Minister for Resources and for Oceans and Fisheries Shane Jones doesn't believe evidence of environmental damage from seabed mining.
Minister for Resources and for Oceans and Fisheries Shane Jones doesn't believe evidence of environmental damage from seabed mining.
South Taranaki leaders dispute the Government’s claim that tikanga Māori is delaying seabed mining.
Minister Shane Jones supports Trans-Tasman Resources' bid, citing economic development over environmental concerns.
Opponents, including local mayor Phil Nixon and MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, fear environmental damage from mining.
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 ironsands, 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 for 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”.
South Taranaki Mayor Phil Nixon said the stance was not about tikanga.
He says the wider community is totally against seabed mining and the damage it could cause to a “pristine environment”.
“We heard from the wider community, they are totally against it.
“It’s a fantastic recreational fishing bed and we don’t want to 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.
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 11m deep into the sands in shallow waters 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 11 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
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.
“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.”
