Govt bends under public pressure on mining

News that the Government may scale down its plans to mine the conservation estate shows how public opposition is working, the Green Party said today.

“John Key and Gerry Brownlee are finally catching on that no-one wants mining in our most treasured places,” Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei said.

“Thousands of people have signed our petition, joined social networking groups, and taken action to protest the Government’s plans to mine the last 13 percent of our country with the highest conservation values.

“Frankly I’m surprised they have resorted to polling to figure out that the public don’t want more mining. All they needed to do was step outside the Beehive and have a look around,” Mrs Turei said.

It was reported by Radio New Zealand this morning that Cabinet will consider a mining proposal on Monday. This was going to lifting mining protection from half a billion hectares of land with high conservation value, but would now only propose lifting protection from around 7,000 hectares.

Mrs Turei said while it was good news that the Government seemed to be taking public opinion into account, any mining in our most treasured conservation places would be unacceptable.

“They can’t pull the wool over our eyes by trying to soften their proposals. New Zealanders won’t be fooled,” Mrs Turei said.

“People don’t want mining in our National Parks, Forest Parks, and other precious places. It’s as simple as that.”