Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki
Email: info@watchdog.org.nz

2023 was going to the year the Government honoured its' promise to ban new mining activity on conservation land. This long-awaited step forward has now been "delayed" and we remain in the struggle against high gold prices and ever hungry transnationals in Hauraki and in other parts of the country. The excuses for the delay have been various and one of them has validity.

We at Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki do recognise that a mining activity ban on all Department of Conservation (DoC) land will affect Ngai Tahu access to pounamu and raises issues for them about their ancestral rights and relationships to land that the Crown claims to be its very own. A quick read of history shows the unfinished business the Crown has with tangata whenua, and the history of violence and dodgy dealings associated with what they call public land.

Any law banning new mining needs to be negotiated with hapū and iwi to safeguard the future access of tangata whenua to their never ceded lands. The law can be creative when it decides to be and clauses could be written that commit to a permanent Te Tiriti based negotiation to protect these rights and interests and exclude them from a mining ban. However, the other excuses for delay are spurious. The necessity for stewardship land review completion first is a red herring, as this category of conservation land is often ecologically valuable and/or a buffer zone around high value areas.

Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki presented a petition to Parliament in 2022 calling for a moratorium on new mining activity while this stewardship land review was carried out because of the ongoing pressure for mining access and permits.11,000 people signed the petition which is currently being considered by the Environment Select Committee but, in the meantime, more access is being facilitated by DoC and the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

We learned at the Select Committee hearing in June 2023 that over 500 new access agreements are waiting to be processed by DoC in addition to the more than 170 granted since 2017. Is this a gold rush due to the Government policy on mining DoC land or is it motivated by the increase in the price of gold? We do not know but we suspect the latter.

A moratorium makes sense and as a tool it has been used before in campaigns to protect areas while laws were amended, nationally and internationally in seabed mining issues and on land with high biodiversity values. The Government has recently stated there will be no legal changes on the DoC mining issue until after the October 2023 general election and no one is holding their breath on that. One of the biggest problems we have faced is the Crown Minerals Act (CMA) which governs access to minerals. The current CMA purpose is to promote mining but changes before Parliament right now will change this to "manage" mining, which will be very helpful if it becomes law.

Notorious Aussie Billionaire Enters Aotearoa Mining Scene

In the meantime, a new player has entered the Aotearoa mining scene, the transnational Mineralogy International Ltd, owned by the notorious Clive Palmer. This company has applied for prospecting permits over kauri forests in Te Tai Tokerau and over large swathes of the eastern Te Tara o Te Ika a Maui in Hauraki.

It also has a permit to prospect over 28,000 hectares around Kōtuku Moana/Lake Brunner, on the South Island's West Coast. Clive Palmer is the fifth richest person in Australia whom, while in formal politics, was voted Australia's least likeable politician. He has described the litigation he has been involved in as a hobby, and that litigation includes attempted gagging orders against his workers so they couldn't criticise him. His mines in Australia are iron ore, nickel and coal.

He is associated with a range of far-Right wing political views and has included climate deniers in his political campaigns. He has accused anti-coal campaigner Drew Hutton (much respected for his leadership in the "lock the gate" campaign) of being funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) when working on a coal campaign with Greenpeace, and he has been charged with fraud in relation to mining and breach of copyright for stealing a Twisted Sister melody in an election.

During the 2020 Australia Federal elections, his Party spent $A123.5 million more than any other political party. His mining company Mineralogy International Ltd has had an office in Auckland for four years, a move that media suggest is associated with his interest in suing the Western Australian government under Closer Economic Relations (CER) over a mining rights issue. Whatever his reasons for setting up here, we don't want him, or his company let alone them having access to the mountains and forests of Aotearoa for his empire.

Wharekirauponga Mining Application

The biggest challenge in this ongoing protracted saga is the weakness of DoC and MBIE in terms of protecting these forests and their taonga species from underground mining. The application for mining consents is still in process via the Resource Management Act (RMA), but DoC allowed access for this activity without a public process and MBIE has granted a permit using the purpose of the Crown Mineral Act to promote mining as a reason for ticking this box.

Meanwhile a group of urban activists Ours Not Mines is taking on a vital aspect of the Wharekirauponga case behind Whangamata. They have taken Hauraki District Council to the High Court over the Oceana Gold proposal to build vents from the underground mine on a paper road in the heart of the DoC forest. The Hauraki District Council granted long term rights to Oceana to build these structures on the paper road for $1 per year, but Ours Not Mines is challenging the Council's right to put a permanent structure of this public space. Oceana is, of course, trying to use the road to avoid having to ask DoC if it can put up mine structures on the surface of conservation lands.

Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki continues to prepare for the main hearings which will be fighting Oceana Gold over the impacts of blasting and mining under the forest habitat of one of the rarest frogs in the world, the Archeys frog which is a 200-million-year-old unique species that doesn't like vibration. It will be a costly exercise for our group but we hope other groups will support this. If Oceana can mine under Wharekirauponga, it can mine anywhere. There are also some Hauraki iwi expressing deep concern about this proposal.

The West Coast And Hauraki

My partner and I recently went to the beautiful Te Tai Poutini (West Coast) of Te Wai Pounamu for a one week driving holiday. While there we visited Blackball, the home of the first miners' strike and we paid our respects at the Pike River Memorial at Ahaura. The heartbreaking reality of underground coal mining is represented at several memorials on the West Coast, and the unrelenting drivers of capitalism have continued to keep the area far from rich.

Locals may believe in ongoing mining because like returned soldiers they have sacrificed too many people to ever accept it really wasn't worth the war. The isolated and seemingly vast forests of the Coast may appear resilient but only from a local perspective in this time. The wonderful history and values of the mining communities in term of solidarity, courage and care offer many lessons. But I still don't see coal and gold mining as a viable future in a destabilised climate with biodiversity crises across the country. The locals on the Coast need good jobs to replace mining but in the bigger picture of the country and the planet the carbon pollution from coal and gold mining is unacceptable.

We stood on the Denniston Plateau amid bonzai native plants spread like a velvet flowering carpet across the stones, and at that moment mining that incredible place felt criminal. And, sure enough, the road to the most beautiful rocks was closed to visitors by foreign company Bathurst Mining and the Department of Conservation.

Coming from Hauraki and being a direct descendant of gold miners, I realise this is a strong working- class culture and is entrenched on the Coast in a way that it's not in Hauraki. But the price continues to be being paid as capitalism keeps up the boom-and-bust extraction of resources for elite benefit not communities. We just do not see either the West Coast or Waihi area in Hauraki enjoying the comforts and luxuries that the millions of dollars made from mining in their region should have provided.

Hauraki has been through months of devastating rain events and our roads are in very poor shape, we can only hope the huge toxic waste dams at Waihi beside the Ohinemuri River stand up to the climate crisis. We ask the people not in these regions to also stand up with us as we continue a more than 40- year-old struggle to protect the land and water from greed. Let's mine e-waste, not mountains.