Nats tie themselves in knots over mining

Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, April 29th, 2010 - 10 comments
Categories: Conservation, Mining - Tags: , ,

Mr Brownlee, I have to confess, you’ve got me scratching my head. In Parliament yesterday, you pulled a strange defence of the government’s policy of opening specially protected lands to mining:

the member may be interested to know that in policy 10.8(b) of that document it states: ‘Proposed access arrangements to prospect, explore or mine in national parks will be considered on a case-by-case basis’. It is very interesting to note that in 2005 the previous Labour Government approved exactly the policy that the National-led Government is advocating now—that is, considering the mining of conservation land on a case by case basis.

Gee, Gerry, if Labour had already permitted mining in Schedule 4 land, why the need to withdraw the areas you want to mine from Schedule 4? How can your policy be some miraculous new concept that you say will boost the economy if its nothing new? Could it be that you’re lying, again, that Labour’s policy doesn’t allow mining on Schedule 4 land? Wouldn’t that be consistent with the fact that Labour issued no permits for mining on Schedule 4 land?

And, Gerry, I’m confused about about another thing you said:

One of the interesting anomalies in all of this is that right now anybody can theoretically go and get a permit to prospect on schedule 4 lands. There are three permit categories: prospecting, exploring, and mining. Mining is prohibited, exploring is prohibited, but prospecting is not. People can get a prospecting permit for those lands and can go out there and dig to their heart’s content.

That sounds like a misrepresentation and, anyway, that nice man Mr Key said:

“It strikes me that the [Parliamentary] commissioner [for the Environment] was making a very circular argument. The commissioner was saying that we should remove land only where the mineral value outweighs the conservation values. Actually we cannot determine that unless we do remove things from schedule 4.” [which Goff called “dig it up first, then ask questions”]

You’re saying that anyone can already prospect and even, to use your words, “dig to their heart’s content” on Schedule 4 while your leader is saying we can’t mine or even know what is under the land until it is removed from Schedule 4.

Which is it?

Do.. do any of you clowns actually know?

10 comments on “Nats tie themselves in knots over mining ”

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  1. toad 1
    29 April 2010 at 8:48 am

    Keep digging Gerry, keep digging!

  2. Jim Nald 2
    29 April 2010 at 9:31 am

    hmm, their knottiness is bordering on bad

    captcha: correcting

  3. ghostwhowalksnz 3
    29 April 2010 at 9:50 am

    Why isnt a Labour MP tying him in knots with his own words , every day , like they do with Tolley.

    Or in Brownlees case , making him eat his words

  4. tc 4
    29 April 2010 at 1:39 pm

    Here here ghost….there’s plenty of other govt ministers not being put to the sword by their opposites.

  5. Doug 5
    29 April 2010 at 5:14 pm

    A prospecting permit only allows limited activities they must be “very low impact, e.g. literature search, geological mapping, hand sampling or aerial surveys”. So no digging.

    Gerry doesn’t know his own legislation – the man’s a buffoon.

  6. Maynard J 6
    29 April 2010 at 6:15 pm

    But…but…surgical techniques…waffle…mine under section 4…modern mining…look over there, Haast Eagle…!

  7. collette 7
    1 May 2010 at 7:56 pm

    according to kelvyn eglington, newmont waihi golds external affairs manager, mining companies are allowed to mine beneath schedule four lands now, so long as the operation is accessed from outside the schedule four area. ie. the farm next door to schedule four land could in theory become the entrance to an underground operation in some of our conservation lands…,,, this could be a clever way of getting around the pesky schedule four issue…

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