Quick comments

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 18 comments
Categories: climate change, Economy, foreshore and seabed, Mining - Tags:

  • The Government and the secretive Iwi Leadership Group are looking at an option where no-one owns the foreshore and seabed. It’s often forgotten that the Ngati Apa case, which sparked the foreshore and seabed, contraversy was about big business. Ngati Apa wanted to have title over the seabed so it could undertake aquaculture, bypassing a ‘bidding war’ for aquaculture licences from local authorities. A ‘no-one owns it’ solution won’t satisfy Ngati Apa, effectively it’s no change from now. Just a symbolic repeal of the Act with the same effect.
  • It’s funny how Key still seems to think it’s important to be ‘ambitious’ in pursuing a goal (catching Australia by 2025) that no-one thinks we can achieve and yet says we shouldn’t be too ambitious in pursuing a target (reducing emissions by 40%) that the experts say it is critical that we do achieve. The real rub, though, is that it doesn’t matter. Whether Key is an ambitious on catching Australia or unambitious on tackling climate change the outcome is the same – he will do nothing.
  • We need to be smart about our natural wealth. We only have our pristine wilderness and our mineral deposits once, when they’re gone they’re gone. So why the rush to get rid of both? If we decide to ever extract those minerals it shouldn’t necessarily be now, the stuff is only getting more valuable sitting in the ground and mining techiques are improving. Mining isn’t some economic panacea – most of the profits go offshore. We exported $2.8 billion worth of oil last year and took just 30% of that in government revenue. Compare that to Norway, where a state-owned company does most of the drilling and the profits go into a national wealth fund. Mining/drlling by foreign companies puts little money into the local economy – it is a multi-billion industry yet it employs only 6,000 Kiwis (who, to be fair, are well-paid because they are fully-unionised).
  • This was Gerry Brownlee in the House yesterday: “New Zealand produces in excess of 21 million barrels of oil a day”. Really? That’s a quarter of the world’s oil supply. That’s twice Saudi Arabia’s production. What an idiot.
  • Close Up bumped John Key for Robin Brooke. Not a good look for Sainsbury or Key.
  • Granny Herald: It’s not a ‘debate’ when you’re the only one participating. How about using all those column inches on a real issue?

18 comments on “Quick comments ”

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  1. Draco T Bastard 1
    11 February 2010 at 12:36 pm

    We need to be smart about our natural wealth.

    We need to retain and conserve it both of which will never be done by a conservative government who will only ever see how much profit they can make by selling it as fast as possible.

    • lprent 1.1
      11 February 2010 at 1:00 pm

      Conservative governments should almost be done for false advertising. I hadn’t noticed them conserving much apart from the small-mindedness and bigotry levels in society (eg beneficiary bashing).

  2. Bill 2
    11 February 2010 at 12:39 pm

    Or did ‘Close Up’ allow Key to bail?

  3. Tigger 3
    11 February 2010 at 12:52 pm

    I’m glad TVNZ bumped Key. I was so over this endless hyping of his speech. He outed most of it beforehand. It was like a stripper turning up naked. Quite frankly, on the night before the speech there was nothing left for Key to say. The Brooke interview was ratings gold. TVNZ would have been fools not to run with it.

    • Lanthanide 3.1
      11 February 2010 at 1:02 pm

      I watched Key on 3. Then a bit after that, they actually played the clip from Close Up with that dork apologising anyway, so no reason to actually watch TV1 to see it at all. Was pretty amusing really, they even had the watermark from TV1 saying “exclusive” on the top left corner – not very exclusive if they go and replay it on the rival station within 10 minutes of it airing 🙂

  4. felix 4
    11 February 2010 at 1:03 pm

    I thought 21 million sounded like a lot.

    Anyone know the real number?

    Does it, as on Red Dwarf, “have a 21 in it”?

  5. JD 5
    11 February 2010 at 1:13 pm

    Yes the profits may go offshore but who actually shoulders the financial risk in investing in these projects?

    • Bright Red 5.1
      11 February 2010 at 2:29 pm

      not much risk. stuff’s in the ground, dig it up. I don’t see major oil companies going under fbecause risks went bad on them.

      And why don’t we shoulder the ‘risk’ and take the profit?

      • lprent 5.1.1
        11 February 2010 at 3:08 pm

        Or just leave it in the ground. The one thing that you can be pretty sure of this century is that resources will get scarcer and therefore more expensive.

        • reddy 5.1.1.1
          11 February 2010 at 5:32 pm

          I commented below. this won’t help us improve v. Australia, it will be an asset sale. How is the wealth going to be extracted and distributed?

          This should be the focus and Nauru the warning. Are we able to add value to anything before exporting it?

          and the same with the oil. Are we giving it away to exploration companies?

  6. kris_b 6
    11 February 2010 at 1:14 pm

    Felix: Just under 48,000 barrels/day according to: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_pro-energy-oil-production

    • felix 6.1
      11 February 2010 at 1:51 pm

      Crikey. Hard to see how you could get those two figures mixed up.

      Wtf was Brownlee on?

      • Armchair Critic 6.1.1
        11 February 2010 at 2:04 pm

        Hmmm, they can’t tell the difference between 48,000 and 21,000,000, yet they are considering reforming the tax system, amongst other things. Weird.

      • Lanthanide 6.1.2
        11 February 2010 at 2:06 pm

        Even for a year it only comes to 17.5M.

        The daily consumption is up around 130-140k, so it’s really quite far away from ‘balancing’ our imports. It’s helps of course, but shouldn’t be trumpeted as a wonderous result.

      • Graeme Edgeler 6.1.3
        11 February 2010 at 2:10 pm

        I’d looked on wikipedia for my numbers (it has a slightly higher number than kris_b quotes – 65,000 bbl/day), assuming it’s somewhere between our two sources, I’d hazard that he didn’t get the number wrong so much as the time period. 57,500 barrels a day is 21 million per year.

  7. obnostic 7
    11 February 2010 at 1:45 pm

    I’m not sure that the comment “it employs only 6,000 Kiwis” on the mining and drilling industry is entirely accurate, looking at the data. Sure “mining” employed 7300 people as at December 2009, but drilling (which I’m taking to include oil and gas) fits in to the “Electricity, gas, water and waste services” column for some reason. Plus, there is some more spread over the “Transport” and “Manufacturing” columns.

    It’s probably still accurate to say that the mining and drilling companies put only a small fraction of what they earn into the local economy though.

  8. reddy 8
    11 February 2010 at 5:25 pm

    Marty G sez: We need to be smart about our natural wealth. We only have our pristine wilderness and our mineral deposits once, when they’re gone they’re gone. So why the rush to get rid of both? If we decide to ever extract those minerals it shouldn’t necessarily be now, the stuff is only getting more valuable sitting in the ground and mining techiques are improving.

    This!

    This is an asset sale.

    no doubt. If the value under the ground and over the ground is given to a foreign company this is an asset sale.

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