Your recipe sounds a lot like the rhetoric from Chavez, Castro and Kim Jong Ill. The end of the socialist road you espouse is poverty for all.

I dont need a new 20 thousand dollar car ever 4 years.

I dont need a new lounge sweet every 4 years.

I dont need to change my whole kitchen just because my new kettle looks out of place.

I dont need to re carpet because i made a mistake a year ago when i put the wrong “color” in.

The gap between rich and poor continues to grow, and mining will not change this one little bit, life is well and truly at an acceptable level for my self and many others so long as there standards are not purely material based. Material based values will never be satisfied.

did you read my earlier post?

Is mining the only thing that can help our economy out?

Every body keeps saying we have to mine to fix the economy.

Surely there is something else?

Or are we totally fucked with out mining?

I say if we can’t be a touch more creative than a single idea then we are fucked already.

The public doesnt want it so I say to the economists and back seat economists to start creating, utilise your time and come up with something else.

Is there nothing else?

I have no doubt the Nats will cave and this proposal will be shelved

Ans so it fucking should provided that is what the majority of kiwis want.

This in turn would be democracy, the government working according the what the majority of the nation wants.

The ECan Act addressed the logjam on effective water resource management in Canterbury after the years of dysfunction on the ECan board. Not really relevant to the mining issue.

Still waiting for your wisdom toad on the reasons for the 35% wage gap between Aus and NZ and your solutions to close it.

For crying out loud any mining company would have to negotiate the strictures of the RMA BEFORE any mining could commence.

Not if something similar to the ECan Act is put in place to facilitate mining. That Act allows the Minister to suspend various parts of the RMA in Canterbury. And don’t forget, Brownlee still has Phase II of the RMA reforms in the pipeline.

I repeat what was said earlier – modern mining techniques are not the open cast high impact mining techniques of yesteryear. For crying out loud any mining company would have to negotiate the strictures of the RMA BEFORE any mining could commence. That will involve endless appeals by greenies and druggies who live in house buses on the dole who roam NZ trying to kill projects via Environment Court appeals. So any mining proposal that survives this hostile appeals environment is going to be pretty darn water tight and as green as possible.

NZers seem to want it all – an environmental regulatory regime that kills almost anything that Greenpeace doesn’t like (which is pretty much any development since radical greens want us to ride bikes, use composting toilets and become vegans) and yet enjoy a 1st world standard of living where the government beneficently provides benefits to all who may need them. The ability to help the poor and disadvantaged come from taxes. Taxes are levied on ….businesses and on the wages of people employed by businesses. The wages of government workers dont count – because they are paid from the taxes on the productive sector. So the productive sector has to actually make a profit for the government to tax. If a regulatory regime becomes too hostile to profit then two things happen-profitable businesses become marginally profitable and the amount of tax they pay drops OR they move to a juristiction that is less hostile to profit – in the case of mining companies they move to Australia where they can operate in a predictable regulatory environment that ensures some reasonable profit and the NZ govt and economy get zip.

And so the Australians become the beneficiary of the multiplier effect I described. Mutiply that on a grand scale – ie billions and you get a small hint as to why Australia is more prosperous, why its govt can afford to tax its people less and still provide higher and more benefits and why its citizens wages and salaries (and thus standard of living) are higher than NZ.

NZ will get what it wants – I have no doubt the Nats will cave and this proposal will be shelved. This will be another economic windfall to the wider economy (not the narrow royalty the govt might make from mine profits) that will never accrue to NZ. The consequences will be more subtle and less dramatic – like the frog in the cold water that is slowly cooked with the steadily rising temperature that never gets too hot to shock the frog into jumping out. The gap between Aus and NZ slowly widens, NZ drops another notch down in the OECD in 2011, then one more in 2012. If the wishes of the environmental left are adhered to than NZ continues its slow slide into economic 2nd world status.

The reality is you can have your cake and eat it too – it requires the people to look at the issue pragmatically and accept a very small and easily remediated footprint on a tiny portion of land. Other 1st world countries make these compromises – the French survive with all their nuclear power stations despite the dire warnings of Greenpeace. NZ can make this proposal work but I fear the entire left leaning commentariat so command the attention of the silent middle class that rational discussion on this subject has become nigh impossible.

If 1 or 2 percent is all we get…… How much percent of total value does the mining company get in profit?

NZ has pristine beauty that is irreplaceable. Australia has thousands and thousands of kilometres of land that when mined is unnoticed.

What is the most logical way to make money out of mining?

NZ government forms a mining company gets permits and mines in Australia.

NZ keeps our beautiful treasures and makes even more money.

uh, it’s actually precisely the point, bc. See, I’d put my environmentally friendly tree-hugging plant love-making credentials up against yours any day of the week. I think I commune with nature more often and far more vigorously that you will ever do in your wildest dreams. Wink.

And yet, even given that I’m a tree-loving, plant-hugging environmental lover par excellence, people still don’t seem to understand why I’m so very much in favour of large machinery elegantly extracting large mineral wealth from mother earth.

It’s called jobs. At the end of the day if they find mineral wealth under valuable land that has more than 8 zeroes after it, why not get it?

Lastly, what would either of you, phil or bc, say if the govt said:

“If we can’t mine, you can’t have your benefit. It’s one or the t’other. Which do you choose?”

This must be me then!
ok, now it really is goodnight…

phil(whoar.co.nz)

and just swerve/avoid the question..?

..mmm..???

phil(whoar.co.nz)

Really?

I doubt an idiot politician such as George Hawkins would take this amount of heat for a measly 1-2% phil, let alone astute politicians such as we have in the top jobs.

Perhaps you’re wrong.

Is that a possibility?

and when asked about that..key/brownlee don’t deny/address it..

..they just bang on about jobs-created/tax-paid..

..so..we can assume the/any royalties wd b the standard..eh..?

..that’s 1-2%..

..eh..?

almost laughable really..eh..?

phil(whoar.co.nz)

We don’t really want to lose voters do we?

bc – that statement describes why NZ is sliding inexorably towards becoming a sleepy Polynesian economy. To retain power under MMP, our leaders continuously defer to factions left, right and centre thereby ensuring overall, and over time, that most of NZers are economical disenfranchised.

Notable exceptions to this slow train wreck are, you guessed it, the gold-plated civil-service pension holders who have their hands on the levers of power today, and on our diminished wealth tomorrow.

What actually happened is that a whole lot of people got all emotional about stuff they knew nothing about because they had no facts and reacted emotionally to a perception that a lot of 1920′s style steam-shovels would go in and start strip-mining Kiwi nesting grounds.

Which isn’t what will happen and wasn’t what was ever intended in the first place.