Digging in for conservation land battle

Proponents of mining say it need not take the form of Waihi's open cast mine.

There's gold in them thar hills. And antimony, beryllium, chromium, rare earth elements and industrial minerals all the way to zeolite.

New Zealand is far from Australia's unlucky cousin in its mineral potential, mining advocates say. "We are a resource-rich nation in a resource-hungry world," says the website of Straterra, a natural resource industry group.

The sky's the limit when it comes to talking up the wealth beneath our land and seabed. In an influential report in March 2008, consultant geologist Richard Barker estimated the potential value of just seven minerals, including gold, copper, iron and molybdenum (used in alloys) at a mind-boggling $140 billion.

Throw in the Southland lignite field and there's another $100 billion. And that's just onshore resources. Barker says the rewards could be much higher.

But while Australia has made the most of its natural resources, New Zealand has been slow to realise the potential beneath our land and sea, industry lobbyists say. Worse, "vast untapped resources" are locked away in the conservation estate.

We are denying ourselves at the cost of greater prosperity, Minerals Industry Association chief executive Doug Gordon says. Carefully controlled exploitation could create thousands of jobs and raise living standards.

Of course most of the profits go overseas but there are royalties, jobs and taxes when profits are declared. Gold exports could help fix the balance of payments...

With the eternal optimism of a recidivist gambler, the minerals industry has pushed its case to exploit resources in conservation lands, with little success until the National-led Government took office.

Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee and Prime Minister John Key have been quoting Barker's back-of-the-envelope calculations as if plucking nuggets from a Coromandel stream. Mining uses less than 0.1% of New Zealand's land area but puts dairying in the shade when you look at export value per hectare, Key says.

Brownlee echoed Straterra's spiel in a speech to the Australian Institute of Mining last August when he announced the review of schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act.

Since 1997, about a third of the conservation estate has been listed under schedule 4 of the Act and, therefore, off-limits to mining. These are our most valued ecological and wilderness areas, including all 14 national parks, the Coromandel Forest Park and other land.

They cover about 13% of our land area - which, conservationists point out, leaves 87% up for grabs. But the industry argues that 70% of prospective areas are in the wider conservation estate and difficult to get permission to work in.

And the third of the estate that's in schedule 4 includes the mineral-rich Kahurangi National Park and the gold-strewn Coromandel Peninsula.

These high-value lands are also the backdrops to our clean, green image, homes to our unique wildlife and major tourism drawcards. How much the Government is willing to ease the access restrictions will be revealed in a discussion paper due out in the next fortnight.

In his now-infamous speech, Brownlee talked up natural resources as playing a big role in improving economic growth and raising living standards. He did not mention that the industry rates the odds of a new mineral prospect proving economic at 1000 to one.

Brownlee and Key have since been at pains to quieten fears that our most valued conservation areas could soon be scarred by bulldozers and open-cast mines.