A dose of reality emerged last week when the announcement was made by Solid Energy that its Spring Creek mine, on the West Coast, would be put into a state of care and maintenance. The not-unexpected decision included laying off more than 220 Greymouth workers and will directly affect the livelihoods of about 130 contracting staff who rely on mine work for their jobs.
All up, 440 Solid Energy staff will lose their jobs in a restructuring that includes halving the company's head office staff and reducing the number of miners and support staff at the Huntly East project.
Solid Energy, one of four state-owned assets targeted for partial sale by the Government, has a balance sheet heavy with debt. Its last financial report was red with writedowns and losses across most of its operating activities.
Coal in the ground has been a valuable asset for Solid Energy in past years as the resources boom in Australia kept growing.
Demand for high-grade coal was required in the manufacture of steel - something for which China and India, in particular, were hungry. Their infrastructure projects seemed never-ending.
But end - or at least slow - they have. The arrival of another global financial crisis, so soon after the end of a debt crisis caused by over-lending in United States banks, has seen demand for steel, and therefore high-grade coal, fall.
There was an outcry last week for the Government to pump more money into Solid Energy to keep Spring Creek open and retain on the West Coast a mainly skilled mining workforce. It was noticeable that joining the chorus calling for Government intervention to keep the coal mine operating were various opponents of such mining.
For many, the latter struck a particularly discordant note. Further investigations showed that even outspoken conservation groups wanted to keep miners at work on the unprofitable Spring Creek mine; a mine for which taxpayers had already outlaid $100 million in costs and which required up to $70 million more to bring it back into production.
Suddenly, it seems, no-one wants to stop mining. It appears the dose of reality came when those environmental groups, plus Green and Labour MPs, found that their wish to stop mining meant job losses. Mining opponents had to look miners in the eye and admit they had no answers about from where their next job might come.
The obvious answer for the miners is Australia, but anyone reading reports about that country's two-step economy realises mining jobs across the Tasman are becoming scarcer as the resources boom splutters back towards traditional demand. Calls have been made for the out-of-work West Coast miners to help with the Christchurch rebuild. But those miners have specific skills that will not be transferable to Christchurch.
The miners have pointed out they do not wish to be turned into pushers of wheelbarrows on building sites. If the Government has any role to play, it is perhaps to provide funding for retraining of those miners to make them a valuable part of the rebuild rather than having to compete with imported foreign labour.
Environmentalists, both political and non-political, are rightly calling for a transition to a new economy on the West Coast, and New Zealand. These are admirable sentiments, but it must be appreciated this will be a long, slow haul. There have been opportunities in the past for such a transition, but they have been wasted. This country is unlikely to close the wage gap with Australia, but there are some things that keep it in the race.
The reality is that one of them is still mining, albeit done responsibly and as environmentally friendly as technology allows. This is a commodity country - dairy, meat, mining and minerals make up a large proportion of economic activity.
Tourism is a large generator of overseas income but, like commodities, it is also subject to the same boom-and-bust cycles.
There is, rightly, room for a voice opposing continued development of New Zealand's natural resources. But that ongoing dissent must be heavily influenced by a tone of reason, mindful of the heartbreak that can be caused to communities: opposition must be carefully thought through, and not be automatic or for the sake of it.
