Waitangi Tribunal pushes pause on seabed mining claim off Pātea, Taranaki
The Waitangi Tribunal grants urgent hearings in exceptional circumstances: applicants must be suffering – or likely to suffer – significant and irreversible prejudice from current or pending Crown actions.
Judge Reeves: 'I do not agree that the risk of significant and irreversible prejudice has crystallised, and the application is premature.
'The application does not yet meet the high threshold required to divert the resources and disrupt the tribunal's inquiry programme that would result by granting an urgent inquiry,' she ruled.
'However, leave is reserved for the applicants to renew their application if circumstances change.'
Claimants said they had already suffered prejudice from their decade-long fight against TTR's mining application, through to defeating the company in the Supreme Court.
Mana whenua said Government bias made the fast-track process unjust.
Judge Reeves said the claimants believed 'the Crown's vocal support of the [seabed mining] project and the FTAA appears to make meaningful engagement with the applicants or delay of the project to pursue alternative remedies 'highly unlikely''.
On Friday in New Plymouth Shane Jones – the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries, and of Resources – called opponents a 'belligerent, well-organised, rowdy bunch of activists'.
He had previously dismissed mana whenua objectors as 'pixie-like hapūs' – which many felt was an insult that still rankles in South Taranaki.
Taranaki mana whenua claimants to the tribunal are Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui and associated Ruanui hapū, hapū of Ngāruahine iwi, Te Korowai o Ngāruahine and Parihaka Papakainga Trust.
Other parties include Climate Justice Taranaki, Ngāruahine's school Te Kura o Ngāruahinerangi and, from outside the region, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki, which also faces an FTAA application.
For the fast-track bid to be rejected, the mine's negative impacts must significantly outweigh national and regional benefits – meaning environmental and cultural damage must be deemed greater than the money the mine makes for Taranaki and New Zealand.
Last Thursday, the organisers of the fast-track decision process ordered TTR to show where it had updated its evidence since losing in the courts.
'Almost all of the technical appendices are dated 2015 and were obviously prepared to support the 2016 application. Only a handful of those reports were updated in 2023 or 2024,' panel convener Jennifer Caldwell noted.
'The Cultural Values Assessment report, prepared by an independent consultant in 2017, was not updated despite what must have been new information as to the Māori concerns.'
A month earlier, panel conveners ordered the Environmental Protection Authority to dig into the proposed seabed mine's environmental and economic impacts.
Every day of operation for at least 20 years, the mining ship would discharge 180,000 tonnes of unwanted seabed sediment, a recognised pollutant, into the abundant waters of the Pātea Shoals.
TTR claims regional benefits of:
305 jobs directly with the miner.
1125 Taranaki-based jobs indirectly.
$250 million annual Taranaki operational spend.
Port upgrades at New Plymouth and Whanganui.
A TTR charitable grants trust.
A report for the miners predicted annual national gains of $55 million in royalties, $136m in corporate tax and $855m in foreign exchange earnings.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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