Prime Minister, I was struck during a recent interview by how quickly a simple question can be reframed.
Throughout the interview, opposition to the Bendigo project was repeatedly described as coming from ‘‘luminaries’’, a shorthand that aligns neatly with the language of ‘‘elites’’ so often used by Resources Minister Shane Jones.
It is a framing where concern is recast as privilege, and questioning is dismissed as ideological and disconnected from ‘‘real people’’ and ‘‘real jobs’’, the ‘‘blue-collar workers’’ Jones says he is standing up for.
That same framing surfaced again when you were asked about the suggestion that Jones and I might debate the Bendigo proposal publicly. Your response followed a familiar line: New Zealand has resources, those resources are valuable, the world needs them, exploiting them creates jobs, and we owe it to the economy, and future generations, to get on with it.
On the surface, it’s a fair question. But what gets lost in that framing are the many ordinary people who are also asking questions.
Farmers, growers, tourism operators and families who live downstream from the proposed mine. People whose livelihoods already exist, who employ others, and who will still be here long after the mine has closed.
These are people who come to the fast-track process with one arm firmly tied behind their backs.
They don’t have the access or resources companies like Santana can bring to bear. They don’t have teams of advisers, or the time and money, to engage fulltime in Wellington.
Others do.
Industry groups such as the New Zealand Minerals Council exist for exactly that purpose: to engage directly with ministers and officials and participate in policy and regulation. That’s not a criticism. It’s simply how influence works.
When access to power is uneven, trust doesn’t come from assurances. It comes from whether the process can live with its own answers. Yes or no.
Which is why the latest decision under the fast-track legislation matters.
Not long after that interview, a fast-track panel released its draft decision declining Trans-Tasman Resources’ proposal to mine the South Taranaki seabed.
The panel cited credible risks to marine life, uncertainty around sediment plumes and underwater noise, and concluded that the adverse impacts were out of proportion with the regional and national benefits.
Risk versus reward. It’s the same question I have kept coming back to in relation to Santana’s Bendigo application. It’s the question I asked of Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop.
The Bendigo debate is not about mining in general. It’s about the long-term consequences of a specific proposal: 18million cubic metres of toxic waste stored behind a dam taller than the Clyde Dam, in a seismic area, at the headwaters of rivers feeding the Central Otago catchment, home to thriving industries that already exist and rely entirely on clean, unpolluted water.
The credible risk here is simple. If any of that 18million cubic metres of toxic tailings were to escape into the headwaters the consequences could be catastrophic and irreversible.
The response from the minerals sector to the South Taranaki recommendation was swift. The Minerals Council’s chief executive described the decision as ‘‘embarrassing’’ and urged people to trust the process, expressing hope that facts, evidence and science would prevail.
For every ‘‘may’’, she argued, there was a ‘‘may not’’.
That response is revealing, prime minister. Surely science did prevail. It did so by identifying uncertainty.
And uncertainty is not a failure of science; it is often the most important thing science tells us. When the consequences of being wrong are permanent, uncertainty should slow decisions down, not be dismissed as emotion or ideology.
The toxins may be contained behind that dam, forever. They may not.
But when the down side is irreversible, and permanent, that distinction matters.
Trans-Tasman Resources’ executive chair went further, saying it is ‘‘hard to accept’’ the panel intended to decline the project despite the evidence the company had provided.
This is the process we are being asked to trust and the government-appointed panel has assessed the evidence, including that supplied by the applicant, and reached its conclusion.
This particular project should not proceed.
There is, however, a wider issue at play. Fast-track panels are not courts. Their decisions do not set binding precedent.
Panels are appointed by government, and their recommendations ultimately sit within a political framework.
If this decision were treated as a genuine signal that under fast-track the bar for irreversible environmental risk is set high, then trust in the process would grow.
But that trust depends on what happens next.
Especially when set against the fact that your government, apparently at the urging of Jones, recently declined to join an international declaration committing countries to a road map away from fossil fuels, despite advice that doing so was consistent with existing policy.
You stepped back from that global commitment at the same time as you stepped forward on domestic extraction.
The common thread is speed.
Move quickly when outcomes align with political priorities. Question expertise when it slows things down.
Fast-tracking is a powerful tool. Used carefully, it can accelerate projects that genuinely build long-term prosperity.
Used indiscriminately, it risks locking in decisions before we’ve taken the time to understand what future generations will inherit.
Leadership isn’t about doing everything faster. It’s about knowing when to slow down and, most importantly, being willing to listen when science tells us we’re not there yet.
How your government responds to the recommendation to decline the South Taranaki seabed project will tell us a great deal about what ‘‘trusting the process’’ really means.
- Dunedin businessman Sir Ian Taylor is the founder and managing director of Animation Research.
