Many students take advantage of the Easter Break for a Central Otago roadie, an extortionately priced flight home to the Easter bunny (Mum and Dad), or to hole up in the library and catch up on assignments – all noble causes. In a more bespoke use of their break, a handful of Otago students hightailed to the West Coast to join a 70-strong protest against a Fast Track application seeking to extract 20 million tonnes of coal from the Denniston and Stockton Plateau over the next 25 years. Critic Te Ārohi spoke to third-year students, Via and Annabel, who were involved – and were issued court summons for wilful trespass as a result.
The environmental impact of the proposed extraction would be two-fold: carbon emissions and environmental destruction. The activists claim that Bathurst Resources Ltd (NZ’s biggest coal operator) would produce emissions that would rival New Zealand’s annual emissions (but not Katy Perry’s recent trip to space). “And that’s quite bad,” chipped in Via. “Do we still want to be mining coal in 25 years? As someone who’s gonna be alive then – hopefully – it doesn’t really look like a very good future that we’re still going to be mining coal.”
Denniston Plateau is home to ancient endemic species, including roroa (great spotted kiwi), nationally endangered giant snails, and four-hundred-year-old shrubs. Annabel compared restoration projects promising to plant new trees to the case of Humpty Dumpty: once broken, you can try to put him together again, but it won’t be the same. “It's like, no. It's gone now and it's not gonna recover for a very, very long time,” she said. A similarly environmentally destructive project, the Cypress Mine, was protested by the Happy Valley Coalition on the West Coast 21 years ago. Annabel said Happy Valley had since been “reduced to nothing”, reinforcing the protestors' resolve at the recent Denniston protest.
Annabel and Via spoke to Critic Te Ārohi the week after returning from their camping trip – one involving more chanting than ‘smore-making – they explained that the protest had been organised by climate activist groups 350Aotearoa and Climate Liberation Aotearoa. “We were encamped on the Denniston Plateau to say, ‘No, we do not want this mine to be expanded,’” Annabel summed up. The more controversial element of the occupation that only some were involved with was a 60-hour slumber party in the cable cars used to transport coal from Stockton, shutting down operations. Annabel was one of the climbers’ support people on the ground, there to ensure their safety. As could be expected, Bathurst, the mining company, was pretty pissed. The police were called.
It was there that Annabel, alongside her fellow climate warriors, was trespassed. Many left at that point – but not Annabel. To leave would be like stranding someone up a ladder: not cool and plain dangerous. “We really needed people on the ground to make sure that the climbers were safe, comfortable, and happy. So I decided to stay despite knowing that I had been told to leave, so that we could fulfill our role of being there. And I feel proud of doing that,” she said. “The action itself was doing something that only had people and the environment and the planet at heart.” She noted that the area is public conservation land.
The whole ordeal was pretty intense, of course. Annabel told Critic Te Ārohi that she hadn’t quite expected to be in the position she’s found herself in when she’d set off for the West Coast, staring down the barrel of a max sentence of three months in prison or a $1000 fine. But she didn’t want this to distract from the purpose of the protest, which she spoke with passion about: to protect the environment from the project’s impact. “I’m really scared of the climate crisis that we are in, there’s no denying it anymore,” she said. “It feels crazy not to take very radical actions against it [...] and who is going to stand up for our lives, our safety, and our security if our government won’t?”
The protestors' actions have drawn some criticism for recklessness; Annabel argued that this is far from the truth. “Some people try to portray us as if we’re going and doing these crazy actions without thinking about it. And that is just not the case at all,” she said. “We had a lot of people who really knew what they were doing there.” Health and safety measures included scouts who were sent prior to see how feasible the cable car occupation would be (where they learned that if people were in the cars, they would stop), ensuring the bucket-bums were experienced in climbing, calling Bathurst once they were in to say “hey, you might want to stop the car” and having a crew of support people on hand. “There was a lot of communication to make sure that people weren’t going to get hurt by this,” said Annabel.
Shane Jones and the Westport community have not reacted well. Jones posted on Facebook on April 22nd, “I cannot fathom the mentality of these blow-ins from other parts of the country to think that they have a right to speak for the hundreds of people who derive their living from mining.” Jones argued that New Zealand is relying on a stockpile of 1.2 million tonnes of coal to patch the gap of renewable energy and keep the lights on this winter. “Mining brings in millions of dollars in royalties, and in wages and spending on infrastructure, plant and supplies,” he said. The Westport community Facebook page is similarly scathing (shown to Critic by a recent Law grad who grew up there) with one comment reading, “Idealistic university students brainwashed from their tutors”.
“It would be a lie to say we were totally loved over there, but we also did get quite a lot of support,” said Annabel. One family brought them cheesecake cups to say thank you. For the activists, it was important to note that they were aware that coal mining brought jobs to the local community, but argued that it wasn’t sustainable – economically or environmentally. While Jones (backed by Westport’s equivalent of Dunedin News) claimed that the mine has a positive economic impact, the activists countered that taxpayers are “paying so much in the cleanup for these mines”. Newsroom reported in December last year that all of the government’s 2024 coal earnings was spent treating damages at a single mine.
As for Shane Jones’ claim that the purpose of the coal is to keep the lights on in New Zealand winter – something all students in Dunedin would be all for – the coal is for export. “It’s a capitalist venture to make money for the corporations and the owners and the [foreign] investors. It’s not making everyday Kiwi lives any better,” Annabel claimed. “They talk a lot about the local jobs that are being provided, but the majority of that profit is obviously going overseas to overseas investors, and even the coal itself is going overseas. So I think it's a really difficult case to make that this would be a net benefit, particularly at the extreme costs that we're seeing.”
The coal expansion has been enabled by the controversial Fast Track Act that has allowed for so-called “zombie projects” to be brought back from the dead. As a crash course, the Act aims to make it easier and quicker to gain approval for projects by bypassing separate application processes – including public consultation – for a 'one-stop-shop' process. “Obviously it’s incredibly undemocratic and I think it’s important to be able to protest because, I mean, there is no other avenue with which to combat something that’s being put through the Fast Track other than this kind of direct action,” said Via. Local MP Rachel Brooking concurred when approached by Critic: “If normal environmental protections are removed by the Fast Track process then the applicant companies will not have a social license and should expect protests, because concerned groups are entirely shut out of the process that would normally protect the environment.” She said many of the projects would “never be consented under the RMA”.
Both Annabel and Via emphasised the passion they felt in students’ involvement in this sort of activism. “Students have always been sort of at the heads of so many movements,” said Annabel. “Now should be no different.” She listed climate change, the genocide in Gaza, and the Government’s recent attacks on trans rights as examples of salient issues students should be engaging with. “I think the students should be taking a really active role in this and really funnelling the rage and the anger into productive activism and protesting.” Brooking, again, concurred, “Being a student is a great time to be involved in causes. There is a long and important history of students being at the forefront of positive social change.”
Annabel encouraged students to join either 350Aotearoa or Climate Liberation Aotearoa if “you’re feeling despairing”. “We are doing things. If you have ideas about how we can make things better, then join us and make those changes yourself. Stand up for what you actually believe in. Use your sort of democratic right to protest. Instead of letting these big rich corporations and politicians just make all the decisions for us and just descend us into absolute catastrophe, stand up; fight back.” Annabel’s court date is May 15th in Westport.