Taking Stock 16 July 2026

Edward Lee writes:

New Zealand Doesn’t Have a Mining Problem. It Has a Planning Problem.

Mining is one of those subjects that seems to push people into camps almost immediately. You are either for it or against it, pro-jobs and economy or pro-environment, pro-growth or anti-development.

That is usually where the debate ends which I think is part of the problem. The real question to ask is not whether mining is good or bad, rather where it belongs.

New Zealand already makes those sorts of decisions all the time. We zone land for housing and other land for industry. We protect marine reserves from commercial fishing. We set aside conservation land because we have decided that homes, factories and other forms of development should not go there.

That is what planning is. You decide what an area is for, what it is not for, and what rules should apply.

Yet when it comes to mining, we seem reluctant to make the same call. Instead, we wait until a company has found something, spent years drilling, raised money, commissioned studies and begun talking to the community. Only then do we start asking whether mining should be allowed there.

By that point, everyone is already dug in. The company has spent a fortune and wants a pathway forward. Environmental groups are preparing for a fight. Communities are split between the promise of jobs and concern about what may be lost. Politicians step in, usually late, and the whole thing becomes a national argument about mining in general.

It is a strange way to plan.

We would never do this with housing. We would not let someone spend $100 million designing a factory in the middle of a residential suburb and only then decide whether factories belong there. We make that decision first.

Mining should be no different.

Decide Where Mining Belongs

New Zealand should identify areas where mining is an appropriate long-term land use, and it should also identify places where mining should not happen.

This is not an argument for turning the country into one large mining zone. Some places are too environmentally important, too culturally significant or simply too fragile. Those areas should be protected properly, and companies should know from the beginning that mining will not be accepted there.

That would save everyone time, money and conflict.

But the reverse should also be true. There are parts of New Zealand where the geology is well known, mining has occurred for generations, infrastructure already exists and local economies have developed around resource activity.

The West Coast is an obvious example. It has long been associated with gold, coal and mineral sands, and there is growing interest in critical minerals. Otago is known for gold. Taranaki has a long history with oil and gas.

That does not mean every part of the West Coast, Otago or Taranaki should be open for mining. It means we should be capable of identifying the places within those regions where mining makes sense, the places where it does not, and the conditions that should apply.

At the moment, we leave too much of that unresolved. That creates risk for investors, but it also creates risk for everyone else. Communities do not know whether investment is likely to arrive. Councils do not know whether they should plan for housing, roads, schools, electricity or water infrastructure. Training providers do not know whether there will be long-term demand for mining, engineering or processing skills.

Environmental groups are left responding to proposals one at a time, often after years of exploration have already taken place.

Nobody gets certainty.

A zoning system would not remove every argument, but it would narrow the argument to something more useful. Instead of asking, “Should mining exist here at all?”, we could ask, “Can this particular project meet the standards we expect?”

That is a much better question.

Zoning Would Not Mean Automatic Approval

This needs to be said clearly. Zoning an area for mining would not mean that every mine gets approved.

That would be no more sensible than saying every house must be approved simply because the land is residential. A mining company would still need to show that it can manage water, biodiversity, waste, transport, noise, emissions and rehabilitation.

It would still need proper environmental assessment, and it would still need to work with local communities. It would also need to show that the economics stack up and that the company is capable of meeting its obligations for the life of the mine and after it closes.

Some projects would fail, and they should.

The point is not to guarantee approval. The point is to remove one layer of uncertainty. A company operating within a designated mineral development area would know that mining is accepted in principle. The consent process would then focus on the quality of the proposal.

That is what fast-track consenting should have been about from the start. Not skipping the hard questions but answering some of them earlier.

There is a difference.

The Current System Rewards Uncertainty

Mining companies can deal with risk. They understand that a resource may be smaller than expected, commodity prices move, construction costs rise, equipment fails and financing becomes harder.

Those risks are part of the industry.

What is much harder to price is political and regulatory uncertainty. If a company spends ten years developing a project but still does not know whether mining will be accepted in principle, the risk becomes almost impossible to measure.

That pushes up the cost of capital, and it also means some investors simply look elsewhere.

New Zealand is not the only country with mineral resources. Capital can go to Australia, Canada, South America, Europe, Africa or Asia. Investors do not always choose the country with the weakest rules. Often they choose the country with the clearest rules.

That is an important distinction.

A strict rule can be planned for. An unclear rule cannot.

If New Zealand wants better mining proposals, it should create a system where companies know what is expected before they begin. That would encourage better planning from the outset, and it would also discourage companies from spending years chasing projects in places where mining is never going to be accepted.

We Still Need Mining

Some people will say the answer is to move away from mining altogether. I understand the instinct. Mining has an environmental impact, and there is no point pretending otherwise.

But modern life still depends on it.

Copper is needed for electricity networks, telecommunications, data centres and renewable energy systems. Lithium, nickel, graphite and cobalt are used in batteries. Rare earth elements are used in electronics, advanced manufacturing and wind turbines. Steel, aggregate and cement are still needed for roads, homes, hospitals and public infrastructure.

Even technologies we think of as clean rely on large amounts of mined material. Electric vehicles need more minerals than conventional vehicles. Transmission networks require huge amounts of copper and steel. Solar panels, batteries and wind turbines all depend on materials that have to come from somewhere.

Artificial intelligence sounds digital, but the infrastructure behind it is very physical. Data centres need buildings, cooling systems, electricity, copper, steel, aluminium and semiconductors.

Healthcare is the same. Hospitals depend on imaging equipment, diagnostics, surgical tools, electronics and machines that could not exist without mining.

So the question is not whether society still needs minerals. It does.

The question is where those minerals come from, how they are produced and what standards apply.

New Zealand can decide not to mine some of them here, but that does not make the mining disappear. It moves it somewhere else.

We still buy the phone, the car, the battery, the medical scanner and the computer. The environmental impact still happens. The difference is that another country carries it, while also collecting the jobs, the investment, the tax revenue and the industrial capability.

That may still be the right decision in some cases. There are places where the environmental cost will be too high. But we should be honest about what we are choosing.

Refusing to mine in New Zealand is not the same as refusing to use mined materials.

There Is an Ethical Question Here Too

This part of the debate does not get enough attention.

If the world needs more minerals, should countries with strong environmental rules and functioning legal systems play a larger role in producing them? Or should mining continue to shift into countries where labour standards, environmental regulation or government oversight may be weaker?

New Zealand has strong institutions. We can require proper monitoring, set water standards, insist on rehabilitation, make companies put money aside for closure and clean-up, and prosecute them if they break the rules.

This gives us more control over how the activity is carried out, rather than removing environmental impacts.

There is something uncomfortable about opposing mining here while continuing to consume products made from minerals mined elsewhere under conditions we might never accept at home.

Recycling Must Be Part of the Answer

At this point, some people will say that we should focus on recycling instead.

They are right. We should.

New Zealand wastes too many materials that have already been mined, processed and shipped around the world. Old wiring contains copper. Phones and computers contain gold, silver, copper and rare earth elements. Batteries contain lithium, nickel, cobalt and other materials. Vehicles, appliances and industrial machinery contain metals that can be recovered and reused.

Too much of this ends up in landfill, stored in garages or exported as low-value waste.

Alternatively, we should treat these products as resources. New Zealand needs better collection systems and more investment in processing and recovery. Importers and manufacturers should carry more responsibility for what happens when a product reaches the end of its life.

There is also an economic opportunity here. Recycling and resource recovery require engineering, technology, logistics, processing and skilled workers. A serious circular economy would create new industries, reduce waste and make New Zealand less dependent on fragile overseas supply chains.

It would not remove the need for mining but would reduce it.

That is where the debate often becomes unrealistic. Many of the materials needed for electrification and renewable energy are only now being put into use. They are not yet available to recycle.

You cannot recycle a battery that has not been built. You cannot recover copper from a transmission line that has not been installed. You cannot recycle a wind turbine that still has another 25 years of use ahead of it.

There are losses too. Not every material can be recovered. Some are used in quantities that are too small. Some are difficult to separate. Some recycling processes are not yet economic.

So this is not a choice between mining and recycling.

We need both.

We should mine less wastefully, recycle far more, design products so they can be repaired and reused, recover what we can, and then mine what is still needed in places where it can be done responsibly.

That is a more realistic position than pretending one can replace the other.

Communities Should Be Involved Earlier

One of the biggest weaknesses in the current system is timing.

Communities often become involved after a company has already spent years exploring. By then, the project has momentum. The company has shareholders and expectations. Local businesses may already be hoping for contracts. Opponents feel they are being asked to respond to something that is already moving ahead.

That is when positions harden.

A national zoning process would bring those conversations forward. Iwi, councils, environmental groups, scientists, local businesses and communities could take part before an individual project is on the table.

That would allow a wider discussion about what people want for their region. Do they want mining to be part of the local economy? What land should remain protected? What infrastructure would be needed? What would rehabilitation look like? What benefits should stay in the region? What should happen after a mine closes?

Those are questions we should be asking before a company has spent $100 million on drilling.

It would also give locals a more meaningful role. Engagement should not begin once the commercial case has already been built. It should happen when the long-term use of the land is being considered.

That does not make the process easy, but it makes it fairer and more honest.

Some Projects Will Matter More Than Others

Not every mine will be nationally important. Some will mainly create local jobs and exports, while others may have wider value.

A project could supply a mineral that New Zealand or its allies need. It could support downstream processing, advanced manufacturing or research. It could improve supply-chain resilience or create infrastructure that benefits a wider region.

Those benefits should be assessed independently.

At the moment, companies commission experts to explain why a project matters. Opponents commission other experts to explain why those benefits are overstated. The result is often two polished reports pointing in opposite directions.

There should be a better way.

An independent national-interest assessment could look at employment, exports, tax revenue, infrastructure, productivity, supply-chain security and the strategic importance of the resource.

That would not replace environmental approval. It would answer a different question.

Does this project matter to New Zealand?

Then the environmental process can answer the next one.

Can it be done responsibly?

Those questions are connected, but they are not the same.

A More Honest Way Forward

New Zealand does not have to choose between mining everywhere and mining nowhere. That is a false choice.

We can identify places where mining should not happen and protect them properly. We can also identify places where mining may be appropriate and set clear rules around it.

We can require companies to meet high environmental standards, involve communities and iwi earlier, invest in recycling and the circular economy, and recognise that some minerals and some projects will matter more than others.

Most importantly, we can stop pretending that every mining proposal requires the country to debate the entire industry again from the beginning.

That would not end disagreement, and it should not. But it would make the disagreement more useful.

We already zone land for homes, factories, farming and conservation. We already decide where people can fish and where they cannot. There is no good reason mining should sit outside that basic planning principle.

Good planning does not mean saying yes to everything. It means knowing where the answer might be yes, where it is definitely no, and what has to be proven in between.

New Zealand has the minerals. It has the environmental rules. It has the institutions.

What it does not have is a clear system for deciding where mining belongs.

That is why I do not think New Zealand has a mining problem.

It has a planning problem.

And that is something we can actually fix.

Travel

David Colman – Lower Hutt – 21 JulyDavid Colman – Palmerston North – 24 JulyDavid Colman – Whanganui – 6 AugustDavid Colman – New Plymouth – 7 August

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