Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis has joined the government voices urging more mining, but the opposition says it is a smokescreen for digging up fossil fuels.
The government has signalled an intention to grow mining in New Zealand, saying it needs to play a bigger role in the economy.
Following on the heels of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's State of the Nation speech last week, which highlighted mining as one way to boost growth, Willis said New Zealanders needed to be more open to it.
"All you have to do is look over the ditch to see a wealthier country, and people often say to me 'Why is that Australians have access to more medicines, why is it that some of their health services seem to be provided faster?' The answer is they're much richer than us.
"Mining has come a long way, it can be done in ways that are environmentally sustainable - whether that's rare earth minerals, whether that's gold, whether that's other resources - we do need to be open to that.
"You've seen on our fast track schedule there are a number of mining projects that we've pulled out for consideration and I think that signals very strong intent."
Further signals of intent should arrive on Friday, when Resources Minister Shane Jones is expected to deliver a big mining speech in Waihī.
The town - about an hour north of Tauranga - has a history tied closely to mining, including the OceanaGold open-pit Martha Mine and the Waihī North gold mine. The company has applied to expand the latter with an open pit, but in October rejected the description included on official documents, saying the pit would be south of the town rather than in Coromandel Forest Park.
Jones last week told Newstalk ZB the speech would focus on New Zealand's need to "get over ourselves" and mine areas of the Department of Conservation estate, "much of which is overrun with weasels and rats and stoats and noxious weeds".
"Stewardship land is land that should and will be made available for economic purposes."
Luxon said he was "broadly aware" of what Jones would say.
'Smokescreen' for 'carte-blanche approach' - opposition
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the prime minister's claim critical minerals were needed for things like solar panels needed to be backed up with facts.
"Which minerals exactly are we mining in New Zealand that help us to build solar panels? Nothing from the government on that," he said.
"Ultimately, they're using that as a smokescreen to pull more coal out of the ground, more oil and gas out of the ground, ignore the fact that climate change is real and is actually a contributor to a lot of the severe weather events - like fires and floods and cyclones and tornadoes - that we're seeing at the moment."
He pushed back against the suggestions New Zealand should be mining fossil fuels rather than importing coal from Indonesia, saying the government should be phasing out the use of fossil fuels - and could speed up the timeframe for doing so.
"If the government was actually of a mind to accelerate renewable energy which they claim they are, there are a lot of things they could do now to massively increase the uptake ... solar panels have never been cheaper than they are now."
"Even if we had found new oil and gas offshore during the time we were in government, it would be another decade before that started to come to the market ... there has been 20 odd years of exploration and they didn't find any."
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the prime minister's strategy of using mining as a key lever for growth was an "utter fallacy", but acknowledged some mining could be needed in transitioning to clean energy.
"We absolutely support an evidence-based approach to a green transition, which means careful management of our resources, but it's not this carte blanche approach that the government is taking to unleashing mining," she said.
"What this prime minister has presided over is growth in some of the real challenges that we are facing as a country. He has knowingly made decisions to grow inequality and grow climate changing emissions, and his contribution to expand mining in this country will only add to that.
She pointed to an IEA report calling for an increase in rare earth minerals to support a green energy transition.
"Interestingly, that is a fact which Shane Jones cherry-picked ... into his mining strategy to justify not only more mining for rare earth minerals, but also for coal.
"That same IEA report said that six-times increase in rare earth minerals was a result of completely phasing out new fossil fuels.
"We deserve a nuanced, evidence-based discussion about mining and the value that may have, where we're getting our resources from and the safeguards that we're putting around that for our natural environment."
Watts' energy role has 'synergy' with climate change
The Energy portfolio was transferred to Simon Watts in the prime minister's recent reshuffle - an appointment as ripe for puns as when he gave Joseph Mooney the Space portfolio in opposition.
Swarbrick said it could improve accountability from the government.
"It means that the Minister for Climate Change is no longer off the hook and able to point to another minister when it comes to decisions that have been made to knowingly increase climate changing emissions.
"The same minister is going to oversee increases to climate changing emissions under that energy portfolio while he's also responsible for managing a decline in those climate changing emissions under his climate change portfolio.
"Climate change is an issue for all minister of government."
But Watts appeared undaunted, saying there was "a real synergy between climate change and energy".
"My focus is on making sure that we've got security of supply and affordability of energy prices, that's what's going to drive our economy. My job as asked by the prime minister is to make sure that we capitalise on that opportunity and make the most of that.
"The reality is that there's a number of ways that we're going to achieve our climate change objectives. We've outlined that in our emissions reduction plan last year, we've got a plan in order to deliver that and that is made up from a number of industries."
He said his focus in the energy portfolio was on having secure and affordable supply.
Luxon said the combination of roles was "very deliberate", saying there were areas of difference between the portfolios, but also areas of overlap - including with Watts' other new portfolio, Local Government.
"There's a coalition of activities or a cluster of portfolios there that have some areas of overlap and some areas of difference. He'll need to speak differently to those portfolios at times as other ministers do as well, but we also have areas of overlap.
"With respect to local government, we've got a big programme of work around climate adaptation that we're going to need to work through and build that out with [councils] ... renewable energy, wanting to doubling that amount of energy and making sure we attract foreign investment into those projects, that's a link."
