LilBaP
In a recent Stuff article, Sir Ian Taylor has a point worth hearing. Technologies that turn waste into something useful are worth pursuing. Circular approaches that recover materials, reduce landfill and design products for reuse can lower the volume of new extraction required over time. They are not, however, a free lunch.
Sorting, processing and recovering waste at scale requires energy, water and, increasingly, the computing power of AI and data centres. Those inputs do not appear by magic. They are produced, refined or powered by the same class of minerals and fossil fuels that Taylor treats as the problem to be minimised.
New Zealand’s electricity system is already operating near capacity. If the country seriously wants to expand in the technology sector – more AI, more data centres, more advanced manufacturing – firm, reliable large-scale power is essential. Small modular nuclear reactors are one of the few options that can deliver that without depending on weather or large volumes of imported fuel.
How this sits with the power demand of the technologies he prefers is a question the lecturer has not answered.
It is a gap. Taylor can explain why a regulated mine carries residual risk. He has not explained why the alternative he prefers is materially cleaner once its own energy, water and material requirements are counted. Modern economies run on mined minerals. Batteries, turbines, transmission lines, data centres, fertiliser, concrete and the devices that design and run waste-recycling technologies all depend on them.
Fossil fuels are still required for thousands of components, most of the freight and most of the firm power. Pretending one can be expanded while the other is constrained, without a clear account of the trade-offs, is not a technology argument.
No serious person claims mining is risk-free or that every project should proceed.
Bonds, monitoring and rehabilitation rules exist because companies do not simply leave. Those rules can be tightened where the evidence shows they are inadequate. They are not zero. Treating them as zero turns a policy question into a moral one. The same scrutiny is rarely applied to the long-term liabilities of other industries whose owners already enjoy the proceeds.
That is the bias. It is easier to lecture about residual risk in a sector that still has visible holes in the ground than one whose downside has already been externalised or is sitting in a server farm. The economic numbers on the other side of the ledger are not trivial.
OceanaGold’s Macraes operation, New Zealand’s largest gold mine, has supported hundreds of direct jobs and thousands more through suppliers and spending. Recent assessments put its GDP contribution in the hundreds of millions in a single year, with average mining wages well above the national figure.
The proposed Bendigo-Ophir project from Santana Minerals is projected, on the company’s figures and independent economic work, to add an average of around $360 million a year to GDP, support roughly 350 direct jobs at average salaries above $140,000, and generate in the order of $1.8 billion in government revenue over its life through royalties, company tax, PAYE and ACC. Those are life-of-mine projections, not guaranteed annual returns.
The site itself sits on high-country pastoral land in Central Otago that was previously used for extensive grazing and was not highly productive for intensive agriculture or horticulture before the permit was issued. It is not high-value dairy or orchard country being taken out of production.
Waihi North’s expansion has been assessed as delivering hundreds of millions in Crown revenue over its life and supporting hundreds of jobs, with the majority of expenditure staying in New Zealand.
Mining remains one of the highest-paid and most productive sectors in the country. This is the scale of the activity that is being weighed against residual risk.
New Zealand already earns a large share of its export revenue from natural resources – dairy, meat, horticulture, timber and the rest of the primary sector. Gold and other minerals sit in the same category. The country has a long heritage of gold and silver mining – it is not a novel activity.
It is also unlikely that New Zealand will easily out-compete the rest of the world as a major exporter of technology. That does not mean the attempt should be abandoned. It does mean covering the bases and doing well the things the country already does well.
A serious technology push would also require firm power at a scale the current system does not have. Treating mineral extraction as uniquely illegitimate, while the rest of the primary sector continues, is a selective standard.
The hypocrisy sits in the timing. Taylor built a successful company under the existing system, has accumulated capital and status and now applies a high precautionary standard to further extraction. Environmental concerns belong in the discussion. but not as a veto exercised after one’s own wealth is secured.
Shane Jones notes that working-age New Zealanders are leaving for higher wages elsewhere which is a measurable response to opportunity. The response from the already-secure is that New Zealand should forgo projects that clear existing hurdles because the residual risk is too high. The people taking the risk of leaving do not set that standard.
If the concern is planetary, the location of the next mine is secondary. The minerals will be extracted somewhere. The atmospheric and ecological effects do not respect New Zealand’s border. Preaching that this country should accept lower income and fewer options so that people who have already extracted their wealth can feel the process was sufficiently careful is a familiar pattern.
The rest of the world continues to develop the resources it needs. New Zealand is invited to set an example that costs its own citizens, while the example is applauded from a distance.
There is room for mining under clear rules on bonds, monitoring and closure. There is also room for technologies that use waste more productively. Both will consume energy, water and minerals. Significant public spending already goes into climate architecture and related processes.
The adult discussion is about the relative costs and the rules that apply to each, not about which already-comfortable voice gets to declare one path morally superior.
The lecture and hypocrisy will no doubt continue from the champagne class. It would be more useful if it included the inputs its preferred solution still requires, the firm power a technology sector would actually need and the jobs and revenue the alternative forgoes.
The rest of the country still needs to earn wages and revenue while these people lecture from the Stuff pulpit.
We know the term chardonnay class. These days some people remind me of the closet capitalist: they made their money then hide behind a different agenda.
