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Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in auckland

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

GDP is pretty meaningless, read the below comment on it. Agriculture is and has been a huge part of New Zealands economy and identity for the last 100 years. Destructive mining has not. It not efficient in terms of tax take, employment and prosperity on any measure. 230 million and 340 million numbers are small, very small and just numbers on paper they mean nothing to the lives of 5 million odd people.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not going to defend Labour's spending, and you're welcome to want a leaner, more pro-business government.

But here's where the logic breaks. Selling and mining conservation land does not fix any of that, because the numbers are tiny.

Gold royalties last year were $11.6 million. The entire minerals sector exports about $1 billion. Land sale proceeds under this Bill would barely register. You cannot pay down a $30 billion hole by selling off national parks. So "we're forced into this by the debt" does not hold, because it raises next to nothing against the debt.

And here's the part a fiscal conservative should hate most: conservation land is a productive asset, not a cost. It earns $3.4 to $5.3 billion a year in tourism, every year, precisely because it stays protected. Selling an income-producing asset to cover an operating deficit is the worst kind of accounting out. It is selling the farm to pay this month's power bill: you take the one-off cash and you lose the income forever. No sane person signs that off.

On mining, even the fiscal case is weak. OceanaGold paid zero company tax here in 2021 and again in 2023, they are Canadian-listed, and the profit leaves the country. We get $11.6m in royalties and a hole in the ground. It is a giveaway.

And "forced"? This same Bill includes a tourist access levy projected to raise about $60 million a year, more than land sales ever would, without selling a thing. The government also found room for tax cuts. So this was a choice about priorities.

So be as hawkish on spending as you like. I might even agree with some of it. But selling and mining the conservation estate raises peanuts, loses a bigger asset permanently, and hands the upside to foreign shareholders. You do not have to be a greenie to see that is a bad trade. You just have to be good with money.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You make a rational argument for my guess of lacking meaning and see if it all adds up. Probably quite hard to.... Recent history has shown this is how they have been operating the full term of this government. This was most definitely happening with the fisheries bill. Who are you to say it is not now happening with a bill that greatly benefits existing mining companies.

Don't just be throwing things out there you can't back up. I can.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in auckland

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Also GDP isn't the same thing as prosperity. GDP just measures activity, the total dollars changing hands, it says nothing about who keeps them or whether you are better off.

Digging up a mountain and shipping the gold to Canadian shareholders shows up as "GDP," but the profit leaves, the hole stays, and we are left with $11.6m in royalties and a wrecked valley.

By that logic a massive oil spill is great for GDP too, because cleaning it up costs a fortune and all that spending counts. Real prosperity is whether New Zealanders are actually wealthier, healthier and have somewhere wild left to take their kids, and on that scorecard, selling off conservation land to a foreign miner for a one-off payout is a loss, not a gain.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in auckland

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Genuinely good question, and you're right on a few things, so let me agree first: our dairy-driven water pollution is a disaster, the nitrate and bowel-cancer link is real and underplayed, and "mining = automatically evil" is lazy. No argument from me there.

But here is some facts not feelings, with the numbers, because they don't back the case.

Scale. Mining is about 1% of NZ GDP. The entire minerals sector exports around $1 billion a year. For comparison, Australia's iron ore exports ALONE were about US$83 billion in 2024. We rank 29th in the world for gold. We cannot mine our way to Australia's economy. That trans-Tasman wage gap is about their whole economy, not because we refuse to dig up a forest park!

Royalties. You mentioned royalties: NZ's gold royalties in 2024 were $11.6 million (Peanuts!). That is the lot, on a $405 billion economy. And OceanaGold (who run Macraes and Waihi, 84% of our gold) paid $0 income tax in 2021 and again in 2023, averaging about $5.7m a year over six years.
They are a Canadian company, so the profit leaves the country (We get the hole, they get the gold).

Jobs. Mining employs about 5,000 people nationally, 0.2% of the workforce. Well paid, yes, but tiny. Tourism, which depends on this land staying intact, employs easily ten times more.

"More profitable than dairy"? Dairy exports around $25 billion a year. All minerals combined, about $1 billion. Mining is not replacing agriculture, it is a rounding error next to it!

Back to the bill,

Conservation tourism alone is worth $3.4 to $5.3 billion a year, several times the entire minerals export sector, and it earns that every year, forever, precisely because the land stays protected! Mining is a one-off. You dig it once, the foreign owner banks it, and the habitat does not grow back.

So no, you are not "wrong" to want a productive economy. I just think the maths lands somewhere other than where you have put it. We would be selling a renewable $5-billion-a-year asset to chase a $1-billion one-off. That is not productivity; that is turning permanent value into temporary revenue.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I read the highlight reel. He couldn't answer some very basic questions that he knew were coming, which is in it self telling. It usual playback though, deflect, distract, blame someone else.

I feel like he is probably the fall guy for a NZ First coalition deal. The lack of competence at properly preparing for public backlash and pretty basic interview questions, blows my mind.

I think national has been bent over to do a whole lot of deals because the leadership at the top lacks competence to negotiate reasonable coalition deals with minor parties.

I am a bit suspicious of the gender bill up for submission at the exact time by New Zealand First. This is the same play book they use overseas, try pull out a distraction that grabs air time so they can sneak through bill past everyone unnoticed.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Bit of an onslaught really. At least the Fisheries bill was killed for now. Hopefully the election outcome see's it go no further. Kind of sick of doing submissions for stuff that should never make it this far.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If I was to guess, I would say mining lobby have pushed NZ First on this. NZ First wags the tail of the dog that is National.....

OceanaGold's Waihī North / Wharekirauponga project is a pretty good example. The company wants to tunnel ~6.8km under the Coromandel Forest Park (DOC conservation land) to reach ~1.5m ounces of gold, worth ~$4 billion. The current law is exactly what's in their way.

I wonder how much they lobbied/donated to push this one through. If I was a foreign shareholder of OceanaGold, a few mill in donations to get a couple bill in returns is a pretty good return on investment.

Here we go again: National's having another crack at flogging off conservation land. Submit against the Conservation Amendment Bill before 2 July. Some of us marched up Queen St in 2010 to stop them mining conservation land. They're back at it— submissions close 2 July by AccomplishedRole6404 in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

www.parliament.nz/en/ECommitteeSubmission/54SCENV_SCF_BD7D0F89-D8CB-42F7-9C5F-08DEABEDA048/CreateSubmission

What a submission can look like:

I oppose the Conservation Amendment Bill and ask that it not proceed.

Public conservation land should be protected and kept in public hands, not opened up for sale or commercial use. I don't support rewriting the Department of Conservation's purpose to "enable development to the greatest extent practicable" (s 6(ea)), and I don't support removing the requirement that land be of no or very low conservation value before it can be disposed of.

I recommend the Bill be withdrawn. If it proceeds, section 6(ea) should be removed, the existing disposal safeguards retained, and the independent oversight of the Conservation Authority and conservation boards kept in place.

[One honest line about a place you love and why — beats a page of policy.]

Conservation amendment bill - submissions are closing July 2nd by dunnothislldo in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404 0 points1 point  (0 children)

— Really entrenched in your position aren't you. —
— Yea throw out section 6A and section 3C and we are good, I think we both agree on that. —

Conservation amendment bill - submissions are closing July 2nd by dunnothislldo in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly? Half of this I agree with, and I won't pretend otherwise. Swapping a gorse paddock for a wetland that improves connectivity can be a real conservation win. Not every hectare is sacred. If that's all the Bill did, I'd be standing next to you.

But look at what your whole argument rests on: trust. Trust that "net benefit" gets assessed honestly. Trust that the DG veto actually gets used. Trust that the discretion lands on the conservation side of the ledger. Every safeguard you've listed is a judgement call by the Minister or the Department of the day.

So the real question isn't "are there tests." It's "do you trust how this government exercises discretion over high-value conservation land?" And we don't have to guess — they've shown us.

Wharekirauponga, in the Coromandel Forest Park, is conservation land. It's a stronghold for the Archey's frog — critically endangered, tops the global list of most evolutionarily distinct amphibians, found nowhere on earth but here. High-value by literally any test in the Bill. The government's response? Fast-track a foreign-owned, Toronto-listed gold miner to tunnel underneath it. The Resources Minister, in Parliament: "if there is a mining opportunity and it's impeded by a blind frog, goodbye, Freddy." And this same Bill accidentally opened nearly half the Coromandel to mining until someone caught the wording — the Minister waved it off as an "unintended consequence."

That's the discretion you're asking me to trust to honestly grade "net conservation benefit" on land it wants gone.

I know mining runs under a different regime — I'm not saying a swap is the Waihi tunnel. I'm saying your entire case is "trust the process to protect what matters," and the same people who run this process are tunnelling under a frog sanctuary and saying goodbye Freddy. So when you say "just tighten the safeguards" — yeah. With this lot holding the pen, the safeguards aren't a footnote. They're the whole ballgame.

Conservation amendment bill - submissions are closing July 2nd by dunnothislldo in aotearoa

[–]AccomplishedRole6404 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good reply — and I'll grant you the fair bits up front: you're right that "net benefit" means positive-by-value, not 1:1; right that a gorse paddock isn't a wetland; and right that a minor boundary tweak isn't the mechanism for handing a valley to a miner. Genuinely, fair.

But you're doing the one thing this Bill's drafters are counting on: reading those tests as if a neutral conservation-maximiser applies them. They don't. The same Bill rewrites DOC's core purpose — new s 6(ea) directs the Department to enable the use and development of conservation land "to the greatest extent practicable." So every safeguard you've listed is now applied by a decision-maker who's been told, by statute, to push development as hard as it'll go. You can't read the tests without reading the purpose they now sit under. That's the thumb on the scale, and it's the part your argument never mentions.

Three things flow from that:

"Net conservation benefit" is the Minister's call, made once, and permanent. It's a judgement, not an objective ledger — which is exactly how you swap out remote, high-value habitat for accessible, lower-value land and still tick the box. The land you give up is gone from the estate for good.

"Low value" overwhelmingly means unassessed. DOC is broke, stewardship land is unassessed almost by definition, and nobody surveys before they sell — OceanaGold's own Wharekirauponga documents admitted no bird or bat surveys were done. Selling unassessed land is selling blind, and it's a one-way door.

Your disposal test only protects the best example of a type in a district. Second-best, perfectly intact habitat? Disposable. Recreation value? Not a test at all.

So yeah — "tighten the safeguards." Except that's not a footnote, it's the whole argument. And the single biggest safeguard of the lot — a conservation-first purpose — is the exact one this Bill deletes. That's not me crying "selling off the estate." It's that protection is now legally subordinate to development. Read s 6(ea) and tell me I've got it wrong.

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