Five Greenpeace activists have been arrested after a protest at the office of the mining lobby group Straterra. The protest caused police to cordon off The Terrace, a major Wellington road home to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Ministry of Justice, and Wellington City Council, among others.
They were protesting Straterra’s plans to fast-track a seabed mining project in the South Taranaki Bight for one of its clients, Trans-Tasman Resources.
Under the government’s new fast track law, specific projects can bypass many processes otherwise required by planning legislation. Critics have said it doesn’t give enough weight to environmental considerations.
“If seabed mining is fast-tracked, it will be in contempt of all expert advice and the wishes of local iwi (community), environmental groups, Taranaki communities and the 60,000 New Zealanders who have signed the petition calling for it to be banned,” Greenpeace said in a statement.
Three activists, including Greenpeace programme director Niamh O'Flynn, locked themselves inside the building. Two people climbed onto an awning at the front of the building and unfurled a large banner saying “No Seabed Mining.”
Political Differences Aired
In a statement, Greenpeace said it was “a demonstration of the resistance promised” in a recent open letter to companies considering using the fast-track process, which more than 7,500 people had signed.
The group called Straterra a “malignant force in New Zealand politics, operating in the shadows and backrooms to exert a pernicious influence over government policies.”
Green Party minerals and resources spokesperson Steve Abel said it was “excellent” to see Greenpeace protesting seabed mining.
“This government is radically anti-nature, hell-bent on destroying our natural resources for the profit of a few, and the seabed mining is particularly destructive,” he said.
“They’re also wanting to increase coal mining and wanting to bring back offshore oil and gas exploration.
“These are all things that take us completely in the wrong direction in terms of where the world needs to be going by protecting nature for the good of all humanity.”
Abel confessed he was a “big supporter of peaceful civil disobedience.”
However, senior NZ First Minister Shane Jones called Greenpeace “blood-sucking vermin,” while ACT MP Simon Court referred to them as “thugs” whose actions were “anti-humanity.”
“If they want to chain themselves anywhere,” he said, “come to my office, this is a political issue. If anything, it has turbocharged my desire to go even stronger on the fast track.”
