Conservation: Polls Show Mining “Don’t Knows” Have Hurt The Govt
April 27th, 2010
You mightn’t think, looking at the most recent TVNZ polling the Govt has taken any knocks from the mining debate. But unpublished polling seen by NZ Energy and Environment Business Week suggests the latest confirmation of National’s solid lead would look different if the analysis of the “don’t knows” were included, instead of the raw supporter numbers. We believe there’s been quite an up-tick in undecided voters in polling conducted by several of the major polling houses, and National’s continued dominance among committed voters reflects a lack of traction among the Opposition parties, especially Labour.
In other words, instead of cementing a commanding lead, it’s just possible National is benefiting from weak opponents while failing to hold its own enlarged base from 2008. PR practitioners have been vocal among themselves in criticising the blundering way the mining proposals have been handled. There’s general head-scratching over why the Govt would invite blowback on areas such as Great Barrier and Coromandel, especially when there’s no guarantee known mineral deposits in those areas will prove commercially attractive under the higher cost, “precision” or “surgical” mining the Govt has in mind.
Two other oddities about the Govt announcements: why raise the Schedule 4 lands issues separately from other swathes of private and public land which the Govt wants to assess for their mineral potential, but which won’t be identified publicly till mid-year; and why so little effort to trumpet the inclusion of a new 12,000 hectares of conservation land into Schedule 4 as “compensation” for possibly removing other areas? The reality is if the Govt’s current proposals are acted on in full, there will still be more land protected under Schedule 4 than there was before the exercise began.
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