Headline: Joyce’s report shows mining is no future for New Zealand
The Government should be focusing on jobs-rich, smart, green industries that have a future, not the failing, dirty industries of the past,
The Government’s mining report shows that it is a jobs-poor industry that damages the environment, and the Government’s fossil fuel agenda has failed, Green Party mining spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said today.
The Petroleum and Minerals Sector Report released by the Government today shows that mining employs just 6,000 people, compared to nearly 200,000 in manufacturing. It also shows that exports of coal and oil are declining and states that “most of the easily mined resources [of coal and gold] in New Zealand are close to exhausted” and “increasingly unprofitable”. The report fails to account for the environmental and economic cost of polluting our climate with more fossil fuels.
“This report shows that National’s obsession with coal and oil has failed to create jobs, failed the environment, and failed the economy,” said Ms Delahunty.
“If our largest employer, manufacturing, got even half the attention that National lavishes on the jobs-poor mining sector, we would have a lower unemployment rate and more Kiwis in good jobs. National has ignored manufacturing while 40,000 jobs have been lost, concentrating instead on mining, which employs just 6,000 people in total.
“The report shows that the wealth generated by mining isn’t staying with workers, it’s going to foreign mine owners.
“For a country that depends on a stable climate for its agricultural exports and markets itself to the world as clean and pure, trying to dig up more climate-polluting fossil fuels is economic suicide. Our environment and our economy cannot afford for us to carry on burning fossil fuels.
“The Government should be leading the transition to a green future, not dragging us back in the wrong direction.
“Even putting aside the environmental damage and the lack of jobs, the simple fact is that the Government’s fossil fuel agenda isn’t delivering. Coal and oil exports are falling and have been falling the entire time National has been in power. Mr Joyce’s fossil fuel fixation has been for nought.
“If Mr Joyce is really worried about New Zealand’s $8 billion a year oil import bill, he should cancel the Roads of National Significance, which entrench oil dependence, and back the Green Party’s plans for sustainable transport instead.
“The Government should be focusing on jobs-rich, smart, green industries that have a future, not the failing, dirty industries of the past,” said Ms Delahunty.
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