Mr Jones told the Otago Daily Times Santana Minerals’ Bendigo site, touted as New Zealand’s newest major gold discovery, could be part of New Zealand’s "export-led" economic recovery.
He also said he told company directors to "put their best foot forward" if the Fast-track Approvals Bill, being moved through Parliament under urgency, was passed into law.
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said Mr Jones’ comments highlighted an issue with the debate about the bill.
It was not how proposals would make their way to the independent panel set-up to consider projects of national and regional significance — it was that ministers, such as Mr Jones, would ultimately hold the power to approve them.
The environmental impacts of mining the Bendigo-Ophir site were as yet unknown, but they could be sidelined if the bill passed.
"We don’t know the extent of the environmental harm, the biodiversity loss in the area," Ms Davidson said.
"This fast-track [approvals process] is designed to barely even ask those questions.
"We’re really concerned about the way ministers are handing themselves superpowers.
"They [ministers] have the final say to approve projects that could include new coal mines, mining on parts of our precious conservation estate, the destruction of the seabed.
"Those environmental laws, they will be ignored and public input will be sidelined. That’s what this fast-tracking is designed to do," she said.
"That feels brazenly anti-democratic. That feels like a massive disregard for protecting our environment and living systems."
It has also been maligned by environmentalists as a "war on nature".
Mr Jones said it would put an end to 30 years of preventing economic development through "deified or weaponized" native biodiversity.
Ms Davidson said that was "utter rubbish" considering how long people had been "trashing the planet".
"He knows that in fact the dominant approach has been a corporate profit-driven approach — and the fact that he is trying to deny that shows the level of untruth that he is willing to spin out there.
"He’s talking about economic development, he needs to be really upfront about who the bloody hell those benefits go to.
"The burden is on his shoulders to be really clear about the disproportionate distribution of where those benefits are going to go and where the costs are going to fall — and I’m talking about the environmental costs, the long-term costs, the social costs.
"He needs to be upfront about so-called benefits; he also needs to be upfront about what this is going to mean for the voice and the power of mana whenua and Te Tiriti justice through all of those conversations."
Central Otago Environmental Society secretary Matt Sole said until more detail on project scope, methodology, processes for mitigating environmental, landscape and heritage loss and dealing with legacy issues of toxic waste were presented, there was little specific commentary the society could make on Santana Minerals’ Bendigo plans at this point.
However, he said the Fast-Track Approvals Bill was "a frightening piece of proposed legislation".
"If this new Bill is passed the community will have no say but will bear the environmental and wellbeing consequences for years to come," he said.
