29 August 2024

The minister for mining and burning, Shane Jones, is trying to take New Zealanders for fools with inflated claims and misinformation about seabed mining off the coast of Taranaki, says Greenpeace.

Greenpeace is taking issue with claims by Shane Jones that the iron sand deposits in the South Taranaki Bight rival the size of the Sahara Desert, that New Zealand would follow China and Russia in terms of the quantities of the vanadium to be found there and that seabed mining would create "huge numbers of jobs".

Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Juressa Lee says, "Either Jones is having serious trouble with his maths, or he’s knowingly misleading New Zealanders with overblown rhetoric about seabed mining.

"It becomes hard to trust anything Shane Jones says when he’s throwing inaccuracies and miscalculations around left, right and centre.

Seabed mining would not create lots of jobs, the mining profits would go offshore, and the cost of the environmental harm would be borne by Aotearoa for generations to come.

"What Jones does get right is that wannabe seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is up against Mana Whenua Ngāti Ruanui and widespread community, scientific and environmental opposition to its heinous plans."

Trans-Tasman Resources plans to mine up to 50 million tonnes of iron sands and dump 45 million tonnes of waste back into the ocean every year - for 30 years. It has failed at every step of the way to get its plans approved and now sees the Fast Track as a way of getting the green light in a move that Greenpeace calls craven opportunism.

"What Jones must do now is acknowledge the mana and rangatiratanga of Ngāti Ruanui, and the lived experiences and local understanding that all these communities have. They do not want seabed mining, and he must listen."

"Shane Jones is clueless about the prospect of a vanadium industry establishing itself in the South Taranaki Bight," said Cindy Baxter, chair of Kiwis Against Seabed Mining.

"Nobody knows how to extract it out of the iron sands, and there are plenty of grid-scale batteries in development that don’t require the mineral. 100% Australian-owned Trans Tasman Resources has repeatedly stated the minerals extracted would be trans-shipped at sea and sent to Asia for processing. It has admitted that the skills required are not in Taranaki, they’d be flown in - so there wouldn’t be any jobs for locals, aside from some catering and cleaning contracts."

"The profits would go to Australia and we’d be left to face the mess."

She noted that opposition was widespread, not just from Iwi and environmentalists, but also from NZ First-voting Taranaki dairy farmers, the fishing industry, and the offshore wind industry.

Seabed mining would be a significant threat to marine life, including blue whales, Māui and Hector’s dolphins, little blue penguins, and critical fishing grounds.

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