Minister of Finance: where the bloody hell are you?

The Minister of Finance confirmed in the House today that he has no idea what the fiscal impacts of the Government’s Schedule 4 mining proposals will be, the Green Party said.

“The Finance Minister joins the queue of the clueless, along with the Ministers of Tourism, Energy & Resources, Conservation and the Prime Minister, who are lining up to pillage our most precious places, with no idea of the impacts,” Metiria Turei, Green Party Co-leader said.

The Minister of Finance, Bill English, stated in Question Time that he was not worried about the economic impact of international criticism. This came after The Economist joined The Guardian in roundly criticising the Government’s mining plans and other environmental policies. The two periodicals have a combined readership of over 5 million readers internationally.

The Minister of Finance inferred that the whole tourism industry would not be traded off for mining, which raised the question of how much of it the Minister would be willing to trade off, Mrs Turei said.

“The public has a right to know just how much of our tourism industry and clean green image John Key’s Government is willing to trade off in order to satisfy their mining mates.

“Despite many months of delay in releasing their discussion document, the Government has yet to present any clear economic argument for mining our National Parks and World Heritage sites.”

Schedule 4 is the technical name for the ‘best of the best’ of New Zealand’s conservation land. John Key’s Government has proposed breaking the 13 year cross-party accord that created Schedule 4.

Public estimates of New Zealand’s total mineral wealth range wildly between $6.5 billion and ‘thousands of billions’ and royalties from actual mining rarely exceed one percent.

“Unfortunately for New Zealand, what we have is a hollow policy put forward by hollow men,” Mrs Turei said.