The Injustice of Blackball

14 comments on “The Injustice of Blackball ”

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1. Adrian 1

   2 November 2023 at 9:40 am

   The lesson is that extractive industries have a limited lifespan, often it is too late for those involved to realise and make. other plans, they just move on as we have done for the last million years.
   • Belladonna 1.1

     2 November 2023 at 10:24 am

     Well, that'll learn them.
     Not surprising that the left vote is dropping like a stone in rural NZ – with that kind of attitude.
     • AB 1.1.1

       2 November 2023 at 11:29 am

       Capital moves into an area to get a return and it moves out when it can no longer do so. Working people follow capital around in a series of disjunctions, or they stay put and try to get by. That's the existing economy, and it simply doesn't do just transitions and doesn't ever intend to.

       One approach is to get capital out of external private hands and into communities. The Preston model is interesting – but in comparison, Blackball and the whole West Coast is tiny and without the historical base of resources in people, skills, institutions and businesses upon which to build. More alarmingly, tourism might go the same way as gold, timber and coal if tourists ever have to pay the real cost of their emissions, or if the places they used to visit are wrecked by climate events.

       Local autonomy with initial central government assistance seems vital. But as Ad notes the cost to taxpayers would be large and there's no prospect of it happening even under a Labour government .

       Instead we get something like Winston's provincial growth fund, which strikes me (perhaps unfairly) as operating like a paternalistic charity with a penchant for extractive industries. National/ACT probably believes that the market can revive these areas if they just cut red tape – i.e. lower wages, fewer environmental regulations and postponing action on CO2 emissions – and if that doesn't work, then nothing can be done. There are no good options on the table presently.
       • Belladonna 1.1.1.1

         2 November 2023 at 12:27 pm

         Thanks, that's an interesting response.
         I don't expect any useful action from the 'right' – the way that you've described capitalism is exactly the way that things 'should' work from their perspective.

         I do expect/hope for more nuanced support from the left (especially as many of the 'left' environmental policies have disproportionate impact on these communities).

         One worth considering is tax cuts for critical local businesses. That is for core infrastructure businesses, which are essential (or nearly so) to their local community. Thinking of things like the Blackball General store from the OP, but also GP, chemist, dentist, etc. Creating an economic environment where there is a positive economic reason to be located in smaller, rural or poorer areas. [As a contrast, my local shopping centre – inner-suburban Auckland – is about to have a 4th (entirely unnecessary) chemist open.]

         However, there are also environmental reasons for towns to close or be relocated. I question the long term viability of Westport (despite my strong family connections there) – it's on a flood plain between 2 rivers, and at sea level. I really don't see that any party has a well-thought-through and costed plan for significant relocations. It's reactive (following a disaster) rather than planned.
       • Ad 1.1.1.2

         2 November 2023 at 2:06 pm

         Provincial Growth Fund applications were remarkably hard fought and well contested.

         If you go onto the MBIE PGF site you can see the many obscure regions that have had their little shunts of public funding and civic entrepeneurship.

         Much good has come from these enterprises already, and not too many failures.

         It will take something at least as big as that, again.
         • AB 1.1.1.2.1

           2 November 2023 at 2:33 pm

           Thanks Ad – I stand corrected on that.
     • observer 1.1.2

       2 November 2023 at 1:29 pm

       Adrian's statement "extractive industries have a limited lifespan" is a self-evident truth, as seen through history and around the world. It's not an "attitude".
       • Ad 1.1.2.1

         2 November 2023 at 2:08 pm

         But it is particularly pressing upon New Zealand.

         Water (as proxy for milk) may be slower to extract and deplete than gold, but you don't need too many Lake Ellesmere's or Rotoaira's to see it's near-impossible to reverse.
       • Belladonna 1.1.2.2

         2 November 2023 at 3:20 pm

         The "attitude" comes from the absence of a sequel. We could do X or Y, or change Z. Absent anything else, the subtext is – 'and we don't care'.

         West Coast-Tasman electorate (ignoring 2020 as an anomaly):

         Party vote Labour 2023 (provisional): 8732

         Party vote Labour 2017: 14,015

         Party vote Labour 2008 (last time National took the seat): 11,532
2. pat 2

   2 November 2023 at 11:37 am

   Take the politics and 'economic ' lens away and ask yourself… if the resources needed to provide the desired lifestyle ceased to be available (in sufficient quantity/quality) in any given location what options would the resident community have?
3. barry 3

   2 November 2023 at 7:26 pm

   I went to walk the Paparoa track a couple of years ago. Like most people I stayed in Punakaiki and took the shuttle to Blackball. Apart from buying a coffee and pie I didn't spend any money there. the facilities in Blackball are pretty good, but there is no reason to stay there. Some people cycle the track and link with the Ghost 2 Ghost or other tracks. Some of them stay overnight, but really from Ces Clark hut it is an easy day to somewhere nicer on the coast. Blackball will never make much of a living from tourists.

   Coal mining has to stop. It has provided a living for people for a long time, but it has killed a lot too. Now the planet can't afford it.

   There are a few people that scratch a living from finding gold, and a few farmers, beekeepers, or others who can make a living growing food. But farmers are not shopping in Blackball. There is a supermarket in Greymouth.

   If people go there to retire they will find it hard to live off super. Houses are cheap, but food costs are high, and health care requires travel.

   So really the only possible growth industry is DOC. Track maintenance and predator control could support 100 jobs in the area. Would the workers want to live there, or would they commute from the coast?

   Blackball is nice, but really doesn't need to exist any more. You are right that there is no justice for the people who call it home.

   We have to decide if we want to maintain communities like them, and how we support them. People will move away for jobs, for entertainment, for health services etc. Each one that moves makes it a bit harder for those that stay.
4. Obtrectator 4

   2 November 2023 at 7:49 pm

   Over the last four decades I've watched the same sort of dismal narrative play out at Rata, on SH1 in the Manawatu/Whanganui region. And that was a place with much better transport links than Blackball. But as long as local industries continue to disappear in the interests of consolidation/centralisation, economies of scale, the "need to be nearer our markets", etc, etc, it'll go on happening.
5. Visubversa 5

   3 November 2023 at 9:40 am

   My maternal grandfather was born in Blackball – his parents came from Ireland to work in the mines. There are several people with his family name om various memorials, but his family left Blackball in the early 1900's and moved to the Waikato.
6. Tom Hunter 6

   9 November 2023 at 2:58 pm

   I'll draw your attention to a post made in 2019 by Chris Trotter where he noted a Working Class protest on the Coast, The Message From Messenger Park, but less for his comments than one by long-timer "Sanctuary":

   Wah wah wah, cry me a river. I am heartily sick and tired of the whining exceptionalism of coasters and farmers. Plenty of people work hard for sweet f**k all, try being an all night cleaner in Tamaki's industrial sprawl.

   The world is changing. Coasters seem to think they have a right to do what they want because, reasons. Nobody forces them to live in that rainy and dreary place. Yes, their way of life is out of date. So stop whinging that the rest of us have some sort of obligation to support a dying way of life, like some sort of giant outdoor paean to the 20th century and accept it.

   What struck me at the time, was the similarity of that comment to this one made in early 2016 in the USA:

   The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too.

   The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

   That's a hardline Libertarian Righty writing in National Review. I'm astounded at the convergence of thought.

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