Opinion: Recrafting the narrative of mining in New Zealand: Is Shane Jones a closet post-structuralist?

Okay, hands up if you’re a post-structuralist?

Not sure what one of them looks like?

Essentially post-structuralists argue that the way we see and know the world is socially created – and it is socially created through words, narratives and the meanings that sit behind them. We each make the world through the way we talk about it...and hence each of us, and each of the societies and the cultures we are part of, will see the world differently through the different ways we express ourselves and the knowledges we have.

Hmmm...you might well ask, don’t I make the world through the way I farm my property, repair that pothole, shop at the supermarket and put real things – food and drink - in my fridge?! Sure, but, this objective ‘reality’ that you operate in and interact with is mediated by the meanings that all these things - from paddocks to potholes to frozen chickens – hold for you...and for others.

Hence one woman’s paddock is another man’s potential forestry block...or a developer’s suburb...or a conservationists reserve; and the meanings we attach to things and places can morph over time – native forests in Aotearoa have gone from being a nuisance that needed clearing in colonial times, to an important resource for biodiversity, and most recently a sink for our CO2 emissions.

What is important for post-structuralists is the way in which some people (those with power) are able to shape these meanings and social ‘realities’ in ways that suit their values, ethics and interests over those of others.

So, how does this gel with the blunt, belligerent rhetorical style of Shane Jones?

Words shape and make the world – quite literally – and as a consummate politician and orator, Jones know this. Since coming into Government he has been persisting in shaping a new narrative about the nation and the place of mining.

Guided by a neo-liberal logic (although Jones appears far more pragmatic than his coalition partner ideologues), beliefs, ethics and values, he is creating new meanings and narratives about mining and the future of the country. And through this have flowed policy change to facilitate access to the country’s mineral resources for – mostly – foreign investors. He is not talking about an objective ‘truth’, but rather how he wants the world to be. And he knows what he is doing – as he admitted in an interview he has a ‘track record of deploying rhetoric’: taking aim at ‘blind frogs’ and ‘woke collar spongers’ (?!) he tells New Zealanders that they need to ‘get over themselves’. He clearly sees a world where the ‘transformative’ potential of New Zealand’s natural resources is ‘unleashed’, and has ‘a vision for the future – a vision that would see our wealth base grow by utilising our mineral reserves to benefit all New Zealanders, increasing our domestic resilience by reducing reliance on imported minerals’.

His ambition is most clearly articulated in relation to accessing conservation land, and especially the 9% of the country listed as stewardship land, for mineral development. This stewardship land forms part of the DOC estate – and is essentially seen as a ‘wasted resource’ by Jones that ‘isn’t considered to have special conservation or scenic values, but we do know that there are areas there likely to contain mineral deposits’.

Like the mining industry, Jones is also doing a strong line in conjuring up mineral resources, bringing them into being with his words. Anna Tsing – an anthropologist from the USA – once wrote a wonderful piece that tracked the rapid conjuring up of the world’s largest gold deposit – Busang in Indonesia – by a Canadian mining company, Bre-X. The reports of the rapidly increasing gold reserves held in the deposit brought literally billions into the Canadian stock markets, and garnered the attention and efforts of the world’s largest mining companies…until it simply wasn’t there anymore: it had been talked up and faked – elaborately – for three years. The collapse had real world effects on thousands of ‘mum and dad’ investors who had been caught up in excitement of this ‘economy of appearances’ and collectively lost millions.

Now no one is claiming another Bre-X is stalking Aotearoa. But a fundamental truth of the mining industry, and especially mineral exploration companies, is that to really succeed they need to conjure up resources to bring in investment and develop a mine. Reports to the stock exchange and the media bring into being resources and untapped wealth based on often partial and sometimes sketchy exploration results. Hence in the last 12 months we have heard that companies may have uncovered 5% of the world’s antimony reserves, the third largest global deposit of vanadium, and the biggest gold discovery in decades, all within what one industry journal described as ‘the world’s next modern mining jurisdiction’.

And Jones is not only repeating this mantra of an industry of the verge of rapid expansion that sees mineral resources everywhere just awaiting digging up, but he is also conjuring up a world in which environmental regulation which has bogged down the sector for decades (it hasn’t – see for one example Federation mining starting up a gold mine on the West Coast under the last government) is removed, so we can mine the ‘critical minerals’ the world needs for the energy transition (but the sector is not focussed on these, and the revised list of critical minerals now includes gold and coal… critical only in the eyes of the Minister and the sector) and bring employment (not very much – it is a high-technology sector), regional development (again the evidence isn’t strong) and strong returns to the nation (which it doesn’t, due to the high levels of foreign investment, imports and existing taxation regime).

All this in the context of a modern sector – so the conjuring goes on - that is environmentally benign, if not generative of environmental benefits (which it might like to be, but isn’t), and has a clear social licence to operate (which it doesn’t in most parts of the country).

So, by using his power and platform to narrate a new world, Jones is seeking to shift the values with which conservation land, ‘blind frogs’ and the environment holds in favour of a vision for a country in which there is a vastly expanded mining industry that will ‘increase national and regional prosperity, strengthen critical supply chains, and leverage our relationships and international partnerships to drive economic benefits for New Zealanders’. This is a purposeful meaning-creating conjuring act of the highest order from Jones. And he knows what he’s doing. So does Michel Foucault.

Professor Glenn Banks is a professor of geography within Massey University’s School of People, Environment and Planning. His research is primarily focussed on the socio-economic and cultural dimensions of large-scale extractive industries in Papua New Guinea and other parts of the Pacific, including Aotearoa.