PM's Presser - Schedule 4 Report Released

• Scoop Audio (28 Minutes): PM's Post Cabinet Press Conference Monday, 22 March 2010.

Conservation lands on the Coromandel Peninsula, Great Barrier Island and Paparoa National Park are on the Government’s mining agenda, Prime Minister John Key confirmed today.

Key appeared alongside Environment Minister Kate Wilkinson and Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee just hours after the release of the Government’s long-awaited discussion document on the mining potential of protected Crown lands.

The report identifies 7058 hectares of land in the Coromandel, Great Barrier Island and the South Island’s Paparoa National Park for removal from the Department of Conservation’s list of protected Schedule Four lands.

Key said the report’s proposals were modest and even small returns from mining activities would be very large.

“New Zealand currently earns approximately $2 billion a year from mining and resource activity, and while it’s too early to know what the possibilities are of opening more land up, the economic impacts over a lifetime could be in the billions.”

Key said his Government would not allow mining if he believed it was not environmentally sustainable.

“Previous mining activities many decades ago under different techniques did have an impact on the environment, but we have no plans for returning to that sort of mining.”

Key said he could not rule out open-cast mines but did not expect them to meet the Resource Management Act’s environmental standards.

Miners would still need consent from regional councils and would have to submit conservation plans under the Act, he said.

ENDS

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