TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ... · 10 want to talk to your submission? MS WILKINS: Yes I’d like to talk to my submission. ... that are normal business practice

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AUTHORITY

HEARING

Trans-Tasman Resources Limited

Marine Consent Application

HEARING at

WAIKATO STADIUM, SEDDON STREET, HAMILTON

on 09 April 2014

DECISION-MAKING COMMITTEE:

Greg Hill (Chairperson)

Gillian Wratt (Committee Member)

Brett Rogers (Committee Member)

William Kapea (Committee Member)

Stephen Christensen (Committee Member)

Page 1403

Waikato Stadium, Hamilton 09.04.14

[9.30 am]

CHAIRPERSON: Morena everybody, we will reconvene. I think the only

submitter here is Ms Wilkins so I'll just check if you want to go up

first, Ms Wilkins? 5

Yes, sorry, yes. Come up here and we have your submission in front of

us so we don’t need you to read your submission. I’m not sure if

you’ve got other written material you want to read or whether you just

want to talk to your submission? 10

MS WILKINS: Yes I’d like to talk to my submission. Do I need to sit?

CHAIRPERSON: Sure. Sit or stand, entirely over to you. If you stand can

you just bring the microphone up slightly so everyone can hear. 15

MS WILKINS: I’ll see how I go sitting.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Hopefully we’re not too scary.

20

MS WILKINS: I am used to boardrooms but this is a bit different.

CHAIRPERSON: The applicants are here. There’s Trans-Tasman Resources.

We have some of the council staff here. Ms Ioane is the hearing

manager so she’s basically in control of this process. The panel is here. 25

Ms Gillian Wratt, Mr Rogers, Mr Christensen, and Mr Kapea. I’m

Greg Hill. And the EPA have given us the authority to hear this and

make a decision. So basically we’re the decision-making committee.

So over to you.

30

MS WILKINS: Okay. So is the floor mine is it?

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, it is yours.

MS WILKINS: Okay. What I was looking at in terms of perspective on this 35

submission was not to speak on things that I’m not an expert on. So I

have some personal opinions on environmental issues and personal

opinions on other aspects of this process. But where I’m coming from

is the business angle because I am a chartered accountant. I work in a

small community. I have a practice, I employ people. We’re based on 40

the west coast so as a profile we’re looking at I guess a community that

could be affected if this first submission goes ahead and heads the way

for others.

So I’m sort of speaking from that angle but also I believe that there is 45

some profile of my community which is Raglan, Whāingaroa, which

Page 1404


isn’t too different from other west coast communities. And I say that

because I know that there is income from tourism, surfing industry, yes

other sort of beach related tourism activities if you like and just a

general sort of community business structure that you’ll find in any

small town. 5

In terms of the business angle we’re used to as accountants looking at

risk and reward and responsibilities, so sort of three Rs if you like that

are really important to us when we’re analysing a business case for

something. Whatever that proposal might be. So in terms of risk I’ve 10

read a lot of the submissions and I would leave a lot of that scientific

analysis to the experts, but as a general observation it seems that we are

looking at something that’s not been done before and so there is risk.

And considerable risk if you look at those communities and the

businesses that rely on things that could be affected by this process if 15

something goes wrong.

Reward, well I’ve yet to see the information that gives me as a citizen

and an investor in this process or in this venture, I’ve yet to see enough

information on which to base a decision. If I was given a prospectus to 20

buy shares in zero which I have been for example there’s a lot of

information that the directors of a company need to provide to someone

like me who’s thinking of investing and if they provide information

that’s incorrect, especially if they do it knowingly there’s all sorts of

fall out. They’re responsible as individuals and we’ve seen lots of that 25

in cases of finance companies and so on.

So coming back to this as an investor I think all New Zealanders are an

investor in any venture that involves natural resources, because those

resources are essentially taken away, in this case, they are just 30

removed. They don’t come back in some other form.

[9.35 am]

Somebody drew an analogy between the wind farm near us at Te Uku 35

and I don’t see that as the same sort of thing. I guess the skyline has

been taken away to a degree because we have windmills. But we also

have something that still brings tourism.

We are very reliant in Raglan on ecotourism and that is a generalised 40

sort of the view of the west coast, with all the white sand beaches on

that side so people who want something a bit more adventurous go to

the west coast, and I think that's important to remember.

So if we go back to that analogy of the wind farm, I don’t think there’s 45

the comparison. That didn’t take away, other than perhaps some

Page 1405


people’s view. It’s actually added, if you like, something that is

bringing people to look at it from the eco point of view.

And it’s generating income within New Zealand. It did create jobs for

a short period of time in our community. I think on that level we’ve 5

got a similar parallel with the proposed venture that there may be jobs

for a period of time, but the end result is you've still actually taken

something away.

And there’s no proof to me that I can understand that says that in taking 10

that sand, there won’t be an impact on the shoreline and therefore on

the businesses that rely on that coast, on that beach.

So, it’ll come back to, you know, show me the business case. And

third ‘R’ if you like, the responsibility, how do we as a country, how do 15

the communities who are affected directly because that process is

taking place in their back yard, how do they enforce responsibility?

Somebody brought gorse into New Zealand many years ago to create

hedgerows and a little bit of, you know, United Kingdom sort of moved 20

down to the Southern Hemisphere. And what a mistake that was. We

all still pay for that. We use poisons and labour and miss out on the use

of land that’s otherwise occupied by what is, in a sense, an invader.

So that’s just a general sort of observation that we do tend to make 25

some decisions for business reasons, but end up with generations later

still paying for it. And that is a concern to me as an investor, as a

citizen of New Zealand.

I will add too, my accent my sound a bit funny but my parents are Kiwi 30

and my whakapapa goes back to certain canoes and I won’t bore you

with all that. But I was born by an accident of fate on the other side of

the world.

So, just having digressed there for a moment, I’ll come back to the 35

responsibility. Now, I work with a lot of very large organisations as an

accountant. These organisations are contractors, they often are doing

quite significant works, not just here in New Zealand, a couple of my

clients work in countries like Fiji. And they do large infrastructure

works. 40

Now always with those contracts there are two kinds of leverages, if

you like, for responsibility that are applied often through the

government. They would involve a retention process and a bond

process. And I haven’t seen anything about any of the proposal to 45

show me that either of those are in place either.

Page 1406


And while I am sure there is insurance, we are talking about processes

that are normal business practice and they go outside of the insurance

area.

5

They are actually there to ensure that, first of all, if the job is done, it’s

done properly, that’s generally how retentions work and they are paid

off over periods of anywhere from two to five to seven years, I’ve seen

in various contracts and certain percentages are withheld from gross

earnings to, in the first instance, to allow that sort of fund to be held 10

and then they are paid back at certain dates on the certain percentages,

and the other process that I’ve seen applied for assurity, if you like, that

there will be no long term impact.

[9.40 am] 15

And so while I was driving down from Auckland this morning because

I’ve been up there for a couple of days, I was thinking about the bond

sort of issue and how would you go about setting something like this,

and it’s a really interesting one, because if you look at landfill, which is 20

something I know a bit about because of my work with other groups

that are involved in zero waste, I know that 30 years is the sort of

timeframe for ensuring there is no environmental impact from a

landfill.

25

So just for arguments sake, how about 30 years to ensure that our sand

is going to come back, you know, that it’s not going to disappear off

the beach X and never turn up on beach Y as it tends to do, as I’ve

watched it do for the 25 years I’ve been in Ragland. So if we were to

sort of look at the responsibility area of this venture, I would be saying 30

that you’ve got to have both some sort of retention process, which

would ensure that you cover any costs of environmental disasters such

as oil spillages from the vessels or other unforeseen events, and then

the long term bond, and I think those bonds, to be realistic, should be

held by a third party with the interest going to the affected community 35

throughout for community groups to use, because after all they’re the

ones bearing the biggest risk, and putting that sort of money into the

local community is at least going to be some mitigation.

So that to me is the common sense thing that has to be there if this 40

venture goes forward. Personally, to come back to that, I’d rather it

didn’t. I think we’re messing with nature and we’ll see the

consequences.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. There may be some questions. 45

Page 1407


MR CHRISTENSEN: Yes, Ms Wilkins, thanks for your submission. I was

interested by your comments about wind farms and their relationship

with the tourism business or industry on the West Coast, and I’m just

wondering whether the issue of the relationship between, let’s call them

industrial type activities and tourism, it could be either positive, 5

potentially, if it’s an attraction, and I can think of other examples where

a new and interesting activity which locates in an area, even though it’s

industrial in character, might actually in some circumstances be an

attraction, or it could be negative in the sense that it reduces the value

that people see in an area, or it could be neutral. 10

MS WILKINS: Yes.

MR CHRISTENSEN: And in this case, it’s not altogether clear to me what

you would say you think the iron sand mining proposal in the EEZ, 15

what kind of an impact do you think that would have on tourism?

MS WILKINS: Okay, I think it would have a negative impact. I think in

general if you take your eco tourist, they are looking for signs that a

community or an area or a country is undertaking certain positive 20

activities for, you know, from an environmental perspective. Where

you’re actually removing an actual resource doesn’t fall into that

category in my mind.

All the people that I know, which, you know, we’re getting into 25

anecdotal and perhaps slightly emotive stuff which I’m trying to stay

away from, but all the people that I know that are interested in those

sorts of issues and would travel to places or countries that, you know,

are doing things well, they have a very negative view of removing a

natural resource, which is what we’re talking about. 30

In general, they would rather see that we found clever ways of creating

the metals and other things that are to come out of this mining from

recycled material and put the money and resource into that.

35

MR CHRISTENSEN: And do you think that applies even in a situation where

the activity wasn’t itself having any kind of physical effect that people

could be aware of. In other words, we’ve heard evidence and it’s not

beyond dispute, but we’ve heard evidence that the activity is unlikely to

have much of an effect on sand on the beaches. 40

[9.45 am]

Now, let’s just imagine that that’s true, is it the mere fact that – it’s a

perception thing then as opposed to a reality thing in terms of changes 45

at the beaches. Might that still be a negative?

Page 1408


MS WILKINS: Yes, I think it would be because I think if you’re looking at

tourism in a particular – the eco-tourism, but also probably your

average surfer too and your fishing people, you know, recreational,

they don’t want things to be interfered with. I think that would be the 5

perception. So even if they can’t see it, there would be a perception that

it’s happening. It’s not like it’s going to happen without knowledge.

So I think, personally, you can’t tag a grain of sand, so you cannot

show that it doesn’t travel from beach A to beach B, we can’t show that 10

yet. All we’re going to see is after this process, if it goes ahead, a

possible effect, and that effect could be quite significant. I’ll leave that

to the experts.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Sure. 15

MS WILKINS: But my view is more of the effect on businesses that are

engaged in those activities and I think there is a negative perception, I

think as a country we don’t do ourselves any favours in taking that or

allowing a venture like that to go ahead. As I said, I’d rather see us find 20

ways to recycle much more efficiently and that would certainly be a big

tick for us as a country.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Okay, thank you.

25

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Kapea, anything?

MR KAPEA: No, he stole all my questions.

MS WRATT: Thanks, Ms Wilkins, thank you for that. You talked about 30

retention as well as insurance and bonds, I’m familiar with insurance

and bonds. Can you just tell me a little bit more, you talked about

retention being a retaining of – retention coming out of gross earnings -

- -

35

MS WILKINS: Yes, okay, one assumes that this is a business venture and that

it’s a profit making venture. With a large venture that has some impact

or possible impacts or it may not be done properly and, you know,

there needs to be a levy or leverage for responsibility to be undertaken,

retention is a common practice that is used in the building industry 40

quite substantially here in New Zealand, but it is used in other ventures

as well.

What happens is an agreed, in a contractual sense, an agreed amount,

perhaps 10 percent, that’s a fairly common one used in New Zealand, is 45

taken from the gross earnings that are set aside. Unfortunately in our

Page 1409


building industry it’s not always done that effectively, it can be held by

companies who then go under, like Mainzeal or someone like that, so

my view is that it would need to be held by an independent body.

That 10 percent is then released in the building industry, as I said, two 5

to five years seems to be fairly common practice, so you might say get

two percent every year for five years released, but it would be withheld

pending remedy of any king that needed to be done for whatever

reason, and so all of that stuff would be spelt out contractually.

10

MS WRATT: But it is on gross earnings.

MS WILKINS: Yes.

MS WRATT: So in fact whether or not the company is making a profit 15

doesn’t - - -

MS WILKINS: Often in the building industry profit will come in the two-fifth

year from that process. So you do have to have a very substantial

amount of capital invested and I think if you’re putting a bond forward 20

as well, and I would say that both are essential, then it’s a very big

investment for that business. But then at least as an investor, myself as

a New Zealand citizen, I would be assured that there is something

behind that venture to provide for the worst case scenario.

25

MS WRATT: Thank you, and just to clarify, when you talk – and I think

you’ve made it clear, but just to make it extra clear I guess – as an

investor you are talking about NZ Inc, if you like, as the investor

because this is New Zealand’s resource.

30

MS WILKINS: Yes. Every man, woman and child, but I think the weighting

of the investment, if you like, is on the West Coast residents, because

they are the ones whose livelihoods and, you know, surroundings are at

risk.

35

MS WRATT: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Thank you.

Now, I’m just going to call the submitters as I’ve got them listed here, 40

but we can change the order of people who are here or not here. Is

Mr Judge here?

MR JUDGE: Sir.

45

Page 1410


[9.50 am]

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Good morning, welcome, we have you

submission and we have your statement here, you go ahead.

5

MR JUDGE: Would you like me to go ahead?

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

MR JUDGE: I will just read my statement. Right, I will just read my 10

statement. It is just sort of a general overview of what I consider to be a

problem, it doesn’t talk too specifically about the actual Trans-Tasman

Resource application, but it puts it in context of what I believe to be the

ecological issues at the time. So I will just read it, the first part is called

“Planetary Boundaries”. 15

The term “anthropocene” was coined around the term of the 21st

century by the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen.

He intended it to mark the end of the Holocene epoch in planetary

history now accepted by science at the time of the late 18th century 20

industrial revolution. “Holocene” literally means “new hole” and

defines the stable interglacial geological epoch dated back 10,000 to

12,000 years in which human civilisation developed. Sorry, I think that

is a mistake, it should be 10,000,000 to 12,000,000 million years. No,

sorry, that is correct. 25

“Anthropocene” means “new human” and represents a new geological

epoch in which humanity has become the main driver in the Earth’s

system. It highlights the potentially fatal ecological rift that has arisen

between human beings of the Earth, emanating from the complex and 30

contradictions of the modern capitalist system. The planet is now

dominated by a technologically potent but alienated humanity,

alienated from both nature and itself and thus ultimately destructive of

everything around it.

35

The question now presented to us by these very characteristics of the

current social, political, and economic order is not just the continuation

of and the sustainability of human society, but the continued existence

of the miraculous and singularly unique biodiversity of life on this

planet. 40

In 2009 a project led by Johan Rockstrom of the Stockholm Resilience

Centre and including Paul Crutzen and US climatologist James Hansen

published an analysis of nine planetary boundaries crucial to maintain

in the Earth system environment in which humanity can exist safely. 45

These nine boundaries are climate change, ocean acidification,

Page 1411


stratospheric ozone depletion, the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles,

global freshwater use, change in land use, biodiversity loss,

atmospheric aerosol loading and chemical pollution.

The boundaries described for each of these can be regarded as tipping 5

points which at a certain level will lead to vast qualitative changes in

the Earth’s system that will threaten to destabilise the planet. The

boundaries when crossed may also be viewed as signifying the onset of

irreversible environmental degradation.

10

According to the report by the Stockholm Resilience Centre three

processes had already in 2009 crossed the planetary boundaries; those

are climate change, the nitrogen cycle and biodiversity loss. The latest

and most current report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change warns of catastrophic changes to the Earth’s system that 15

includes rise in sea levels, regularity of heat waves, droughts, floods,

extreme weather events. These will in turn lead to devastating impacts

on food production, widespread diseases, invasive insect infestation,

massive dislocation of human populations and the threat of reissue (ph

4.34) in global war. 20

The discussion of climate change is relevant to the Trans-Tasman

Resources proposal to mine the seabed precisely because it is an

industrial enterprise of a vast scale that will use enormous quantities of

CO2 emitting fossil fuels. 25

Biodiversity loss has been so great since the turn of the 20th century

and especially the period since 1945 that this particular tragedy has

come to be known as the Sixth Great Extinction. There have been Five

Great Extinctions discernible from the fossil record over the last half of 30

billion years attributed to erupt, shifts in climate, asteroid collision and

so on. The current period of extinction however is quite obviously a

result of the impact of human industrial civilisation on the natural

world, on the flora and fauna that is unable to withstand the pressures

of overhunting and overfishing, deforestation, the urban agricultural 35

and industrial expansion that equates to habitat loss and of course

toxicity in the environment.

[9.55 am]

40

Biodiversity loss is relevant to the Trans-Tasman Resources proposal

because the vast scale of this industrial enterprise will have

immeasurable and ongoing effects on the natural ecosystem of the

ocean floor and on the ocean life. This will include destruction of

habitat, wilful and reckless destruction of species, noise pollution, 45

chemical and heavy metal pollution.

Page 1412


This proposal is for industrial activity to take place within a recognised

range of the Maui dolphin, a species critically endangered and

recognised to be extremely sensitive to changes in its habitat.

5

Biodiversity loss is a planetary boundary that has already been crossed.

The following figures illustrate the reality of the crisis in the marine

environment alone. 90 per cent of big ocean fish have disappeared

since 1950, this includes Pacific Blue-fin Tuna, a species that is around

95 per cent depleted. Sharks are killed in an estimated rate of 270,000 10

per day, 50 per cent of Great Barrier Reef is gone since 1987, that is in

Australia, but I still think it is relevant, it is the ocean environment. 30

per cent of marine birds are gone since 1995, 28 per cent of all marine

animals that includes everything have gone since 1970.

15

Extinctions are happening in a rate a 100 to a 1000 times faster than

natural processes. Ocean acidification is on track to double by 2050 and

to triple by 2100. Biodiversity loss of current and projected rates could

lead to the loss of a third of all living species this century, three

quarters of life on Earth in 300 years. 20

The planetary boundaries model developed by the Stockholm

Resilience Centre has for each ecological process a preindustrial value,

the level reached before the ending of industrial capitalism. The

proposed boundary in a current state as for climate change and 25

biodiversity loss, these are as follows. Climate change, the preindustrial

value was 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide concentration in the

atmosphere, its proposed boundary was 350 parts per million. The

current state as of 2014 is 400 parts per million. That is a boundary that

has definitely been crossed. 30

Biodiversity loss, this is measured by the rate of extinction and the

number of species lost per million species per year, the preindustrial

annual rate referred to as the natural background rate of species loss

was 0.1 to 1 per million. The proposed boundary is 10 per million. The 35

current rate is greater than a 100 per million. This equates to the

extinction rate in a 100 to a 1000 times the preindustrial and

background rate.

In each of these rifts the stability of the Earth’s systems we know of as 40

being endangered, it has red alert status. If business as usual continues

the world is headed within the next few decades for major tipping

points and most likely irreversible environmental damage that will

threaten much of humanity. We are undermining the Earth’s system

that supports the conditions of life. 45

Page 1413


Regarding chemical pollution no measure for this was determined by

the Stockholm Studies 2009, however the key chemical pollutants were

identified with proposals given for measuring the effects of persistent

organic pollutants (POPs), plastics, endocrine disruptors, nuclear waste

and relevant to this discussion heavy metals. 5

The expanding economic system, the above problems are merely

symptoms of what is the essential problem. The expanding economic

system is placing impossible burdens on a fixed earth system. This will

and is leading to planetary overload. It has been estimated that in the 10

early 1960s human society used half of the planet’s biocapacity in a

year. Today it has reached an overshoot of 30 per cent beyond the

planet’s capacity to regenerate.

Projections show that if we continue on the business as usual path, 15

human civilisation will need the regenerative capacity of two planets by

2035. The crossing of the planetary boundaries is one primary cause.

The current impact is the global socioeconomic development (ph 4.30).

The capitalist mode of production and its tendencies of unlimited 20

expansion can be related historically to the overall break in the human

relation to nature.

The fundamental characteristics of the capitalist economy is that it is

essentially limitless in its expansion, it is a “grow or die” system. 25

The dragon (ph 4.50) of mass capital recognises no physical

boundaries, all obstacles are treated as mere barriers to be overcome in

an infinite sequence, capitals thus from a wider social and ecological

viewpoint are a dragon law (ph 5.00), an unstoppable and crushing 30

force.

[10.00 am]

It is a system they are not concerned directly with the expansion of 35

economic system value but rather with the expansion of exchange

value. It is merely quantitative and derives its meaning from an

exponential increase.

Quantity rules, I quote, “quantity rules absolute in the capital system”. 40

That is Istvan Meszraos. Qualitative social relations including those

with the natural world and the conditions of life are not part of its

ceased system of accountancy. I will quote E F Schumacher here, from

a book “Small is Beautiful”, 1973, “the strength of the idea of private

enterprise lies in its terrifying simplicity”. It suggests that the totality of 45

life can be reduced to one aspect, profits.

Page 1414


“With the alienation and reification that accompanies a system of

capital and in an era dominated by the interests of capital, ecological

destruction has simply become a way of life. If a society’s implicit

goals are to exploit nature, enrich their needs and ignore the long term, 5

then that society will develop technologies and markets that destroy the

environment, widen the gap between the rich and poor and optimise the

short-term gains. In short that society develops technologies and

markets that hasten collapse instead of preventing it.” That is from

Donella Meadows, “The Limits to Growth; Thirty Year Update”. 10

The single-minded goal of technological innovation under capitalism is

expansion of profits, accumulation and wealth for those at the top. By

corporations that have no national loyalty, not quality of life for the

citizens of the country whose resources they are exploiting, nor 15

protection of the environment. Ecological degradation ranks alongside

inequality and poverty as powerful evidence of market failure.

The discounting of the future: the capitalist market system is geared at

all times to concentration of economic surplus and wealth. Coupled 20

with this is the displacement of the majority of costs onto society and

the environment. There has been much debate in recent literature on the

distorted accounting of human and environmental welfare in this gross

national income statistics. There are shameful forms of waste and there

are deliberate and designated inefficiencies. The most pervasive and the 25

most dangerous being the short-term timed horizon built into the

system that works exclusively on individual human greed.

The modern technologically driven system of profit necessitates a

heavy discounting of the future. A good capitalist is one who can 30

maximise and monetise an opportunity to exploit resources no matter

how bad the environmental problem can be in the future due to their

immediate actions. One of the chief characteristics of the anthroprocene

is that suddenly geological scale change has entered human history.

The generations to follow this current era will no longer have the 35

opportunity to act because the conditions of the irrevocable

deterioration earth’s altered system will already have been set in place.

“Each generation makes good capitalistic decisions yet the effect is

collective social suicide”, said Lester Thurow from a book called “The

Future of Capitalism”. 40

The capitalist system is a bubble economy using up environmental

resources and the absorptive capacity of the environment while

displacing the costs back on earth itself, thus incurring an enormous

ecological debt. While the system is small it can keep expanding 45

outward and the ecological debt is displaced, often with no recognition

Page 1415


of the cost incurred. The industrial revolution in Europe, for example,

was made historically possible due to the discovery of an entire

continent in the Americas. When the system expands due to its inherent

nature and becomes an all-engulfing juggernaut, as I have said before,

with no extra continent to exploit, the mounting ecological debt 5

becomes precarious, threatening collapse.

The general law of environmental degradation, external habitat is a vast

commons to be exploited. The current situation globally is that the field

of operation for the capitalist system is the entire world. The oscillation 10

of wages within satisfactory limits, the continued reproduction of a

relative surplus population, the limitless drive to increase the rate of

exploitation is not co-ordinated in absolutely everything from human

beings to the natural world has become commodified.

15

“We are rapidly being reconfigured into a new global neo-feudalism”,

said Chris Hedges, New York journalist. The more powerful the

function of capital, the extent and energy of its growth, the greater the

ecological demands and the level of environmental degradation. In

physics the second law of thermo-dynamics guarantees that there will 20

be an increase in tropic degradation with the advance of production,

entropy equalling a collapse in disorganisation of available energy in

the system.

[10.05 am] 25

The capitalistic goal of promoting private profits at the expense of

social and environmental costs means this entropic degradation will

force a relentless push towards maximising economic returns at

whatever level can be obtained for management in the system. 30

This is a historically specific characteristic which takes advantage of

available technologies, recognised resources in relation to trade of any

given historical phase of development. In the contemporary situation,

the structure of commodity production treats external habitats as a vast 35

commons to be freely exploited by capital.

It tends to maximise the toxicity of production and to promote

accelerated habit destruction, creating problems of ecological

sustainability that far outweigh the general entropic effect. This 40

general law of environmental degradation is one of the contradictions

of capitalism.

Page 1416


It can be expressed as an amassing of wealth at one end and the

accumulation and the conditions of resource depletion and pollution

and species and habit destruction, urban congestion, overpopulation

and a deteriorating sociological life environment at the other.

5

In short, the drive and expansion of capital degrades the very

conditions of production. The world in which one operates one’s

enterprise collapses.

Finally, an inability to respond rationally to the crisis. Traditionally, 10

over the history of liberal democracies, it has been the liberal classes

and the liberal institutions that have made important reforms, that have

acted as a kind of safety valve against the excesses of unfettered

capitalism.

15

New York Times journalist, Chris Hedges, laments the death of the

liberal institutions and the bank machine of the liberal classes as an

extremely dangerous situation. He likens the contemporary moment to

19th

century Tsarist Russia, where the writer Dostoevsky chronicled the

collapse of liberalism, describing an age of moral nihilism and political 20

paralyses.

Similarly, there is today an inability of those at the centre of power, he

just says, to respond rationally to what is happening. Instead of a

rational response we see the use of force, we the see the security and 25

surveillance state attempt to physically erase resistance. We see the

ramming through of draconian security laws in this country, outlawing

the law to protest at sea and so on.

In Australia, we are seeing the Abbot government proposing to outlaw 30

the boycotting of companies on environmental grounds. In Idaho we

have seen the outlawing of any reporting of animal abuse in factory

farms. It goes on and on, some of it ridiculous, some of it terrifying.

To quote Chris Hedges again, 40 percent of the summer Arctic sea 35

house melts the response (INDISTINCT 2.47) Power to send ships

with half billion dollar drill-bits to mine the last vestiges of gas, oil,

minerals and fish stocks out of the death throes of the planet.

This is an absurd situation that is no different to the desire to vacuum 40

up huge quantities of seabed and sea life off the New Zealand coast in

order to find precious metals for the profits of a foreign owned

supranational corporation. Precious metals that will be used to

perpetuate fossil fuel burning industrialisation as well as the

militarisation of chair political tension zones. 45

Page 1417


It represents nothing but the irrationality and the shear irresponsibility

of current corporate power in the political systems that serve it. In

accepting this situation and perpetuating it, we are replicating the moral

and intellectual decline that was famously documented within the

ancient empires at the point of their collapse. 5

Throughout the sorry history of capitalist expansion, sacrifice zones

have been offered up to the marketplace. From the ruthless and

pointless killing of the buffalo herds on the American plains to the

destruction of vast swabs of rainforest around the globe, including the 10

great Koru forests of our own country.

And the current devastation of the Indonesian and Malaysian

rainforests for the sake of palm oil production, causing what is nothing

less than a genocide upon our cousins, the orangutan 15

To the mountain top removal in the Appalachian Mountains also

happening today, where the mountain is literally blown up, the forests

are bulldozed over and burned and huge ponds of heavy metal poisoned

water accumulate. 20

The list goes on and on, to seabed mining off the coast of New Zealand.

It is in the same company and the same league as inter-generational

environmental crime carried out in the name of short term profit, good

capitalism. 25

The defining struggle of the 21st century, the environmental struggles

without doubt, the defining struggle of the 21st century. If the Holocene

of the last thousand years stood for the epic of the new whole in

geological evolution and the Holoanthropocene stands for the epic of 30

the new human, marked ironically by the crisis in the human

domination of the planet, then what we need to strive for is a hollow

Holoanthropocene, an epic of the new whole human based on

transcending the alienation of humanity in nature. I will quote from

John Bellamy Foster, from his book “The Ecological Rift; Capitalism’s 35

War on the Earth”, 2010. He says “humanity must at long last reach a

new stage in its really historical development in which the earth is a

boundary and life is respected.”

[10.10 am] 40

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Mr Judge for that. Can I ask you a question?

Given, and that is a fairly broad description of the whole of society and

I presume how you see it. What is your view though, given that we,

having to assess this application under a specific piece of legislation 45

our parliament has passed, which around the effects of the activity, and

Page 1418


really drew on too broadly in terms of climate change, and the Act is

very specific about what we can and can’t take into account, not

climate change but biodiversity. So is it your view that this is

philosophically opposed or this is really just part of more adverse

environmental effect and therefore is inappropriate? How do we just 5

frame that, how do you frame that? We have a specific piece of

legislation to consider as opposed to a philosophical argument.

MR JUDGE: The legislation around climate change that this government

agreed with at the time is very poor. 10

CHAIRPERSON: I suppose the only comment, I mean you may not be aware,

there is a specific section in this Act that we are dealing with that we

cannot have regard to the effects on climate change, the issue of

discharging greenhouse gases, I mean there is a limitation; we can’t 15

take that into account.

MR JUDGE: You can’t.

CHAIRPERSON: We can’t, the Act expressly excludes us from doing that. 20

MR JUDGE: Right.

CHAIRPERSON: So hence I was kind of looking in terms of what you have

put to us, how do we wrap that up into – I assume what you are saying 25

to us is that you don’t think this should go ahead?

MR JUDGE: What I am saying, what?

CHAIRPERSON: That this proposal shouldn’t go ahead, I am assuming - - - 30

MR JUDGE: Obviously I am saying that because I put it in context of the

ecological degradation that has been happening now since the

beginning of the industrial revolution.

35

CHAIRPERSON: Right, and this is part of that continuation, is that the - - -?

MR JUDGE: Oh, definitely. I mean it is remarkable that you are not able to

consider climate change because the latest IPCC report says that it is an

urgent situation that – it warns governments to address it now because 40

if we – you know the general consensus, and it is hard to get consensus

from scientists because they are all trying to compete with one another

but it is about ninety-eight per cent consensus world-wide now, that we

are heading towards a period of increased warming.

45

Page 1419


If we stopped emissions tomorrow, somehow miraculously stopped

carbon emissions tomorrow, we would still be faced with three hundred

to six hundred years of warming. So we are basically talking about the

end of what we know as human civilisation, because it is not

sustainable. I mean we have had two summers already now where the 5

drought situation in the Waikato has been - - -

CHAIRPERSON: I realise that. I might just come in here because I think that

was the issue I was trying to put to you. I mean we have got certain

things that we can do. I understand what you are saying to us. What I 10

was trying to get you to do is to say to us, within our realms, you are

saying the environmental degradation is significant of this proposal.

MR JUDGE: It just seems to be another one of these things which is

happening because it is so short term; it is so incredibly short-sighted 15

and short term of the stewardship of the environment if you like. It is

all geared towards generation of profit for a corporation, a Trans

national corporation. And as far as I know it is ninety-seven per cent

foreign owned.

20

As far as I understand it the sand is going to be vacuumed up onto a

ship, they are going to be processed and sorted through for their heavy

metals and so on, their precious metals including titanium, which I

believe is used in the aircraft industry in China, in the military aircraft

industry. So we are using our resources. I mean, someone mentioned 25

before that these are our resources in New Zealand. They are not going

to be. They are going to be brought up, sucked up out of the earth by a

corporation that has the money to do it. I don’t know how much, I am

not sure of the economics of how much is going to be coming back to

the New Zealand economy. It seems to me that zero jobs that will be 30

created because it is all going to be sucked up, processed on a ship,

transferred to another ship and then that ship goes off to China. What is

that going to do for our economy?

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I understand your concern, it is clear to me. I 35

will just let you take some other questions.

[10.15 am]

MR CHRISTENSEN: I am like Mr Hill; I am wanting to work out how to 40

take advantage of the information that you have shared with us within

the context of the legislation that we are required to apply. I suppose,

am I right in saying that by taking the context that you have put

forward in terms of looking at things on a much broader and looking at

the planetary boundaries concepts and so on, that you are trying to 45

heighten for us the importance of, or the significance of, in this context,

Page 1420


the impacts on biodiversity, for example. And that is clearly one of the

things that we can take account of in the legislation.

MR JUDGE: Yes.

5

MR CHRISTENSEN: And you are asking us to, or are you asking us to view

the significance of, impacts on biodiversity that might or might not

arise from the particulars of this project, within the context of what is

going on globally in relation to biodiversity and how serious that issue

is? 10

MR JUDGE: I think it is an incredibly serious issue and I think, and I am not

a scientist in this field, I am not a biologist so I am a keen reader of the

information on it, obviously. What I would hope that my submission

today might encourage is a taking seriously of the scientific 15

investigations about biodiversity loss that such an industrial process

that is proposed might have on the Maui dolphin, on the fish stocks, on

the whole food chain, on the whole thing.

MR CHRISTENSEN: I have got it, I understand the point you are making. 20

MR JUDGE: I would like some scientists to come and share that information

- - -

CHAIRPERSON: And we have got it, we have had a lot of that. I mean we 25

had a lot of that last week so we have got the information. So we do

need to weigh all of that in terms of any decision that we make.

MS WRATT: No, thank you for a very good summary of the issues that you

have raised and I think the questions that my colleagues have asked are 30

very relevant in terms of our – we are constrained by the legislation we

are working in but I thank you for your very informative presentation.

MR JUDGE: I am just curious to know, how did that come about that you

were not allowed to consider climate change? 35

CHAIRPERSON: That is what the parliament has said in the legislation.

MS WRATT: I could perhaps make a brief comment. I think the response that

you would get from Government would be that, and I am not saying 40

that it is an adequate response, I am not making a judgment here as to

whether or not I think it is an adequate response, but the response

would be that New Zealand’s emissions trading scheme is the

Governments response to dealing with climate change and that it is

intended to put market pressures, or economic pressures on those who 45

produce climate change emissions.

Page 1421


I mean it is a consistent approach they take across legislation that a

specific legislation often doesn’t deal with climate change,

environmental legislation doesn’t deal with climate change issues.

5

MR JUDGES: I will just say in response to that, that it is not working. The

emissions have increased from the period that we are supposed cut

them.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Rogers has a question. 10

MR ROGERS: Morning. Just a question, you are well read in the in these, are

there any examples from all your reading of mining activities that do

meet some of these philosophies? Where communities or whatever

have found ways to mine basically, and I suppose the question is 15

coming from - my understanding is that, I am not aware of any

civilisations that have not, basically, mined, in the history of humanity.

I am just aware if there are any good examples that you have from your

reading that we may be able to consider to frame a better decision?

20

MR JUDGE: That is a good question. I am wracking my brains to try and

recall something that I have read that is a positive example of mining.

Obviously very small scale, pre-industrial cultures mined without too

much effect. I think my answer would be that it is the massive scale

that we see now, it is the huge scale of industrialised processes of 25

mining that make such an impact on the environment as opposed to

small scale, much smaller human societies that have occurred,

hundreds and hundreds of years in the Americas and so on that have

found evidence of mining obviously. And through Europe. It is the

industrialised processes and vast size of the - the vast size of this 30

particular proposal is frightening, it is just absolutely terrifying to my

mind.

[10.20 am]

35

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Mr Kapea.

MR KAPEA: Good Morning. You mentioned the word ‘stewardship’ and I

see in the submission here you make reference to Kaitiakitanga. Are

you familiar with the concept of Kaitiakitanga? 40

MR JUDGE: I probably am, but if you could just give me a slight.

Page 1422


MR KAPEA: It pretty much encompasses all your work that you have done

here in terms of everything was sustainable, the well-being of those still

to come. And it’s something that we’ve probably banged our heads

against the wall for a long time to get noticed.

5

Yet all your readings here are very, very based on the same values and

principles and that’s why I just want to ask, were you familiar with that

concept?

MR JUDGE: Yes, I am familiar with it to some degree in Maori culture I do 10

believe.

MR KAPEA: That’s all, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Mr Judge. 15

MR JUDGE: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Is Mr Hill here? Is Ms Watson here? Thank you.

20

MS WATSON: Tena koutou. My name’s Madeline.

CHAIRPERSON: Just before you start, we’ll just get some copies of your

statement.

25

MS WATSON: Oh yes, I’ll go and print it out.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. It’s just good to have it in front of us. We

have yours submission in front of us as well.

30

[10.25 am]

Thank you everybody, we will come back and we will have

Ms Watson’s statement, thank you.

35

MS WATSON: Thank you everyone. My name is Maddy, Madelin, I am a

seventh generation Pacific Pakeha. My father’s whanau have lived in

Taranaki for several generations.

Almost a year ago I returned home to my home in Whaingaroa, Raglan, 40

after 10 months of sailing the Pacific Ocean with a fleet of Voyaging

Canoe. The fleet’s crew came from over 40 different island

communities and were committed to sharing knowledge and taking

action to protect the largest body of water on the planet – our home, the

Pacific Ocean. 45

Page 1423


Today I have come to be heard on behalf of my crewmates. Those

whose lifeblood and very sustenance is the Pacific Ocean. I have come

to speak for the child growing in my belly and his or her generation. I

have come to stand for life and thousands of life’s forms that can’t

speak for themselves on this issue. 5

[10.30 am]

While voyaging we were run with both life’s mystery and beauty at its

fullest as well as the devastating undeniable reality of the great ocean’s 10

death. A compelling combination of experiences to watch a large pod

of dolphins teaching their young to jump where the ocean surface was

slicked with oil, to sight blue whales not long before our waka shook

with the sound of underwater explosions, to sail beneath the stars,

along a cluster of dead zones marked with red lines and warnings on 15

our charts.

Seabed mining can only be described as a destructive process. If TTR

is given the go-ahead oil slicks and intensified noise pollution will

become realities in the South Taranaki Bight. The mine site and a 20

significant area surrounding it will become yet another dead zone with

no guarantee of recovery from the displacement of one billion tonnes of

sand, widespread sedimentation and pollution.

On land I am a gardener, I am struck every day by the complexity of 25

life’s ecology both in the soil and in the sea. It is a mystery still beyond

human understanding. It is clear in the TTR application documents that

there are many unknowns about the marine ecology at the proposed site

of mining in the STB. I am concerned about the assumptions, the

outdated research, studies from international waters, misleading, 30

inaccurate and sweeping statements as well as the absence of

information about the mining technology.

This certainly is not enough to claim authoritative understandings about

the marine ecology or to draw valid conclusions on the environmental 35

impacts of this proposal. Without up-to-date, unbiased, comprehensive

understanding of this ecosystem neither management nor mitigation of

the effects of this project are possible.

Our current level of knowledge and appreciation of this ecosystem is 40

still in its infancy. We are therefore currently incapable of accurately

predicting the short and long-term environmental effects of seabed

mining in the STB. What we do know is that the proposal will

definitely not enhance the marine ecology.

45

Page 1424


At this point in human history our survival depends on the regeneration

of our natural environment. This is not a time to even think on further

human endeavours that will be destructive to the marine environment in

either the short or long-term. Even activities with minimal negative

impacts are not worth considering anymore. We can’t afford to embark 5

on any new projects that will hasten the ocean’s death. We should be

meeting like this only to decide if our plans and ideas provide sufficient

benefit to the marine ecology to even be worthy of consideration and

debate.

10

Starting at the base of the marine food web, will seabed mining in the

STB benefit plankton population? The proposed mining site lies on the

border of one of the highest biomasses of plankton in New Zealand.

Phytoplankton, single-celled aquatic plants at the very bottom of the

food chain need two things for their survival: energy from the sun and 15

nutrients from the water. The plumes created from seabed mining will

impact sunlight penetration. Chemically altered discharge from the

unwanted mine materials will have adverse effects on all marine life,

phytoplankton being particularly sensitive to concentrated metals and

change in nutrient availability. 20

We know that in the process of photosynthesis phytoplankton release

oxygen into the water. Over half of the world’s oxygen is produced via

phytoplankton photosynthesis, so every second breath you have ever

taken is a gift from the ocean. Is this not reason enough for us to 25

respect, revere and lavish gratitude on the ocean every day?

As well as this, phytoplankton keep all our heads above water by taking

up about one third of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted from

human activities considerably slowing the effects of the global climate 30

crisis. Has TTR researched the effects of their proposal on the global

climate situation?

[10.35 am]

35

And from what we have heard, no. Phytoplankton are at the core of the

STB’s ability to sustain life, as well as humans, fish, whales, dolphins,

crabs, sea bears and just about everything whose life depends on the

ocean, owes their existence and survival to phytoplankton. The

repercussions of destroying the population of plankton in and around 40

the proposed mining area are far reaching.

Research shows that migratory mammal species such as blue whales

and southern right whales feed in and migrate along ancient pathways

through the STB, both within the proposed project site and within its 45

acoustic footprint. The proposed site also overlaps the southernmost

Page 1425


habitat of the critically endangered Maui dolphin. I have read the STB

is one of only five feeding grounds in the southern hemisphere for the

endangered blue whale.

Blue whales rely on large aggregations of dense krill which feed on 5

phytoplankton to sustain their extreme body size. They continuously

dive and feed throughout the day when high density pro patches are

present. A phenomenon our fleet were witness to off the coast of

Central America during our voyage. Disruption to feeding due to the

extermination of krill population and noise pollution from mining 10

activities could have significant negative impacts on individual baleen

whales and the health of their populations.

\

There are fewer than a dozen breeding southern right whale females

remaining in New Zealand. The blue whale population has plummeted 15

by 95 percent in the last century and of the remaining 100 endemic

Maui dolphin, there are only 55 breeding females left. It seems crazy

that in full understanding of the imminent extinction of these ocean

creatures we would even consider putting more pressure on their lives

and livelihoods by allowing further human activities that threaten them 20

directly and/or threaten the ecology of their habitat.

A major focus of our voyage through the pacific was educating about

the relatively unknown and under researched effects of noise pollution

on marine mammals. Whales and dolphins together with other residents 25

of the deep communicate through sound to find mates, to navigate and

to hunt prey. Their lives are dependent on hearing sounds but a

growing number of noisy vessels and noisy human enterprises pollute

the ocean. The mining activities proposed for the STB will combine

with existing noise pollution to create a troublesome dim that could 30

adversely affect the hearing and thus the existence of these marine

creatures. They cannot it, the sea is their sole abode and habitat.

Noise pollutions from TTRs activities could further threaten vulnerable

populations, driving them away from areas important to their survival, 35

injuring or even causing the deaths of whales and dolphins. I am

concerned by TTRs lack of effort to identify the acoustic impact of

their proposed activities on the mammals and ocean creatures that

migrate through and populate the STB. The blue whales and the

southern right whale are but two at risk species who are not included in 40

the noise study. The accumulative effects of the potential noise

pollution on marine life created by all areas of this enterprise on top of

the existing activities in the STB must be accounted for.

45

Page 1426


There is an urgent need to revaluate the environmental impacts of this

proposal. There is no denying that scraping one billion tonnes of sand

from the sea floor in the STB will have devastating effects on the

ecology of the area. If re-establishment and decolonization of a

balanced and healthy ecology is possible, it will be an extremely slow 5

process. I have no faith that a foreign owned mining company has the

will or ability to commit resources for the decades that would be

necessary to restore the health and vitality of the STB’s ocean and

coastal communities. The risks for many species including humans far

outweigh the short term financial benefits to a few. 10

Please consider all life as a rare and miraculous gift, our highest

priority and oppose this application. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms Watson. 15

[10.40 am]

MR ROGERS: Morning. Just going to your experiences in the Pacific Ocean,

how big were those vessels? 20

MS WATSON: They are seventy-five foot long.

MR ROGERS: Okay, cool. You talk about an explosion? What was that?

25

MS WATSON: Seismic testing off the coast of Central America.

MR ROGERS: Okay, so they were – it was seismic surveying or as in seismic

events, as in an earthquake?

30

MS WATSON: No, surveying, yes. It was human.

MR ROGERS: Human induced.

MS WATSON: Yes. 35

MR ROGERS: Okay, thank you.

MS WRATT: Can I just question that? My understanding of seismic survey is

that it doesn’t cause that sort of explosion. How did you know that was 40

what it was?

MS WATSON: The Captain of the fleet contacted the Coast Guard nearby

because they were repetitive explosions that were making the masts and

all our bodies shake and this was the information we were given. 45

Page 1427


MS WRATT: Okay, that is interesting.

MS WATSON: It was.

MR KAPEA: Kia ora. You just mentioned dead zones. Can explain that a 5

little further?

MS WATSON: Yes. We didn’t get close enough in the daylight to see the

effects of them but on the charts between Hawaii and the west coast of

the States there were a number of patches with red lines and I believe 10

that some of them were nuclear dumping grounds. We certainly saw a

lot waste floating around - we didn’t go through them - around the

edges of them. Yes so just areas that are not safe for humans; let-alone

fish and animals.

15

MR KAPEA: So if we have got debris, if we have got containers sort of in the

water those areas are marked?

MS WATSON: Yes I guess in case there are large foreign floating objects that

might be hit, yes. 20

MR KAPEA: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Is Ms Greensill here? And Mr Hamilton here?

25

MR HAMILTON: I am here.

CHAIRPERSON: It is just that we normally take the break at eleven o’clock.

I don’t know whether you want to come now and speak or do you want

to wait until a little bit later. 30

MR HAMILTON: In answer to your question, Mr Chairman, is that the

answer is no. Angeline is going to be opening up - - -

CHAIRPERSON: That is fine and that is why I was asking. That is perfectly 35

acceptable. That is why I was asking because I thought that might be

the case. So what we will do then is - - -

ADJOURNED [10.43 am]

40

RESUMED [11.20 am]

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, perfect, thank you, welcome.

MS GREENSILL: (Māori Content) 45

Page 1428


MR KAPEA: Kia ora.

CHAIRPERSON: Kia ora.

MS GREENSILL: For those of you who wanted to know what I was singing 5

about, I was singing about crying to the winds of heaven who has heard

us just the rippling of the ocean, who is there to help us if all gone, and

so we have to do this.

MR KAPEA: Kia ora. 10

MS GREENSILL: My name is Angeline Greensill, I am the co-chairperson of

Nga Hapu o Te Uru and I have given a document here which is our

forum plan. I have been asked by Joanna Kati, the secretary, to present

our submission lodged on the 18th of December last year and please 15

take that submission that was lodged as read.


MS GREENSILL: Nga Hapu o Te Uru is a customary fisheries forum made 20

up of hapu and marae webs from port of Waikato in the north, actually

on the screen there I a place I come from, that is Whaingaroa, who

those of you who have never been there, it is a pretty place and it is a

place that actually relies upon a gift from Taranaki to actually exist in

terms of beaches. 25

So we have a forum that is not in Taranaki, it is made up of hapu and

marae from port of Waikato in the north to Waipiro just south of

Mokau. Within that land area there is a sand mining operation which

has operated for a number of years – Taharoa and also (INDISTINCT 30

2.48) in the north. Both of them have had problems, but they still exist

and they have brought economic benefit to some of the people there.

The vision of Nga Hapu o Te Uru is to preserve, sustain and enhance

the fisheries according to our customs and values. In order to achieve 35

our vision we wrote a Customary Fisheries Plan 2012-2017 based on

four principles and building collaborative relationships with hapu,

marae agencies, government agencies and other sectors. The four

principles of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which is affirmed as a founding

document of New Zealand, in the articles outlining entitlements and 40

responsibilities of both hapu, iwi and the Crown. Kaitiakitanga is a

practice of ensuring the Maori environment is protected and sustained

for future generations, the health of fisheries is paramount.

Manaakitanga, the caring of others including animals and plants that

share the earth with us, and whanaungatanga, our relationships and 45

connections with people and our environment are important.

Page 1429


While Nga Hapu o Te Uru is north of the consent area, our

whanaungatanga relationships to the Taranaki area and the iwi are

widespread. Many coastal fauna in the Tainui area trace relationships to

Ngati Ruanui to Ruaputahanga and married Whatihua who lived in 5

Raglan. We also have Aotea which is the waka that went to Taranaki

which actually lies buried in Aotea harbour which is between Raglan

and Kawhia, and also through to Ngati Toa to Ngati Koata, whose

lands and marine interests stretch from the Cook Strait to Te Tauiha hu

a Te Maui waka a Maui, which I guess is Marlborough, and through to 10

relatives they married into whanau at Parihaka, Hawera, Whanganui

and other places. My great grandmother is from Parihaka.

Te Taihauauru Iwi Fisheries Forum is our neighbouring forum and

similarly is involved with customary fishing practices, restoring, 15

protecting and enhancing fisheries for future generations. Our

whanaunga in Taranaki have given a variety of reasons for opposing

this consent application, while we do not speak for them, we do tote or

support their stance against the granting of a marine consent to Trans-

Tasman Resources Limited to mine iron sand within the South 20

Taranaki Bight with such haste.

[11.25 am]

Do we have an existing interest that may be affected? We believe we 25

do. Like our whanaunga in Taranaki, we are Tangata Tiaki in our area

and we work strenuously to actively protect our customary fisheries

and ecosystems from harm. The marine environment is one,

interrelated, interdependent system. So what happens in Taranki will

affect marine life from Te Tau Ihu to Te Reinga of north. 30

The children of Tangaroa and Hinemoana, Hineone, Hinekirikiri and

others don’t recognise boundaries. They spawn and they speck (ph

0.47) larvae or juveniles, they float in the ocean’s currents and settle to

begin life always vulnerable to human induced impacts such as 35

sedimentation plumes, oil spills, fishing and waste discharges.

The application – I won’t read through that because you know what the

application is all about – but going to paragraph 9, Nga Hapu o te Uru

opposes the application in its entirety and asks that it be declined. 40

Central to this issue is the recognition of the ahi ka in Nga Taranaki

Maunga (ph 1.14), who has produced rocks and gravel to be ground

into sands for millions of years. The accretion of black sand on the

West Coast beaches as far north as Te Manuka is a welcome gift for 45

those suffering from coastal erosion. It is a sign of manaakitanga

Page 1430


playing out in Te o Maori, what I am talking about is the gifting or the

looking after things within the environment, the natural world, Te o

Maori.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the treaty articles as outlined in our plan outlines 5

entitlements and responsibilities of hapu and the Crown, of course the

treaty articles are not followed in these sorts of processes, instead we

have section 12(a-d) of the Act which outlines a commitment to the

Treaty principles, however even this is not adequately reflected in the

TTR process. In fact the TTR application, if approved, impacts upon 10

Tangata whenua abilities, rights and obligations to actively manage

their taunga, such as traditional kai, flora, fauna and gravel sand in the

project area. This mining application, if approved, is a breach of the

Treaty as it fails to protect the interests of hapu me nga tangata katoa.

15

It is my understanding that the Treaty in my experience of tino

rangatiratanga requires that hapu have a decisive or determinative voice

in decision-making in respect of their taunga. What they require is

enough information to be in a position to apply te kainga custom and

law, to arrive at decisions that will protect the Maori of taunga. 20

While such information may be available as Ma Taranga Maori within,

which is Maori knowledge within hapu and iwi, it is the scientific

experts who appear to have a monopoly on providing what is regarded

as the credible evidence upon which decisions are based and often you 25

have people who are 90 years old who have lived in a place all their

lives, they know about reefs, they know about fishing spots, who

actually are not regarded as experts.

Consultation. An MOU, and I am talking about the on between 30

ourselves – in fact I forgot to bring a copy – was signed with the

Ministry of Fisheries in 2007 with our forum recognising our

relationship under the Kaimoana Regulations, which came about as a

result of the Treaty of Waitangi Claim Settlement Act, Fisheries.

35

Our own rohe moana was gazetted out to the 200k limit and I have

actually given I think a map in there of these rohe moanas around the

country and I note that there aren’t that many down around Taranaki, I

understand the person who is in charge in that area lives in Palmerston,

so that might have something to do with it, but if you look at the map 40

you can see that the whole at the time of me waka area, we have been

very busy since Seafloor and Foreshore Seabed Act and we have

actually designated out to 200 miles our rohe moanas. These are places

that we have an interest in and if there is research, if there is mining,

we want to know about it. 45

Page 1431


That doesn’t exclude us from having a say with our whanaungi down

south, because the currents flow up that coast, so that is just our

relationship in terms of our rohe moana. Our rohe moana gazetted out

to 200, which in our view indicates that we wish to be consulted on

matters that are likely to impinge upon the rohe we are responsible for. 5

So while we don’t expect their full consultation in regards to this issue,

we certainly would if it was in our space and we have had those

conversations with Andy Sullivan and others in the past about possible

mining of our area.

10

No consultation or consideration was given to coastal kaitiakitanga to

whenau who live north of Taranaki. These areas should be considered

with regards to the effects of the activity on marine life from spawning

cycles to fishing. Consultations focus solely on the place closest to the

proposed mining site, which fail to take into account the impact that 15

could be felt along the whole West Coast and out the other side is not

complete consultation in my view.

[11.30 am]

20

Some Taranaki whanau, hapu and iwi have been consulted without the

provision of all information required for them to make timely decisions

on practices which are foreign to Maori world views. The best and

most appropriate way of obtaining an obtaining an understand

information about the effects of any proposed activity on these existing 25

interest is to have full information and to engage directly with

represents of a whanau, hapu or iwi for as long as it takes to get proper

understanding of what is envisaged. This is an application that has

actually been done in haste.

30

Moving on to kaitiakitanga and although that is in the RMA, I know it

is not here but it does come in my view under active protection which

is part of the treaty. The application fails to provide active protection of

taonga, particularly over the fisheries and also obstructs kaitiakitanga

by tangata whenua of their environment. Protection considers taonga 35

not as thing to be exploited in Maori view, not to be exploited, patented

and commercialised to increase the GDP but as taonga having

whakapapa and afforded the same consideration and protection as

tangata whenua.

40

Migratory species, the marine environment is home to a variety of sea

mammals such as the Tuhora and Aehe (ph 01.12) and other species

such as crayfish, tuna, whitebait which may be affected by mining

activities. Any adverse impacts of the migrating resident mammal

species could be devastating and must be avoided and of course we are 45

thinking here mainly of the Maui dolphin, we have orcas we have all of

Page 1432


those things visit us up the coast. I have been down at Cook Strait when

I have seen the migration through the pass of all the dolphins heading

north and there have been hundreds of them, thousands probably. So,

they are around. I am not sure where they feed in Taranaki but they

certainly need to be taken into account seriously and I do not think 5

there is enough research that has been done into how these mining

activities are going to affect them.

Threats to seabed biology. The sea floor supports a wide range of

organisms including mussels, worms and crustaceans which in turn 10

support an extremely healthy fishery. The suction dredging crawler will

remove the entire top surface of the seabed. Every living thing in the

sound will be killed in the process turning the mined area plus a

significant area around the mining sites into a dead zone. Sediment

surface feeding fawn has a high potential to die from mining processes. 15

So what we create from a living space is a dead space.

Sediment plume impacts. I am sure you have heard all this before.

There are plumes created at the time of mining and when the unwanted

sand is dumped on the sea floor. I think this is sort of standard in a lot 20

of submissions that have been so you probably do not need me to go

into the impacts of sediment plumes. You have also got experts that

you would listen to rather than to me.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. 25

MS GREENSILL: Surface species impacts. Again, the surface noise and light

that run day and night will negatively affect seabirds. I am not sure if

the prions come there or those that sort of travel far south to the Cook

Strait area but I know they come in the thousands and drop out of the 30

sky to their nesting places. I am not sure if they feed in this area but I

have not seen much research into that. The economy profits will be

directed; basically the majority will be directly exported overseas while

the risk of the potential ecological collapse remains with us.

35

The low worker rates will not deliver economic gains and will not

provide economic benefits relative to economic losses resulting from

the applicant’s proposal. There are minimal employment opportunities,

we know that in a lot of mining companies fly in and fly out, drive in

and drive out and it is highly skilled labour required usually. There are 40

minimal employment opportunities while New Zealand’s clean green

image and tourism will be undermined. In the west coast area where I

come from tourism is one of New Zealand’s largest export industries. It

directly and indirectly contributes about 10 percent of the GDP and I

am sure that you have probably heard all the tourism statistics and that 45

as well. Do you need me to go through this?

Page 1433


CHAIRPERSON: We have heard quite a lot but I am happy to if you want to

go through it.

MS GREENSILL: Okay. The applicant only focuses on impacts on tourism in 5

the immediate local area and fails to consider to accumulative adverse

effects to the larger region. Only 250 jobs would be created and most of

the workforce will be taken up by overseas personnel. The fly in, fly

out, drive in, drive out majority will not reside in Taranaki but come

from all parts of New Zealand and possibly overseas. The export value 10

of the seabed iron ore is not only in the same range as plastic products

that are exported from New Zealand. The food and forestry sectors

generate 70 percent and at the time of writing this, New Zealand’s

merchandising export interests at around 20 percent of GDP.

15

The seabed mining proposed will only be minor in export earnings in

comparison. In terms of tourism, we rely upon, in my area I guess, we

have got, I am not sure Taranaki would be the same, surfing,

recreational fishing, there are thousands of people who actually make a

living in terms of accommodation for those types of activities that bring 20

in more money, I believe, than what is proposed here.

[11.35 am]

The fishing industry, which Maori have interests in, are likely to be 25

impacted upon by this. The applicant acknowledges that impacts to

commercial fisheries in the local area will take place and has not

provided any evidence that compensation will be paid to that sector.

There is no economic analysis of the loss to the recreational fishing 30

sector. The potential loss to people’s economic well-being and impacts

to the local and regional area will create adverse effects to those

communities. And there is no mention of customary fishing at all, some

of which is actually undertaken by commercial vessels. I know that if

we are having a Hui and we want snapper we don’t have the means to 35

go out and get the snapper, we ask for a customary catch, and it is

picked up by the commercial boys in a particular bin.

There are also risks from vessels and I guess you have already had

evidence about a person who actually worked on rigs and that. I am 40

sure his evidence is probably more believable than mine. But evidence

has already been heard about the deep sea moorings for stabilising and

large extraction export vessels create adverse effects and destroy a

large area of seabed.

45

Page 1434


The possibility of oil spills as they transfer fuel. The applicant

maintains that the operation will be carried out with a focus of avoiding

spillage but has failed to develop a contingency plan, as far as I know,

failed to account for any potential effect of low probability that has a

high potential impact. Furthermore there is a minimal risk assessment 5

on availability of resources for managing risk at sea or from the land.

We are still - at the time that I wrote this, the applicant has not

developed any emergency plans for unplanned events and relies on a

risk matrix and a hazard register as a live document. That may have 10

changed.

The EPA assessment of oceanographic and coastal processes – I put

this in because it actually refers to some of the legislation that has

customary rights and fishing rights within it – existing rights. These 15

effects can’t be included if insufficient engagement has taken place

with affected parties. So if you have existing interests how do you find

out unless you engage with people?

The application does not satisfy the requirements of the EEZ and 20

Continental Shelf Environmental Effects Act, 2012. The assessment of

environmental effects is flawed being based on inadequate scientific

research. Additionally the application fails to satisfy New Zealand’s

international obligations under the Law of the Sea.

25

The applicants fail to avoid, remedy or mitigate adverse effects on the

marine environment. It has insufficiently addressed the fact that

moving sand from a marine environment can adversely affect the

nourishment of beaches in the long term.

30

This is the first application to mine the EECZ. It will set a precedent for

further extractive industries in the coastal marine area of the west coast.

I have evidence of that happening from a timeline that I don’t – I

haven’t given it to you – but a timeline that I started way back when the

EEZ came in in 1982, going through to the different Acts that took 35

place that took place after that.

The 1991 Crown Minerals Act which actually gave the Crown the right

to allow extraction in selling of Crown owned minerals. They had not

identified at that time that they had the minerals. So in 2003 when the 40

Seabed and Foreshore issue evolved and there was a court case that was

a problem because then there was a dispute over ownership.

From that point on, from the 5th May we had applications coming in

for the whole of the West Coast, from Taranaki all the way up to 45

Kaipara. The first being the Iron Ore New Zealand Limited in 2004 by

Page 1435


Rutherford. Then the Seafield Resources Limited, a shelf company,

from Luxenburg. Then we had the 10/11/2004, Iron Ore New Zealand

Limited, all going for prospecting for iron ore sand on, at that time,

1269 square kilometres of seabed along the Taranaki Coast.

5

Then we had the passing of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, again, about

two weeks later, which removed the possibility of any Maori challenge

to seabed mining in New Zealand courts, for ownership. So that is the

position we are in.

10

Following on from that, within a month, we had BQL Australia

registering and Mr and Mrs Wang of Black Sands Exploration. Then in

January of that year we had Black Sand Exploration again applying for

an exploration permit for iron sand covering an area from 3670 square

kilometres up the Coast. Then from the low water line, eighteen 15

kilometres out. So that was 2005.

Then the Foreshore and Seabed Act and the Resource Management

Amendment Act came in, that was 2005, where now we have the

Crown owning the foreshore and seabed and legally can grant permits 20

for prospecting, exploration and mining operations. So, there you go as

to how we lost any right to have any say and the fact that we are under

threat with this particular application is a precedent case. You can get

away with getting you to agree to sixty-seven, or whatever hectares

they want. We have got all these others lined up and they have been 25

waiting for something to happen.

[11.40 am]

So, 2005 the prospecting permit for iron ore web has been granted. We 30

have press releases and then of course Chasm was formed because of

all of these things in 2005, 25/03/05, I have the minutes of that

particular meeting where we have a couple of scientists, Terry Healy

and Shore Me (ph 0.34) talking about the fact that the sand flows up

our way from Taranaki. Sea Field Resources Limited 2005 and so forth 35

and so forth, so we gone and then we get the politicians involved which

was at the time Harry Duynhoven from New Plymouth and I could go

on but I will leave it there.

So, there is evidence that this is to us a precedent if it is approved. The 40

first application to mine the EEZ will set a precedent for further

extractive industries in the coastal marine area of the west coast, will

interfere with natural processes which contribute to an economy that is

based on valuing the natural capital of papamoana, that is the sea bed.

If the applicant is allowed to mine sand for 20 years this will prevent 45

Page 1436


any sand from moving north and will contribute to further erosion to

foreshore and seabed as a natural accretion will not occur.

Nga Rauru and other ahika submitters have raised major concerns with

the application Nga Hapoturu (ph 1.34) supports these submissions as 5

well as those presented on behalf of Chasm experts and other

submissions in opposition. Nga Hapoturu asks the committee to decline

this application.

CHAIRPERSON: Well, thank you. There may be some questions. 10

MS GREENSILL: I did not refer you to a book actually, I should have.

CHAIRPERSON: That is fine, yes.

15

MS GREENSILL: Sorry.

CHAIRPERSON: That is fine.

MS GREENSILL: So the first part, it is just, this is a management plan. People 20

have great big thick ones; we decided we just wanted a little one to

have our vision in it. So, really it is a vision of our hapu and we are like

other hapu down at Taranaki. There is a photograph of our kaitiaki, the

people who have been in this for 10 years, unpaid volunteers, kaitiaki

doing what they are obliged to do which is look after the customary 25

interests.

And at that back there you will see the list of taonga species and these

species are not just in our area, they are west coast species. A lot of

them will be referred to, I guess in some of the Fisheries’ reports. So, 30

they are species that are taonga, that need to be taking into account

when people start thinking about whether sedimentation is going to be

a problem or the discharge to what is lying on the floor of the ocean.

And at the last page there is just a copy of our Rahimoana map which 35

shows the different hapu really that take responsible for particular

areas. We do not have lines in our lives as people, we do not believe in

boundaries but because of legislation we are asked to define these sorts

of things and so we have had to put straight lines across the map. So

that is mahapuoturu (ph 3.14). 40


MS WRATT: Thank you, Ms Greensill. A few questions, if I could start on

paragraph 13 and the map which in fact relates to the point you have 45

just made about Rahi boundaries. Could you just explain to me, I am

Page 1437


sorry I am not as familiar with Rahimoana boundaries as I might be, the

significance of the gazetted areas and looking in your map at the back

of your, this map, the T and U areas?

MS GREENSILL: Yes. 5

MS WRATT: I do not think that coincides with the TTR project area but

perhaps you could just expand on that and how you see the actual

project area.

10

MS GREENSILL: Well those are, Nga Rauru is one of the hapus affected by

this and also Te Atihaunui or Paparangi is a Whanganui hapu, iwi. That

looks as if that is a rohimoana in their area. I did speak to fisheries how

wide it was, that Taranaki did not have as much as we had. I mean, we

actually saw danger signs when the Crown Minerals Act came in so we 15

started moving to get some sort of interest established.

Other places have not done that for a number of reasons. It is not

perfect but they do intend, there were people who intended to put

rohimoana out there a mataitai over the reefs that they fish from. It has 20

not happened and the reason is there has been a change of personnel.

The current person in charge of that area is in Palmerston and they have

some work to do I understand.

[11.45 am] 25

But there have been discussions about that and attempts to actually put

a Mataitai, which is like a reserve where you can still customarily fish,

but it is a bit like an honorary reserve, under the jurisdiction of

Kaitiaki, of the people. 30

MS WRATT: And what does a gazetted rohe moana mean?

MS GRENSILL: It just means that you have the right to actually have a say on

whatever happens in that area. In terms of customary fishing you have 35

an opportunity to have influence on by-laws. You can appoint a

Kaitiaki. These are people that actually have a role in terms of dishing

out permits to get customary catches and stuff like that. So within that

area that is where the Kaitiaki work.

40

MS WRATT: And when you say that is gazetted that means that the

Government has signed off on that - - -

MS GRENSILL: The Government has signed and we also – I had a

memorandum of understanding which I didn’t bring, which was signed 45

off by the Ministry of Fisheries in 2007, which actually recognises our

Page 1438


relationship with working together, and always informing each other.

And so we have quite a good relationship, actually, with the ones in

this area.

MS WRATT: Yes, okay, no that is helpful, thank you. So just going back to 5

the specific TTR project area, I totally accept that there are iwi that,

that comes into their area. But it looks like in terms of the legally

gazetted area it is not covered.

MS GREENSILL: No, it is not. 10

MS WRATT: Thank you.

MS GREENSILL: It doesn’t mean to say there is nothing substantial - - -

15

MS WRATT: No, I accept that. You mentioned in paragraph fifteen that the

material that had been provided to you by TTR, you felt there was

information missing? Is there anything specific that you can - - - ?

MS GREENSILL: It was stuff, I guess, when I looked there weren’t ecology 20

things. There weren’t stuff that really, I mean I struggled, I actually

struggled to try and understand this application because there was so

much information that was not there. And this is the actual consent

application. And so I know that they have been busy trying to bring in

information but it doesn’t help us who are trying to have a say. 25

We could probably leave some of those criticisms out if in fact that

stuff has now been produced. But there is no evidence that I know of

there not being huge impacts. I mean they tell you nothing – there is

going to be no impact, really minor impacts, of taking sand out of that 30

area.

This is about how many stories high and how many million tonnes of

sand. I mean I live in on a place right on the beach. I see the changes

happen every day. One day there is rocks and the next day it is covered 35

in sand. It depends on the weather, it depends on the currents. It

depends on what Taranaki is giving us as to whether we have erosion.

A lot of the stuff is not – they are very short term. In my view a lot of

what the experts are doing is, yes, some of them have been here a long 40

time. But some of these studies are very short term in terms of if you

actually compare that to people who have lived there, fished there, are

Tangata Whenua there, their evidence, I think, needs to be taken into

account. If in fact there is any of that expert evidence it would be really

interesting to hear what they have to say. 45

Page 1439


Because, I mean, silt, if you are going to de-ore something and just

leave silt to go to the bottom. I mean, I am thinking of the larvae and all

the stuff that actually spawns, that we rely on to actually find some

home to live and to grow. It is certainly unnatural to us. And for us,

also, I guess, you know, I don’t know there is just so many gaps. I 5

mean I haven’t got my book with me because I did highlight them all.

MS WRATT: I mean we do have some scientific reports on aspects of those.

We are going to the Marae in Taranaki after ANZAC weekend so

hopefully we will get some of that input from the local Maori. 10

One other question I have which was, you mentioned, it is not written,

but you mentioned just at the end of your commentary that when

CASM was formed in 2005 there was scientists present who

commented in terms of sand from Taranaki travelling up the Coast. 15

MS GREENSILL: Yes.

MS WRATT: What has come through in the evidence that we have seen is that 20

the sand from the mining site, the current will take the plume

predominantly down to the south-east; maybe some occasional wind

and changes that will take it to the area to the north but still south of

Cape Egmont. So I guess my question about that is, when you say that

– when they have said that sand from Taranaki will travel north, that is 25

different from what we have been advised, is that sand from the

Northern Taranaki Coast or is that actually from the South Taranaki

Bight? It is not in your written evidence but it was a comment that you

made.

30

MS GREENSILL: No it is not but I do have the Professor Healy telling us and

Sean Mead, if I can just find that paragraph.

[11.50 am]

35

They physical effects of sand mining, this is from Professor Healy of

Waikato university. “The ocean current moves north along the west

coast taking the sand with it,” so our sand comes originally from

Taranaki coast. “Our type of sand originates from intermediate and

acidic volcanoes, especially Mount Taranaki, and acidic hard deposits 40

from shoreline and rivers including the Waikato and Mokau Rivers.

Other possible sources are (INDISTINCT 3.34) and Waitakere. Black

sand contains titanium magna type which is magnetic iron ore plus

titanium. The content in the sand is 0.125 to 0.25. The specific gravity 45

Page 1440


of the sand is heavier than usual with a specific of 4.5.” I mean, do you

want me to leave you a copy of this stuff or shall I read it through?

MS WRATT: I think it would be useful to leave us a copy.

5

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, I agree.

MS WRATT: Does he mention, just hearing what you have read out, he does

not mention the Whanganui River or the Manawatu? So, it sounds like

he is talking about the Waikato River. 10

MS GREENSILL: What he goes onto say is the heaviest particles of sand tend

to settle near the original source which means the iron ore deposits

which the miners are interested in will be richest near Mount Taranaki

and less rich and valuable the further North you go until the final 15

deposits at Pandora bank north of Ninety Mile Beach. Further north for

less black, therefore if the miners go ahead the operation will most

likely be near Taranaki but there will be a loss of sand further up, for

example at Raglan.

20

MS WRATT: Okay.

MS GREENSILL: So, he does go on to talk about that and yes.

MS WRATT: If you could give a copy of that to the EPA staff I think that 25

would be useful.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, that would be good.

MS WRATT: Thank you. 30

MS GREENSILL: Just another comment, we do not know a lot, for example,

what is there and how the mining will impact on other things.


MS WRATT: Thank you very much.

MR ROGERS: Good morning, hi. Just a quick question, if I may, on your

submission you referred to “an MOU that was signed with the Ministry 40

at the time no longer holds weight with regards to the consulting with

West Coast Maori,” is that the Ministry of Fisheries?

MS GREENSILL: The Ministry of Fisheries now, sort of transformed into the

Ministry of Primary Industries or become something else? 45

Page 1441


CHAIRPERSON: EPI, yes.

MS GREENSILL: EPI.

MR ROGERS: So just on that, was that with regards to fishing or is there, can 5

you just explain that sentence to me actually.

MS GREENSILL: These are, Rohimoanas are actually customary fishing

regulations under the Fisheries Acts. So they do not extend to us having

a say or they do not extend to other environment things argued outside 10

of customary fishing but of course everything is connected to that in

our view.

MR ROGERS: Right. I suppose under this Act we have to take account of

existing interesting and that is a registered existing interest. Thanks. 15

MR CHRISTENSEN: Good morning. Could I ask you in relation to the

designated areas, why is 200, if it is 200 kilometres off from the coast,

they are all at 200 kilometres, why was that landed on as being the

appropriate distance from the coast? 20

MS GREENSILL: I think at the time it was something to do with the

foreshore, seabed and the EEZ or something else, I am not sure. What

was the 200 mile limit, I cannot remember now. I know there was a

reason we did it. 25

MR CHRISTENSEN: But that was, sorry, the New Zealand territory extended

to the 200 nautical mile before the introduction of the evidence that you

can also claim 200 past the continental shelf. So, I suppose really now

you could say you should update that and extend it further. Okay, could 30

I ask a little bit more about the customary fishing and I am looking at

paragraph 22 of your submission that you read to us this morning and

you made the comment that if there was say, a hui being planned and

you needed snapper and you would ask for one of the commercial

operators to take the customary take for you. Could you just explain a 35

little bit more about the customary take and how that works in relation

to the commercial guys?

MS GREENSILL: Well it depends on what size of hui you are having as to

what you ask these guys to get. I mean you might ask for one thing, 40

you might ask for five fins, it depends you are expecting. If you are

going to something that has got a couple of thousand people then you

have to think about how much snapper or how much stuff do we want

for or fish, how much do we want for this, how much do we want for

that and all of that is actually quantified by MAF. So, we put in returns 45

Page 1442


every month about how much we take as customary people under these

regulations.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Yes.

5

[11.55 am]

MS GREENSILL: So we are really regulated, we used to go up and help

ourselves and take as much as we like and give it to the family as we go

home. Now if you do that, it is under the Amateur (ph 0.15) 10

Regulations, you actually get fined. So now in order to take more than

you want you have to have a hui of some sort and so the culture has

been really undermined, I guess, our culture, in terms of what we

normally did as to what we are allowed to do now, so the only time you

can go and get more than you are allowed under the Amateur 15

Recreational Regulations is if you are having some sort of hui

whatangi, a po kai, some sort of commemoration, a wedding, you can

apply to get some fish. And so what happens is commercial operators

go out, they have some bins set aside, they have the paperwork to go

with it, because if they are caught, if they get caught with stuff over 20

their quote they are in trouble. So if there are no boats and if there is no

fishing then you can’t actually get access to the fish yourself.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Okay, thank you very much.

25

MR KAPEA: Kia ora, Angela, nice to see you here and I wanted to start over

Taharoa because we have failed to get a lot of information about how

that was set up, about the discharge, the dewatering that flows over the

sides of the ships that come in and I have flown over and you can see

the plume around there. Can you enlighten us to what is going on? 30

MR GREENSILL: Taharoa is an interesting place and it is also a hurtful place,

I mean it is a place that was occupied by Ngati Toa before they went

south, so a lot of their burial grounds have actually been mined and so

it is pretty sad that that has happened, but the other thing that has 35

happened there and again, there has been a lot of Ngati Moa to people

themselves who fought against the iron sand going in there, is because

of the damage to their lake and their fishery species, the mullet and all

that stuff. Those have been the sacrifices for the economic gain of

having Taharoa the way it is today, so in terms of the dewatering I have 40

no idea on all the technical information about that, all I know is that

people are really unhappy about what it has done to their lake, so yeah,

I am not really familiar with all - - -

MR KAPEA: Right, you know I just thought you might have been involved in 45

the consents for that.

Page 1443


MS GREENSILL: In fact another person who is coming after me might know

a bit about it.

MR KAPEA: Okay, I will save a little bit for him. The other thing that I 5

wanted to ask you about is – and I asked Te Manawa – and it is the

perception out there that you only able to talk to Maori who are on the

list and I asked Te Manawa yesterday in terms of whakapapa, you are

not disconnected because you live down this end of the island and the

hurt that occurs with an application like that is felt by all the Maori. 10

Can you tell us your view on that?

MS GREENSILL: I guess that is why I said at the beginning that I am a

descendant of Re Putahanga o Ngati Ruanui, even though I reside in

Raglan, because I married my te puna from Raglan, that means I still 15

have a connection to the people, that I still care about what happens to

the down there. I mean they haven’t asked me to put submission on

their behalf, I have done it because it is my duty to actually support

what is happening to them, my great grandmother was brought out of

Parihaka after the British went in, so she came up and married 20

Kirihopu, my other relation, my great grandfather. So again, those

connections are really strong to Taranaki, but where there is a

difference in terms of – everybody have a right to have a say on these

matters, but I defer to ahi ka, the people who live in the place, who

know the place, who have the knowledge my not necessary be on the 25

list, but they are the ones – the old man who is 80 years old or 90 years

old, who doesn’t even go out, they have so much knowledge about a

place that is missed when you actually go into an office of someone

who is recognised by TPK on the card we mangau our sight. I mean our

organisation, the one I have got a submission for next, is recognised as 30

such and so we do get consulted, but I am well aware of people who

should be consulted and never are.

MR KAPEA: Which leads me to the next question about that Ma Toi Aotearoa

Maori, about that knowledge base that gets ignored in terms of 35

expertise and we just had some conferencing where we sent the experts

away and for me the only people that were missing were Maori and you

mentioned that expertise and I want you to tell us about that expertise,

it is out there, you touched on it then.

40

MS GREENSILL: If I can just use – that is just customary fishing.

Page 1444


[12.00 pm]

That is the Maui dolphin area by the way that you are looking at, that

blue line there that they sort of decided they take all the netting out,

they have that it could actually survive a few more years, it is 5

struggling, okay, never mind about that one.

This here is a picture of erosion happening at home and what you are

looking at is a method that my father has used for the last 60 years. He

is now 90 years old, he is getting a bit old in terms of being tired of 10

actually having to go and pick off after the public, who are the main

contributors to erosion on our coast, because they don’t know how to

walk down walkways, they actually this end and wreck the plants.

So what you have there is a simple structure, it works with the Maori 15

hatua (ph 0.58). Basically you have Tawhirimatea as our wind god, he

travels, the wind blows when he is blowing, the waves come in, they

set the sand like concrete, the manuka trees there from Tanae are like

trying to get a profile onto a dune very quickly, the easiest way is to put

in and watch which way the web waves are coming, put those stakes in 20

the ground, they are tied with harakiki, the wind comes up, overnight

you will find that most of that brush will be covered in sand the next

morning to see that it washed it all, will in a few weeks, maybe a

couple of weeks, depending on how much sand is coming, you will find

that the dune starts to be developed, the slope is back, you can start 25

planting.

So that is traditional knowledge that is working with our elements, you

don’t fight the sea with erosion, you don’t go putting up a big stone

wall, which is what Taranaki has done, they have got a big erosion 30

problem and all the way up the coast you are seeing sea walks, which

actually add to the problem, but it is where they have got to now, there

is nowhere else to go.

Here we are trying really hard not to actually use those types of 35

methods; we try new soft engineering methods, which have been just

developed over time and observation. So that is the type of Matauranga

Maori I think that I am sort of referring to. I don’t know whether there

is anything about the change that occurred from that. There you see

coastal erosion a house that the surf patrol and then the response of the 40

council was to take it away, because it was going to fall in the ocean.

My father went and made some brush on the ground, within a short

time you can see all the slopes back, the dunes are back, there is no

house there, so you it recovered and we claimed it all with the help of

some of the local communities, so, you know that is what can happen 45

with just a little bit of knowledge.

Page 1445


MR KAPEA: And it goes back to that knowledge or your awareness of what

is happening in your environment.

MS GREENSILL: Exactly. 5

MR KAPEA: And those people who live in on the coast, the ahi ka, they have

a tremendous amount of knowledge to contribute to this, yeah. The last

thing I want to ask you is about compensation for fisheries and being

offered compensation and the dangers – if you get offered 10

compensation and you take that compensation, you are agreeing to the

application?

MS GREENSILL: That is right, you are, yeah.

15

MR KAPEA: So you get compromised again.

MS GREENSILL: You do, so it is better not to take it and just to fight, and I

think the fishing industries got enough muscle to actually fight this

issue, I don’t know whether they will, but I hope they do, because they 20

have a lot to lose, I think.

MR KAPEA: All right, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Kia ora, thank you very much. So you are going to cover 25

off the Tainui Hapu Whangaroa submission, as well, aren’t you?

MS GREENSILL: I will try and leave some of that out, all I wanted to do

with that one is I sort I have been looking at some of the evidence that

has been given, I have been a bit conscious that a lot of Maori stuff has 30

not been in the evidence, I thought I would spend a little bit of time and

just taking some stuff from a friend of mine who is from Taranaki also

with links to there and just sharing some views.

On the first page, and I am sorry I haven’t numbered these pages, is 35

basically my lineage and expertise, I suppose, and committees I belong

to.

CHAIRPERSON: Ms Greensill, is this something that you want to hand to us,

or this is something you are guys talking to? 40

MS GREENSILL: Sorry, they are all on the table, yeah, sorry.

So perhaps if we start at number 4, I am the environmental

spokesperson of the Tainui hapu of Whangaroa. That hapu has got 12 45

hapus. And the name “hapu”, we have kept our name “hapu” instead of

Page 1446


going to “iwi”, we remanded to be become iwi organisation and our

people are quite rebellious, we have kept the name hapu because it is in

the treaty. So we have 12 hapu and I am authorised to give a

submission on their behalf in support of our Te Maunga who live under

the quarter way of Taranaki Maunga and who are directly affected by 5

the application.

Tainui hapu is registered under Section 35 of the RMA and listed on

the (INDISTINCT 0.10) website of TPK as an organisation to be

consulted on environmental matters within our rohe, or area. 10

[12.05 pm]

As part of my role, I receive, respond and monitor consent applications

within our rohe, focusing on those likely to adversely affect the 15

environment. From my bach I sit and watch paddleboard riders, waka

ama paddlers, windsurfers and countless boats heading in and out of the

harbour.

I watch orcas arriving, chasing stingray, and sand sweeping up the 20

beach on a windy day. I am constantly. reminded that we are the

youngest of the species and are descended from Paptuanuku and

Ranginui. Some say from Tangaroa.

This is part of our world where we are to inform ourselves of how to 25

make decisions. We have inherited places, customs and obligations

which guide our behaviour. And I want to actually read what Shaun

Ellison said in our submission against the Foreshore and Seabed Act,

and bear in mind it’s not just about the foreshore, it is actually about

that whole environment. 30

And Shaun stated in our submission against the Foreshore and Seabed

Act, when one moves into the realm of Tangaroa, Hinemoana and

Hinewainui, his two wives, praise and acknowledgements are offered.

There’s a reciprocity involved. 35

As a result, when nurtured by the divine presences of those places and

are given food to feed our people, each sub tribal group and each

family grouping has their own gardens, their own places for collecting

food. So everyone had their own crayfish holds, we didn’t go 40

trespassing on anyone else’s, that’s changed with the fisheries

regulations.

Page 1447


Sub tribal groups and family groups are the custodians and guardians

within the physical realm. In the Maori world we have three realms.

We have basically the physical, the spiritual and the energetic. That is

how we view the world, rather than just physical.

5

It is our role as human beings to care for, nurture and protect all things

within out space, within our world and, particularly within the area in

which we live, so that they may survive and flourish for future

generations.

10

So that the open spaces of the divine presences of the gods and spiritual

influences may remain clear, clean and free from obstruction, as places

where the spirits of both the living and the dead may roam freely.

Where energy flows without hindrance, thoughts and ideas may soar. 15

Where this is a free and uninterrupted exchange of the vibrations of the

universe and of energy shifting, moving, escalating and diminishing

from the earth to the heavens, from the heavens to the earth, from the

land to the sea and from the sea to the land.

20

Tangaroa still embraces Papatuanuku. Ranginui still embraces

Paptuanuku. The foreshore is a space where one can clearly witness

the movement and exchange of energies in the preparation, bustling

and adaptation made by the divine influences of the gods they

perpetually seek to express. Inherent universal balance and harmony, 25

one with another.

Within the ever-changing reality of the physical world, it is the open

space, the courtyard, on which the voices of all the divine influences of

the gods are heard, seen, felt and sensed. As the tide comes in, so 30

Tongaroa stands to deliver his speech and Hinewainui and Hinemoana

move forward with cries of welcome and support as they gently

massage Paptuanuku.

As the tide recedes it is Papatuanuku and Tane and Hinewao and 35

Rakahore, the rocks, Hinetuakirikiri, the gravel, and Hineone, the sand,

and others who reach out to take hold of the lively essence of the

courtyard and allow the individual collective influences to be expressed

and felt by all present.

40

Each one of them has their own story and each one of them has

something to say. According to some, during the creation of the world,

the gods began to fight, one with another. Tamaro and Tane continue

to quarrel. The physical manifestation of their dispute may be seen on

the foreshore. 45

Page 1448


The foreshore is a sacred place, our place, our place of prayer and our

church. Ranginui and the heavens above is the roof and Papatuanuku is

the foundation and floor. It is where we sense and feel the divine

presence of all the gods and influences at all times.

5

Both a place of leisure and a storehouse of food. Certain areas are held

in particular reverence and as such are set aside for certain purposes.

When I step on the beach, I feel the presence of Tawhirimatea, that’s

the God of Wind, and the gentle breezes and buffeting winds of 10

Hinemoa Mairangi in the soft caress of (INDISTINCT 4.04) showers,

of Te Ihorangi and the full unadulterated cleansing power of driving

rain, of Hinepukohurangi and the protective embrace of the mist, of

Tama-nui-i-te-ra in the warmth of the sun, of Hine-te-marama in the

illumination of the moonlight, of Hurunganganga in conversations and 15

energy plays of the stars, and Hurumanu in the many voices of the

seabirds.

I remove my footwear and the soles of my feet sense a presence of

Papatuanuku, my sacred mother, of Tangaroa, of the seas, of the oceans

and the waters, of Hinewainui and Hinemoana, as I recall that all things 20

have both masculine and feminine aspects and qualities of Rakahore,

who’s children, the rocks and boulders, have accumulated countless

stories over eons of time, of Hinetuakirikiri, as the gravel and pebbles

lightly massage the energy points of my feet, of Hineone, whose sands

collect the warmth of the sun, and of Tane and Hinewao in the trees 25

and bush and forest.

The soles of my feet affectionately stroke and massage the sand, the

rocks, the pebbles and grass and the knowledge that all the creation of

its own life essence and we are all related. We are related in the divine

oneness of the universe and we are related through our mutual descent 30

from Ranginui of the heavens above and Papatuanuku of the earth

below.

[12.10 pm]

35

I sense the vibrations from our many relations throughout the universe

and I am energised and further enlightened. Here are some of our

sacred spaces set aside for special purposes. Sacred rocks, our sacred

trees, our places where we follow the example of our ancestors in

giving thanks and offering prayers to the divine and resting places of 40

our ancestors. These are the areas on which our ancestors walked, that

felt the touch, the caress, the kicking and stomping of our footsteps and

that they continue to roam in spirit.

Page 1449


The foreshore provides us with food to sustain our physical wellbeing.

It is a place where we offer prayer, a scared place where we conduct

rituals, a place where we may purify ourselves of spirit, mind and body,

a place of leisure and play and a place of learning. The foreshore is a

special place of learning. There one may watch and study the stars and 5

see just as our ancestors did in their time, both formally and informally.

All things have something to say and something to share. The sea, the

fish, the shellfish, the crabs, the shells, the pebbles, the gravel, the

rocks, the boulders, the sand and earth, the trees, the winds, the birds. 10

There is also our hospital and medicinal remedies of the land, the bush

and the sea. The salt water and the protective and nurturing influences

of our ancestors of the divine gods, landing places for canoes and sea

vessels both past and present are here, physical vessels and spiritual

vessels. 15

There are many stories and memories, not merely of this time but times

of long ago. Every subtribe or group have their own stories. The moana

and all that abides there is taonga. It has a mauri which must be

protected for future generations. According to Mason Durie, Maori 20

views of the world are based on the proposition that the environment is

an interacting network of related elements, each having a relationship

to the other and earlier common origins.

Maori are tangata whenua and as such view the world through different 25

eyes: three dimensionally, spiritually, physically and energetically.

Mana, Tapu and noa are the key concepts which underpin Te Ao Maori

and the Maori world. Manu and Tapu are attributed first to the Atua

who are personified in the various elements which make up our world.

For the purposes of this application Tawhirimatea is the Atu of the 30

winds and storms. Of all the Atu in the Maori world, he is the most

destructive when challenged. Tempting to capture and control

Tawhirimatea for commercial gain is a challenge to his mana. This is

when we are talking about wind farms but again here you have Hene

rua te kirikiri, again trying to capture her sand is also destructive. 35

Tangaroa and his children Punga, Tutewheiwhehi and Ikatere are also

affected. His friends will be captured and transformed before being

released into the moana. The application by Tran-Tasman Resources to

mine iron sands will adversely affect this world view and the marine 40

environment.

Tainui therefore ask the application to be declined for the following

reasons: mining 50,000 tonnes of sand annually will not protect the

mauri or life force of everything that exists in the domain of Tangaroa. 45

It will devastate the ecosystem which supports the current economy

Page 1450


based on less harmful non-extractive industries such as tourism,

customary fishing and recreation.

Just a comment about the treaty. Despite the fact that we have a treaty

that forms the basis of relationships with governments, councils and 5

other agencies, we are constantly reminded by projects such as this that

we live in a capitalist global world that is market driven. Within that

world, there are those who attempt to master the elements, those who

push for adaptation and others who produce models which are used in

processes such as this. 10

This application is about rangatiratanga of hapu and iwi who have

relations with the environment and obligations to the past, present and

future. The Nga Kaihautu Report highlights gaps in consultation which

should have been a prerequisite for identifying effects on those who 15

have existing interests such as tangata whenua. It is about risks, costs

and benefits. It is also about kaitiakitanga and the enormous pressure

exerted under regulations that promote economic gain over

environmental protection.

20

Because this application changes so much of what is familiar to

Taranaki people, it is important to assess the effects of the proposed

development using the most accurate up to date information possible.

From what I have read that is still not available, therefore, how can an

informed decision be made. 25

One of the reasons Tainui hapu is making this submission is that the

seabed mining that is proposed in Taranaki will affect the sand resource

available to replenish beaches and mitigate impacts of coastal erosion

in our rohe. 30

We depend upon the constant flow of sand north to mitigate effects of

erosion on our beaches. Not only will the sand and beaches be affected,

but also the swell and waves. Taranaki already has a severe erosion

problem taking away 50 million tonnes per year will add to their 35

problems as well.

Tangata whenua have inherited due to the care, which have been

undermined by regulations which constantly change. Can the Act

protect the sights handed down from Atua through Tupuna to us? For 40

the sake of current and future generations we ask the application be

denied. The decision is in your hands.

MR KAPEA: Kia ora.

45


Page 1451


MS GREENSILL: Just as a closing comment, we support all of the

submissions that have been made by KASM and also Mr Malibu

Hamilton, who will be giving it shortly, and Dr Huber and others that

gave evidence yesterday. 5

[12.15 pm]

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I will just see, are there other questions of Ms

Greensill? I have just got one, and you referred to them both in your 10

submission. I am just interested in your view in terms of the Treaty of

Waitangi and I know you will be very familiar under the Resource

Management Act about how the treaty is embodied in that legislation

and you referred to them, section 12 here.

15

What do you see as the fundamental difference in terms of what we

need to take into account in terms of the treaty? I mean the word is

different in the RMA and here. What is your advice to us in terms of

how we need to give effect to the principles of the treaty, and do we

here? 20

MS GREENSILL: I think the precedents have already been set in the Court of

Appeal. There is a lot of places you can look for getting assistance with

that particular issue

25

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

MS GREENSILL: I mean, all of the principles have been defined.

Partnership, how can you have partnership if people are not talking to

you? Consultation is all part of that. Rangatiratanga, the principle of 30

being able to be taken seriously when something that belongs to you is

affected. And I look on what is happening out there, the seabed and

foreshore, the people have links to that area and they need to be taken

into account. That is where the treaty comes in, those treaty rights. And

I think the crown, when it drafted this legislation, is well aware that 35

there are obligations that any committee sitting has got to take into

account those principles. So, I am sorry I cannot really help you.

CHAIRPERSON: No, I was really interested in your views. I think you were

saying that regardless of what the legislation says, your view, I think to 40

us was that they are clearly relevant here and we need to give effect to

them or take them into account. Thank you that is very clear to me,

thank you.

45

Page 1452


MR KAPEA: I have a lot I just do not know where to start. You mentioned it

before in terms of how it was commercially driven, and the decision

making is certainly commercially driven. We sit in this situation and,

regardless of what decision you make there are winners and losers, and

Maori are usually on the wrong side of that. But in terms of: if it was to 5

be granted, what would the old people do in terms of taking care of

Tangaroa.

MS GREENSILL: Well, they would probably have a tangi first.

10

MR KAPEA: Ae.

MR GREENSILL: And I would imagine there would be a lot of angry people.

I do not think that anger has been expressed down this end, it is already

starting to show in the north. At some point in time the government has 15

got to start looking at its direction and stop putting at risk and creating

regulations which forces people like you sitting at the table to take an

economic approach over what is supporting us as people, which is the

earth.

20

We cannot, I mean, there is enough seabed mining places around.

Yesterday I was reading an article about Papua New Guinea, where

again they are starting to speak out about dumping tailings at sea and

all that sort of stuff. So, there are a whole lot of places that are starting

to look at a better way to do business and I do not believe that 25

economically iron sand stands up against tourism, forestry, fishery and

other types of enterprises. There are too many risks that we will face.

We have seen how costly to clean up the Rena. We know that there are

spillages from these things as they get fuel that will affect the beaches.

30

So, you know, you are going to make a decision, it is going to be a hard

decision, it will be appealed either way probably, if there are such

things these days. I am not sure if there are any more are there? Can

you appeal?

35

CHAIRPERSON: Again, it is not like the Environment Court one through

points of law but basically this is it.

MS GREENSILL: This is it, you are the decision makers. Well, you have to

live in the future with what you think your grandchildren will be happy 40

with.

MR KAPEA: Thank you.

MS GREENSILL: If you put yourselves in our position, because we will be 45

blaming you if things happen.

Page 1453


MR KAPEA: Kia ora.

CHAIRPERSON: That point has been made before.

5

MR KAPEA: Shoulders just slumped then a bit. But one of the things that,

you know, you have put it so beautifully in terms of our cultural values

and our understanding and our relationship with our moana, with our

gods and that is part and parcel of us. Not part and parcel, but all of us.

10

[12.20 pm]

And we have been very fortunate that we have had a handful of

submitters come to Hamilton who are Maori, and express exactly what

you have expressed. But we don’t get enough of them. And we need 15

that confirmation; we need that explanation given to everybody

because I can’t give it sitting up here. So we need to spread that

understanding. So having you come, and present the way you have,

reminds us of who we are. Kia ora.

20

Ms GRENSILL: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Kia ora. Thank you very much. Thank you for your

submission.

25

MS GRENSILL: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Hamilton, welcome.

MR HAMILTON: I hope I have printed off enough copies. 30

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr Hamilton. Mr Hamilton, I just note there are

about twenty-five pages, are you intending to read it all or - - - ?

MR HAMILTON: No, Mr Chairman. I was about to tell you, but I will tell 35

you right now. Is that my intention is to take a fair portion of that as

read, in trying to actually assist the committee.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Thank you.

40

MR HAMILTON: The other part of it is there are three pages as an appendix,

and so I consider that it will be went through quite quickly.

CHAIRPERSON: That is great. No it is (INDISTINCT 2.46) thank you.

45

Page 1454


MR HAMILTON: Now, Mr Chairman, with respect, I would certainly like to

just make a comment prior to opening myself up, with regards to the

introduction and so on, and thank the committee. There are two points,

one for taking on the fact that we could cross-examine. I find that was

really good. Because it was up to the committee but the committee has 5

chosen to do that and I think judging by the transcripts, vigorous,

rigorous debate has taken place. And I think that when we originally

put that there was to test the applicant’s evidence. I think looking at the

transcripts that has been the case, some of that evidence has been

tested. 10

The second part I would like to thank the committee for, was in relation

to the Staff Report and the ability to make comment as part of natural

justice for the submitters, because by that time the Staff Report would

be after everything has been heard.

15

And I thank the committee for making that decision because I certainly

would like the opportunity to comment with regards to the Staff Report,

simply because I think that, unlike the RMA that is a technical

document, and cross-examinable, is that the Staff Report is an overall

of the Board and the EPA, I am led to believe. 20

And so while there is a collective consciousness from the EPA’s

position, I certainly think it is a really good thing that you have done it

as a committee to allow the rest of the submitters an opportunity as to

comment on the openness and how the EPA is pushing their 25

programme. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. As I said, this time process, we are

all under this really tight time-frame so we are clearly trying to make

sure everyone has a fair shot and the principles of natural justice are 30

observed. Thank you for that.

MR HAMILTON: Good. I will open it up by saying that my name is Malibu

(ph 4.52) Hamilton, grew up in Kawhia, brought up on Maketu Marae,

my father is from Taharoa, Patehaki (ph 4.57) Randell. He was one of 35

the ones who set up the sand mining for Taharoa, on the land. He was

one of the key committee that set it up. I actually whakapapa to

Mahuta, maniapoto raukura (ph 0.17) and more importantly Koata,

Ngati Koata.

40

[12.25 pm]

So I actually span down this coast and up this coast with regards to that

is where my whakapapa lies. With regards to my, as you will see in my

introduction, I try to skirt over it, but in this instance I found somebody 45

https://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en-NZ&q=maniapoto+raukura&gbv=2&sa=X&as_q=&nfpr=&spell=1&ei=udBEU_GZA9KFyQH07oHADg&ved=0CBoQvwU

Page 1455


was telling me that it is beneficial to actually read it to the Committee,

so I will do so.

So I am Tangata Whenua environmental practitioner and have

participated in resource management arena for many years. I have a 5

Bachelor’s degree in Iwi environmental management, I have

undertaken resource consent processing for Te Kotuku Whenua and to

the environmental groups of Ngati Wairere Te Hapu and on occasions

for Tainui Hapu ki Whaingaroa and several community groups.

10

Today I appear as a representative of Te Ngaru Roa a Maui and the

scope of evidence sets out roughly the matters that I will be dealing

through and as said, there is going to be quite a lot, because I will take

this as read.

15

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

MR HAMILTON: And to start off, I am commenting with regards to Ms

Falloon. Ms Falloon’s evidence in chief outlines the consultation

undertaken by TTR to a range of different bodies, groups and 20

individuals along with hapu and iwi. During the consultation process

for hapu and iwi TTR maintains they were clear in the meetings with

the lodgement date of October 2013 for marine consent.

TTR also considered that the process would result in an understanding 25

of the issues to address further investigation and analysis. Several hapu

and iwi had contended that the process was flawed, in some cases only

consisted of summary information and was lacking any detail or draft

copies and it was problematic to provide cultural impact assessments in

a timely manner. The lack of detailed information continued for a large 30

period of time as TTR modified the application and those brief

examples are below and I will take that as read.


35

MR HAMILTON: And start at para 5. Throughout the evidence of Ms

Falloon, it was stated that TTR valued relationships with hapu and iwi

and are willing to listen and work through the concerns of hapu and

iwi. And yet even when the full application was lodged with the EPA,

TTR only supplied a link to a website to download to assess and 40

analyse the application required timeframe before submission was

closed.

Te Ngaru Roa a Maui contend that the provision of a website link for

the full application does not demonstrate best practice relationship 45

building and it is at odds with the statement that TTR are willing to

Page 1456


listen, to work through the concerns of hapu and iwi. Surely, a CD or a

USB external drive would not have been a large expense and nor would

it have been a large expense to provide hard copies to hapu and iwi.

In the absence of information, TTR commissioned a desktop study 5

from the publicly available information to identify hapu and iwi

interests. Te Ngaru Roa a Maui argues that the desktop study should

not be seen as a definitive study and nor should it be viewed as a

replacement of hapu and iwi input. Moreover TTR and the EPA should

endeavour to obtain more robust information from hapu and iwi. 10

The TTR impact assessment has failed to encompass the Maori

worldview and a range of Maori values. Additionally, TTR has failed

to provide adequate information, particularly Maori hau. There has

been no mention how members of hapu and iwi base their economic, 15

cultural and social balance against te Wairapapa whanau model. And I

will take those as read.

And start again at para 9. And yet the evidence of Ms Falloon clearly

describes that consultation and provision information was brought. The 20

evidence provided by Ms Falloon also failed to provide any relevant

information on the Maori worldview or Maori values despite being in

position to access all the submissions.

Maori, like Pakeha, have been disturbed and affected by this 25

application. TTR appeared to have focused on the existing interests of

Maori in the provision of a desktop study, rather than other matters

pertinent to the adverse effects of the applications to Maori cultural and

social practices and other provisions in the EEZ Act. TTR had a clear

strategy to publicly notify the marine consent for October 2013 and it 30

appears they have made a commercial decision rather than obtaining

the best available information for decision-making purposes.

Te Ngaru Roa a Maui contend that TTR had rushed through a broken

(ph 4.46) of application just to suite the lodgement date. TTR intend to 35

work with hapu and iwi to develop an environmental management plan,

emergency response plan and form a Kaitiaki Komiti as part of a

condition of grandeur.

[12.30 pm] 40

Te Ngaru Roa a Maui raise the issue of how TTR will achieve those

provisions identified in the impact assessment without robust

information from hapu and iwi and a strong relationship.

45

Page 1457


The EPA Staff Report identifies further information to be considered

and does attempt to provide a more rounded view of some Maori

values. Additionally, the Staff Report identified that the TTR activities

pose a potential adverse effects to the cultural association of iwi to their

lands, waters and other taunga. 5

Furthermore the EPA has an established set of protocols that could

have been utilised for the framework to identify, report on and include

in the evidence. The protocol identifies Maori cultural concepts and

practices, such as kaitiakitanga, maui, mana and tapu. Additionally it 10

identified a number of outcomes to Maori, such as – and I will take

those as read.

But again, para 15 says, “Lastly it also identifies key case law

principles of the Tiritiri o Waitangi”, and I have actually itemised those 15

straight out of the protocol, and you will see there are some key case

law relating to this, which ebbs all the way through it.

Para 16, Te Ngaru Roa a Maui argue that TTR has failed to recognise

section 12(e) of the EEZ Act, provisions effectively long 20

(INDISTINCT 1.21) went on to giving adequate attention to Maori

cultural values and concepts including kaitiakitanga along with

rangatiratanga.

The evidence of Ms Fallon in Table 1 acknowledges impacts from the 25

environmental and plume modelling in the rohe and (INDISTINCT

1.36) that is its interests, such as – and I will take those as read, except

to say that the modelling has proven that the sediments coming into the

Whanganui river, for instance, and sediments about to be deposited and

mixed with that. 30

Para 18, those impacts have the potential to be adverse, furthermore the

TTR presupposes that the consent would be granted to allow for the

setting in place of a Kaitiakitanga Komiti. That process should have

been undertaken prior to the early rounds of information and 35

consultation, particularly as TTR had early engagement work of Maori

as investment partners in the project.

TTR sought, in the early engagement of Tainui Group Holdings and

Taupo Moana Group for investment reasons. Additionally, TTR sought 40

the input from one of its own directors, as below – and I will take that

as read except to highlight the italics that I have and the underscoring

that I have done.

45

Page 1458


Para 19, while Te Ngaru Roa a Maui recognise that it may have been

for investment purposes, nonetheless it does demonstrate that TTR

could have given more focus on this application and to Taranaki hapu

and iwi and set in place a more robust Kaitiaki Komiti at the outset,

rather than waiting for the consent. 5

Para 20 – and this paragraph is about fishing impacts. The evidence Ms

Dibbs acknowledges the seabed mining will displace set net

(INDISTINCT 3.04) and that some fisheries will be disadvantaged

with limited flexibility to respond to further exclusions and the amount 10

of displaced catch from trawl and set net fisheries will be small, with

no negative impact to quota for value or fish stocks. Also stated is that

there will be localised intransient changes to the distribution and

abundance of commercially harvested fish species in the immediate

vicinity of the mining operation, plus any displaced catch will be 15

caught elsewhere, with no extra cost to fishers.

Moreover, Ms Dibbs relies on the evidence of Dr Hadfield’s report on

plume modelling to arrive at a conclusion that there will be likely only

minor effects. Firstly, Dr Hadfield’s evidence has been challenged by 20

other experts. Secondly, that is not the view of the commercial fishing

industry. The Sanford submission outlines that it is potentially exposed

to up to 10 million in risk per annum and the operation could affect the

economic well-being, diminish the value of its quota assets and reduce

its access to the public water space and that TTR should be paying 25

compensation as a mandatory provision to cover lost fishing

opportunities for over the 20 year period.

Additionally, the evidence of Mr Gordon is challenged by several

experts on the type and range of modelling that should have been 30

undertaken as being – and I will take that as read.

Te Ohu Kaimoana also oppose and gave a range of issues that needed

addressing, including that information to date was inadequate to grant

consent along with the concern that TTR may not be financially able to 35

address any unforeseen effects, other than those identified in the

modelling in the application.

And the section with regards to the caucus there – if you could turn to

page 10, and on para 31. While a lot of the stuff that I have stated as 40

taken as read, there is some very pertinent information in that and I am

confident you will take the time to have a bit of read and analyse partly

of what I am trying to highlight.

45

Page 1459


[12.35 pm]

MR CHRISTENSEN: So, can I just make sure I understand that table there.

Those are your comments in response to what you’ve read in the joint

caucusing statement? 5

MR HAMILTON: It’s what’s been in the joint caucusing statement. I have

done this on several, I’ve undertaken that kind of stance on several of

them. And so, during some of them, there's lots of information in there

that’s come from the caucusing, which I think really needs to be 10

addressed, in my personal opinion.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Okay.

MS WRATT: So you've basically pulled out these comments from the joint 15

witnessing?

MR HAMILTON: I have yes, yes I have read.

MS WRATT: Thank you for your purportion (INDISTINCT 0.40) 20

MR HAMILTON: The summary of fish impacts. The commercial fishing

industry is opposed to the TTR application (INDISTINCT 0.47) alone

and state a potential loss of up to 10 million. And saying that about

they need compensation. 25

Mr Gordon highlighted a lack of modelling that is really considered

crucial to arrive at a robust decision and Teo Kamoana (ph 1.02) raised

the issue of financial viability to address on the preceding impacts.

30

The commercial fishery caucus, identified uncertainties around the

problems of shellfish and fish life cycles from elevated sediment and

whether local productivity would be positive or negative.

Plus there was disagreement on the effect of the exclusion zone, on 35

catch rates at the scale of FMA8 and the impact of the pits and mounds

and the physical activity of trawling, along with Mr Gordon stating that

economic modelling should have been undertaken prior to the start.

The commercial fishing industry has property rights and leasing rights 40

under QMA and any displacement or ability or permission to harvest

those rights is a direct cost to the holders of QMA allocation.

Next, to discussing noise effects from the crawler and vessels. Further

discussion on noise is below. The fish and zooplankton caucus agreed 45

that the juvenile fish were more at risk from elevated levels of sediment

Page 1460


and had significant effects on feeding, while being a mortality of

snapper within one kilometre of the plume.

It was also agreed that there is uncertainty how the species would react

to an increased level of sediment concentration and the cumulative 5

effects are likely to cause sub lethal effects in the area of the immediate

source of the plume.

Also agreed, was that some fish mortality may be impacted upon by

heavy metals. Interesting was that there was likely no effect to 10

zooplankton and rock lobster larvae, because of tolerance to re-

suspension of sediment in the natural environment.

Firstly, that conclusion discusses only sediment re-suspension. In

nature it is intermittent. It does not take into consideration the 15

sediment volumes and intention of seabed strip mining operating 24/7

for 20 years.

Secondly, the conclusion of one of the academic studies. Only in a

laboratory small scale research and not any actual in-situ research. 20

Additionally, the conclusions were in the absence of recently

introduced modelling for sediment.

I think there’s quite a few that, when I say it’s in the absence of, some

of that, I consider, is quite pivotal. 25

Thirdly, the constant sediment stream over the 20 year period could

cause tropic cascade by removing key predators like crayfish and

snapper which in turn could see an increasing of killer numbers that

could leave large areas laid bare by eating the kelp forest on the roofs 30

(INDISTINCT 3.45) and elsewhere.

Throughout this process, several experts have challenged the TTR

proposal, including Mr Gordon, who has identified potential significant

flaws in the project. 35

Te Ngaru Roa a Maui argues that absence of robust science does not

mean absence of effect.

Dr MacDiarmid also states that the prolonged exposure to suspended 40

solids graded at about 170 mils can result in adverse growth and

development impacts in juvenile snapper.

Page 1461


From seven north eastern estuaries found that fish conditions decreased

and gill damage increased as to suspended solids, increased from 4.37,

as well as that the fish species are highly mobile and capable of moving

away from areas of high suspended solids.

5

Furthermore, the evidence acknowledges marine fisheries have

traditionally been a source of cultural and economic wealth for Maori,

with a large number of species that are likely to be harvested for

customary purpose in the area. And she identified those species within

her evidence. 10

Equally important, is that the social impact assessment identifies that

no research has specifically been undertaken on fish species in the area

and the north and south traps.

15

Graham Bank and Patea Bank were seen as areas of importance for

fishing. The Ngā Kaihautū report does give a broad overview of

impacts to Maori and cultural practice and he has identified several

areas of concern such as. And I’ll go right down to the end and that

there is a potential for impact to customary and commercial fisheries. 20

[12.40 pm]

The commercial fisheries caucus identified displacement areas and the

zooplankton caucus highlighted that fish species can move away from 25

the areas of strip mining to avoid mortality and some lethal effects.

And yet the very cause of the matter is the adverse impacts to

commercial, recreational, Maori, commercial and customary rights.

While displacement areas do have an effect on commercial fisheries, it

is the locals commercial and recreational, plus the Maori rights, that 30

have been impacted upon as well.

The commercial fisheries have property rights and leasing rights that

are based on a management system and any displacement or lack of

ability to undertake those rights is a loss and Maori have a significant 35

allocation of shares in the quota.

Maori also have existing use rights such as the non-commercial

interests that are recognised in the Fisheries Act, alongside the

(INDISTINCT 1.08) boundaries which you have discussed with 40

Angeline. The comment here is the fish may move but the people have

lost a significant resource.

It is on the above basis that Te Ngaru Roa a Maui state that this

proposal does not meet the legislative tests, as set out in the EEZ Act, 45

nor does it meet the requirements of section 12, in breach of Te Tiriti o

Page 1462


Waitangi. The property rights quota can be challenged to the World

Trade Organisation, because of export rights as well as a contemporary

claim to the Waitangi Tribunal.

Noise. Firstly Te Ngaru Roa a Maui questioned whether anyone of the 5

two caucus groups above has expertise in the area of noise. Secondly

the evidence of Mr Hedley has been questioned along with parts of Mr

Childerhouse’s evidence. Mr Hedley is challenged on the

supplementary information he produced for the caucus on the noise

specs from the crawler that had not been built yet, along with the 10

ambient values being well to high. Mr Childerhouse was questioned

about Figure 1 appearing in his evidence and if it was limited by the

sound recording equipment to arrive at the figure for megafauna

hearing ranges.

15

Mr Childerhouse is reporting back to the experts. There was no

agreement among the experts on the noise level and frequencies

produced by the proposed operation and the experts did not reach

agreement on a sound level of distance viewed as a condition. The

experts did not agree on any specific conditions but would gather more 20

information.

The vessel impacts. In response to the EPA, Maritime New Zealand

considered that the FPSO will be classed as an installation, but are

unsure if the impacts until upcoming changes are made to the marine 25

protection rules, due to the transfer functions in the regulations.

A discharge minimum plan approved by the director of Maritime New

Zealand, International Convention (MARPOL) (INDISTINCT 3.05)

requires operators to have emergency response procedures and 30

managed operational discharges and an oil spill contingency plan. The

TTR discharges are not considered harmful substances under the

Marine Transport Act nor are the transfer of slurry ore.

M and S enforcement of New Zealand flagships and foreign flagships 35

in territorial EEZ for marine safety and protection only. All TTR ships

will need to be compliant with the International Maritime Organization

conventions. There is no act of monitoring of the vessels at sea in the

EEZ and consequences will be dependent on any investigation after

fact. 40

TTR maintains that because M and S is responsible for the DP, they did

not set in place contingency plans for spills in this process, as they have

the required equipment for all spills as a first response. And their

antifouling plus biosecurity will be compliant with all international 45

conventions and will be overseen by M and S. The structural integrity

Page 1463


of vessels would be classified by the recognised organizations of the

flag state. Each place within society has its own rules. M and S could

monitor through the port state control procedures only. NZ and New

Zealand are party to the Tokyo MOU and will be able to monitored by

M and S. 5

In relation to public liability, M and S states that it is dependent upon

whether it is a vessel or an installation. As an installation, the upper

limit is approximately 27 million and a vessel is based on the size and

accordance with part one or two of the Act. The evidence of Dr Patrick 10

outlines requirements of TTR to comply with Marine Protection Rules

Part 200, and international convention and a DNP (INDISTINCT

0.14). Maritime New Zealand inspectors are required to view the

international oil prevention certificate on a regular basis and require the

vessel to cease operating if it is not compliant. 15

[12.45 pm]

Paragraph 54, I’ve just outlined the tiers (INDISTINCT 0.33) that he

has spoken about. In terms of risk, Dr Patrick is stating and I’ll take 20

that as read and start at paragraph 56.

No risk assessment has been undertaken of any circumstances such as a

ship sinking due to excess of weather, in failing due to load line limits

being exceeded and ships cracking, leaking and being sunk as a 25

consequence.

TTR maintains that because M and S are responsible for the DNP that

they do not need to set in place contingency plans for spills and they

have the required equipment for oil spills at the first response, I’ll take 30

as read as well.

The evidence of Mr Beamsley contained results of an oil spill trajectory

modelling program based on an 11 year historical period of winds and

currents. The summary findings show that 92 to 97 percent of spills are 35

predicted to result in a beaching outcome.

Spring season had the highest probability of beaching of 97.8 and the

minimum time between a spill and the beaching were 12.4 hours in

summer and 16 hours, spring and autumn. The Rangatikei river mouth 40

was the most likely to be affected from the spill along with parts of the

STB.

Additionally, 80 percent of the spill volume is affected and remained

afloat and it should be assumed that 80 to 90 percent of spill volumes 45

will ultimately beach.

Page 1464


The Maritime Act, December 2013, now has consistency with the

international convention on load lines 96, which requires a ship’s load

lines not to be submerged when the ship proceeds to sea, is at sea or it

arrives in port, as in section 67. 5

I’ll start off at section 67, describes the penalty and fines of not

exceeding $10,000 and $100,000 for a body corporate. The Te Ngaru

Roa a Maui raised the issue of load lines in our submission and, again,

do so in relation to this, 67A the ship’s arrival in port. And I’ve 10

identified what a port means in the Act and start on 61.

The evidence at (INDISTINCT 2.43) Park puts forward an argument

that the TTR FPSO and FSO vessels do not require consent under the

Marlborough Sounds Resource Management Plan. 15

Nor does it constitute an occupation of space as defined in the RMA,

but does acknowledge that it may require lease or license to occupy to

give effect to the exclusion of other persons.

20

Furthermore, Ms Clarke does not consider that the vessels constitute

structures within the meaning of section 2 of the Act. And the

Marlborough Sounds Resource Management Plan drew a short duration

and infrequent temporary anchoring of the FSO and export vessel.

25

CHAIRPERSON: I’m just wondering if what you are telling us is what Ms

Clarke told us, which we’ve already heard, so I wondered what your

point is, that you don’t agree with her?

MR HAMILTON: Actually my point is coming. I line them up, say what 30

they going to see and then I’ll have a go at them.

CHAIRPERSON: Well, that’s fine, why don’t you just have a go at them?

MR HAMILTON: Because actually it’s scattered right through that - - - 35

CHAIRPERSON: Right, okay.

MR HAMILTON: And I’ve tried to be a helpful as I can.

40

CHAIRPERSON: No, no, you’re fine. I’m just saying we have had the

evidence so we know it. So just quoting it back to us doesn’t assist us

very much, that’s what I am saying to you.

45

Page 1465


MR HAMILTON: That’s fair, Mr Chairman. But I am at a loss with regards

to what to do and I’ve tried to be as fair as possible because in these

here are lying down, while I’ve said these things, these next lot is

actually crucial because it’s bounded on the very words that they have

said and what they are actually meaning. 5

And I have actually, to be upfront Mr Chairman, I could tell you is that

I can come in here and I could quote all sorts of things. And I can rattle

them off and I would have loved to have been able to have done that.

But the proof of the pudding is actually in the evidence and I have tried 10

to actually be considerate.

I have noted all these evidences, I’ve used factual evidential based

arguments and that’s what I’m trying to do, just to be fair, Mr

Chairman. 15

Ms Clarke appears to side-step the issue of the FPSO, the FSO. Only

getting to Admiralty Bay and other bays for transfer purposes and it

appears that TTR only go to those areas to shelter from heavy weather,

rather than it being used as a fully operated working area, which is 20

defined as a port by the UTA.

The FPSO, FSO can operate up to 4 metre swells. Therefore, it is

expected that those vessels will be moving into more protected areas in

big seas, with full loads transferred to the exporters vessel. That 25

constitutes a higher risk.

[12.50 pm]

It is clear that MNZ has a key part to play in the issue of the TTR 30

proposal to strip mine the seabed for iron sand for export, and if

granted, a compliance monitoring role. The recent legislative changes

will transfer some responsibility to the EPA, but it appears that the

approval of the Marine Spill Plans, the IOPL inspection regimes and

garbage managed as the rates of ships (INDISTINCT 0.32) will not be 35

part of those changes outlined in the evidence of Dr Patrick.

While TTR discharges are not considered harmful substances, the EPA

has a legislative responsibility to address those matters now, in this

process. 40

MR CHRISTENSEN: And is that your point? Really, which is to say, your

argument to us is to say that it is not good enough to think that another

agency is responsible for looking after all of that stuff and hope they do

a good job of it. 45

Page 1466


MR HAMILTON: Thanks very much, because that is certainly part of the

arguments or line of reasoning and arguments that I am putting

forward.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Yes. 5

MR HAMILTON: I think you have a reasonable grasp of that. There is that

and of course, I will talk later to you about it, you think I should talk

now or?

10

MR CHRISTENSEN: No, I am just cutting to the point. I understand that the

point you are making is really the key to it is 64.

MR HAMILTON: The key to some of that, yes.

15

MR CHRISTENSEN: Yes, okay.

MR HAMILTON: The evidence of Mr Beamsley clearly identifies that a

significant oil spill has the potential for a major disaster to the epifield

or beach (INDISTINCT 1.42) with the STB. 20

It is the places tax and rate payers at a significant risk. Any significant

oil spill or ship wreck has the potential for life changing effects to

Maori, coastal peoples and national and international visitors. TTR

downplays the effects to tourist businesses, regarding the Rena disaster, 25

and fails to recognise that the news media identified that some tourist

operations were forced to close, move out of the district and some got

financial assistance to keep solvent.

I go on about Mr Vosk from his evidence, saying that this vessel is 30

going to be the largest ever built with an overall length of about 350

and a width of 60. And then I go on about the penalties again and then I

go on about, TTR states an insurance policy for 100 million will and

may be set in place. And then I give an example, a recent paper

undertaken and published by Lloyds Insurance on the risks removable 35

states stack. I just quote that “up until now, $240 million for the Rena

disaster” and also with regard to the ships and actually trying to remove

these ships, 21.1 billion out of the 20 most expensive shipwrecks.

The TTR insurance policy has not been provided for assessment and 40

will only be conditional on the wording and clause of that police and

100 million it appears woefully inadequate to cover the cost of even a

Rena disaster situation. Profits should not be privatised while costs are

socialised.

45

Page 1467


Te Ngaru Roa a Maui argues that a bond should be set in place to give

more certainty that costs remain with TTR.

The words insulation, structure, port, occupying, temporary have been

bandied about in the evidence. M and S identified the FPSO as an 5

installation, due to attachment to the seabed and the MTA describes it

is as a port. Yet TTR seeks to have limited controls set from one of the

largest vessels ever built in this kind of an operation inside the

territorial limits in ecology in ecological and culturally significant areas

such as Admiralty Bay. 10

Te Ngaru Roa a Maui argues that there is gross uncertainty relating to

the above and that the EPA is bypassed by the MNZ for many

functions and that TTR insurers have not engendered public

confidence. 15

Te Ngaru Roa a Maui considers it is problematic to expect all the

reports from MNZ to be made public as M & S have not sought a

marine consent and may be considered a third party.

20

Nonetheless, it demonstrates that the public have recourse to that action

and all reports from third parties should be publically available to

scrutinise.

Economics, I take that first part as being read and that is seven, not 25

agreed. The magnitude and environment cost to be within a ball park of

a report by Dr Blake. Experts believe there is insufficient information

on environmental values to support his statement.

Certainly there has been some changes to TTR’s position with 54 30

million (INDISTINCT 4.41) royalty rates and tax payments down 4

million to 50 million per annum. Along with uncertainty decides the

wider economics or benefits which is stated to be an increased in GDP

of 302 million per year. Certainly that has been put in doubt.

35

While it was agreed that the economic analysis produced results over

20 years, TTR has failed to analyse the environmental effects which

may extend beyond the life of the project.

[12.55 pm] 40

Just as important is that TTR failed to undertake an evaluation around

the value of environmental impacts versus the economic benefits of the

proposed project, along with not undertaking analysis of physical

impacts on fishing stocks. 45

Page 1468


While it was agreed that there is a lack of evidence, it demonstrated

there was no effects to commercial fishing and tourism. Actually I will

take that down to “Lastly the experts agreed that there were

uncertainties around the model resource to a lack of peer review”.

5

The marine mammal one, certainly what I want to do is – there is a lot

highlighted in that and I am certainly willing to answer questions

around that, but I what I think I really want to do is to go down to

where para 89, that is where I would like to start, I am sorry my

(INDISTINCT 1.03). 10

Of note, was that Professor Slooten did not sign sections of the joint

statement. Professor Slooten stated there was insufficient information

available on the numbers and species of marine mammals and their

likely reaction to noise, sedimentation, habitat destruction and flow-on 15

ecological impacts, caused by the proposed mining operation. Professor

Slooten did not sign the sections of joint statement that relates to noise

conditions, due to lack of robust scientific data produced by the mining

operation and it is not possible to determine the impact of noise on

marine mammals, nor the conditions related to noise. 20

Also there was insufficient information available on the ecological

linkages between benthic communities, fish communities, marine

mammals to be able to determine the indirect ecological effects of the

mining operation and the available data is not sufficiently detailed for 25

robust before, during and after comparison of the effects of mining.

Professor Slooten states that the caucus group discussed the potential

and physical impacts on marine mammals, including (INDISTINCT

2.14) hearing impairment and behavioural responses such as 30

displacement of stress. The experts agreed that behaviour of marine

mammals feeding and whether the individuals have calves or not, is an

important consideration, because of stress related changes. Plus a

considerable amount of additional research will be needed to gather

realistic baseline data as well as data essential to allow the DMC to 35

make a science-based assessment of the likely impacts on the marine

mammals.

Excuse me I will just have a drink.

40

The evidence of Dr Green has acknowledged that his method for

detecting pit in filling does not reflect any potential migration of dredge

pits as a response to Ms Pratt and that his method seeks estimate only

and in filling time scale based on a relatively simple sediment trapping

premise based on literature that pit migrations will be in direction of net 45

sediment. Furthermore, Dr Green maintains that Dr Hadfield’s and

Page 1469


Gary Teear’s expert evidence referred to the direction of migration

after the pits and mounds being in the south-east direction, and his

calculations were based on that direction.

The highly energetic nature of the coast changes direction due to large 5

storms moving up the coastline. The storms of September 2010 from a

large low-pressure system emanating from the Antarctic, produced

strong south-westerlies with a fetch to Tasmania and travel up the West

Coast in the North Island.

10

It was measured at a wave buoy with significant heights of nine metres.

Also a few days later another large storm passed through the South

Island’s West Coast with the largest waves. These types of ground

squalls are not uncommon on the coast. It is during large swells large

volumes of sand are moved. Surfers a highly familiar to large ground 15

squalls travelling up and down the coast from tropical cyclones.

The second is the pits and mounds methodology is based on the

information from TTR on the size of the pits and widths of depth.

Throughout experts’ evidence there has only been discussion on 10 or 20

11 metre deep trenches. TTR has identified the iron sands typically go

down to 60 metres under the seabed and that the oil and gas whirls of

South Taranaki have found columns of iron sand up to 140 metres

deep.

25

And I will provide the appendix to that as an evidence-based. It is

entirely unreasonable to consider that TTR would forego extraction in

those areas, to go deeper than 10 metres and on that basis it can be

safely assumed they will go deeper? There is no evidence to state that

TTR will only mine to that depth. There is only a daft condition that 30

restricts TTR to the depth in relation to the mud content.

[1.00 pm]

Several other experts based their evidence on that depth therefore Te 35

Ngaru Roa (ph 0.28) consider that to be a pivotal point. If the depth

was deeper then it would nullify all those results.

Each evidence, such as the sedimentary modelling and the effect of

waves and surf breaks would be grossly incorrect and will have to be 40

recalculated and submissions sought after further analysis.

Dr Hadfield has changed the hydro-cyclone parameters of the Courtney

(INDISTINCT 0.52) Maori model from six metres to now, twenty

metres of the sea floor due to a fundamental flaw with the use of the 45

(INDISTINCT 0.59) attachment that was unstable.

Page 1470


Also discharged in this process is the concentrated brine mix from the

reverse osmosis plant and you would note that in our submission we

consider that, that was quite a thing, the brine.

5

The plume from the discharge pipe descends to the bottom within about

forty metres from the outlet and then forms a bottom-attached plume

with a vertical thickness of about five to ten metres. Dr Hadfield states

that he is at a loss to explain the error that would have caused that

adverse effects. Without doubt, this demonstrates that TTR systems are 10

not up to scratch.

A further issue, that the vertical thickness of pipe to ten metres of

plume has not been assessed by other experts as to toxicity of the brine

mix at the new height and mixing values. The concentrated brine is 15

highly toxic out of place in the marine environment as described by the

EPA Staff Report.

Te Ngaru Roa Maori maintain that dilution is not the solution to

pollution and what is being proposed is out of keeping with the marine 20

environment. Because the modelling is based on desk-top modelling

any variation or change in operation will require new analysis from a

whole range of TTR experts.

During the two above points, Te Ngaru Roa Maori considered the 25

hearing needs to be adjourned to allow TTR sufficient time to reassess

the opinions – expert’s opinions - to be recalculated, and submissions

sought after further analysis.

In response to several submitters that mining of the seabed will remove 30

supplies of sand to beaches as far north as Cape Reinga, Dr Hume states

that the South Taranaki Bight sediment, and I will leave that as being

read, all the way down to sand – I have got at 101 – Dr Hume has not

quantified that amount nor presented any factual evidence on the issue.

Are those submitters to take it that only sand from the other side of the 35

Taranaki Bight produces sand that travels up the West Coast?

There has been no evidence put forward by any of the experts of a

larger picture of sand production. There has been no large scale

hydrological modelling that was done to show that effect. The evidence 40

above demonstrates that large deep ground swells traverse from the

bottom of Aotearoa have the fetch and power to move large amounts of

sand up the coast lines and that the low depressions operate in a clock-

wise direction, it draws sand resources from notarial zones and moves

them up the coastlines. 45

Page 1471


Without setting aside the concerns above, serve as deeply interwoven

into the fabric of the sea, coastlines, inter-tidal zones and rivers. And in

undertaking several activities, such as boating, fishing, diving, surf-

casting, sail-boarding and kite-surfing, the point of difference for

surfers and divers are that they are immersed in the waters for long 5

periods of time. The potential impacts of the water quality are a health

concern along with the impacts to surf, race and rigs. (ph 4.07)

In dealing with the other matters: the evidence of Mr Bissett states that

TTR decided early not to seek approval to mine a beach irrespective of 10

whether this was legally possible and yet TTR has now moved into

exploration permits for Kapea southward. TTR prospecting drilling for

(INDISTINCT 4.27) here in Raglan was just off the coast outside the

Maui dolphins set exclusion zone, just two nautical miles off the coast.

And therefore that also identifies the TTR potential intentions. 15

The Te Ngaru Roa Maori submission inserted a map of the prospecting

and exploration permits 50753, 50383, and are very aware of the

incremental creep pathway that TTR can take if granted consent. Te

Ngaru Roa Maori also wish to state that, we are very uncomfortable 20

with the fact that our rights to a health ecosystem, embedded with - - -

(INDISTINCT 0.08) wairuatanga, is to be traded away to China to

extract vanadium and titanium as a bi-product of steel manufacture that

has a high potential to be used in Chinese defence aircraft

manufacturing. 25

[1.05 pm]

Also of note is that the Key Stone New Zealand Director, Right

Honourable Dame Jenny Shipley, is a director of the Chinese 30

Construction Bank. TTR’s been transparent in these regards as they

have made this information publicly available and that’s where I got it

from Andy. So it’s publicly available but I have got it on a USB stick if

you wanted the evidential basis of where I am getting those comments

from. 35

Te Ngaru Roa Maori consider that TTR (INDISTINCT 0.51) in an off-

hand manner in dealing with the EPA Section 22 request for further

information and the EPA. TTR failed to provide separate clear answers

to all those requests and instead provided those answers deeply buried 40

in expert evidence. A peer review from the EPA clearly showed flaws

in the modelling and science and that still has not been satisfactorily

addressed.

45

Page 1472


In conclusion, the evidence above has highlighted significant short-

comings in the TTR application, scientific modelling and conclusions.

The updated evidence by TTR experts has failed to satisfactorily

provide evidence that adverse impacts are avoided, remedied or

mitigated. There have been wide opposition to the application with 5

many of the scientific, legal and experts from submitters challenging

the very basis of the TTR project.

The Te Ngaru Roa Maori submission highlights the lack of assessment

of the natural capital and economic experts agree in caucus (ph 1.59) 10

that TTR has failed to balance those concerns against their own

economic considerations. And could I add here, that is quite explicit

with regards to having to consider making a decision on an economic

basis. Our argument is this, they haven’t done that. So how can there be

made a decision where it is actually out of kilter and favours one? 15

TTR has failed to be a good partner to address Maori issues and were

off-handed when dealing with the EPA. Te Ngaru Roa Maori maintains

that TTR could also do the same if consent is granted. And it does not

bode well in any future monitoring by the EPA. 20

TTR has moved to ten(INDISTINCT 2.48) like a Jedi warrior to say

there is no wrong here and move on, as the effects are no more than

minor. And yet, in essence, they are still trying to struggle to get the

hydro-cyclone parameters in the CORMAC model working. Even the 25

key scientist is baffled. What is worse is that TTR will continue to

argue that it can be fixed by way of consent conditions and more

baseline research and monitoring. All that should have been done

before rushing to lodge the application.

30

Te Ngaru Roa Maori argues no evidence there is harm is not the same

as evidence of no harm. Te Ngaru Roa Maori have set out matters

relating to statutory provisions it a previous submission but in short, Te

Ngaru Roa Maori argues that the application does not satisfy the

requirements of the Act and fails to satisfy the test set out in 10, 12 and 35

12.

I would like to add that, I apologise for not reprinting our submission,

because a lot of the impacts that were in there, a lot of the parts relating

to the functions with regards to making these decisions is there. So I 40

apologise that I didn’t resubmit that but I am confident that you may go

back and have another look at that.

CHAIRPERSON: And we have got it directly in front of us.

45

Page 1473


MR HAMILTON: Thank you. So in the end we seek that the application be

declined and there is Appendix One with regard to the evidence based

on.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, and thank you for the way you took 5

us through that. It was very efficient so thank you. There may be some

questions.

MS WRATT: Just one specific question at this stage, going right back to your

paragraph seven, you make the comment that TTR and the EPA should 10

endeavour to obtain more robust information from Hapu and Iwi.

MR HAMILTON: Yes.

MS WRATT: Any suggestions on what needs to be done to do that? 15

MR HAMILTON: Well sure. I could see that in actual fact there is a fisheries

forum is due to do that. I am not quite sure whether the Matapuna or

the Manapunua (ph 4.46) have actually had a chance to do any proper

impact assessment of it because of the time slot. I do know, I had a hint 20

that there was supposed to be and I have heard that the committee and

the hearing is going down to the Marae, Sally (ph 4.58) told me ages

ago and I am pleased that the committee are doing that and thank them

for going to a Marae to hear it in a tupuna whare. Because that is where

the ancestors, that is why the (Māori Content 0.10). That is where the 25

mana and the tapu actually comes from and so I appreciate it. I

imagine that there may be some changes with regards to some of the

stuff but I would personally have liked to have seen them do a cultural

impact assessment.

30

[1.10 pm]

I certainly think it was very difficult that the whole fisheries group was

actually going to be lodging that supposedly at the end after the hearing

is closed. I do not know quite how that is going to work but I am kind 35

of concerned that the EPA, in my opinion and TTR, should have gone

hell bent and should still do, go hell bent to actually understand.

Angelene herself has actually given quite a good thing with regards to

the realm of evidence that she has got and potential effects but 40

nonetheless it is down to the Manawhenua that I think needs to be

explored.

MS WRATT: Okay, thank you.

45

MR ROGERS: Good afternoon.

Page 1474


MR HAMILTON: Kia ora.

MR ROGERS: Just a question regarding the consultation which you say has

been poor, how long in your experience would good consultation take? 5

MR HAMILTON: Thank you, actually I don’t know whether it is about the

time and the length of consultation. I think it is like every, your case

lawyers to find that, with regards whether they would like to come,

without me saying right now, the first one, they are allowed to come 10

with unprepared evidence, they are allowed to actually move through

the process and they are allowed to change their mind if they want.

Consultation itself is not something that is in this Act, but actually

getting the information to satisfy the existing interest and getting the

information with regards to the question of the Treaty of (Māori 15

Content 1.51) Waitangi is crucial.

TTR that is what, that is what we are saying. They have actually rushed

this through, had a date that they wanted to lodge by October 2013,

nothing else mattered. Their science, their consultation with tangata 20

whenua and the community, nothing else mattered. That is what they

had. I am challenging that and saying that is a commercial imperative

rather than looking at the effects, rather than analysing the documents,

that is what I am saying.

25

MR ROGERS: Okay, I might come back.

MR HAMILTON: I can answer it in another slight way if you want.

MR ROGERS: I will ask you slightly different after a bit of time to think. I’ll 30

come back.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Mr Hamilton, just one question from me. The concern

that you have expressed in relation to the potential for much deeper

mining. Would that be addressed if the thing were to go ahead, would 35

that be addressed if it was very clear and a condition as to the

maximum depth of mining?

MR HAMILTON: Actually I have deliberately put in about the unfairness to

TTR, they have identified this resource, they have been bandied around 40

everywhere saying that there is a lot of good resource that JORC are

saying that it is four billion dollars work there and I would caution that

because in our submission and in here I am talked about the

incremental creep.

45

Page 1475


If you are not going to pick up and I will tell you what it is, incremental

creep is that they get consent and they go for the rest in blocks which is

their right because they have an existing consent on the marine

legislation and that’s what I am concerned about.

5

CHAIRPERSON: You are concerned about they will apply for a second

consent as opposed to just - - -

MR HAMILTON: That is right, like I have heard and I have read some of the

lawyers’ opening speeches in the responses from you is that he thinks 10

that you should only just concentrate on one but he is wrong. Actually

the legislation is saying that you have to undertake the accumulative

impacts. You have to consider a whole range of that. Some of that is

spelt out in my submission in the earlier stuff.

15

CHAIRPERSON: I just wanted to make it clear because I was not sure whether

you were saying they will just go and mine more or would they need to

get a second consent so you are quite clear that they would need to get

a second consent - - -

20

MR HAMILTON: Again, this is what it is worse about the question that was

asked is actually who is going to tell anybody out there. TTR do not

want a monitor on board. They even told the EPA, they do not want a

monitor on board, it is in the evidence. So who is going to tell when

they hit this patch that it is actually 60 metres deep, that actually blows 25

out the whole sediment stuff, the benthic community is now totally

destroyed over a large area.

MR CHRISTENSEN: I do not need to pursue that any more, thank you.

30

MS WRATT: Can I just make a comment though if a condition was set of they

could not go beyond 10 metres for example, then they would be

blatantly ignoring the consent conditions so is that not a commercial

risk that you would expect a company, despite your obvious cynicism

about their good intentions is that not too high a commercial risk for a 35

company to take to just blatantly ignore a condition?

[1.15 pm]

MR HAMILTON: Thank you for asking me that, Commissioner. I actually 40

think that’s a really good question to ask me. I don’t whether I’m

confident, you’re a learned person, and you’re on the Board and I’m

confident you’re fully aware of what’s happening in the environmental

world and with regards to monitoring consents.

45

MS WRATT: You haven’t actually answered my question though.

Page 1476


MR HAMILTON: I’m going to. Is that most of the consents that have actually

been given are not monitored. Most of the companies will actually go

and breach them and actually wait for an abatement notice, and while it

might be a risk to TTR actually that is a significant resource. And the 5

difference between what I’m saying is a pivotal point, although you

heard, it’s going to create a devastation, and I’m not quite sure how you

can actually effectively monitor that consent, and you’d be given a de

facto consent without robust management based on not trusting

anybody, and actually being there to have the information. 10

And I have not heard yet in any of the evidence, or seen where under

the crawler that nobody’s going to GPS them, nobody is going to GPS

the depth down, they’re not doing that kind of stuff at all, and so I think

it’s a risky, risky thing to give them consent on that basis. 15

CHAIRPERSON: And just to come in, I think that’s what a lot of submitters

are telling us, the applicant’s told us, or a lot of submitters are saying

it’s not possible to do it, and that’s what we’re going to clearly have to

weigh and make a decision. 20

MR HAMILTON: Not possible to do what?

CHAIRPERSON: What you were saying? You’re saying to us and other

submitters are saying it’s too difficult to monitor. 25

MR HAMILTON: Oh, yes.

CHAIRPERSON: And that’s the issues that we’ll have to grapple with.

30

MR HAMILTON: Yes, I said that in the original submission. We spoke about

with the EPA.

CHAIRPERSON: Exactly. So those are all issues before us. Thanks.

Mr Kapea? 35

MR KAPEA: Kia ora Mr Hamilton. I just want to go back to paragraph 19,

and you make mention of the kaitiaki tanga committee and the

formation of that.

40

MR HAMILTON: Yes.

MR KAPEA: And I think Maori right around New Zealand can find

themselves at times being in these committees, and then all of a sudden

agreeing to the application because you set up a committee, and we’ve 45

had very little written evidence or seen very much come back from

Page 1477


local hapu in terms of their involvement with TTR. So yes, they’re

opposed to it, but then there are other parts of the information that

comes back saying that this committee should have been set up, we

want this report written and we haven’t seen any reports at all. Do you

have any comments on that? 5

MR HAMILTON: Most definitely, and thanks for the opportunity. Is that I

agree with your comments with regards to these committees, that a lot

of Maori are getting onto it, a lot of our people are. There is a

difference, the difference is what I highlighted, the first it should have 10

been done, the second difference is that TTR is only wanting to set up a

kaitiaki committee after the fact.

And what’s really important is that it’s to actually offset ecological

damage, it’s not to set off having like their insurance policy, which may 15

have provisions in it that would do those different things; it is actually

set up as – and I’m not going to use the word “lolly scramble” it’s just

too disingenuous. Because I think TTR’s invasive core is trying to do

what other people are doing. They’ve been doing this offset mechanism

with setting up these committees for quite some time. I’ve been 20

involved for a long while in the resource management arena and I see

this happening all the time.

Certainly there is lots of talk about it brought off – oh, the committees

been brought, oh, they should really know, here two million. Example, 25

Contact Energy put two million dollars down to actually monitor the

birds down the South Island - - -

CHAIRPERSON: I might just – so the question was, should it have been set

up before reports, and I think your answered, and Mr Kapea may have 30

a follow up question to that.

MR HAMILTON: But he also asked with regards to what it is and the benefits

associated, which is why I was answering in that way, and I’m happy to

stop. 35

CHAIRPERSON: Do you have another question Mr Kapea?

MR KAPEA: I pretty much get the picture.

40

MR HAMILTON: Thank you.

MR KAPEA: The other thing that I’m hearing in terms of submitters, is

fisheries.

45

MR HAMILTON: Yes.

Page 1478


MR KAPEA: And the thing that troubles me is this compensation. Fisheries

are going after a compensation, does that mean if they get the

compensation they’re not opposed to the application?

5

MR HAMILTON: Actually the compensation, the likes of the fishing industry

is talking about, is actually quite relevant. Is that there is going to be a

potential loss, and in fact there’s a catastrophic loss with regards, and

earlier on the advice from NIWA to the Ministry of Fisheries, it said

contact should be buying the quota or should be doing something about 10

the quota itself, rather than this token compensation stuff. TTR hasn’t

done any of that.

[1.20 pm]

15

MR KAPEA: But in doing that, aren’t fisheries saying, yes well it’s okay for

you to go ahead and mine, not unless you compensate us for the fishing

loss?

MR HAMILTON: No, no each one of those fisheries people are actually 20

saying no don’t go ahead, we don’t want it. You’re going to destroy

our income.

MR KAPEA: So where do we get the compensation from?

25

MR HAMILTON: The compensation is something to try to make some

tokenistic gesture towards somebody using pension insured. It’s putting

on a paper towel over the top of the, instead of paper insured, it’s all set

mitigation.

30

MR KAPEA: Okay, that’s all I need to know. Kia ora.

MR HAMILTON: Kia ora.

CHAIRPERSON: Kia ora, thank you very much. Thank you for your 35

submission.

MR HAMILTON: Ka pai.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you everyone. It’s 20 past one, we’re going to take 40

a lunch break. Ms Gilbert? Is she here?

MS GILBERT: (INDISTINCT 1.12)

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, let’s do that one now; that saves you having to. 45

Page 1479


MS GILBERT: (Speaks in Dutch) What I said, was ‘thank you’ in my own

language. I thank (INDISTINCT 1.45) for speaking for me. Because

they did.

I’m from Holland, a little country. I lived in a town that was six metres 5

under sea level, Amsterdam. Most houses where I lived in I would

have drowned if the sea had broken through.

And I remember a conversation I had with Angelina’s father on the

beach, where he was weaving his sediment catchers and I said “Oh, we 10

do that too in Holland” and he said we could learn a great deal from the

Dutch and how they manage their dykes.

And I speak to you as a member of a people who used to live by what

the sea could give us. We had rivers teeming with salmon and with 15

sturgeon. We had eel in every ditch, in every lake. We had herring.

We had haddock. We had so much food from the sea. We are a sea

people, as you may know.

And I come to you and speak to you as it were, as a voice from the 20

future, because where I come from we have nothing left.

No matter the science, no matter the decisions you make. We

harvested the seabeds, we harvested the fish, we killed off the salmon.

The pollution from the biggest rivers came through our country because 25

our country is a delta from the Rhine river.

Today, not a single salmon, not a single sturgeon swims in those rivers.

And that is the decision you have to live with, because no matter how 30

we think you’ve got science sorted, we, in Holland, are living with

what happens if you do not take what Angelina says really, really

seriously. What Malibu says. What everyone of us wants to say.

We import our eel from New Zealand. We import our fish, our herring, 35

from Denmark. We import our haddock from other fisheries across the

ocean. We have 70 million people living in an area the size of

Northland.

If we do not have the transport of those foods to our country, 70 million 40

people will die of starvation within a week. You have a country that

can supply its people with food. Don’t waste it. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Kia ora.

45

MS GILBERT: Kia ora.

Page 1480


CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Thank you for that. Thank you

everybody, we’ll take a lunch break, 25 for an hour and then we’ll start

with Mr Curry if he’s here, when we come back. Thank you.

5

ADJOURNED [1.25 pm]

RESUMED [2.25 pm]

CHAIRPERSON: I’ll just call the next submitter, Mr Curry, is he here? Does 10

anyone know Mr Curry? No? Ms Crosby? Ms Crosby had a question

mark.

MR ………: What initial is that?

15

CHAIRPERSON: Donna.

MR ………: She is not here at the moment because she’s still coming from -

- -

20

CHAIRPERSON: Who is here who wants to be heard? Your name please?

MS DILLON: Lorraine Dillon.

CHAIRPERSON: Oh great, thank you. Do you want to come up? Thank you. 25

MS DILLON: I’m afraid I haven’t sat in here so I’m not quite sure of how

things work.

MR ………: Sit yourself down, we don’t buy chairs. 30

CHAIRPERSON: You can tell by that we are trying to be relaxed and

informal. It might not look that way, but we are trying.

MS DILLON: Thank you for the opportunity of speaking here. I think, as you 35

can probably tell from my accent, you probably want a bit of an

explanation as to why I am here and my stance on my submission.

I’m a Scot, 53 years old, who moved here in 2012. I first came to this

country in 1994 and fell in love with New Zealand. I fell in love, hook, 40

line and sinker with the country and with its people. And from being a

very proud Scot, you can imagine what a sea-change that was for me.

And at the time, I aspired to live here, but I didn’t have enough points

at the time. So me and my husband, who was with me at the time, we 45

decided when we retire from the Police Force we will see what the

Page 1481


entry regulations are like when we come here and make our plans to

come and live here.

That never changed, we came here many times in the intervening 20

years and it never changed that New Zealand was our place that we 5

wanted to end our days.

My interest in the intervening time and I think in 30 years as a Police

Officer, I bring that experience. Not only do I bring my experience of

living in the U.K. for 52 years, I also bring my experience of being a 10

Police Officer in London for 30 years, and what that brings and an

insight into life, that that brings to you as an individual. You see life

and the politics from a perspective that can be quite different. And my

experience in the Police service leads you aware of things, how they

can happen, how they can go wrong. 15

Personally, I was very interested in the softer side of life, the

gardening, diving. I became very much interested in permaculture

which I wanted to integrate into my life when I came to New Zealand

and which I have done. 20

When I came here in ’94, as I said, what I loved most about this

country, was the people. And at the risk of patronising you, being a

Scot, living in England for as long as I did, I understand how

inadvertently one can patronise another country. 25

And I don’t mean to patronise by coming from the U.K. and suggesting

the U.K. you know, is any better, any worse, but what I loved about the

Kiwi people is your trust, your open love of other people, your

welcoming nature. 30

People used to say to me then, not so much now, but they certainly

used to say to me then, are they not 50 years behind time there? I’m

sure you've heard of that. And I said, well yes, but in such a good way

because of this trust, because of this love, this openness. 35

But I did express, I remember at that time, worrying about how that

trust could be taken advantage of and my concerns of that. And I bring

that to this as well, that I am concerned that perhaps that trust and love

and openness maybe being taken advantage of. 40

With respect to the other applicants who are making their submissions

to you about why this should go ahead.

45

Page 1482


[2.30 pm]

Now, my stance on this is there are three main issues as far as I am

concerned. There is economic, environmental and ethical. I think all of

them are as important as each other and what I do not understand in any 5

of them is the risks attributed to that. For me, nothing I have read

makes me understand why the risk is sufficient to go ahead with this. I

am not an expert, I do not pretend to be, I am quite a simple person but

I do not understand why these risks are seen to be worthwhile from an

economic, an environmental and an ethical perspective. 10

I used to work a lot, I used to be responsible for a team who taught

intelligence and one of things when I joined the Police service 30 years

ago, risk assessment, I do not think anybody would know what a risk

assessment was 30 years ago in the Police service. But many officers 15

and have died or are seriously injured for that to have continued and

gradually we got to grips with risk assessment and mitigating risk and

that is my biggest concern here.

I do not see there being sufficient mitigation to the risks concerned, 20

environmentally, ethically and economically to justify what is being

proposed. On my permaculture course which was this time last year,

and I put this in my submission but I will repeat it and I will try and

keep bringing it back to this submission, is I went to an organic farmer

called Mike Moss who is local to me and his farm and his animals were 25

so healthy and I was just completely blown away by the health and

vitality that was on his farm.

And I asked him, I said “what is the one thing that I could take away,

the one sort of compartment you could take away that, you know, for 30

me and form a permaculture perspective that you would give to me”

and he said, “keep your fertility on the land.” “Do not get rid of it, you

know, what you see as waste is not waste, keep the fertility on the

land.” So, you know, he was in the forefront of the riparian planting

which was keeping the river systems, you know so that he kept the soil 35

and the food on his land, you know and the effluent, he had a really

positive method of retaining the effluent on his land so that it did not

leech away and cause poisoning to the river systems etcetera and he

really concentrated on it.

40

So, when I have been doing my permaculture, you know, I try to live

my life and this submission is about why would we economically

export our fertility, that fertility that makes up the seabed. Why would

we export it somewhere for what I am lead to believe is what three

cents of the dollar? I do not understand economically why that makes 45

sense that you would export that economic fertility away from this

Page 1483


country. Keep as much of it in as you possibly can and that is why

economically I do not understand why this makes sense.

And I will talk about later but there is also the ethical aspect of what,

how this iron ore is being used. I do not understand the ethical aspects 5

are and what the ultimate aim of this ore is. Again, back to risk, we

hear about the jobs that are going to be gained by this exploration but to

me the bigger picture is that the risk involved in this and the do not

knows is, the jobs in the fishing industry, the tourism etcetera. The

quantification of the risk of the job losses, the effect of this bus 10

submission and if this goes ahead.

Environmentally, I do not understand how it makes sense

environmentally. I mean, I am gardening and I find it very interesting. I

dug a hole, I was building a carport and me and my husband dug this 15

hole about 12 inches by 12 inches, a foot down, dug down, put the post

in and put the soil back in. Now, he put subsoil back in. Now, anybody

who lives in New Zealand knows how everything wants to grow in

New Zealand. Weeds, grass, everything, this area was a very

productive little area around this post. When we put the soil back we 20

put the subsoil down and that was about four, five months ago, nothing

has grown in that patch, and I see that to me in that little small 12 inch

patch of grain as evidence of what if we are digging up the sand – as

you do in gardening, you get that sub-soil from down below and

flipping it up and changing and throwing it into the seabed – to me that 25

was a little 12 inch square evidence of the potential catastrophic effect

that it is going have on the seafloor.

[2.35 pm]

30

As a diver – I have spent 15 years diving – and I know that it is not just

the coral reefs that need have the light, some of the best dives I have

been on have just been on bare sand. And you go down and you look

and all the weird and wonderful creatures that are in there, that

ecosystem that you are not aware of when you are up at the top and you 35

have seen and you go down and there is this fantastic ecosystem that

you can see, you have just got to look for it and I worry. It doesn’t

make sense to me how you can strip that seabed, all that ecosystem is

like an oxygen, the oxygen of a garden, how you can strip that away

and how that is not going to make a difference. 40

I know you have heard submissions from people far more intelligent

and knowledgeable than me about all the things that are going to

happen, but for me it is instinctive, from what I know, from life and

from what I do, it doesn’t make sense to me. 45

Page 1484


I watched recently a little YouTube video called “How Wolves

Changed Rivers” and to me – it is a four and a half minute little

YouTube video about how they reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone

Park after they were taken out in the early 1930s. They thought it was

just about getting rid of elk, but throughout the years, by the 5

introduction, by the changing the elks’ behaviour, which you can do by

shooting the elk, which they have tried for the last 50 years, they

completely changed the ecosystem within the Yellowstone Park, just a

few wolves in a short period of time.

10

So my concern is, if what we are doing to this unknown sea, what is

going on at the bottom of the sea, and we can’t see it, by taking away

all the sand, by stirring it all up and changing underneath, what the

effects of that is going to have. We cannot reintroduce that sand in the

way it is back into that system, we can’t, it is not as easy as that, but to 15

me that was a fantastic and very simple way of this what they call a

trophic cascade.

When they took out one element of that area and the effect that that has

had, taking it away and then reintroducing it, and I don’t think you will 20

have the opportunity to do that, you know, the risks are too great, you

will not have the opportunity of going back and saying, actually you

were wrong, we didn’t realise this was happening.

One of the other aspects of when we were teaching intelligence is 25

Donald Rumsfeld, and the ethics of this are clearly concerning, because

it was all about invading Iraq, but I think it was quiet astute in as much

as what we know and what we don’t know.

And you may have heard this already but for me there are four 30

compartments, it is about what we know we know, and you know that.

It is what we know we don’t know, and I am sure that is already

building up and there are lots of question marks about what we don’t

know. But there is also what we don’t know that we know, but for me

the most important and the biggest problem I am concerned, for me as 35

far as risk is concerned, is what we don’t know we don’t know, that is

huge, and the risks, when we were teaching about risk assessment is

about trying to gain that.

The ethics, and when I was reading (INDISTINCT 3.50) in here and I 40

was trying to get an idea of why I came here and why I loved the

country and its values so much, I found on Wikipedia this quote, and it

is about your anti-nuclear policy, and it is about “New Zealand’s three

decade anti-nuclear campaign is the only successful movement of its

type in the world which resulted in the nation’s nuclear-free zone”. The 45

only successful movement of its type in the world, and for a nuclear-

Page 1485


free zone being enshrined in legislation and to me that is what New

Zealand is about. It’s that small country standing up to the big guys and

saying “No, we won’t, we won’t bow to this, we will stand up against

you”. And this is why I thank you for giving the power and the ability

to do this, because that is the values this small country has and has had, 5

and, you know, I want to be a part of it.

[2.40 pm]

And therefore from the ethical point of view is what I don’t understand 10

is that I’m led to believe that this iron ore will be sent to China, will be

turned into military equipment or bombs or planes and I don’t

understand from a country that has taken that stance, why there is this

turnaround, and I don’t understand it, I’m sorry.

15

I feel, on listening to the television today that there is maybe, it’s like a

game of monopoly that’s going on and, you know, that there’s some

sort of fire sale going on, that assets are being sold. And the risks to

those assets and the risks of selling those assets off are not being taken

seriously. 20

And, to me, the risks, you know, have to be considered more and there

is nothing I have read to justify the risks that there is to New Zealand

and New Zealand’s infrastructure to justify what is going on.

25

Once again, thank you and I apologise for not being more specific and I

thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. But, I think, for me,

this is about precedent setting. At the risk again of patronising you, I

don’t mean to but this is from the heart and I know I’m not supposed to

get emotional, but I don’t see how you can’t not be emotional. 30

But the precedent setting here one way or the other is large. I believe

that you are specifically talking about this submission, but I think the

effects either way of the decision that you make is pretty enormous, an

I thank you for letting me speak to you to take my considerations into 35

perspective, so thank you.


MR CHRISTENSEN: Thank you, Ms Dillon. I have heard from a number of 40

submitters a concern around the end use of iron ore that is exported and

built into bombs and warplanes. I don’t know where that comes from.

Do you know the origins of that?

45

Page 1486


MS DILLON: No, it was at a meeting I was at and it was purported that, that

was. I mean I have been to China. I’ve travelled a lot. I went to China

in ’92 and the pollution there. I mean, I believe it’s being exported to

China. The pollution there in 1992, you couldn’t breathe in some of

the cities we went to because the pollution was so great and everybody 5

drove cars around.

So it’s being, from my understanding, it’s being changed into steel in

China (INDISTINCT 2.40) for the pollution aspect in China as well.

10

MR CHRISTENSEN: Well, yes, but that’s not the point you were making.

The point you were making was the ethical aspect of the end use of the

steel.

MS DILLON: Yes, absolutely. 15

MR CHRISTENSEN: So can I just take that a little bit further, because I

don’t know, well the applicant hasn’t said and I don’t think we know

what the iron sand would eventually incorporated into in steel.

20

But if it was, let’s say, steel surgical instruments that saved lives,

would that change your view?

MS DILLON: Again, I go back to this keeping your fertility on the land. Why

would you export your fertility to a country to make things? Look at 25

our industry and if it was helping New Zealand in a greater way, then

would we be here?

But the reality is, it’s why export 95 percent, 98 percent of your fertility

away? For the risk that is going to be created. You know, it’s about 30

the risk. Whether it’s surgical instruments, whether it’s things that

keep people alive, it’s the risk to New Zealand as a country. Can we

justify the risk?

MR CHRISTENSEN: I think, so if I can try to understand or reflect back what 35

I think you’re saying is that even if you’re able to remove the ethical

objection in terms of the end use of the stuff, there remain the

environmental and the economic concerns that wouldn’t be addressed.

MS DILLON: And the risks attributed in all of this. 40

MR CHRISTENSEN: I understand, yes, thank you.

MR KAPEA: Yes, we talked about keeping the fertility on the land and we

had it mentioned yesterday that when you looked at the Korowai (ph 45

Page 1487


4.23) over Papatuanuku, it’s pretty much all gone, there's deforestation

everywhere.

And of course, it’s pretty hard to keep fertility on the land when you

don’t have the fauna and flora there to keep it there. And, as a diary 5

you will have seen the degradation that’s occurring from year to year

around our coast.

MS DILLON: Yes, not just the coast.

10

[2.45 pm]

MR KAPEA: How do we stop that decline in terms of? One of the things

that’s been put to us in terms and conditions of consent is ecological

restoration in adaptive management, if you like. Where we might start 15

receding our coastline or all sorts of opportunities because at the end of

the date if we do not start repairing it or doing some restoration or we

just leave it the way it is, we are not going to have a coastline anyway.

MS DILLON: Yes. 20

MR KAPEA: So, I am asking you how you feel about trade-offs, if you like.

MS DILLON: Trade-offs.

25

MR KAPEA: Well, we have got to weigh everything up in terms of the

balances and I do not know what iwi down in Taranaki are going to

say. But if we are going to have, there is this philosophy in Maori if

you take something from a Taonga, put something back and it has been

said here. So, if you are going to take something and they were to be 30

granted consented, if they were, then what would you like to see put

back into the environment?

MS DILLON: I would like to see it not taken away at all, you know. It is not

just about the coastline and I apologise but to me it is the whole ocean 35

floor. It is the fishing industry, it is the whole ocean floor. How, that is

a million dollar question. I am a simple person, I do know. I mean, I

went on a permaculture thinking it was about how to grow sustainably.

My mind was absolutely blown away by the concepts that permaculture

gives and I do not pretend to be an expert but for me permaculture was 40

about working with nature and it was exactly that. I do not know what

the answer is but people with far greater minds than me will be able to

answer that question, I know they will. I do not believe there is a trade

off in this instance but if there was I would like to there is an answer - -

- 45

Page 1488


MR KAPEA: That is a terrible word.

CHAIRPERSON: I think you were quite clear you said you did not want taken

in the first which I think was your opening remark.

5

MS DILLON: I do not see, because there are so many unknowns, I could not

quantify what the trade-off would be because there are do knows, do

not knows that we do not know what the impact is going to be.

CHAIRPERSON: I think you have been clear on that. 10

MR KAPEA: My question was more around where do we stop degradation

because it is occurring.

MS DILLON: Yes, no there is absolutely no - - - 15

MR KAPEA: Cheers, thank you.

MS DILLON: I think we have gone a bit far in it.

20

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. Thank you for your submission.

MS DILLON: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: I am just checking who is new. Sir, are you presenting? 25

MR ………: I am fine.

CHAIRPERSON: Great.

30

MR ………: Donna is here.

CHAIRPERSON: Right, so can we go with you first, please then we will

follow with him, thank you.

35

MS CROSBY: I woke up this morning and decided not to be here actually.

CHAIRPERSON: Not because of us I hope.

MS CROSBY: But I thought I will come and support the people who were 40

speaking.


Page 1489


MS CROSBY: I have screes of information actually written out for you but I

had some dreams last night and I thought now is just not my time

because I did not feel I could be up here and not get really emotional.

CHAIRPERSON: You were right. 5

MS CROSBY: Yes. So, I am Donna Crosby my family came here in 1860s

from Ireland and my mother’s side 1950s from Holland. Though, I

know this play is my home, always lived in the Waikato, I have been a

little bit around New Zealand but always mainly been in the Waikato 10

area. If I could say there was anything about why I am on this planet I

would say I feel for the people and - - -

CHAIRPERSON: Do you want someone with you?

15

MS CROSBY: No, I am good.

MR KAPEA: Take your time.

[2.50 pm] 20

MS CROSBY: Yes, this is just who I am. Sorry, so you know, I feel for

people and I feel for places and I’m affected by the things that have

happened to the people that live here and the things that have happened

to the places that we're in. 25

I believe, as a human being, that I’m not more powerful than any other

living creature, but that I’m a part of everything that exists. I can really

relate to Maori values of Maori, with things in the environment because

I feel that I am a part of that in my relationship with west coast and the 30

more I know Tangoroa.

It’s a place that I go to for sustenance, for soul food, for healing, for

being able to live amongst what I see in society on a daily basis. I go

into the hills, the Hakamata (ph 1.25) Hills, three or four times a week 35

just to connect with what I see as the source. I think we all come from

the same place.

So when I see damage to ecosystems and, well not even see, you know,

it’s about for me, everything is about the feeling of a place. It’s about 40

the look, the feel, the touch, the taste, all of those things. They’re

important.

So initially when I looked into seabed mining and, you know, really I

don’t get involved in too many of these issues because I do find this is 45

the situation I end up in which isn’t very comfortable. The thing is I

Page 1490


have read every report that has come out on the EPA website to go,

well, hey, is this something that humans need?

Because this is really what it comes down to for me is do we need to

have anything that comes from the iron that we are digging up and 5

everything that we are destroying in the process to get what we, as

humans do we need that?

And I don’t believe that we do need any of it. I looked around my

house to see what was made of steel to go well, hey, could I not have 10

that here. And in every case, it’s oh I don’t need that actually,

everything that I own is pretty much from the dump anyway.

But, you know, I just use what other people are throwing out because

it’s there, but if they didn’t throw it out I probably would buy it. So it’s 15

kind of like, well yes, I don’t know really about that.

But do we actually need it? Because there is so much devastation that

we are creating in the process. There isn’t enough evidence from

everything that I’ve read to say that anything is going to be okay for 20

anything that it is in the ocean.

There is nothing to say that it’s not going to beach the dolphins, the

whales, the fish, everything that is in that place. And all of the

evidence, I’m not an expert in any of those things but, you know, I can 25

read.

My feeling for the people, I just, you know, I’m from the heart of the

Kingitanga movement.

30

CHAIRPERSON: I wonder whether it’s more helpful. Clearly, you don’t

want this proposal to go ahead and you are clearly concerned about

what the effects of this are too significant?

[2.55 pm] 35

MS CROSBY: Yes, absolutely. And what I really am here to say is what

happens to the environment affects me and what happens to other

people affects me. Like when I read the submission from Ngati

(INDISTINCT 4.52) and Ngati (INDISTINCT 4.58). To me this is to 40

me it is just all the same. It is the same as what we have always done in

history, you know, about not respecting people’s values and not

respecting what people say are important to them. People who have

passed away in that area that are important to those people, it is like,

well actually that it is important because people get angry, they get 45

Page 1491


upset, they get disgruntled. And I do not know you may not hear those

stories from the people, you know, but I do.

I have had a lot of time of listening to people who are really upset

about what has happened for them and their people along the way and 5

that affects me because I feel for people, I get upset when they get

upset. I cannot listen to their pain and be kind of numb to it, it does not

work like that.

MR CHRISTENSEN: Can I ask you what you do for a living? 10

MS CROSBY: I am a teacher.

MR CHRISTENSEN: A primary school teacher or early childhood?

15

MS CROSBY: I am an early childhood teacher, yes. But I have actually, when

I was going to speak today, when I thought I could. I have been

relieving at primary schools because you can move across sectors and I

did have a classroom full of children from the Waikato that I raised the

ideas, you know, the proposal from TTR to them to tell them what was 20

happening with the sea bears. And you know, they just go all activist

on it with “why should they” and really I presented the clear views

about, you know, “what do you see around the room that is made of

steel, do we really need this? We do not really know what is going to

happen to the dolphins,” like this, you know. 25

But really, I try not to impose my own personal value system on other

people and I was relieving in this school and really they had a lot of

important things to say that I wish that I had bought. But it was about,

you know, these are people from the Waikato. They all have 30

connections, we all have connections to Taranaki, to the area of

Taranaki, I have a friend Opunake who is a surfer. We all have that

whether we are Maori or non-Maori or whatever. All of this place

belongs to all of us and all of those children, they have connections

down there. It is all one in the same thing, I feel. 35


MR KAPEA: Kia ora, Ms Crosby. Sorry, we are recording it Donna but just

listening to you and you said to us that you are not from here but it 40

sounds like you have a very strong Te Ao Maori part of you, meaning

that you have that Wairua, that spirituality. And so everything that

happens to the whenua, to the moana, hurts you and you feel that.

45

Page 1492


MS CROSBY: Absolutely, yes. Not only the moana, you know, like I climbed

Taranaki a couple of months ago at the end of February. I just felt I

needed to be really sorry because we just do not consider that, it just

seems like everything is about money.

5

MR KAPEA: Yes, it is a part of Maori, it is a part of most people who come

to this country and when you take your shoes off and you put your feet

on this whenua, it adopts you, you do not adopt it. And that is the

relationship that all Maori and all people who come to this country

become part of the whenua and it becomes part of you. So, the pains 10

that you are feeling are the growing pains for being part of this whenua

and part of this moana. Kia ora to you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, thank you for coming.

15

MS CROSBY: Sorry, I have been quite emotional.

CHAIRPERSON: That is all right. Mr Swinton, good afternoon.

MR SWINTON: I am not used to seeing so many suits, more waxed suits to 20

be honest.

MR KAPEA: I will take this one off.

MR SWINTON: The distinct lack of sun tan going around in here. 25

CHAIRPERSON: Because we are stuck in here.

MR SWINTON: Poor fellas. I had to take the afternoon off to come in here so

it has actually cost me about 100 bucks which is quite a bit, I have got 30

two French friends staying with me and an Australian friend it is their

last day and they said this was more important. So they did not mind if

I came in. So my name is Andrew, I live in Raglan in Whale Bay. I am

opposed to the application by TTR on a number of grounds really, but

I’m going to keep it simple, I’m not a scientist, I’m not going to try and 35

pretend I am and give you silly facts.

[3.00 pm]

Simply enough I grew up at the beach, I grew up at Kerikeri up in the 40

West Coast, and then I went to Europe and went to school, and I spent

15 years over there at University and school and came back here six

years ago.

45

Page 1493


And when I was a kid I spent my days playing on the beach up at

Kerikeri on my Skellerup, little polystyrene body board getting a rough

stomach, and things haven’t changed much really you know, I teach

surfing every day, and for the last six years every single day my feet

touch the sand. Every day I walk down the beach, every day I go in the 5

sea.

I’ve got surfers ear, my ears are ruined. I’m pretty fit, I’m pretty

strong, I only eat fish from the sea, and I deal with thousands of tourists

every year. I actually worked for Phil McCabe in Solscape, but 10

previous to him I worked for Raglan Surf School, I work in Europe

every year, I do summer to summer to summer for a long time and I

really enjoy my job, it’s a good lifestyle.

What’s interesting, what you guys don’t see is the number of 15

German’s, French, English. I could bring in my sheets, my waiver

forms from work, and they’re full of people from all round the world.

And every day I have them three hours, and in three hours I teach not

only how to stand on a surfboard, I teach them about the environment, I

teach them what the seaweed’s called, I pick up the rubbish. I explained 20

seabed mining, I explained the oil prospecting, I explained the things

that are under threat in New Zealand.

These people I teach are not idiots, they’re architects, they’re lawyers,

they’re doctors, they’re not 18 year old backpacker’s. I’m an advanced 25

coach, I teach advanced thinking people who are quite clever, and they

pay good money to come to New Zealand to do a week with me. It’s

what I live off, you know, they froth as we say in surfing over what I

do every day, they can’t believe it, they would sell their left leg to do

what I do every day. I earn about 500 bucks a week if I’m lucky, hence 30

a 100 bucks is quite a lot for me to come here, and they will pay me

good money believe it or not. I don’t get it all. They still pay me a lot.

The beaches in Raglan are fairly safe, you know, we rips on the

beaches, every beach does, and my worry is when I’ve travelled around 35

the world in the last 23 years as a surfer, I’ve been to Holland, I

listened to the submitter from the Holland earlier. In Holland when I

lived there I taught surfing, and there was a huge wind farm built

offshore. Will it affect the shore at all they said, of course it affected

the shore. Its way up sea they said. But not that far out to sea, it’s still 40

stopped the waves.

Holland’s got pathetic surf, you know, no one goes there for the surf,

but it’s still stopped me ever bothering to go surfing, and I never went

to the café at the beach, I never rented a board or a wetsuit, even 45

Page 1494


though I lived 15 minutes away, I taught surfing but the surfing was

like this big, it was pathetic, I wasn’t going to go, it was just rubbish.

They come over here now, they all come over here and they hang out in

Raglan, they live the lifestyle or try to, and they go back to Europe and 5

they buy their big TVs and all of this kind of thing. But when they

come down the beach and they hit that sand and they walk across the

sand, under their feet they look at it and they’re like “what is this stuff,

this stuff’s weird, I’ve never seen sand like this”, and you explain to

them what it is. Oh, that’s really cool. Now and again one will put 10

their phone on the beach, good bye phone. Digital camera on the beach,

goodbye digital camera. And they say – oh, so I explain its iron and

that you know, it’s magnetic and – oh, yeah, that’s really cool.

Then I explain about the seabed mining proposal, and they said – oh, 15

why is it so bad to you, you know, why don’t you like it? And I say –

well, you know, when I was in America years ago they built this

marina down the coast from where there was a famous surf spot, they

did no research into the surf spot and it was a long way away, and it

destroyed the surf spot. In Franch, La Torche, a famous place, built a 20

sea wall, destroyed a surf spot, destroyed a community of surfers.

In Raglan I know that the seabed mining is quite a long way away, but

if I stand on the top of Mt Karawai and look south, I can see Taranaki.

I look north and I can see the lights of Auckland at night. So it’s not 25

going to take too long to spread up the coast really when I think about

it. This is a landmark case where if we say yes now, I can see it just

rolling on. Like the oil industry, you know, once the money starts

flowing the permits just starting being thrown around, and I don’t want

New Zealand to turn out like that, from having lived in Europe for 30

years.

I was at the nuclear-free protest when I was a kid with my parents, and

my parents still live in Europe, and my mum asked me to send her

black sand for Christmas, that was all she wanted, just some black 35

sand. And she spread it for good luck, just in her garden.

MR KAPEA: Did you get an export licence for that?

MR SWINTON: Probably got enough in my shoes, and I know that, but the 40

point is a lot of people have got this funny connection to it, and I know

the mining is happening miles away. But I explain surfing to people

and I explain the way waves break and where they break, and the

reasons why they break, and I’m not a scientist, I’m sure you’ve had

Med Ocean (ph) and all these other people in here explaining scientific 45

facts. But I know when I look out to sea and there’s a block of sand

Page 1495


and you take the block of sand away, it makes the waves more violent

on the beach, and that will speed up coastal erosion. And I don’t care

about what study, wherever, that’s basically what happens, and I watch

the beach every day. I go down the beach – one day the corner is good,

one day the middle’s good, one day the other end’s good, because the 5

sand moves around. But one thing that we never ever see in Raglan in

clear water.

[3.05 pm]

10

You go to the east coast and you go for a swim and the water is

beautifully clear, the wind is offshore. Pretty much all the time,

they’ve got a prominent south-westerly coming up here all pretty much

all the time. The water around Raglan, while the surf might be picture

perfect, postcard perfect, it’s not very clear, and that’s because when 15

we have surf it churns up the bottom, and it will stay misty for ages and

ages, like two weeks before it will clear. And where I work, when I

drive past to look out you look down, and very rarely can I see the

bottom. So rarely that I will take a photo to show where the rocks are

to people, because you can’t ever see them. 20

So I don’t understand, if you’re going to dump all the spoil in the sea

and everyone’s going to do it properly, et cetera, et cetera, I still don’t

get it. It’s still the Tasman Strait, there’s still a lot of water moving

around, it’s still rough, it’s still going to get thrown about. If it takes 25

two weeks to settle in Raglan how long is it going to take out to sea

where it’s rougher.

Also teaching surfing you get things like Orca’s cruising by, which are

pretty cool. I was going to bring a photo of an Orca – I’ve got a wicked 30

photo of an Orca on the beach and a guy walking behind it – well not

on the beach, in the sea – the guy was on the beach. Like really up

close, you know, on the beach I work at, a whole surf school behind it.

And that kind of sums it up to me really, it’s a bit like – well you need

the sand to make the waves great, you need the fish, we need all the 35

stuff that’s there.

And living in Raglan I deal with so many people who can’t believe just

how lucky we are in New Zealand to have all these wide open spaces.

It’s our USP in marketing, it’s our unique selling point – our green 40

wide open spaces. Why are we trying to ruin them, we should be

making marine sanctuaries, not trying to sell it off, I don’t get it – like I

just don’t get it. In Europe they’ve done all that, they’ve ruined it all. I

spent 15 years watching everyone wanting the new mobile phone,

wanting this and that. When I went back to New Zealand I didn’t have 45

phone for three years, you don’t need that kind of thing.

Page 1496


I understand we need economic development, but what about the

ecotourism element, what about the fact that all these people are

coming here to have what we have, it’s free for them to come and see,

they’ve got to pay to get here and if we ruin it the whole world is 5

watching us. In Germany it’s like – when they’re 18 at school they’re

given a ticket to go to New Zealand. I meet probably a thousand in two

weeks, German kids who come here who are 18 and they can’t believe

it – “yah, I’ve got this surfboard, I can go surfing for free, this is crazy”

they say to me “I don’t have to pay for parking, this is crazy, the beach 10

is so beautiful, the waves are so soft.”

MR KAPEA: Have you shown them where the toilets are?

MR SWINTON: Sure do, don’t you worry. But I go down the beach and 15

swim round like a seal every day, and I’m 33, you know, I’m not 15 but

I do what I did when I was three, when I 13. I still wear baseball caps

and jandals. I’m not that bothered really what I look like. You guys

wearing suits all look silly to me to be honest. Like come on, we’re in

New Zealand there’s no need for all this stuffiness, just relax a bit. 20

And I just don’t get why it’s all gone so far, you know.

When I sit on the beach and I explain to the tourists, and I drive down

the van down to the beach and we stop at a lookout and I point at this

and point at that and I explained the seabed mining. But why are you 25

doing it, if the money’s not going to you - why is it going to China they

say, why is it all being exported, why don’t New Zealand do it for

themselves? I sell, well you know, we’re just cruising, we’re not that

bothered. Everyone else wants to come and steal our stuff but we’ve

kind of got the treasures. 30

And it seems really sad that we’re going to give our treasures away so

easily, and I think as people have pointed out, it is a landmark case. In

six years I’ve taught 7,000 people in New Zealand, and of those 7,000

every single one of them has got the message about New Zealand – 35

they’ve understood from the minute they arrived really, the minute they

get out of Auckland anyway, they understand the wide open space bit.

And of all those people I think the same by 11 times world surfing

champion, which might mean nothing to you, a guy called Kelly Slater, 40

he’s even got a girl’s name. He said I think when a surfer becomes a

surfer it’s almost like an obligation to become an environmentalist,

because in the environment. I’m not angry at the sharks, we’re in their

environment. I stand on a fish when I’m at work, I feel sorry for the

fish – sorry, I didn’t see you. The fish darts away, I feel bad about it. I 45

love my job and my lifestyle, I love being able to walk down the road

Page 1497


and look at the sea and know that it’s free. The fish are free, and that’s

the only reason I started eating fish when I came back to New Zealand

because the fish are free before we catch them. They’ve lived a nice

life out there.

5

I think by destroying that habitat from the ground upwards is just

craziness, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. And I don’t know just

don’t ruin our fragile ecosystems, don’t embarrass us in front of the

whole world, they’re all watching us. Papua New Guinea, they dropped

seabed mining, Australians are having second thoughts, even 10

Australians. Don’t ruin where I work and play, you know, it is where I

fish. It is where I live, do not think the whales will not notice what is

going on. Do not think the surfers will not mind, there are 25,000,000

surfers plus in this world. Everyone from Barack Obama has been

building, everyone talks. Everyone with a board will travel as we say, 15

got a board we will travel.

[3.10 pm]

They come around the world for us. We are voted in the top 10 surf 20

places in the world, people who do not even know anything about

surfing come and stare, they do not even know what they are looking at

when they take photos.

It seems ridiculous to me that Taranaki which is equally as famous for 25

surfing, where I send people after they come to me, they say where else

can I go next and I say go down Taranaki it is really good down there.

I do not want them to come to me and say oh I went to Taranaki, it used

to be good, but they have ruined it now, it is embarrassing.

30

I understand all the facts, I have read a lot of the garbage and TTR do

not sound like a particularly clean company to me. That is just my

opinion but that is what I am here for and the EPA do not really, I do

not understand how you let it go so far, you kind of let it get out of your

grips of it. Why do you not stop it to start with, why do you not - - - 35

CHAIRPERSON: I am just going, I am going to come in here, that is what this

process is about to determine the appropriateness - - -

MR SWINTON: I am amazed it has got to this process that is my point. 40

CHAIRPERSON: Just keep telling us what your concerns are.

MR SWINTON: I am just amazed it has got to that point. My concerns are

this will go further. The surf is actually pretty good so I am surprised 45

there are not more surfers here but better not. A lot of people did not

Page 1498


want to come out and speak, they are embarrassed to come and speak to

sit in board shorts and a hat and stand here.

They were like oh they will not listen to me and I was like course they

will. When people heard I was actually going to go they were like 5

good on you bro, someone has got to do something. The man mowing

my lawns this morning, Freddie from Raglan Lawns, great guy, he said

go Andy, go tell them, tell them from me. Do not ruin it.

MS WRATT: Can I ask you a question now? 10

MR SWINTON: Yes.

MS WRATT: Thank you for sharing your view with us.

15

MR SWINTON: That is all right.

MS WRATT: I appreciate that you have a passion for this. My question is do

you think that those of us sitting behind this side of the desk to not

value any of those things that you are talking about either? 20

MR SWINTON: I do, but I also realise that you value your jobs.

MS WRATT: Actually, I do not have a job.

25

MR SWINTON: Oh do you not?

MS WRATT: I am being paid for what I am doing now, yes.

MR SWINTON: I realise that everybody has a job you know and I realise that 30

we all, that there is money in this world and there is that kind of thing

but we did not have seabed mining before and we do not need it now

and I realise you are doing your job in the best interest. We are

surviving without it so you are getting paid you fellas so maybe we

could just stop it there. If it goes through anything could happen. 35

MS WRATT: We are here to listen to what you have to say and make a

decision, but I get the impression that you do not think that any of us

value - - -

40

MR SWINTON: It just feels like New Zealand is out of touch. I hated living

in Europe living in walled gardens and playing football it sucked. If

you wanted to go to the park and run around, if you wanted to go to the

beach and lag it down the beach as far as you could and not see anyone

like you can here. I think a lot of New Zealanders are trying to be like 45

Europeans. Europe is very trendy, when you come from Europe and

Page 1499


you come to New Zealand, European cars, European coffee, is it trendy

to ruin it like Europe thought because a lot of Europe is ruined.

I do not understand why we want to be like the west when we are the

example for the west in a way. 5

MR KAPEA: Yes, I do have a question, you derive your income from the

surfing, what do you put back?

MR SWINTON: Every day I pick up rubbish from the beach. Every day I go 10

down to Manu Bay and I pick up cigarette butts, I pick up bottle tops

that people throw on the rocks. I give back my love to people. I give

back sitting here is giving back to the sport I have done for 23 years

and the lifestyle I have led, the people I have met and the people who

are staying at my house right now, the people I have met on the other 15

side of the world that have wanted to come to New Zealand and I have

said come and stay. That is my giving back, it is sharing my paradise

with other people and explaining the way my paradise works. It might

be teaching one of your kids to stand up.

20

For me that is selling a piece of myself to them, it is a piece of my love

that I am giving away. It is a gift that keeps on giving. The kids will

keep giving to other kids. I teach and my family listens, you can ask

Phil, I said I do not want to teach little Johnny with his mum who is

going to disappear to the pub for some drinks. I want to teach little 25

Johnny’s mum so she can teach her kids and keep teaching.

Solscape where I work is a small surf school and when I started

working there I got asked a lot of questions about am I into pro-surfing

do I believe in corporate sponsorship. I do not, the way I got my job 30

was because I believe in doing high quality lessons where you teach

more than just how to stand up on a board and how to buy a t-shirt with

a label on it.

CHAIRPERSON: Great, I think you might have answered the question, thank 35

you very. Thank you for coming in, thank you. Mr Curry has he come

in? No, right.

[3.15 pm]

40

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: If there’s nobody else. I think I’d like to get up

and say something. I did bring a submission.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, just before you do. I’ve got other submitters here

who have asked to be heard today, so I’m just going to check if anyone 45

else is here. So I’ve got Mrs Ward-Holmes (ph 00.22), some of them

Page 1500


are not coming at all, and then there was Ms Ward-Holmes, Murcott - -

-

DISCUSSION

5

And Simon Thompson.

MR …………: He’s not a submitter.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, if he’s not a submitter he can’t submit. Then I had 10

Sara Watters (ph 1.05). And sorry what was your name?

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Nora van der Voorden.

CHAIRPERSON: And you are a submitter, but you haven’t asked to speak, 15

but you would like to?

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: (INDISTINCT 1.14)

CHAIRPERSON: That’s all right, I’m just clarifying. That’s fine, come 20

forward. Before you start, we’ll just bring up your submission.

MR ………..: Sorry, could you say your name again so that we can - - -

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Nora van der Voorden. 25

CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

MR ………..: She’s not on the list.

30

DISCUSSION


35

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Firstly, I want to say thank you for giving us all

the opportunity to be here in Hamilton, rather than have to trudge over

to Wellington.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes. 40

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Secondly, I’m going to apologise if I make a real

mess of myself. I’m nervous, I’m over emotional, I have a terrible

memory. I’m not computer literate therefore I have very little of what

the actual application is. I’ve heard from people around me what’s 45

Page 1501


involved. I have major concerns, meanwhile I’ve just been writing a

little bit as the time goes on.

My name is Nora van der Voorden, as you know, I live on the banks of

the Waitetuna River, in the northern end of the Whangaroa Harbour. I 5

watch the tide come and go and the wildlife that comes with it and goes

with it, and I love nature. I feel like I’m part of everything to do with

nature, and anything to do with the sea and I despair man’s attack and

invasion of another earth, and I really think that the sea is just another

universe and that we have no right to be there. You know, maybe take 10

a few fish that skim along the surface, but don’t dig in it. I don’t think

we’ve got the right to be up in the planets either, and I don’t think

we’ve got the right to go looking and changing microscopic things, it’s

just out of our range, we are earth dwellers, we’re not ocean creatures,

we don’t swim – not like they do anyway. 15

[3.20 pm]

I love getting my hands in the dirt, I’m a land dweller. And 20

New Zealand is a little long narrow strip of land in the South Pacific

and I don’t think we have got the capacity to deal with the invasion of

the seabed and I don’t think the land can cope with it, I don’t think the

sea can cope with it or sea creatures can cope with it, it’s just out of

bounds. 25

And I think as intelligent knowing beings we should be working on

healing the earth. It’s sick, we should be healing it, not creating more

destruction.

30

We have got a little place called – what it’s called is not important –

but we have got a little accommodation place and our guests come from

not just New Zealand but also from overseas. And the last lot of people

we had asked about New Zealand, National Geographic asked them to

do a story on New Zealand and our environmental issues and attitudes 35

to our environment.

And we were honest with them, we told them about the polluted rivers,

we told them about the destruction of forestry over the years, a little bit

of New Zealand’s history. We told them about the seabeds and mining 40

issue, of course, because we have got a big sign out the front that talks

about it. It just says, “Don’t destroy our ocean”. And we told them our

honest assessment of what New Zealand is and the way we are going

and they were shocked and they were definitely going to take it back

and report on what we said about our views on our environment and the 45

threat to our environment, and that includes the ocean.

Page 1502


And when it comes to sediment in the sand I can’t help visualising that

when you throw sand in the air some of it will land, the bigger particles

will land sooner than smaller particles and the smaller particles will go

for ages before they actually settle anywhere. And they do settle, and 5

they get into your eyes and your ears and you don’t even know there is

sand in your ears until you start poking around and the grit comes out.

And I think in the same way if you start, if you break through the sea

crust floor and that crust is there to keep things in place, and you break 10

through that and you are going to be upsetting the sand for a long, long

time. It’s going to take years for that crust to form again. You know,

and the size of the application, yes, you know, this is just the beginning

and you could call it a precedent setting case and, yes, it is because so

much of it is relevant to each particular application as it comes in. 15

90 percent of what’s relevant to this application will be relevant to the

rest of them. So, yes, it is precedent setting and I heard you say the

other day that each one will be taken on its own case. Maybe, but it’s

all the same thing, it’s all relevant.

20

Another thing that really annoyed me is that the EPA chose for some

reason not to advertise this hearing in the Waikato Times, and I think

that’s really wrong because Waikato people – Raglan Beach is their

beach. Waikato people will go fishing out there, they go surfing out

there, they go walking on the beach, they come out to Raglan on the 25

weekends for their coffees and to enjoy the views and to be part of the

environment out there, they walking, they go to the mountain. So, yes,

it should have been in the Waikato Times and it wasn’t and I don’t

understand that.

30

Another thing that crossed my mind is I rang, when it first came out, I

thought insurance. You know, a lot of people have coastal properties.

Now, the insurance companies I spoke to, there was maybe three or

four and I am sorry I don’t remember which ones they were, but they

all said, “No, if it’s man caused erosion they would not cover the 35

erosion”, so that’s another issue that maybe hasn’t been dealt with and

perhaps the earthquake, EQC Earthquake Commission will pay for

these things but I think there needs to be something, some things need

to be sorted out or there will be shifting of blame. “No, we’re not

responsible. No we’re not responsible, we’re not responsible” so who 40

is going to pick up the tab there?

This one is a bit of humour but, you know, it makes think that

New Zealand has “stupid” written across its forehead or is there signs

in the airport saying, “Come on over, rip us off, we’re all available to 45

be pillaged and plundered”. How does the rest of the world know that

Page 1503


we are so available to be used and abused and taken advantage of?

And also I resent the amount of money the government is paying

mining companies or oil companies when we have people who are

going hungry, and kids who are going without decent clothing and

footwear, and people waiting for surgery when there is millions and 5

millions and millions of dollars being given to mining companies to

take the money away as big corporates. Now, no one here is going to

benefit from any of this.

[3.25 pm] 10

Anyway so it is really about the fact that we shouldn’t be going into the

ocean, we shouldn’t be stuffing around with the seafloor at all, it’s out

of bounds. So I am sorry I am putting it to your conscience and I

guess, yes, you have a job to do and I am not hanging any guilt because 15

it’s just the way life is.

But I just hope that some of you get out of your offices enough to really

connect with nature again because it’s very important to reconnect with

nature occasionally. That’s me. 20

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, I will see if there are any questions.

MR KAPEA: Kia ora. In your submission you have stated here that we need

laws with developed precautionary principles in place in order to do so. 25

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: I am sorry I wrote that quite a while ago.

MR KAPEA: And obviously you looked at some of the application, you

looked at those things and you have considered that, and I suppose that 30

is why we are here at this table because of that piece of legislation.

And we are only a small part of that, we are just the DMC but we are a

part of that new law, at least you get to be heard and we don’t all work

in offices.

35

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Okay.

MR KAPEA: Thank you, that was all.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. 40

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: Be kind to me, I’m fragile.

MR ROGERS: I have girls so I know all about all sorts of things, sorry, that’s

just totally off the – I was trying to make you feel better and I will now 45

stop digging and I will ask you the question that I was going to ask you,

Page 1504


if I may. You made a reference about insurance companies, I misheard

or I didn’t quite get the full part of that, did you say “manmade

coastline erosion is not insured”?

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: No, it won’t be. 5

MR ROGERS: That is the point you are making?

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: It’s not an act of God.

10

MR ROGERS: Right, okay, but that was the point.

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: That was my point.

MR ROGERS: Is that if this caused a whole lot of erosion and it affected 15

parties they can’t claim it under insurance because it is manmade?

MS VAN DER VOORDEN: If it could be proven that it is due to the seabed

sand mining because loose sand floats around, as you have been

hearing many times, sand comes up and goes down again. But I think 20

when you are taking away a huge sum, a huge lump of sand and it’s

drifting out there and God knows where it ends up, and it’s thought that

the chances are that it will cause more erosion. So I got on the

telephone and rung a few insurance copies. I said, “Look, this is a

possibility how would you react to something like that?” And they 25

said, “Well, if could be proven” but, of course, no one is going to take

the blame, no one is going to say, “Oh, yes, well, actually that all

started happening when we started seabed sand mining” because the

shape of land is going to be shifted. So who picks up the tab when all

these properties start dropping into the sea? 30

MR ROGERS: Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

35

MR KAPEA: That wasn’t that bad, was it?

CHAIRPERSON: Can I check, is there any other submitters here who want to

be heard? I will come back to you in a second because some of them

might be coming – have we heard whether any of the other submitters 40

are coming or not? So I think what I will do, we might take a break for

15 minutes because some of them weren’t scheduled until after

afternoon tea, so we will take a 15 minute break and will come back if

they are here and then we will hear otherwise we will close the day.

45

Page 1505


Now, can I just come back to you, I just want to just cover off. You are

going to speak instead of, is it, Ms Ward-Holmes? Were you going to

speak instead of Ms Ward-Holmes.

MR DE BARROS: (INDISTINCT 4.01) 5

CHAIRPERSON: So have you got her submission and you are going to speak

to her submission or are you - - -

MR DE BARROS: (INDISTINCT 4.09) 10

CHAIRPERSON: Oh, it is a him, sorry, Turi, sorry, I apologise that is where I

was getting – so you are going to speak to his submission and he has

given you permission to do that? Okay, let’s do it now.

15

MR DE BARROS: (INDISTINCT 4.32)

CHAIRPERSON: Now, just before you start, how long you might take

because we might still take a break if you are going to be a while?

20

MR DE BARROS: I am going to take 15 minutes if I don’t stop.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, have you read the submission?

MR DE BARROS: I have read the submission, yes, so I wanted to read some 25

facts on top of the submissions.

CHAIRPERSON: All I am saying just to make sure that we are okay, you can

only raise issues that are raised in the submission.

30

MR DE BARROS: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, thank you. So we will take a break and we will

come back.

35

ADJOURNED [3.30 pm]

RESUMED [3.51 pm]

MR DE BARROS: - - - name is Felipe Bonfanti de Barros. 40

CHAIRPERSON: I had asked that you get authorisation, so you are going to

get us authorisation.

MR DE BARROS: Yes, an authorisation from Turi Inia. 45

Page 1506


CHAIRPERSON: And you will supply that to us tomorrow, thank you very

much.

MR DE BARROS: So I am going to speak briefly about his submission and

since most of the people have discussed it in these days and you 5

probably have heard a lot about the Treaty breach, the consultation, the

precautionary approach, the coastal erosion, the migratory mammal

species, threats to seabed biology, plume impacts, surface species

impacts, risks for baches and insurance. You probably heard that a lot.

10

For this submission the economic worries, okay. So the position is

oppose in full and no seabed mining in South Taranaki nor any other

part of New Zealand because we love our seafood and swimming and

we ask to leave the country alone.

15

I would like to have some focus on the economic worries and I will

read a little bit about the submission and I will bring some more data

that we raised on the few notes. So, first of all, profits will be directly

exported overseas while the risk of all the potential geological collapse

will remain to New Zealand. So we are talking about a company 20

making profits, most of them going overseas and all the risk remaining

with the country of New Zealand.

Low royalty rates will not deliver enough economic gains and will not

provide economic benefits relative to economic losses resulting from 25

the applicant’s proposal. So what he is saying, and if you could take a

look on the proposal, is that the economic benefits for New Zealand

will not be good enough to justify profits for an offshore company.

There are minimal employment opportunities while New Zealand’s 30

green image and tourism will be undermined. This is a key point I will

bring back to it – do we have the PowerPoint available, okay.

MR CHRISTENSEN: I don’t think you need to read to us, we have seen this

in many submissions. 35

MR DE BARROS: So how has this decision been made? I believe the

decision has been made on the best interests of New Zealand, that’s the

whole the EPA has been delivered. The assets of New Zealand will be

harvest for a 90 percent company so most of the profits will go 40

overseas. Also if you read the proposal you don’t know how much of

the whole expendage will be with New Zealand made products or will

be with ships bought from overseas, people hired from overseas and all

the service that comes from overseas.

45

Page 1507


So when you analyse such a proposal from an economical point of view

the first question you do could be, “Will New Zealand be better off

with this proposal? Is this the best proposal for every New Zealand

citizen? What are the real benefits for the New Zealand citizen and

what are the real costs?” 5

[3.55 pm]

So this is assessed on the proposal that the applicants consultation has

been incomplete, insufficient and lacking integrity in the sharing of 10

knowledge. What are the risks? Do we know all the risks that are

involved with? Are we willing to take this risk to get this benefit?

What are the values of the assets. There have been discussion about the

(INDISTINCT 0.31) facts. How do you value a 500 years community,

how do you put value on that? 15

So when you think about economics there is a term that economic

people like to say that it’s optimum. But optimal is a situation where

you need equilibrium, everybody wins. So you cannot find any other

place, position where you cannot give everybody something better. If 20

you move from that position someone will lose. So my question for

you people, because it is not clear from that and I did some research

about that the other people did, and the submission did, is will

everybody in New Zealand society be better off with this proposal? I

don’t think so. 25

So we are not going to reach a situation where everybody in

New Zealand is better off with this proposal, so this is not optimum,

this is not an economic equilibrium that will help people.

30

Second economy concept. Market equilibrium is different from social

equilibrium so market equilibrium is when someone is willing to pay

and somebody is willing to sell and everybody makes profits. Social

equilibrium is when you guarantee that all the benefits have been taken

into account. 35

My question to this Board, because I couldn’t find it on the

propositions, that is social benefit or social equilibrium achieved if all

the New Zealand society benefit from the proposal? I didn’t find that

information. 40

Steel built economies. The future and society are social assets so when

you think about economy and the (INDISTINCT 2.29) was discussing

that, is that people have value and the environment has value. Māori

people know that very well in this island. That you have a value on 45

your traditions, you have a value on your community and you have a

Page 1508


value on your environment. I didn’t see on the proposal, and neither

has the other submissions, the value of the assets that are being taken

from New Zealand in comparison to the money that is being paid for it.

I didn’t see the value of causing problems to the environment and

harming people comparative to the value that will be paid. 5

So have these social and natural assets been evaluated to see there is no

more impact and when we talk about the environment do we value all

the assets? What is the real value of a life? It has been discussed here

but what is the real value of a life, what is the real value of a 10

landscape? People know the value of the landscape because they pay a

million dollars for a house on the mountains to have a good vision of

the sea. So a million dollar house is just one-fiftieth of the total

revenue of this project. How much is it worth to the community of the

landscape? 15

What is the real value of a community? There is another issue in

economies is that you can try to find a social optimum by comparing

the amount of money that is provided by the project to the amount of

money that you lost in the project but how do you value a life? How do 20

you value the life of a dolphin? How do you value the life of someone?

The great risk posed here is that if I don’t evaluate the value of a life, of

a mammal life, of a human life how will I evaluate the value of the life

of the rest of the country? How much has it cost? Because we are 25

using the assets, we are using the environment. We are using the assets

that were put there, how much does it get spent? It’s not anywhere in

the proposal.

There is also another discussion which is put on the submission. This 30

comes from the concept of natural capitalism. Is there any other way

that we could do that. In the submission it said that TTR will produce

4.4 thousand million tonnes of iron a year.

[4.00 pm] 35

That would generate around $50 million of taxes and revenues.

New Zealand today produces $44 million of revenue just by recycling

iron and this is one-fourth of the iron being recycled. So the question

that people have been asking, is there another way that we can produce 40

the same amount of value?

And then talking about economy, I will bring the issue to the risks. So

at that time we had information about that it would generate 250 jobs.

The website has the information that there will be 200 jobs generated. 45

Well, tourism generates more than $100,000 in New Zealand. Tourism

Page 1509


generates more than almost $25 billion of gross revenue in

New Zealand. So the TTR proposal is less than 1 percent of the tourism

in New Zealand.

And what is the tourism in New Zealand based on? It is based on the 5

100 percent pure New Zealand brand. As a foreigner who has been

living here for a year I know that people from outside look and see

New Zealand as a pristine place that takes care of its environment. So

it is written here and it was said yesterday, how much will it cost in

damage to New Zealand brand image? If it is only 1 percent it’s 10

already enough so the cost, the tax revenues will not pay the damage to

the brand.

Let’s talk about the industry. So in 2005 there was the report saying

that almost half a million of the visitors to New Zealand went for whale 15

watching and that brought around $100 million to New Zealand.

That’s one-third of what is being proposed here. But the same report

said that with a yearly growth of 10 percent, in 10 years from 2005 the

whale watching economy could be as big as the tax revenue that we are

discussing here and nobody is discussing the risks of doing whale 20

watch in New Zealand.

Let’s talk about the marine culture industry, something that we also

see.

25

CHAIRPERSON: I just want to come in, so the point you are trying to make

is?

MR DE BARROS: Which is here that from an economic point of view you

are risking a lot to gain very few. 30

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, and think that is the pointing you are making to us.

MR DE BARROS: Yes. Another point, well the New Zealand agriculture

industry from 2012 report is a hundred times the size of tax and 35

revenues from this.

CHAIRPERSON: Again, I just have to come in, because we are not dealing

with land based agriculture, we are dealing with a sand mining proposal

and I think what you are saying to us, the risk of that is too big from the 40

economic point of view, so I am just wondering what more you need to

go through?

MR DE BARROS: Because you are posing the risk on the brand.

45

Page 1510


CHAIRPERSON: Which we have had yesterday, we had that explained to us

in great detail.

MR DE BARROS: But not with values.

5

CHAIRPERSON: But we still have - - -

MR DE BARROS: Okay.


MR DE BARROS: Let’s talk about the environment. If you go to try to do a

search on the internet you will find nowhere the costs to produce a

healthy 65 square kilometre sea environment, you will find it nowhere.

There is no such research. There is not even research about a one 15

kilometre square of seabed. But there is research about 100th (ph 4.02)

of a square metre which was a biosphere tube that drained $200 million

in 10 years and could not maintain itself. So a human being is not able

to produce a healthy environment by itself with all the research. So if

we are not able how can we dispose of that value? 20

Furthermore and still talking about economics. I am talking about the

social equilibrium that we are looking. We are going to take assets,

assets that have value for the people who live there, for the tourists that

came clean, for the Māori people around. How do we mitigate that, 25

how do we take the assets and pay back for it? So you have more than

3,000 submitters. I don’t think that 3,000 submitters would be happy

and exchange what they have now for $15,000 a year for each

submitter for this proposal.

30

[4.05 pm]

I don’t think that the half a million population that lives in Waikato and

Taranaki would be happy to exchange the way of life they have and all

their belief for $10 a year revenue. So if you take the amount of social 35

loss, environmental loss, cultural loss and you exchange for the amount

of taxes, that is 50 million a year, it won’t be paid. So the whole thing

that is said here that from an economic point of view the value of the

assets being disturbed or destroyed or devaluated is not offset by the

amount of money produced in the business. 40

We are not talking about environmental compensation and we are not

talking about mitigation. There is no study that says how much does it

cost to breed a new brand of a dolphin or to breed a new brand of

whale. So we are putting out assets that are invaluable because we 45

Page 1511


cannot even think of raising against some valuables that are nothing

against it.

And I will end this presentation with just a thought for you and it is still

based on economics. My cousin two years ago had $50,000 of assets 5

and after six months he was able to raise his assets to almost a million

dollars. He made that my losing his father, his mother and his

grandparent. So although there is an economical translation there he

exchanged the lives of his father, his mother and his grandfather had

died, everything he has he inherited the money they had. I don’t think 10

anyone could say that he would eagerly do that exchange. So the

economic evaluation does not take into consideration life, cultural, the

New Zealand brand image and the risks to the environment. That is

what I wanted to bring.

15

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much and those are clearly things that we

will need to weigh in our decision making. I will just check if there are

any questions.

MR CHRISTENSEN: I just have one question for you. What is the value of 20

the whale watching tourism industry in the South Taranaki Bight?

MR DE BARROS: In the?

MR CHRISTENSEN: In the South Taranaki Bight, what is the value of the 25

whale watching?

MR DE BARROS: I tried to find that information on the internet but it wasn’t

available.

30


CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, thank you. Thank you everybody.

That was all the submitters that want to be heard today? Thank you,

we will adjourn until 9.30 tomorrow morning. 35

MATTER ADJOURNED AT 4.08 PM UNTIL

THURSDAY, 10 APRIL 2014

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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ... · 10 want to talk to your submission? MS WILKINS: Yes I’d like to talk to my submission. ... that are normal business practice