New Zealand is one of the richest countries in the world generally, but especially in resources per capita.
Yet, despite exporting gold for nearly two hundred years, we hold no gold reserves, and extract almost zero in royalties from those who mine our taonga.
But that criminal political foolishness is nothing compared to what’s coming at us from Nact first, or labour. Our corrupt, cowardly, and incompetent political class seems to be betraying us all over again.
The world has begun the process of moving into blocs, and New Zealand is sleepwalking into the biggest resource gamble of the 21st century as the USA seeks to secure essential military and industrial supply chains to maintain its ability to wage war on whoever it chooses.
And unless we intervene-fast-we won’t just lose billions.
We won’t just destroy landscapes.
We will forfeit some of the last levers of national sovereignty we still possess, and with them another of our rare and vanishing chances to build a nation instead of a colony.
We will lose another opportunity to develop a nation of citizens, instead of continuing our descent into a corporate playground of customers, consumers, and serfs.
Yes, I know my own runs purple at times. But this is not hyperbole.
This is not ideology.
This is the obvious conclusion from the official documented reality of our minerals framework, our trade agreements, and our geopolitical positioning in these interesting times.
And next year, New Zealand goes to the polls.
One party-The Opportunities Party (TOP)- has the bones of a modern economic approach, but no strategic frame yet links its policies into a coherent project of national renewal. It has some good ideas, and clear intention. But that is not enough, and the rest of the political class seems either bought, captured, confused, or asleep.
Meanwhile, the country is being silently locked into a foreign-designed supply-chain architecture that views New Zealand as a promising quarry with good manners, and an welcome inability to negotiate in its own best interests.
Once again we are being sold out. Once again, our Crown Jewels are being given away. Like the Maui gas field, the refinery, Manapouri, our energy grid, transit, telecom, etc etc.
But here is the twist:
If we’re going to be forced into mining, then we owe it to ourselves, our children, and our sovereignty to extract on our terms, with our rules, for our national renewal. Not as a colony feeding someone else’s war economy, but as a country rebuilding its industrial base.
This is a moment of peril.
It is also a moment of opportunity.
Will we seize it? Or, once again, will we simply be seized?
Let’s begin.
How we fell into the Critical-Minerals Trap
Over the last two years, New Zealands kakistocratic political leadership has quietly signed onto:
- The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) – a US-led alliance for securing defence and tech minerals.
- The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Supply-Chain Agreement (IPEF) – mapping and coordinating critical-minerals flows for the US and allies.
- A new Critical Minerals List aligned almost exactly with US, EU, and Australian strategic needs.
- A Fast-Track mining regime that strips environmental and democratic protections in order to speed extraction for foreign markets.
None of these alone is fatal.
Together, they form a structural lock-in:
New Zealand supplies the raw materials.
Other countries do the refining, manufacturing, defence production, and profit extraction.
We get royalties at 2–3%, massive holes in the ground, pollution, and not enough money to improve things or develop our economy.
This is not a conspiracy.
This is policy design, and it’s a depressingly familiar one.
What does NZ get under current rules? 2% Royalties and a Pat on the Head
Let’s look at gold- this canary sings loudly
- Gold exports: ~$496m in 2023
- Royalties paid: $11.6m
That’s about 2%. It’s laughable. Dark laughter. Thank god we get ‘jobs’ too. (Wtaf do our politicians do? The older I get, the more I just have to assume it’s “take bribes”)
This is the same regime we are preparing to apply to:
- Antimony (missiles, military electronics, EVs)
- Rare earths (motors, sensors, weapon systems)
- PGMs (catalysis, hydrogen, aerospace)
- Beryllium (missile guidance, satellites)
- Tungsten (armour-piercing rounds, high-temp alloys)
Meanwhile, every other nation with its head screwed on captures 50–80% of mineral rent – because minerals are non-renewable and sovereignty matters.
That’s why you’ve seen France kicked out of west Africa.
New Zealand?
We are still stuck in the 1980s neoliberal cargo cult, where government is told to “stand aside” while foreign extraction giants “create value”.
Except the value is created overseas.
And the holes are left here, and the mess.
TOP’s Problem — And NZs Opportunity
TOP has good instincts on tax reform, housing reform, land value, and public investment.
But without a unifying strategy, it risks looking like intellectual furniture – clever policy without a political project.
This is where critical minerals seems political dynamite.
To lead New Zealand out of decline, a party needs to answer one question:
Who controls the next generation of wealth creation – and for whom?
Right now, that answer is:
Not us.
All the minerals we are about to mine will leave this country under foreign ownership, foreign price-setting, foreign value chains, foreign equity stakes, and foreign shipping contracts.
TOP, if it grows a spine, has a story to tell:
- New Zealand is rich, but the public is poor.
- We have the minerals the world wants, but none of the bargaining power.
- We have the chance to rebuild our economy- but only if we stop playing colony and start negotiating like a sovereign nation.
This is the missing frame.
This is how TOP stops being a boutique party and becomes a national vehicle.
The Hard Truth is this.
NZ Will Be Forced Into Mining anyway
Geopolitics has moved.
The US-China strategic rivalry has turned minerals into weapons.
Our allies will demand supply chain “resilience.”
The global clean-tech transition requires staggering quantities of metals.
New Zealand cannot simply opt out.
We do not have the diplomatic weight, the military shield, or the economic diversification to say no forever.
But we do have one choice left:
We can be a quarry, or we can be a modern nation that uses mining as a platform to rebuild economic sovereignty.
This is what Norway did with oil.
This is what Finland did with forestry.
This is what Chile is now doing with lithium.
This is what China did with rare earths.
Mining, by itself, is not a sin.
Mining without sovereignty is.
The TBLR Doctrine is this: If we must mine. We will mine while adding value, developing industry, technology, and our own human capital.
Here is the Truth-Based Legal Revolution lens applied to minerals:
1. Redraw the Royalty & Rent Regime
Raise the Crown’s share from 2-3% to 40-60% of economic rent, with a windfall component and no loopholes; and/or withhold a portion of resource for domestic development.
2. Public & Iwi Equity Stakes
Every strategic minerals project must have public and mana whenua ownership at the table – not as window dressing, but as shareholders with veto and profit rights.
3. Onshore Processing
No more exporting rocks and logs.
If a company wants to mine here, they must refine and process here, employing New Zealanders and building industrial capability.
There must be technology transfers.
4. A National Development Bank
Use the mineral rents to capitalise a sovereign credit institution that rebuilds our industrial base, infrastructure, logistics, and energy systems – rather than handing wealth to overseas shareholders.
Nz must stop impoverishing itself.
5. Constitutional Guardrails
Fast-track cannot override:
- Treaty rights
- Biodiversity protections
- Long-term fiscal stewardship
- Crown duty of care
- Strategic autonomy
Mining must serve nationhood – not nationhood serving mining.
6. The Election Frame: New Zealand is Being Sold out, Cheap, again.
The public already senses the truth. Every person I speak to tells me Nz has been ripped off since the 1980s.
- We are rich in resources-but poor in policy.
- We are rich in potential-but captured by foreign interests.
- We are rich in minerals-but governed by political sell outs, corporate proxies, lawyers and accountants who seem incapable of thinking like statesmen or stateswomen.
This is exactly what TOP can weaponise:
“NZ is about to hand the next 50 years of wealth to foreign mining giants for 2%. We say: mine if we must – but only on terms that rebuild New Zealand.”
That is a bumper sticker.
That is a strategy.
That is a movement.
7. NZ has few shots at Sovereignty left.
Once the minerals go, they do not come back.
Once the supply contracts are signed, they do not loosen.
Once the strategic partnerships are locked in, we will not be able to renegotiate from a position of strength.
This election is our moment.
Not to stop mining.
But to own it.
To channel it.
To turn extraction into reconstruction.
New Zealand can be one of two things:
- A polite quarry feeding empires.
- Or a sovereign nation using its mineral wealth to rebuild a high-wage, high-skill, high-value economy.
The future is not written.
But right now, Wellington is writing it for us, but in Orwellian script. We are a pretty girl whose skirts they are lifting for empire.
They are writing us into the role of resource provider, price taker, and perennial debtor.
They are pimping us out, again.
It’s Epstein-ish tbf.
It’s time for a different story.
A story where mining is not another sordid tale of exploitation, not another low blow to our sovereignty- but instead a means of rebirth.
A story where New Zealand is not plundered- but rebuilt.
A story where our mineral wealth is the seed corn for a new economy, a new politics, and a new social contract.
And that begins with one phrase:
“If we’re going to dig, we dig for ourselves.”
My great grandfather was a West Coast coal miner, I can’t imagine he would approve of 2% royalties and no national development.
Do you?
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Tadhg Stopford is a historian and teacher. Support change by purchasing your CBD hemp CBG at www.tigerdrops.co.nz
To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal
Henry A. Kissinger