Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki, info@watchdog.org.nz.

It's been 40 years since Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki first started challenging the transnational gold mining industry. We are in the thick of it again as Oceana Gold attempts to mine the conservation lands behind Whangamata at Wharekirauponga. Throughout the 40 years we have had wonderful connections from across the planet, a number of whom visited us and inspired us. We pay tribute to the activist Roger Moody* from England who died in 2022 and who came to Aotearoa while working on mining issues and who supported numerous campaigns across the world.

I will never forget Moses Havini ** from Bougainville who shared with us the violent consequences of mining his home lands. The Mayor of Crested Butte in Colorado came to talk with us about their successful campaign against the gold companies. I toured with John Krey from Bulga in the Hunter Valley, Australia, fighting big coal with some success and great conviction.

*CAFCA toured Roger Moody through NZ on a 1990 speaking tour. His obituary will appear in the December Watchdog. Online tributes to him, including from CAFCA, are available here. **Murray Horton's obituary of Moses Havini is in Watchdog 140, December 2015 Ed.

More recently Augusta Macassey Pickard and I represented Watchdog at an online conference led by the "Yes to Life - No to Mining" network which was incredibly humbling. The death threats and violence threatened in central and southern America, the struggle against Oceana Gold in the Philippines, the Northern Ireland gold rush of 2022, courageous South Africans in drought-stricken areas plagued by mining - we were very humbled to hear the stories.

Our own story is one of tenacity and of white middle class privilege, we have not been subjected to the threats and violence that our comrades across the world experience, nor have we been fighting for whenua for 180 years as the tangata whenua do every day in this country. We have the responsibility of our privilege, and we try to work with solidarity and integrity within Hauraki and within a world where transnational capitalism squeezes the Earth and communities in a toxic grip.

In 2022 we expect to be in court versus Oceana Gold, which is producing vague reports about how wonderful its plans are to mine beneath the habitat of a 200-million-year-old species of frog, dewater beneath a forest and create thousands more tonnes of toxic waste. It never mentions heavy metals or climate change contributions from mining, and it talks a lot about jobs in one breath and using robot miners in the next. Its latest plan is to offer pest control funding to the Department of Conservation (DOC) in exchange for the undermining of the Wharekirauponga because it is such a hero of natural protection.

Labour Fails To Honour Promise

The most frustrating aspect of this situation is not so much a greedy transnational which can smell gold profits, but the failure of the Labour government to honour its promise from 2017 to stop new mining activities on DOC land. Instead of doing this, the Government has created a long, complicated reassessment of DOC stewardship lands (some of which have high conservation value) to see if some of the lower value land can be opened for mining - this is mainly to placate the West Coast. While it holds panels about alleged values the miners carry on in places like Wharekirauponga which is a regionally significant conservation area.

Watchdog, with the support of Forest and Bird, has an Action Station petition for a moratorium on new mining activity until the stewardship red herring is finished. However, as I write this, Oceana Gold has lodged application for consents to mine at Waihi and Wharekirauponga. It plans to dig a new open cast pit in the middle of Waihi, expand the Martha pit (the sacred maunga Pukewa) into the main street and create more underground mines as well as tunnel under the forest at Wharekirauponga.

We face a massive legal challenge and we are only too aware that the court room is defined by the ability to fund expert witnesses. I have spent many hours searching for experts who are not consultants to the mining industry but they are few and far between. We rely on the court of public opinion as far more accessible but covid has limited our ability to maintain non-violent direct action as a complement to legal work.

The climate issue is central to the opposition to gold mining and it's clear that the massive amounts of concrete and steel used in underground mines will contribute to our far from acceptable greenhouse gas emissions. Looking after the climate is just one more reason to stop projects like Wharekirauponga.

The new world activity known as "urban mining" is the real alternative to the rape and pillage of mountains and forests. The enzyme technology now exists to strip gold and silver and other elements like palladium from electronic waste such as cell phones and lap tops. One day the mining of the Earth will be unthinkable and waste will be a resource meeting many of our needs.

The Right To Say No To Extractivism

But, in the meantime, the dinosaur capitalists continue to wreak havoc. Oceana Gold has been associated with human rights abuses at its Didipio Mine in the Philippines and has been fined for environmental, breaches in the USA. If the Overseas Investment Office actually looked at the track record of companies like Oceana Gold, it would not be so quick to allow it to buy up more productive land and turn it into waste dumps around Waihi. But short term, local and narrow understanding of the long-term effects of gold mining still dominate the decision making.

The Key government was slapped down hard for trying to mine National Parks and places like Hauraki/Coromandel. Thousands marched in the streets against this bizarre concept. However, Labour is ever so clever saying it will ban new mining and then dreaming up reasons to delay this while the miners plough ahead with their plans assisted by laws like the Crown Minerals Act whose purpose is to encourage mining.

Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki is an umbrella group for the small communities in the Hauraki which are determined to keep fighting this, we rely on each other and we rely on people around the country to support us. In 2022 we need money to support the legal fight and we need political pressure on the Government to honour its promises - but we never forget the price other activists pay in other countries and the price tangata whenua pay in this country for defending the whenua! We never forget the people who have supported us for 40 years because they can see beyond the glitter to the future generations who need clean water, clean soil and the right to say "no" to extractivism