Today's letters include discussion on mining in Central Otago, a decrease in Southland's Hoiho population, and GE in farms.
Mining will wreck land and we won’t get rich
The interest in gold mining in Otago is horrifying and it will not make us rich.
Norway is one of the richest countries in the world from mineral exploitation — of oil. The Norwegian government takes a 50% stake in each oil licence and owns 67% of Statoil.
By comparison, the New Zealand government takes a 3% royalty on gold.
When gold made Otago rich in the 19th century, gold mining was labour intensive and locally owned. The money stayed in Otago.
Modern mining is massively mechanised, the few jobs are highly skilled and we don’t even have the industry to provide the machinery. Our industrial base has been so eroded over the last 45 years that today we couldn’t even provide picks and shovels.
The government will get taxes of course, but the primary function of a multi-national corporate structure is to avoid taxation — losses are localised and profits exported.
You cannot "restore" land that has been mined. The pit will become a biologically dead hole of water, the toxic waste will go into a tailings dam.
If it leaks, the vegetation around will die, as happened at the Tui mine in Coromandel. The dam will have to be maintained forever, long after the mining company has moved on and forgotten.
Tourism is our second-largest export earner and mining will destroy Otago as a tourist destination.
Our landscape is our treasure, our taonga. To mine it is akin to taking an ancient pounamu hei-tikei and smashing it on the floor so we can sell the fragments for a couple of dollars.
Tony Williams
Dunedin
Audit affairs
I understand that Audit New Zealand will be charging more than $250,000 for auditing the Waitaki District Council’s proposed 2025-2034 Long Term Plan and its accompanying consultation document.
Like Councillor Jim Hopkins who highlighted the audit cost last week (ODT 17.2.25), I, too, am incensed over this sort of exorbitant, greedy, over-reach from a central government department. $250,000 to run a ruler over our 10-year plan? Seriously?
Considering it was done by an auditor appointed by the auditor general and carried out from Audit NZ offices in Wellington, surely this "work stream" is already funded through our taxes.
These sort of double dipping charges, snuck into our rates bills under the guise of user-pays, must stop. The people to do the stopping need to be a staunch, vocal, force of energised local government politicians prepared to call it out and claw it back.
Fliss Butcher
Oamaru
Hoiho distress
Recently at Curio Bay I had an interesting discussion with a couple of very nice French tourists who were eager to see the world’s rarest penguin, the hoiho/yellow eyed penguin. The previous day they visited the hide at Roaring Bay, Nugget Point only to discover that hoiho numbers had dropped from 46 breeding adults in 2011 to four last year.
I had to tell them there wasn’t much hope of seeing hoiho any more because of starvation, disease and drowning in set nets and trawler nets.
They were devastated and could not understand how Kiwis could let this happen. One of them said, "If the guide book tells me there are no penguins we will not come."
This is bad news for the local economy. How I wished I could reassure them there was now a marine reserve in the Catlins so there was hope. Tragically, I could not.
J L Johnstone
Balclutha
Let’s stay safe and keep GE in the lab
Thank you for the excellent article "Eco-focused producers: a struggle to grow" (ODT 25.1.25), and the opinion piece about the Gene Technology Bill (29.1.25).
Together these show farmers and growers doing their best — but they would all face increased costs and risks if the Gene Technology Bill were passed as currently drafted.
The Bill proposes possibly the loosest regulation for GE in the world — more laissez faire than our major trading partners. It would allow some GE techniques to go completely unregulated, with no safety assessments, no public notification, no labelling, no traceability, and no monitoring. It could enter farms invisibly via seed, other inputs, or pollen from a neighbour’s GE ryegrass. Organic and GE-free farmers would face costs and challenges to keep it out and to maintain their GE-free status.
The government says it will benefit us economically, without having investigated the opportunity costs. A recent report by the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research estimated that the impact would be a drop in our export income of $10 billion to $20b annually. Our markets don’t want it.
Gene editing techniques are touted as being precise, but they are not. Unexpected changes can and do occur, such as the discovery of antibiotic resistant DNA in gene-edited cattle in the US, resulting in their withdrawal. We have enough of a problem with antibiotic resistance as it is.
The Bill could allow GE to enter our food invisibly, taking away consumer choice. There is the potential for toxins and allergens to be created as a result of gene editing. Farmers, home gardeners, the public and our ecosystems risk changes we can’t predict.
Let’s stay safe, keep our premium markets, avoid risks to our environment, and keep GE in the lab.
Philippa Jamieson
Opoho
