John Armstrong: National wades warily into conservation land minefield

The Government proposes mining in the Coromandel.

So defensive was the Government yesterday, it would not have been a surprise to have seen trenches being dug around the Beehive and sand bags piled around the entrance.

The reason for the high degree of apprehension lay not so much in the amount of land that the Government intends removing from Schedule Four of the Crown Minerals Act - the provision that makes national parks and other areas of "high conservation value" no-go areas for mining.

It is the hugely sensitive location of some of the various parcels of land that make up the 7000ha freed up for mineral exploitation - notably in the Coromandel and on Great Barrier Island - which has National creating a humdinger of a political fight for itself.

The total area detailed in the discussion document released yesterday seems rather timid compared to the Government's earlier rhetoric about "maximising" New Zealand's mineral potential.

However, this is a case of a little now and maybe more - much more - later. Further investigation will be done on identifying other "small targeted areas" which might be removed from Schedule Four.

By taking bite-size chunks over time, the Government hopes to avoid an even bigger fight with mining opponents.

However, incremental opening-up of areas in national parks to mining is hardly going to produce the sort of economic jump-start that National says justifies the policy - especially as it will be up to five years before any new mines actually start production.

If the Government has lacked political courage on that front, the same cannot be said for the areas it has chosen to open up for exploitation.

In selecting pockets of land in the Coromandel and on Great Barrier, it has chosen to fight on territory where the conservation lobby and its arguments are at their strongest.

An early warning of that was John Banks' slamming mining on Great Barrier Island as "unacceptable". An astute judge of the public mood, the former National MP knows which way the wind is going to blow on this issue in local body election year.

Neither he nor anyone else will be fooled by the Government's transparent attempt to buy off critics with a new Conservation Fund paid for by mining royalties. No one will be fooled, either, by the addition of 12,400ha to Schedule Four - supposedly a net gain of 5300ha protected from mining.

Supposedly a fair chunk of this is actually water in the form of marine reserves which in time would have been given such protection regardless.

That leaves the Government mounting two arguments in favour of mining: first, that the impact is minimal - thus Gerry Brownlee's "postcard on Eden Park" analogy - and, second, that lifting New Zealand's economic game leaves New Zealanders no choice but to open up national parks to mining companies.

That is the ground on to which the Government hopes to shift the debate. Unfortunately for National, cool economic logic has a hard job competing with emotions stirred up by warnings of endangered kauri forests, dead kiwis and mud slides.

No wonder Brownlee and John Key were on the defensive yesterday. They know the battle for public opinion is already half-lost.