John Armstrong: Mining compromise? More than a possibility

Great Barrier Island. Photo / Sarah Ivey

"Always a possibility" is fast becoming the Prime Minister's stock reply when confronted with tricky-to-answer questions.

That was the case again yesterday when John Key was asked at his post-Cabinet press conference whether National might be backing away from elements of its plan to allow mining in some of the country's national parks and other "high-value" parts of the conservation estate.

Coming on top of assurances there will be no open-cast mining on Great Barrier Island and in the Coromandel, Key's "always a possibility" response might have been another hint that National could end up removing parcels of land in those two areas from the list of potentially mineral-rich sites identified as suitable for mining.

It is hard to tell. The Prime Minister is someone who does not like to rule anything in or out until he has to do so.

Given that last week's discussion document which listed the sites is now open for public consultation, neither would Key want to be seen to be pre-empting that debate by ruling out any moderation of the Government's stance and thumbing his nose at public opposition to his Government's highly contentious proposals.

Alternatively, Key's comments might be seen as further evidence of what seems to be his compromise preference that any major expansion of mining operations take place on Department of Conservation land deemed to be of low environmental value, where mining is already permitted subject to ministerial approval.

Adding grist to that view yesterday was the Prime Minister's outlining a three-stage "test" which mining applications on high-value land would have to pass: first, whether they would boost investment and create jobs; second, the need for mining companies to demonstrate to New Zealanders - not just to the Government - that the financial gains they made would "largely" remain in New Zealand; and, third, that the mining would be environmentally "sustainable".

Those caveats would seem to raise the bar for the approval of applications - especially for foreign-owned mining companies.

However, Key's enunciation of the three-stage test may have been yet another bid by him to shift the debate away from being solely one about conservation values to one about the benefits of mining for the economy - ground where the Government feels far more comfortable.

Key knows he is losing the overall argument. Yesterday, he blamed television news showing file footage of open-cast mining - even though that had been ruled out - as making it harder to persuade people of the long-term benefits of mining for the economy.

Yet since the mineral "stocktake" was released a week ago, the Government has failed to mount any kind of campaign to convince people of the merits of its argument. There seemed to be no strategy for selling the recommendations of the discussion document.

Instead, it stumbled from one public relations howler to the next, culminating in the use of incorrect figures to attack Labour - figures which the hapless Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee was forced to correct before he left for Mexico to sign a renewable energy agreement with that country's Government.

In Brownlee's absence, it has fallen on Key to reassert some control and try to turn the debate around. Truth be told, however, it is probably already too late for that.

In such a political environment, compromise becomes more than just a possibility.