This is edition 2026/087 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Hi all,
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. Democracy Briefing: Digging for influence
Bryce Edwards
- 🏛️ Resources Minister Shane Jones hosted a Beehive "critical minerals roundtable" with mining bosses, a senior US State Department official, and diplomats from Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
- 🇺🇸 The American delegation was led by Michael DeSombre, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, hearing pitches from New Zealand mining companies seeking US-backed finance.
- 💰 Electoral Commission donation returns show the mining, oil, and gas sector declared roughly $295,000 in donations in 2025, spread mainly across NZ First and National.
- 📋 The coalition delivered a sweeping 2025 policy win for extractive industries, including 11 mining projects fast-tracked, $80 million in regional infrastructure funding, and $200 million for new gas field development.
- ⚖️ The Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2025 changed the Act's purpose from "manage" to "promote" petroleum and mineral resource development, and repealed the 2018 ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration permits.
- ⚠️ The Act replaced automatic trailing decommissioning liability with ministerial discretion, reopening the liability gap the 2021 law had closed after the $293 million Tamarind Taranaki taxpayer bailout.
- 🔍 RNZ's Kirsty Johnston found via OIA that industry bodies including OMV, Todd, Methanex, and Energy Resources Aotearoa received confidential pre-consultation on the bill and helped shape its final wording.
- 🏢 On 19–20 February 2026, GMP Environmental Limited donated $300,000 equally across National, ACT, and NZ First — $100,000 each — within the same week.
- 🔥 GMP Environmental is a subsidiary of Greymouth Petroleum, controlled by NBR Rich Lister Mark Dunphy, estimated net worth over $200 million, and one of the most persistent lobbyists for decommissioning liability changes.
- 🧾 The "Environmental" label on the donor entity obscures its function: GMP Environmental supplies trucks, mudtanks, and oilfield logistics to petroleum clients, not environmental services.
- 📊 New Zealand taxpayers paid approximately $293 million to decommission the Tui oil field after Malaysian-owned Tamarind Taranaki became insolvent and abandoned its obligations in 2019.
- 🔴 Labour MP Deborah Russell named "shadowy participants in the oil and gas industry" as undisclosed consultees on the bill's late-stage Supplementary Order Paper.
- ⚖️ Blogger No Right Turn described the donation pattern as "naked corruption — bribery, law for sale", citing the sequence from legislation to three-party payment through a subsidiary.
- 🟡 Jones canvassed the idea of government-set minimum prices for certain minerals, a public price floor for private extractors, at the Wellington roundtable.
