The parks are ours - not mine

I've got a good idea - let's propose mining on Great Barrier Island and Stewart Island, on top of the Coromandel and Paparoa National Park.

It's worth $194 billion all told - so much money we couldn't count it if we tried. And if anyone complains, we'll chuck in 12,000ha of land not currently protected to make up for it.

Must have sounded a pretty good idea at the time, although my understanding is that Energy Minister Gerry "sexy lignite'' Brownlee has always been a bit ahead of the Cabinet curve on this one, but has been given his head of coal steam, so to speak.

After all the ducking and diving and weaving, the discussion paper on mining in and around our national parks and other bits of protected "schedule four'' land is finally out, and, lo and behold, Forest and Bird was right all along.

The Government plans to take land in Coromandel, Great Barrier Island and parts of Paparoa National Park on the West Coast out of the protection of schedule four in the Crown Minerals Act, while adding a further 12,000ha to the schedule to mitigate that.

But wait, there's more.  In addition to the schedule four proposals, the Government wants to gather information over the next nine months on ''highly prospective'' non-schedule four areas in Northland, parts of the Coromandel and parts of Stewart Island.

Brownlee has been doing his best to play down the size of the proposed mining and to talk up the commercial benefit to the country. The land proposed for removal from schedule four could be represented as a postcard on Eden Park, he said, or 0.024 percent of New Zealand's total land area.

''The Government is in a parlous position,'' Mr Brownlee said at a press conference yesterday. ''We can muddle along as we are, or we can set our sights higher. Developing a tiny portion of our mineral wealth would have a huge impact.''

A parlous position is right. Mining just isn't very popular, except for mining companies, and the Government should be getting that message loud and clear. If it needed an example of the extent of this, it need look no further than its own backbencher and Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye.

Now, Nikki is as loyal as they come, and she is not the sort to mouth off at the Government just to raise her profile. But when National's own rising star puts out a press release opposing mining on Great Barrier Island, the Government ought to sit up and take notice.

"My personal view is that when environmental and economic factors are taken into account, and given the island's status in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, mining on Great Barrier Island doesn't stack up. I'll be strongly advocating that position to my colleagues in the government,'' Kaye said.

It takes guts for a backbench government MP to be that forthright. But Nikki isn't stupid. Her constituents will be telling her loud and clear what they think of the idea, and they are the ones who keep her in office.

I doubt Nikki will be the only one to speak up, either. I wonder what Eric Roy's constituents are telling him down in Southland about the idea of digging up Stewart Island again. Or Sandra Goudie in Coromandel. Or Todd McClay in Rotorua. Or Chris Auchinvole on the West Coast. Or John Carter in Northland.

On top of this, expect every little tin-pot environmental group from Cape Reinga to the Bluff to issue a call to arms of their local supporters to inundate their local media and MPs with opposition to this proposal.

So far the only people I've seen welcoming the Government's proposal are Business New Zealand, which is hardly surprising, and Solid Energy, which is even less surprising.

Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson has been persuaded to offer the ultimate sop to voters in the form of a conservation fund made up of royalty revenue from minerals extracted by mining companies. This is really taking the public for fools, and is straight "in order to save this, we have to destroy it'' stuff. Honestly.

I'd have expected more from Wilkinson. The public needs a Conservation Minister who can stand up to the Energy Minister and argue for the protection of the estate, not the plundering of it.

What amazes me the most is that John Key has let this get as far as it has. It's a no-brainer really. Mining is unpopular. End-of-bloody-story.

Yes, we're sitting on vast wealth. Yes, if we dug it all up we'd be rich. But what would we have lost? Our countryside. Our reputation. And possibly our souls. I know it's tempting, Gerry, but sorry, you're just going to have to leave it in the hills. There are other ways to make a dollar. 

All together now: "Damn the dam, cried the fantail...''