95bFM ‘War on nature’ — Advocate criticises Crown Mineral Amendment Bill
8 October 2024
Interview by Evie Richardson, adapted by Fiona Ng
Greenpeace Executive Director, Russel Norman, says Parliament’s passing of the Crown Mineral Amendment Bill will significantly worsen New Zealand’s fight to combat the effects of the climate crisis.
On 24 September, Parliament introduced the Crown Mineral Amendment Bill, which provided only four days for public submissions.
The bill aims to push for new offshore gas and oil exploration, a move the coalition government has been pushing for after being previously banned under the Labour-led government in 2018.
Alongside a short submission time, parliament also expedited the overall legislative process by cutting down the normal six-month select-committee process with intentions to pass the bill before the end of the year.
If passed, the bill will enable the reintroduction of oil and gas exploration, which many are concerned would hinder efforts to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis.
Greenpeace Executive Director, Russel Norman, told 95bFM’s The Wire that Parliament’s decision to shorten the public submission time indicates their intentions to “force through the bill”.
“[The government] clearly has no interest in what the public thinks.”
“[It’s] pretty clear they're going to proceed to try to restart oil and gas exploration. I don't think they'll be successful at getting oil and gas exploration underway again, but certainly, they're going to give it a shot.”
Norman says the shortened public submission time heavily decreases the number of submissions, providing little opportunity for public input, which he claims is in line with the government being a “climate change denying government”.
“[The Bill] allows offshore oil and gas exploration to restart, or at least, it allows them to issue the permits to try to restart [new offshore oil and gas exploration], and they're obviously very keen to do that as part of their broader war on nature.”
When the Bill was implemented in 2018, Norman says New Zealand had a “clear pathway” to address the climate crisis.
However, he now believes New Zealand has gone backwards.
“The government is obviously trying to turn the clock back to the 1950s when climate change wasn't something they cared about.”
“They will disrupt the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
To tackle the climate crisis adequately, Norman proposes switching to the national use of electric energy in the country, such as through transport, and industrial processes.
“What that does is it increases the demand for electricity, but it actually reduces demand for energy, because electricity is so much more efficient, so the amount of energy the economy will need will be lower once we electrify transport, industrial processes, and we'll be able to generate that electricity from renewable sources on the shore.”
“We can save ourselves eight billion dollars a year on imported transport energy, which is what we're spending on oil and petroleum products to run the transport plate.”
