Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee first floated exploiting the nation’s most protected conservation lands – those covered by Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act – last September, in a speech as close you can get to unauthorised. His colleagues, particularly the risk-averse John Key and his right-hand Auckland temperature-taker Steven Joyce, ducked for cover expecting monumental fallout from the environmental movement. By Christmas 2009, the remarkably muted response was provoking some confidence the global financial crisis and NZ’s recession may have changed the political game and such a policy could be made to work. Brownlee was busily convincing talking up the benefits of the “fast growth” boost pursuit of extractive industries – oil and gas as well as other minerals – could produce. It gave tangible actions to the “catching Australia” theme, which otherwise risked looking decidedly rhetorical.

But while the green movement was slow to the party – Greenpeace, in particular, was distracted by its “20 by 2020″ campaign ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit – it got organised over summer. From Brownlee’s perspective, the moment it all went wrong was in March, when a highly accurate leak – always the most damaging kind – to Forest and Bird revealed Great Barrier Island and Coromandel Peninsula, two politically charged iconic targets for the all-important Auckland vote, were proposed sites for Schedule 4 rollbacks. It put the Govt on the back foot for the first time and it never recovered. When 40,000 marched against the proposals in early May, the die was cast.

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Now, Brownlee is putting a brave face on events, saying airing the issues has not only created healthy debate, but also raised public awareness of the vast mineral wealth potential of NZ. Today’s announcements of aero-magnetic surveys over Northland and the West Coast of the SI show he hasn’t given up but is instead targeting areas where both local communities and regional councils are keen to see mining developed. In other words, don’t expect any push any time soon to go further. Indeed, it’s arguable even with Labour’s continuing support for mining on conservation lands outside Schedule 4 – proffered this morning by leader Phil Goff – National is further behind on the debate about conservation land mining than when it started.

Who to blame for this political mishandling? On one hand, today’s decisions demonstrate the inherent conservatism of the Key administration. This will be seen by its business backers as evidence of spinelessness, even as it will buoy the Govt in the polls for being seen to have “listened.” Key was asked at his post-Cabinet press conference on Monday whether, with the benefit of hindsight, it was smart politics to start the mining debate by targeting the most sensitive public lands and work back towards the potentially acceptable. Key looked frosty and said: “I don’t want to speculate on that,” which says it all.

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