Big names in New Zealand music are supporting a campaign against OceanaGold’s proposed gold and silver mine underneath conservation land between Waihī and Whangamatā, Coromandel, which could be approved under controversial fast-track legislation.
Morgan Donoghue is driving a gravel road south of Whangamatā when a hand-written note from New Zealand musician Benee lands in his inbox.
She’s written the lyrics to her worldwide hit Soaked: “Secrets have been brewing up a storm, did not expect them to transform…”
It’s a boost before today’s mission – a hike into the Wharekirauponga bush, which is conservation land that could soon have a massive gold mining operation underneath it.
OceanaGold has bought a farm that borders the other side of this Coromandel forest and is near its existing mining sites in Waihī.
From its new property, it plans to dig a 6.8km tunnel to reach about 1.5 million ounces of gold underneath Wharekirauponga, which at today’s surging prices would be worth more than $4 billion. About $50m worth of silver would also be mined.
For context, Auckland’s Waterview tunnel is 2.4km long.
The tunnel will be two side-by-side underground roadways, allowing miners with explosives and excavating equipment to remove ore (material containing valuable metals).
It will start at ground level and descend towards the mine, which will have a depth varying between one and two Sky Towers. Mining voids will be dug out from the tunnel and backfilled with rock as the operation progresses.
There will be four ventilation shafts that open onto the conservation land. On top of each will be a funnel-like tower, called an evasé. These will be up to 8m tall and, with fencing, take up about half a tennis court each.
Blasting underneath (mining would be 24/7) would create noise and vibrations. That will be carefully managed to minimise any minor effects on the environment, OceanaGold says, including on the threatened Archey’s frog, which is found only in pockets of bush in the Coromandel and King Country.
The tiny frogs have been described as living fossils and modern-day dinosaurs because they are almost indistinguishable from the fossilised remains of their relatives that lived 150 million years ago.
Opponents to OceanaGold’s plans - including Donoghue, the son of co-founding members of the anti-mining group Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki - argue the environmental disruption and risk is too great, and there’s no place for mining on, or underneath, conservation land.
Donoghue, 49, helped run early Big Day Out festivals and a major record label and has rubbed shoulders with artists including Robbie Williams, Radiohead and Rihanna.
He now leads the NZ division of inMusic Brands, which owns some of the world’s leading musical hardware brands.
Donoghue’s mum still lives in the Coromandel, and he was incensed when he heard OceanaGold had avoided the need to get Department of Conservation approval for its vents by proposing they be placed on a “paper road” owned by Hauraki District Council - land set aside more than a century ago, but never used and indistinguishable from the dense, mature bush around it.
The council granted the company a 40-year license to occupy parts of the “road”, which cuts through the conservation area, for a nominal fee of $1 a year.
That’s only one hurdle cleared - resource consent was still needed to begin mining, including consideration of the protection of wildlife and the environment.
Donoghue took legal action through his anti-mining group Ours Not Mines, arguing the council had no power to grant such a deal.
In February the Hamilton High Court declined his application for a judicial review. He’s now appealing that decision to the Court of Appeal, and enlisting some of the biggest names in New Zealand music to help with costs of over $60,000.
The lyrics signed by Benee will be sold on Trade Me, part of a “musicians against mines lyrical art auction”, which launches today.
Others onboard include Fat Freddy’s Drop, Supergroove, the Phoenix Foundation, Che Fu, Georgia Lines, Hollie Smith and Don McGlashan, Goldenhorse, Goodshirt, Pluto, Greg Johnson, Kings and Ladi 6.
The campaign comes in the shadow of the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill, which would give three ministers broad powers to consent infrastructure and development projects that have significant regional or national benefits.
OceanaGold is eyeing fast-track - currently being considered by a select committee before further votes in Parliament - to get its tunnel approved.
Resources Minister Shane Jones has said in parliamentary debate that under his leadership “mining is coming back”, and “if there is a mineral, if there is a mining opportunity and it’s impeded by a blind frog, goodbye, Freddy”.
For Donoghue, the trek into Wharekirauponga, which is within the conservation area known as Coromandel Forest Park, underlines what’s at stake.
The DoC track winds along the old horse-drawn tram track used when the area was mined for gold over a century ago. Native bush, including stands of kauri and towering rimu, has regenerated, and our guides Clive Duxfield and Rosemary Segedin, local members of Coromandel Watchdog, point out a stream where freshwater crayfish can be found.
As we climb the noise from mining helicopters grows. They are working in an area just above the spectacular Wharekirauponga waterfalls – OceanaGold has DoC permission to carry out exploratory drilling, and the helicopters are towing core samples back to Waihī. Beyond a “track closed” sign is temporary accommodation for the drill teams.
Seeing the mining activity on conservation land is disturbing, says Donoghue, raising his voice to be heard over the helicopters.
“We definitely need to stop this.”
From eco-communes to hanging with Rihanna
Until the age of 5, Donoghue lived in eco-communes at the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula. The land and lifestyle were chosen by his parents, Kate and Mike after they emigrated from the United Kingdom a couple of years before he was born.
The family moved to Coromandel Town, where Kate taught at the local school. Mike, who had degrees in zoology and oceanography, worked as a long-line snapper fisherman. In 1987 he joined DoC, heading work on marine mammal policy and protection.
The principal scientific adviser to NZ’s delegation to the International Whaling Commission, he played key roles in ending Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean, the establishment of marine mammal sanctuaries in the Banks Peninsula and sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands, and humpback whale research in the Pacific.
The Donoghues were also at the forefront of the anti-mining movement in the Coromandel, including occupations at drilling sites that sometimes led to detainment by police.
Mike was due to give a talk on the Rainbow Warrior on July 10, 1985, but pulled out because of illness. Later that night the Greenpeace ship was blown up by French secret service agents, killing photographer Fernando Pereira.
Just after midnight the Donoghues’ home phone rang and was picked up by Morgan, aged 10 at the time. It was Steve Sawyer, a Rainbow Warrior crew member.
“He went, ‘The f*****s have blown up my ship, the f*****s are blown up my ship!’ He knew it was the French.”
Donoghue was immersed in his parents’ passion for conservation, but his was music. His best mate in high school asked Donoghue to manage - “carrying amps and drums around” - his band, Jungle Fungus, who signed to a record label and toured.
In 1996, Donoghue helped run the Big Day Out, and before his 21st birthday had worked with more than 100 touring bands and artists, including the Smashing Pumpkins, Alanis Morissette, the Fugees and Bjork.
Donoghue moved up from promotions to label manager for EMI, working with established names like Neil Finn, and signing soon-to-be-famous bands including Goodshirt, The Black Seeds and Blindspott. Visiting artists on the label included Radiohead, the Beastie Boys and a yet-to-become-huge band called Coldplay.
He joined Vodafone, rising to their global head of music in London, where he judged the Brit Awards and mingled with Rihanna backstage.
A major digital download deal between Vodafone and Nokia that came up agonisingly short prompted him to return home after three years abroad.
Donoghue now lives in Mt Eden, Auckland, and leads inMusic Brands NZ. It employs about 40 people and makes embedded software for the company’s DJ software brands, operating from an uptown warehouse office with craft beer in the fridge and a Creature from the Black Lagoon pinball machine.
He established Ours Not Mines in January 2022, along with David Cormack, a former Green Party communications and policy director who now co-owns a PR firm in Wellington.
The group’s name is taken from a placard held by then opposition MP Jacinda Ardern in 2010, during a protest march down Queen St, demanding conservation land be protected from mining.
Ardern promised no new mines on conservation land after leading Labour into power, but the legislation never eventuated, despite campaigns by Ours Not Mines and others.
Donoghue changed tack and targeted OceanaGold through the courts. LeeSalmonLong took on the case for free (the Auckland-based litigation firm has done pro-bono work for other environmental groups including Greenpeace).
Then, tragedy struck. Donoghue’s mum was travelling overseas with his eldest daughter, and Mike wasn’t answering her calls. He’d suffered a massive stroke soon after returning from his daily swim. A neighbour sent to investigate called for help.
“The helicopter arrived at Waikato Hospital the same time I did,” Donoghue says. “Dad survived for three weeks. They thought he was going to be alright.”
During that period, Donoghue tested positive for Covid-19. He never developed symptoms, and three hours before his isolation ended his father died, on November 29, 2022.
The last time they’d been together Donoghue had sat by the hospital bed and read his dad a “see you in court” letter Ours Not Mines was about to send to Hauraki District Council.
An obituary in the Herald for Mike Donoghue, who was 72, quoted former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who was NZ’s representative on the International Whaling Commission.
“You have rendered your country great service,” Palmer told his old friend. “The leviathans of the deep owe you a great deal, especially your beloved humpback whales.”
Shane Jones dismisses ‘ideological mascara’
OceanaGold met DoC in September 2020 and discussed its need for vents in Wharekirauponga. The department expected to receive an access arrangement application, but in July 2021 the mining company asked Hauraki District Council for a licence to use its paper road.
DoC wrote to the council, expressing strong concern that granting such access, “effectively shifts the decision-making process away from DoC’s legislative mandate, which is to ensure the conservation of the Wharekirauponga Forest ecosystem”.
Nonetheless, the licence was approved two months later at a council meeting on September 15, 2021. Mayor Toby Adams says that decision was procedural and didn’t signify support for the mining project, and environmental issues would be considered during the subsequent consenting process.
Ours Not Mines challenge to the licence was heard in the Hamilton High Court in November 2023.
The council didn’t have the power to grant what in substance amounted to a lease, argued the group’s lawyers, Tim Mullins and Adam McDonald. The fenced-off vents - “distinctly at odds with any recognised or reasonable use of the land as a road” - would interfere with the public’s right to pass and amount to a public nuisance.
Justice Harvey noted there were no plans for the road to be used in the foreseeable future, with vehicle access impossible and pedestrian access infrequent and difficult.
“Instead of dense bush and vegetation obstructing travel, in the temporary licensed areas there will be a structure and fencing obstructing travel but a clear passageway of 5m which is ample for a pedestrian,” he wrote in the February 2024 judgment.
“After the licence term expires, [OceanaGold] is required to infill the mining shaft, remove all the structures and fencing and replant the ground.”
It wasn’t appropriate to weigh up the wider environmental effects, Justice Harvey wrote - that would be done in due course through Resource Management Act applications.
OceanaGold lodged those but was subsequently one of the organisations approached by the Government about applying to have consents fast-tracked under the new regime, and it has now done so for the Wharekirauponga project.
Under the legislation’s current drafting, three ministers will receive expert advice and then ultimately green light projects: Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones and Transport Minister Simeon Brown.
A select committee considering the bill has received nearly 27,000 submissions, many strongly opposed on environmental grounds. Others, including the Auditor-General, have concerns about transparency and real or perceived conflicts of interest. (For the record, OceanaGold says it doesn’t make donations to political parties or individual politicians.)
Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, Coromandel Watchdog, WWF-New Zealand and other groups have organised a “march for nature” down Queen St on June 8.
Catherine Delahunty, spokesperson for Coromandel Watchdog, former Green MP and close friend of the Donoghue family, says Jones’ “Goodbye Freddy” comments are Trump-like, and “emphasise that our unique biodiversity must be defended”.
“If you can mine underneath the habitat of one of the most endangered species you can mine anywhere, and there’s going to be ongoing risk to the whole of Te Tara-o-te-Ika-a-Māui (the Coromandel Peninsula).”
Bishop has indicated changes could be made before the legislation’s second and final reading, including removing the final decision-making power from ministers.
His office declined to comment, but Jones, the NZ First deputy leader, is bullish about the need for change, saying the current resource consent process doesn’t give enough weight to economic development.
“No bill is perfect. No doubt there will be further refinements. But I have been somewhat astounded by how incandescent a number of the responses have been. Do these people have no conception of how dire our economic circumstances are?
“Catherine [Delahunty] and the other emerald lizards are not being fair in acknowledging that mining nowadays is a tremendously responsible industry, and they go through many hoops to ensure that the impact from their activity does not leave lasting damage.
“It’s convenient for them to catastrophise effects upon the environment because their underlying ideology is anti-development, anti-mining and quite frankly, anti-capitalism … I just regard it as ideological mascara.”
What new gold mining is planned around Waihī
Gold was discovered at Pukewā, Waihī in 1878. Tunnels dug underneath the rapidly-growing town weren’t backfilled - in 2001 a family was home when the ground fell in below their house, creating a 50m by 15m hole. Twenty-six homes in nearby streets were red-stickered.
The Waihi Gold Company closed in 1952. Rising gold prices saw the old Martha Hill mine site reopen in 1988, as an opencast mine.
Its roughly 800m long, 600m wide and 260m deep pit has been closed since a landslide shortly before Canadian multinational OceanaGold - which also runs the Macraes mine in the South Island - took over operations in 2015.
OceanaGold wants to eventually reopen and extend the Martha pit but, in the meantime, has dug mines underneath the town.
Near the entrance portal to those tunnels, a processing plant runs 24 hours a day, milling ore into a fine powder. A cyanide solution then dissolves the gold and silver.
The material left over, called tailings, is stored in impoundments or ponds, formed by engineered embankments that are progressively raised to increase capacity.
A third tailings pond would be built for the Wharekirauponga underground mine. OceanaGold also wants to dig a new open pit mine, which will be smaller than at Martha and filled in once no longer needed.
The portal to the proposed tunnel under Wharekirauponga would be some distance from the existing processing facilities. A second 4.7km tunnel will link the two, and avoid heavy trucks hauling ore overhead.
The tunnels, processing facility upgrade, new open pit and tailings pond are together called the “Waihi North” project.
This will cost more than $600m, OceanaGold says, and add about 300 jobs to the current workforce of approximately 350, with an extra 1300 local jobs indirectly supported.
The company takes the Herald on a helicopter tour above Wharekirauponga. On a ridgeline, a wooden platform is crammed with portacabins and a water tank. An exploratory rig is nearby – teams work around the clock, drilling core samples which are helicoptered back to Waihī for analysis.
It says teams of ecologists are also in the forest regularly counting frogs, doing predator control and vegetation surveys, to meet DoC’s conditions for the exploratory drilling.
If mining is approved, the Crown’s cut of extracted gold and silver will likely be 5 per cent of accounting profits – expected to be around $8m a year.
The wider gross value contribution from Waihī mining to New Zealand’s economy would more than double to $269m per annum, OceanaGold says, and the lifespan of mining would be extended to 2037, and likely longer.
That will benefit families like that of Brett Sims, a fitter who is currently the acting mines rescue co-ordinator. His 27-year-old son also works at the mine.
“People have their own experiences and horizons, and different reasons for feeling different ways,” the 60-year-old says when asked about opposition to mining.
“For me, I’ve been able to raise a family, and my son is now getting to that age where he might want to do that, and it’s a great area to live.”
OceanaGold says surveys show about 70 to 80 per cent of Waihī residents support its mining.
A Herald vox-pop of 30 residents on the town’s main street finds 20 support mining underneath Wharekirauponga, all citing the economic boost for Waihī. Many also appreciate the company’s annual donations to schools. Two residents interviewed were opposed, and the rest were neutral or didn’t know enough to say.
Later, a survey of 30 people in Whangamatā found only four in favour, with 14 opposed, eight who didn’t know about it, and four neutral.
In Waihī, Zoe, a mother of two, says banks and other businesses have closed recently.
“If we lost the economy that comes with the mine, people couldn’t afford to stay – they’d go where the work is.”
Bryan Callaghan, co-owner of Waihi Sports & Cycles, says the town isn’t thriving but does better than other centres because of the mining and associated spending. He believes steps to protect the environment will work.
Not everyone is so sure. A woman, on the way to school with her son, tells the Herald mining has scarred the area.
“As Māori, our roots are in the land, and they took the whole mountain away just so they could get the gold.”
OceanaGold has consulted with 10 local iwi and hapū about the mining expansion. Most declined to comment or couldn’t be reached by deadline, but Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki chair John Tamihere confirms strong opposition.
Wharekirauponga is adjacent to the iwi’s whenua (land), he says, and the planned extension of the Martha pit will bring it closer to Waihi Central School, which will be part of its Treaty settlement.
“We do not oppose mining per se but we oppose arrogant foreign multinationals exhibiting cavalier attitudes,” Tamihere says.
“We terminated our MOU (memorandum of understanding) with Oceana two years ago and will not participate in their silly so-called consultation processes.
“They, like all colonisers, [and] given their offshore conduct, think they can herd all the natives under one umbrella and schmooze the lot because to them we are all the same.”
OceanaGold has faced accusations its gold and copper mine in the northern Philippines has violated the rights of indigenous people and been environmentally destructive. It strongly denies wrongdoing, and says the local council recently recognised overwhelming community support for the project.
Tamihere says assurances that underground mining at Wharekirauponga won’t be environmentally risky are “preposterous”.
“The life of the mine is over two decades. Noise, traffic, water table adverse impacts will occur, regardless of what they say. Distillation ponds will leachate, [there will be] natural adverse weather events. Even after they leave our mokopuna will have to clean up.”
Ours Not Mines and Coromandel Watchdog raise similar concerns: possible contamination of watercourses and land, including from heavy metals and the new tailings facility, and the impact on wildlife including Archey’s Frogs, which are deaf but are sensitive to vibrations.
The touted jobs and economic benefits aren’t nearly enough given those huge risks, Donoghue says, and Waihī has the same issues with deprivation as other towns, despite decades of mining that’s radically altered its surrounds.
In response, OceanaGold says modern technology and its planned environmental mitigations mean such scenarios won’t occur. Tailings impoundments, for instance, are independently monitored for structural integrity and water quality, it says, and engineered to withstand massive earthquakes and rainfall.
An annually-adjusted bond of $60m covers Waihī operations, to fund the cost of rehabilitation, even if the company were to close suddenly. This will be recalculated if Waihi North is approved.
OceanaGold has funded research by ecology consultant Dr Brian Lloyd, who previously worked for DoC, that indicated Archey’s numbers are many times greater than thought. The findings, which haven’t been formally peer-reviewed and were strongly criticised by another ecologist, have been submitted to DoC.
The current conservation status of Archey’s is “at risk - declining”. This status and that of other amphibians is being reviewed for DoC by an independent panel of experts, with results published later this year.
OceanaGold says only “localised and minor” effects on the frogs are expected, and the forest will be “left in an improved state from an ecological perspective”.
It will fund an intensive pest and predator-eradication programme until 2050, it says, covering nearly 19,000 hectares and killing pigs, ferrets and other pests that eat the frogs and other wildlife.
“That’s not to offset or compensate for impacts of the project,” says Alison Paul, OceanaGold’s NZ general manager of corporate and legal affairs.
“That is a purely additional programme that is acknowledging the fact that we’re going to be mining under conservation land, and it’s the right thing to do.”
Paul says OceanaGold’s door is open to Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki, and it follows due process on resource consents and other approvals.
The proposed Martha pit boundary change will have a full public hearing, she says, and reopening the pit will need a change to the district plan and resource consents (it isn’t part of the Waihi North project or any fast-track application).
Asked if mining and conservation land should mix, Paul points to OceanaGold’s rehabilitation and reforestation of an open pit mine on conservation land near Reefton, on the South Island’s West Coast.
A larger “win-win” of economic benefits and conservation can happen at Wharekirauponga, she says.
“People will, in principle, not want to see conservation mixing with mining. But I think there’s actually room to be a little more creative and a little braver about that, and to see what’s possible.”
Auctioning NZ music history
Donoghue has deployed his own creativity to raise money for the costs he owes OceanaGold and HDC (which are partial – the council says it’s spent about $200,000).
His musician contacts are happy to help. In Thames, former Supergroove frontman Karl Steven hands Donoghue a piece of NZ music history – hand-written lyrics to Can’t Get Enough, complete with illustrations and a section in mirror writing.
The lyrics of the 1994 mega-hit were never officially produced, and Steven says those circulating online are wrong in places. Why becomes clear when he gives an example.
“A line they always get wrong is the one that goes, ‘Scorn to conform to the norm yawn like a lawn pawn I was born to reform warm corn’.”
Steven quit Supergroove at age 21 and later completed a PhD in philosophy at Cambridge University. He now works as an acclaimed composer for TV and film and says supporting Ours Not Mines is a no-brainer.
“It would be incredibly ungrateful of me to live amongst this beauty every day ... a few streets away is forest stretching for miles until you hit the world’s biggest ocean ... [and not do] the slightest thing to help ensure it exists for future generations.”
Further up the coast road and above Coromandel Town is the art-filled home of Kate Donoghue, surrounded by olive trees and native bush, grown from scrub by her and Mike. Swallows have claimed an old mining shaft on the property.
Mother and son delve through boxes of records, newspaper clippings and pamphlets from decades of environmental advocacy.
In one photo from circa 1988 a staunch-looking Kate is holding her ground as a police officer grabs another protestor. The confrontation began when she spotted a drilling rig drive past Manaia School and left her class to go in pursuit, overtaking and then blocking the rig with her old Subaru.
“It was an easy campaign, people flocked to it,” she says of the anti-mining fight.
“It’s very sad that we have to go through this all again, but we’re ready for it. Aren’t we, Morgan? We have to do it. And Mike wouldn’t be surprised at us doing it.”
“He would be surprised if we weren’t,” adds her son.
Nicholas Jones is an investigative reporter at the Herald. He won the best individual investigation and best social issues reporter categories at the 2023 Voyager Media Awards.
