Greenpeace has condemned the fast-track bill as a war on nature, warning it harms Māori rights and the environment, with seabed mining and irrigation worsening pollution.
Greenpeace seabed mining campaigner, Juressa Lee (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Te Rangi, Tupapa, Ngatangiia) says the law “is going to destroy protections for our fresh water, our conservation land, our sea beds”.
“We’ve seen this over hundreds of years of mining and extraction. We have seen the impacts and it is just this outrage. Where the outrage comes from is [the government] is not learning.”
After 27,000 submissions Lee said submitters against the bill weren’t heard.
Worse fears realised
“The worst of our fast-track fears have now been realised,” Lee said.
Trans-Tasman Resources is anAustralian company, which hopes to mine up to 50 million tonnes of iron sands and dump 45 million tonnes of waste back into the ocean each year, for 30 years.
“TTR have been trying to get this over the line for more than a decade and lost repeatedly in courts because they haven’t been able to demonstrate the project wouldn’t cause material harm to marine life,” she said.
But now, Lee said the fast-track bill may be its ticket to “get the green light” without worrying about proving the environmental impacts.
Now whales and dolphins have been granted personhood, Lee wondered if concerns are raised about the 700 pygmy whales and critically endangered Māui dolphins who live and would be at risk by the seabed mining in Taranaki.
Lee called this a “revolting use of government power” and anti-democratic in the complete dismissal of Taranaki iwi Ngāti Ruanui who have been custodians of that ocean for hundreds of years, and what Lee said makes the bill anti-Māori.
Last month TTR’s owner, Manuka Resources told the Australian Stock Exchange the seabed mining project would bring a billion dollars a year to annual exports but then had to retract the statement two days later under strict ASX rules that require companies to specify production targets and to have a reasonable basis to provide this information.
The retraction also said investors were not to rely on the forecast financial information as a basis for any investment decision concerning the company.
Lee said she was concerned with that example of TTR approaches as well as greenwashing, which she said was being used to convince decision-makers the project was a good idea.
Other environmental risks on fast-track list
There are other projects which Lee also considered environmentally concerning such as coal mining and other extractive processes on conservation land such as gold mining in Waihī by Canadian-Australian mining company OceanaGold.
In addition is the project contested by local iwi and Greenpeace, the Ruataniwha Dam, which had been renamed the Hawkes Bay Tukituki Water Security Project.
“This is going to lead to more intensive dairy farming and all the water pollution that comes with it,” she said.
Lee described the Waimate incineration project as a “scary nightmare . She said it was being labelled as “waste to energy” when it wasn‘t an efficient source of energy. It was not clean to be burning mixed municipal waste (a combination of waste from homes, businesses and elsewhere which couldn’t be easily separated), would cause pollution in air, water and soil and makds it less likely to minimise waste.
She also cited the Waitaha Hydro Scheme which had previously been declined because of environmental impacts, and the Hurunui irrigation scheme which draws water from the Hurunui water to benefit farmers, which Lee said would essentially kill the river and result in more intensive dairy operations.
“The International Energy Agency has said there can be no new investment in oil, gas and coal if governments are serious about stopping climate change,” Lee said.
“It’s very indicative of where the government sits on real meaningful climate policy in action.”
Extractivism for profit
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said his ten-year goal is to double New Zealand exports which aligned with fast-track projects but Lee said these projects “would spell the end for us”.
Lee said the profits were marginal and not worth the environmental destruction.
For instance, in New Zealand mining companies paid a 2% royalty on the net sales revenue of certain minerals if their accounting profits were below a certain threshold - for coal it is $5 million and for gold it is $2 million and, above the threshold, the company pays the higher of the 2% royalty or a 10% accounting profits royalty.
Resources were finite and extractivism was linear and came with the mindset of taking until there was nothing left, Lee said, “It will not be able to sustain itself. There is no version of mining that is sustainable”.
Lee said the government prioritised primary industries and extractivism as the only or best ways to support communities and societies, when those very industries were destroying the natural environment that people’s wellness and livelihoods depend upon. Lee said they should be incentivising other ways of living, Indigenous ways of living which involved regenerative agriculture and food production.
For hundreds of years, Lee said there was evidence of how mining and other extractive industries had harmed the environment and communities where water sources and soil remain contaminated long after mines close.
“They’re not learning and that’s why I would call this government regressive because it doesn’t seem to be able to learn from the past.”
One-term government?
Lee said the way forward was to get rid of the coalition government because it lacked ambition, compassion and was regressive.
She said it would be ideal to have a one-term government because of what she called the anti-democratic ways the present coalition was doing things “through the dismissal of attempts at participatory democracy”.
Lee wanted a complete system shift where other ways of living were incentivised and said Indigenous leadership would recognise Indigenous value systems and focus on relationality between others and the natural world.
