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Russel Norman - Source: Supplied -
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Panel response to Q+A interview with Russel Norman and Doug Gordon.
PAUL HOLMES Alright so let's find out what the panel thought about mining in the conservation land. Does that debate show us a little bit about what this debate is gonna be like?
JON JOHANNSON - Political Analyst Absolutely, that was a microcosm of what's going to occur over the next few years, because people feel emotionally attached to their place and it pits two different visions of New Zealand, you know New Zealand primarily as a place to live, versus New Zealand primarily as a place to do business, and people feel very heated about it in both camps. So this is gonna be a rancorous debate and I think what the government has to do is make it very very clear to the public precisely what is being done, how they're going to weigh this trade off between the environmental as Russel points out, and the potential mineral wealth as Doug was talking about.
PAUL It's not just a green issue too, it goes to the middle classes doesn't it, you know the Aucklanders with the house at Omaha Beach, with the place at Whitianga or Whangamata, you know who wants a mine over the back yard and great big trucks rolling up and down the road in the summer time. So it's got big capacity, big political capacity, do you think Phil?
PHIL O'REILLY - Business New Zealand Well one of the things that worries me about this whole debate is the absolutism of it, it's ridiculous, so we're gonna dig a hole and no tourists are gonna come, get outa here, so it's really a case of what's reasonable and how you work out that balance.
JON But we have not had the debate in this country about how resilient that brand is, and what the opportunity cost is if that brand is destroyed.
PHIL Precisely, but it's because there's been absolutism on the other side.
PAUL But we go to countries as New Zealand is, and we admire the natural beauty, we go to the Grand Canyon, we go to Yosemite, and we know they've got huge mining operations somewhere in that country, but it doesn't stop us going there, what do you think, gonna be a big one?
MAXINE GAY - National Distribution Union Well I found it interesting, particularly following Kim Hill's interview yesterday with Sefton somebody or other who has written a book called The Resource Curse, and he made the point that just because you discover oil or minerals it doesn't actually mean that the citizens in your country are going to be better off, and in fact in many cases they can be even more impoverished. We have the equivalent of a mining industry here, we have white gold, and all the degradation that comes from that, and one of the fascinating things in Don Brash's report looking at the gaps between New Zealand and Australia, was if you took Australian mining and the mineral industry out of the GDP per capita, and you took New Zealand's agriculture and fisheries out, what you ended up with was the gaps that were exactly the same.
PAUL Alright, petroleum exports last year accounted for one billion dollars of revenue, 550 million of that was just clipping the ticket, it was royalties, I don't see how that damages the country, but no you're right about the absolutism. I mean why can't Russel agree to perhaps looking at every case, case by case when he's assured by the Prime Minister who is also the Minister of Tourism that there'll be very strict rules.
JON You need to turn down the volume and turn down the slogans on this Paul and just have logical debate about it, we're already mining the conservation estate.
PHIL So you know the sort of absolutism of the debate really concerns me, but I'm a Kiwi too, you don't want to go and destroy the natural environment in the way that we see in so many other countries. So this is a real New Zealand debate I agree.
JON But to have that debate you need a lot of information so people can make informed decisions.
PAUL If you look now at total revenues from mining in New Zealand being two billion a year and it could be by 20-25 250 billion, god where's the argument. Jobs.
MAXINE Well in a free market world price environment it's a fallacy to say that the citizens in that country may well be better off as a result of that, the fact of the matter is that they aren't ...
PAUL You shouldn't be listening too much to old hippies on national radio.
MAXINE Well you and I can remember a day when we used to get free milk or subsidised milk, if the dairy farmers did okay. It's illegal to do that now, so similarly if we found oil and the world price for oil goes up it would be illegal for New Zealand citizens to be subsidised or have cheap oil, so it's a nonsense.
JON I think what the Prime Minister needs to do as Phil was saying, we need to understand what terms mean, like there's going to be you know special protections and looking at how they're going to do it cleanly and all of that, so that we understand better what is being done.
PAUL Didn't you know old Doug Gordon's line though about how mining is in fact 36,000 people go to the Pike River Mine or something like this, so the mine can be a fascinating thing and a tourist attraction.
