Taking Stock 4 December 2025

Santana Minerals

RARELY has it been appropriate to praise a law firm but the well-established Christchurch firm of solicitors, Lane Neave, deserves a large vote of thanks.

For all applicants for resource consents, and all investors in the projects seeking consent, Lane Neave has provided some excellent commentary and analysis in its summary of the Fast-track application of Santana Minerals, to mine private land at Bendigo/Ophir, near Cromwell.

The summary of around 64 pages of editorial comment is easy reading, loaded with information, but of additional value as it outlines the processes and law that will guide the Fast-track Panel.

As such, it provides valuable insight into the issues that are relevant, as New Zealand adapts to new law, and a new form of bureaucracy.

For example, the new Fast-track rules name the parties who are entitled to be consulted. The likes of Iwi, Fish and Game, Forest and Bird, The Environmental Defence Society, the local council and those on adjoining land must be invited to consult.

Adjoining land means abutting the land, not hamlets 20 kilometres up the road.

Lane Neave reviews the Santana application in detail. It runs through the main issues to be addressed by an application to mine.

Issues like dust, noise, floodlights, and road traffic are all relatively easily discussed, explaining how relevant guidelines should be met, in this case by Santana. It details the plan to conform with the guidelines.

For example, noise levels would be accurately measured and compared with legal maximum noise; dust would be sprinkled and mitigated by planting; traffic would be enumerated and if necessary, accommodated by improving roads.

In general, consent would be granted only if the economic benefits clearly outweigh legitimate environmental concerns, after adjusting the concern for the proposed remedial work, proposed value added to the land, and proposed compensatory plans.

For example, if an applicant proposed to destroy a well-used cycle track but planned to build a better one nearby, the nett damage might be nil.

After reading the summary, I deduced that the areas of most concern to the Fast-track Panel for Santana would be:

- The plan to prevent the mine-affected water from entering waterways.

- The plan to protect residual, toxic waste from escaping the tailing dam, in the event of a disaster.

- The plan to protect any important flora or fauna, like lizards or rare plants.

- The plan to maintain and improve access to historical gold mining sites.

- The plan to rehabilitate the mining pit, leaving it in a different, but better condition, as each stage of the mining is completed.

In Santana’s case the economic benefits are obvious and will not trouble the panel, or anyone with the motivation to stop New Zealand’s destructive plan of ever greater borrowing.

Assuming gold prices at 80% of the current (rising) spot price, the project would pay the NZ Government around $2 billion over 14 years, employ directly around 350 people at high average wages, and indirectly employ another estimated 400 people. The cost might be a (temporary) scar in a distant valley, if the project were supervised carefully, as promised.

Santana would become one of New Zealand’s most profitable (top 10, in profits) public companies, with a base in Central Otago, and would be a popular destination for tourists.

It would have to accept environmental responsibility and become a devoted corporate citizen. It would be approached for sponsorship for many Central Otago ventures and has already agreed to sponsor the 2026 world panning event, in Cromwell.

The extraordinarily detailed application has engaged with around 15 acknowledged specialists to consider the plan and assist in the developing of strategies to avoid, or remedy, or offset changes to the environment.

The Lane Neave legal summary offers additional insight by discussing what the Fast-track panel must consider, and what it may not consider.

It points out that the law defines whose opinions must be considered, clearly sidelining the views of attention-seekers or irrelevant people.

It provides detail on one local iwi’s representations, and on how it should (and must) be consulted. I see this as an example of respectful consultation, at best practice levels.

The iwi group is Ka Runaka consulted through its mana whenua organisations, Aukaha.

This group represents seven Papatipu Runanga, collectively Ka Runaka.

Santana for eight years has had a steering committee comprising four Aukaha representatives with a focus on the Clutha river. 

It has led to the sharing of preliminary technical reports for discussions around the Fast-track process.

Communication remains active and collaborative and has focussed on environment, culture, heritage, legacy, mapping and the importance of relationship building and transparency.

The context of this might be framed by the iwi belief that the Crown has not honoured its promises to Ka Runaka to play a cultural role with the Clutha river and Lake Dunstan, after the changes made when the Clyde Dam became the focal point of a hydro-electric scheme.

It seems to illustrate how Santana Minerals has been careful to honour the intentions of the Fast-track process, consulting extensively with relevant parties, such as Ka Runaka, and other respected, worthwhile groups

The Lane Neave report politely pointed out that such parties had rights to consultation but have not been vested with the power of veto, by the Fast-track Act.

The Fast-track Approvals Act considers all the political environmental and issues, the proposed plan to address and remedy issues, and also the compensatory proposals, where there is no remedy.

The latter may explain Santana’s proposal to grant the Department of Conservation in the area a large sum for up to ten years, to be used as DOC sees fit, in the area.

Some would go towards monitoring Santana’s environmental commitments.

Those with a genuine science-based concern ought to read the summary and follow up by reading the relevant sections of the 9,400 pages of expert science-based papers that explain the plan.

Throughout the Fast-track process there will be shrill stuff from attention-seekers and those who do not believe that economic benefits offset large earthworks and a dam in a distant valley.

Many of the reporters for Stuff, TVNZ, and the Otago Daily Times, will remain excited about the potential for headlines from talking to the most emotionally-charged activists and opponents.

Expect to read of people glueing their hands to the highway or baring their backsides in protest.

Neither the government nor the Fast-track panel will find this relevant. Others will display good taste and avert their eyes.

It remains to be seen whether such media coverage would attract an audience.

The Fast-track panel will offer its decision in the second quarter of 2026, after consideration of the benefits of the project weighed against temporary or permanent environmental change, as revealed in the consent application.

Government Policies

THE government released two new policies last month, both subjects relevant to readers of Taking Stock:

1. It will release councils from the implied sole liability for poorly built (and council approved) houses.

2. It will ramp up KiwiSaver contributions from both the saver and the employer to reach 12% in coming years, a figure that at headline level is similar to the Australian formula which has so inflated the Australian sharemarket, building paper wealth.

The new responsibility for building failures will be nailed to the party or parties that failed, the cost borne by compulsory insurances and bonds, putting the cost on all errant parties.

I foresee a problem in the insurance policy and the bond.

One of my extended family has owned for 40 years an Australian company that provides such insurance, selling to builders in Victoria. His company then mitigates liability by buying reinsurance from what used to be a range of international reinsurers.

The problem today is that there is hardly any such reinsurance available, forcing him and his clients (the builders) to pay ever-greater premiums to obtain insurance. The public pay ever more for the policies.

Those that insure have not found it viable to cover such immense liability at an affordable cost.

Will the NZ government itself, or the various local councils, need to underwrite policies, as remedial costs soar and policy premiums soar?

Of course, the root problem of poor leaky houses is not unrelated to government decisions, the skill of the builders, and the skill of the under-resourced inspectors.

Many will recall when NZ chose to allow untreated, or poorly treated soft wood (pine, not Douglas Fir) to be used for frames. Fletchers would have files that might be useful to inspect.

Kiwisaver

THE KiwiSaver industry has had design flaws, poor selling behaviour, and greedy fund managers, from its inception.

The industry is now facing huge, often repeat, requests for cash withdrawals from clients who generally have been made poor by the extreme cost of housing ownership and rentals, and by the falling number of job opportunities for those in the retail, hospitality and entertainment industries. These people need to survive by chewing on their savings.

The bite this makes in savings will be larger because of the large level of students whose reading and arithmetic levels are not likely to appeal to potential employers in the public sector. Employers are getting choosier.

All of this explains why so many have stopped contributing to KiwiSaver and are learning how to game this system to gain permission to withdraw.

Nor does the industry add to its appeal when its most public faces display a belief that KiwiSavers should retain a pool to subsidise social services and public assets. Explain that to a saver.

KiwiSaver is the best way forward for long-term savers because of employer subsidies.

It is virtually never a sensible option for people who reach 65 and lose their employer subsidy. They should withdraw and achieve better returns with less cost.

There is one KiwiSaver manager with an established record of adding value through financial analysis and expertise - Milford. I have no idea why we need a dozen managers. Three would be plenty.

My former colleague, Mike Warrington, used to advocate that a fund could be tacked on to the teams that run the “Cullen” fund or the ACC, both of whom are comparable in skill to Milford.

The rest of the managers seem like ticket clippers on the giant gravy train, not much different from the now obsolete Money Managers group.

A useful reassessment of KiwiSaver might indeed include larger sums docked from wages and matched by employers. Twelve percent seems a lot.

Another way of achieving that result would be to cut current wages by 6% and let the employer put the whole of the 12% into a locked-up savings scheme.

You can imagine the pushback from that.

Saving anything in NZ, for nearly 40% of the population, will be challenging until the economy grows without any reliance on immigration and debt.

Is the mining sector a part of that growth?

Pike River film 

THE much-acclaimed Pike River film currently showing in movie theatres is not a film about the most cynical corporate abuse of safety laws in New Zealand's history.

It is a story about the resilience of two middle-aged West Coast women, unexceptional bar their dogged pursuit of their goal - to bring back the ashes of their men killed when the mine exploded in 2010.

I am not a reliable judge of movie excellence, having changed my car more often than visited a movie theatre, certainly in the last 50 years.

But nobody could fail to admire the excellence of the two NZ actresses who converted the film into a high-octane emotional drama.

My regret is that their story was told without any useful discussion of what some would regard as corporate manslaughter, and without any use of the wonderful book "Tragedy at Pike River Mine" written by Rebecca Macfie.

The Christchurch author/journalist, Macfie, was widely recognised as New Zealand's best female business journalist on the back of her great book, maybe bracketed with Tim Hunter and Pattrick Smellie as the best of either gender of business journalists.

Macfie's research and coverage led to the country's recognition that the Pike River explosion was almost as inevitable as a puddle after torrential rain.

The level of cynicism that led to miners being bribed to work in a clearly under-protected, gassy mine was brilliantly uncovered by Macfie.

The sole ventilation shaft, the unusable safety ladder, the useless “safe room”, the inoperable gas sensors, the cigarette packets found deep in the mine, the extreme gas levels - Macfie exposed these stupidities, and was not challenged.

What a great film we might have had if the story of the two women had been framed by a reminder of the real cause of the explosion - negligence - and maybe cynicism, at multiple levels.

The other error was to finish the film, rightly exposing John Key’s smile and wave leadership, but quite wrongly lionising Jacinda Ardern as the heroine who stood up for the two women in their quest to bring back the remainders of their men.

The recovery mission never happened. The mine remains a gassy tomb.

It was Winston Peters who organised robots to enter the mine when he returned to Parliament in the 2011 general election.

He became a prominent advocate for the Pike River families’ calls to re-enter the mine drift. Re-entry into the mine became a key bottom-line for NZ First in their coalition negotiations. He publicly volunteered to be one of the first people to enter the mine.

An attempt to recover the bodies was abandoned in 2011 due to safety concerns and a second explosion. The mine remains a gassy tomb.

One suspects the producer, like everyone in the film industry, was revealing his personal sentiments, rather than the truth, in how he brought his story to an end, almost deifying Ardern.

One hopes one day Macfie’s wonderful account will be the centre of a highly-relevant film which culminates in the eventual trial of the miscreants, should the police prosecute after completing the still-running investigation.

Kiwibank Tier 2 Note Offer

Kiwibank has announced an offer of Tier 2 Notes, which carry an investment grade credit rating.

The notes have a final maturity date of 12 March 2036 but are likely to be repaid at the first reset date on 12 March 2031. Similar notes from major banks, including Kiwibank, are typically repaid on the reset date. Based on current conditions, we expect an interest rate above 4.75%.

Investors will not be charged brokerage, as Kiwibank will cover these costs. The investment statement can be found on our website.

If you would like to be added to the list for this offer, please email us with your CSN and an investment amount, and we will send through a contract note.

The issue is open now and closes on Friday, 5 December at 10am. Payment is due no later than Wednesday 10 December.

Please note that due to demand, this issue is likely to be scaled.

Chris Lee

Chris Lee & Partners Ltd