new mines on conservation land once and for all.
“Now, by the pure luck of the biscuit tin ballot, the Government will have to stand up in Parliament and confirm whether it will listen to the voices of New Zealanders and support nature, or whether it will continue to back the mining companies,” says Eugenie Sage.
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Show us what you're made of Poto.
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Here's hoping the Bill leads to better protection of at least some of our natural ecosystems. We hold the environment on trust for future generations.
Stewardship land classification is one area where the Dept of Conservation needs to keep looking at its letterhead to learn what its role is.
This result is why The Greens must be in Parliament.
Now we will see what grunt they have.
The other parties will be forced to show their true colours.
All hail the biscuit tin!
Well said.
All power to the biscuit tin.
It was the biscuit tin that brought down the Muldoon government.
When the anti-nuclear bill was drawn from the biscuit tin, all MPs were 'forced to show their true colours.' Mike Minogue and Marylyn Waring voted for the bill removing the Muldoon government's majority.
It was the biscuit tin that allowed Labour MPs 'to show their true colours' and and vote in support of the Maori Party's bill to remove GST from food. (a position later reversed under conservative top table pressure).
It was the biscuit tin that allowed MPs of all parties 'to show their true colours' and vote for the anti-smacking bill.
It was the biscuit tin that made Sue Bradford one of the most successful backbench opposition MPs of all time.
May the biscuit tin keep testing the consciences of our MPs to defy their party whips and resist top table pressure to the benefit of democracy.
Long live the biscuit tin! Long may it remain, ensuring the ultimate primacy of parliament over government.
There's certainly a sad Irony connecting the first 2 links…and pretty much the 3rd one.
And of course there is the West Coast Regional Council. And Alan Birchfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Birchfield
Need to keep fighting for this…..
No need to ask why the local councils were in favour of a mine – jobs for the locals swinging a pick.
I presume the same argument was used to give Pike River the green light.
Not surprising, when the alternative is unemployment or uncertain underpaid tourism jobs.
We need to give them better alternatives.
Wind and wave power construction, is just one of many new industries,where mining and oil industry skills could shine.
It's hard to fathom after all this time of pressures on making a living on the coast, they're still not looking at what is resilient and sustainable.
Pike River should have been open cast.
It was the worry about the snails that made it otherwise.
And then they took the snails and put them in the chiller and they all died anyway.
This is why the Greens have been silent on Pike River all these years, despite the tragic loss of life.
Pike River's hydraulic mining expert Masaoki Nishioka's evidence to the Royal Commission.
Q. We’ve had some discussion in this Commission about whether Pike River
could have been an opencast mine, based on what you know about Pike River,
do you think opencast mining was a realistic potential for Pike River?
A. Well speaking only of opencast mining, looking at the topography of that area, there was no rainfall which is seven millimetre per year, it’s correct rainfall and I thought, you know, opencast mining is really difficult to do. That area is fairly close to National Park and obviously there are much area of that property belongs to DOC land. So I thought it’s very difficult to use in an opencast mining in that property.
Q. Is it fair to say that the technical challenges of opencast mining were part of the reason – so was it not just the conservation concern? Were there also
technical problems with opencast?
A. Well it’s probably the mining practice concerns we could operate the opencast mining, but considering the habitation and also the water management which usually in opencast mining contaminate drinking water so infestation after finishing opencast mining, vegetation might be very, very difficult because of that heavy rain and obviously I thought there was not enough topsoil available to rehabitation of that area.
transcript
Somewhere…a bridge is missing you !
I was looking into your history here on TS and it is a little checkered, shall we say. This one popped out, with Mod note and all, and it seems you’re still repeating the same BS as you did more than 6 years ago: https://thestandard.org.nz/kia-kaha-pike-river-families/#comment-1259558.
Crazy… they don't want to allow mining on 4 hectares per every 10,000 hectares and the mining companies will PAY to be able to mine to DoC usually in the form of pest control. Green zealots driving mining to unsafe offshore mines.
I have no issue with mining on conservation land, as long as the conservation land is:
1 Museum Street, Pipitea, Wellington 6160
Do they really use an actual biscuit tin?
yup
https://twitter.com/nzparliament/status/804055579870146560
Got to love NZ, the sellotape has been ripped starting with using one’s teeth.