Marama Davidson mining revocation announcement speech

Today, we are announcing that a Green Government will commit to revoking any consents or permits handed out under the fast-track process for coal, gold and seabed mines.

These projects, if approved, will have been through a process that categorically fails to meet our standards of transparency, accountability, and environmental responsibility.

We don’t believe that’s acceptable.

More importantly, these types of mining are profoundly destructive. Each leaves behind polluted water, scarred landscapes, and divided communities.

They extract resources from our land, ship them overseas, and leave our people to deal with the
aftermath.

We believe our country, our whenua, is worth more.

We believe in a country where the natural beauty, biodiversity, and cultural heritage are not sacrificed for the short-term profits of the few. A future where economic development builds our country up, rather than tears it open.

We believe every community must have a stake in building a liveable, sustainable future.

That’s why we are choosing a different path.

We can make what our communities need to live good lives. Our work and livelihoods in Aotearoa, can be based on renewable and sustainable industries.

We can have an economy that employs people without destroying the ecological basis of our existence for the profits of the few.

We have already announced our Green Jobs Guarantee, which would ensure that every worker has access to training and secure employment in sectors that sustain our economy and our environment.

This includes establishing a Ministry of Green Works to provide large scale green infrastructure that will support thousands of stable, well-paid jobs.

It includes major infrastructure investments in rail, renewable energy, and housing.

We will reinstate jobs for nature, native afforestation programmes, and freshwater improvement programmes.

We will establish a Future Workforce Agency to plan for future workforce needs.

Real, tangible, lasting, and sustainable jobs to ensure people and the land thrive.

Before today, we have said that we would review, and potentially revoke consents for projects in this fast-track process. However, the Luxon Government’s extreme focus on extractive industries and denial of climate change is a massive step backwards for nature and people.

This goes against the core values of who we are as New Zealanders.

So today, we are taking a stand against the fast-track, and the most destructive forms of mining – by definition one of the most extractive industries there is.

Yes, this commitment to directly revoke consents is exceptional.

However, what has happened in the last two years has been nothing less than a government and big business-led war on nature. The correction necessary to address the twin evils of the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis is exceptional.

And so, we are putting the Seabed mining, Hardrock gold mining and Coal mining industries, and their investors, on notice. Your Fastrack consents are not safe and they are not secure.

A Green Government will revoke them.

We do not want to see the seabed of Taranaki destroyed by sucking up millions of tonnes of sand and dumping it back into the ocean over 35 years.

We do not accept that a plan to crush the spectacular 40-million-year-old sandstone ecology of the Denniston Plateau – for export coal – is at all acceptable.

A greedy search for gold in the conservation land of the Coromandel and the beautiful, rugged landscape of Otago is futile.

The Greens are making this announcement today, before any consents are issued, to ensure complete transparency.

With that, I want to acknowledge the environmental organisations here today and commend you for your advocacy.

To the people in Taranaki, in Coromandel, In Takaka, in Otago, in Northland, on the] West Coast, and everywhere else where local iwi and communities and activists have stood in defence of our precious nature and fought these mining projects – in some instances for years – we salute you. You stand for all of our futures. And we have heard your calls for decisive political action.

This announcement is to make it crystal clear that the Green Party of Aotearoa stands with you in defence of Te Taiao.