South Taranaki leaders say the government is wrong to claim would-be seabed miners are being held up by tikanga Māori.
Minister for Resources Shane Jones is a vocal supporter of an Australian company’s bid to mine ironsand off the Pātea coast under the Government’s new Fast-Track approvals process.
“Depriving regions of investment due to tikanga Māori, a la Taranaki iron sands, is a fool’s paradise,” he wrote in an opinion column for The Post last week.
Local Democracy Reporting raised with the minister that multiple court cases and protests have been about feared environmental damage – not about tikanga.
“I don’t believe any of those apocryphal stories at all,” said Jones, who is also the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries.
“I believe that the proponents of those stories have been captured by false prophets who don’t believe in economic development.”
Jones promised business leaders at his regional growth roadshow in New Plymouth on Friday he would protect the miner’s mineral rights.
“The people associated with the ironsands off the coast of Taranaki already have certain rights out there. Our Government is not going to … strip people of their rights.”
Over more than a decade, protests and legal action have focused on Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) asking for consent to discharge unwanted seabed sediment – a recognised pollutant – into the ocean.
Opponents say it would cut marine sunlight levels and smother the rich reefs of the South Taranaki Bight.
Last June, South Taranaki District Council called for a ban on seabed mining, telling a parliamentary inquiry any economic benefits wouldn’t outweigh the effects of “environmental vandalism”.
Mayor Phil Nixon said the stance was not about tikanga.
“We heard from the wider community they are totally against it.
“It’s a fantastic recreational fishing bed and we don’t want damage that pristine environment.”
Nixon said the final decision must be made on scientific evidence.
“Until people can absolutely prove anything different, we do not want things like that going ahead.”
Retired appeal court judge Honourable Lyn Stevens had read the seabed mining evidence as chair of the Environmental Protection Authority’s final hearing on the bid.
He told TTR’s lawyers the mining would be harmful.
“It’s inevitable that there will be findings in this case of material harm in various respects and that’s been admitted,” he said.
“Our job will be to assess how significant such material harm is and given those findings how might conditions mitigate those. Or can they?”
Jones said he simply doesn’t believe that damage will occur, saying the reefs are miles from the proposed mine.
“I reject that and the only way I’m going to be convinced of it is through a process that enhances economic rationalism, science and technology.”
Three days into the eight-day EPA hearing of the evidence in March, Trans-Tasman withdrew.
Instead the company applied under the new Fast-Track Approvals Act.
TTR, owned by Australia’s Manuka Resources, wants to vacuum 50 million tonnes of sand every year for 35 years to extract valuable vanadium, and iron and titanium.
It would suck up almost 180,000 tonnes of sand a day, going 11 metres deep into the sands in shallow waters as off Pātea.
But TTR needed consent to dump 45 million tonnes of sediment each year into the sea – or 160,000 tonnes daily.
Much would sink but some would drift off in a sediment ‘plume’ of the finest particles, which seabed mining opponents say will settle over the Pātea Banks reefs.
The EPA rejected TTR’s first application in 2013, but three years later granted consents.
That kicked off a battle through the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court by eleven objectors: Ngāti Ruanui and Ngaa Rauru, the Taranaki-Whanganui Conservation Board, environmental activists and commercial fishing lobby groups and companies.
Supreme Court judges in 2021 unanimously rejected the application over lack of environmental caution, sending it back to the EPA with instructions to block mining if consent conditions couldn’t prevent pollution.
Jones admitted he wasn’t up to speed on the court battle.
“To be honest with you, I’ve lost track of how many attempts and rejections and acceptances this project has had.”
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has led the seabed fight as MP for Te Tai Hauāuru and before that as chief executive of Ngāti Ruanui’s iwi agency.
“It’s always been about the discharge permit and the plume,” she said.
“There’s never been any science, any modelling at all, able to prove that the damage, the discharge from the plume would not create environmental destruction beyond repair.”
She said the minister’s lack of knowledge on details was frightening.
“He has no clue what he’s talking about because, unlike the rest of us, he hasn’t got the experience.
“We’ve got 12-13 years of experience with this sector. He’s never had fracking in his backyard.”
The South Taranaki Bight is home to endangered Māui dolphins and pygmy blue whales.
Jones said: “Sadly, I’ve got a troublesome relationship with the coast of Taranaki because I have zero interest in Maui’s dolphin, but I’m being told I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
NIWA found 14 reefs covered in kelp forests, macroalgal meadows, and gardens of sponges and ancient bryozoans.
Blue cod, kahawai and terakihi are among the 30 fish species.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
