John Armstrong: Retreat now, mine another day

Not a moment too soon National has come to its senses and finally acknowledged national parks are "national" parks owned by New Zealanders - not out-of-sight, out-of-mind patches of forest, rock and dirt to be dug up for the almighty dollar or traded like latter-day blankets and muskets at the Government's convenience.

The drum beats coming out of the Beehive yesterday were the sound of the Cabinet beating the retreat on the idea of vesting ownership of the Te Urewera National Park in the hands of Tuhoe as part of that tribe's pending Treaty settlement.

Having annoyed many across the political spectrum with its plan to allow mining in national parks, National, in flirting with the vesting notion - even if that guaranteed rights of access to the park to everyone - exposed itself to what might have been a injurious double-whammy backlash from right, left and probably centre.

The increasing angst in National's ranks from the Cabinet downwards at this prospect prompted the Prime Minister to belatedly declare a bottom line in negotiations which rules out ownership of the park going to Tuhoe.

Key was reluctant to admit that his new bottom line was driven by fear of a voter backlash. It is difficult to see any other reason. However, Key put up one.

"We need to acknowledge this is a national park." National is likewise now backing away from its plan to allow mining in prime conservation areas, including national parks.

The Government is now stressing that it will put its effort into expanding mining in other, less environmentally-prized parts of the conservation estate. That, Key added - further fuelling the likelihood of a backdown - would be "more acceptable" to the public.

This is the fallback option that the Prime Minister seemed to favour before March's release of the discussion paper which canvassed possible mining sites on land like national parks which has Schedule 4 protection from mining under the Crown Minerals Act.

As David Parker, Labour's conservation spokesman, noted yesterday, mining companies can already apply for permits to mine conservation land outside Schedule 4.

The likely backdown would therefore seem to be a reversion to the status quo. Not quite.

A little-mentioned feature of the discussion document recommends that access of mining companies to such land should be subject to joint approval by both the Minister of Energy and Minister of Conservation, rather than solely the latter as currently occurs.

This seemingly minor shift in power away from the Conservation Department goes hand in hand with a separate review which is designed to speed up approval of applications from mining companies for access to land managed by the department.

It could be argued that the Government may end up getting what it always wanted - significant and faster expansion of mining operations on Crown land. But it could have done so without creating a whole lot of trouble for itself in the process.