Mining wealth worth looking for
The government is entitled to be heartened by the results of aHerald-DigiPoll survey this week showing that a majority of New Zealanders back its plan to increase exploration for oil, gas and minerals. But it should not get carried away. The public approval it is entitled to infer is heavily circumscribed.
The poll, conducted late last month, showed that 27 per cent supported the idea and 40 per cent cautiously supported it. So a significant portion of the support is qualified, and it is not hard to imagine that those who offered "cautious support" were giving voice to at least mild misgiving.
When the qualified support is combined with the implacable opposition, seven of 10 of us are not enthusiastic. And the question was about finding out what mineral wealth might be available to us; it is a long way from saying we should dig it up.
The significant difference from the proposal floated in September 2009 - and scuttled nine months later - by Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee is that mining areas of the conservation estate is now off the political agenda.
After unsuccessfully fudging the matter in Parliament, Brownlee himself finally conceded that there was "a huge public outcry".
But at the same time, he referred to the danger that controversy over allowing mining on a small area of the conservation estate would undermine an industry with "enormous potential". The key here is the word "potential". There is ample dispute as to what the value might be to the economy of large-scale mining. Critics argue that few jobs are created for people other than specialist technical staff, many of whom have to be imported, and that the mining industry overstates the positive impact it might have on the many small communities ravaged by unemployment. The experience in Western Australia, where plenty of low-skilled New Zealanders are finding work, would appear to argue against that, but the mineral reserves there occur in quantities beyond even Brownlee's most fevered imaginings.
Likewise, there is some hard calculation to be done about what we might lose - by way of species habitat, recreational utility value and international image - if we move into large-scale mining.
But those are arguments for another day. Conservationist groups who argue against prospecting do their cause no good.
Even they should accept we need to find out what's there first.
Then we can do the maths and have the discussion.
Our economy is in no shape to allow us the luxury of ignoring the potential riches beneath our feet.
It might not be possible, or desirable, to get them all out, but surely we can benefit from some of the bounty bestowed on us.
Runner's Games spot is a joke
The question of whether the double-amputee runner Oscar Pistorius should be eligible to run in the Olympic Games has been needlessly turned into a technical and ethical conundrum.
The 25-year-old South African sprinter, born without fibula bones, had both legs amputated at mid-shin as a baby because he would never have been able to walk on them. Now he runs - on J-shaped carbon-fibre prosthetics. He holds the world records for his disabled-athlete class in the 100m, 200m and 400m.
His prowess earned him the name Blade Runner and a place in his country's 4x400m relay team for the London Olympics. And this week his national Olympic committee reversed an earlier decision and gave him the go-ahead for the individual event over the same distance as well, even though he had failed to meet the Olympic qualifying mark of 45.3 sec at an international meet, as the rules require.
The committee's U-turn constitutes a complete argument against his inclusion, of course. Pistorius made the team for the solo race only because they bent the rules; if he were sincere in his claim that he just wants to be treated equally, he would have declined a place offered to him by an exemption.
But even the place on the relay team is a nonsense.
Those who argue for his inclusion suggest that it might help erase the lines between people with physical disabilities and those without. But such reasoning is specious and, worse, supports him by patronising him. There is no erasing the line between Pistorius and the other runners against whom he will line up in London: he does not have the legs that birth gave him. It may make able-bodied people feel warm and fuzzy to say he's just like the rest of us. He is not. His legs were made in Iceland.
Much discussion over the past few years has centred on whether the man dubbed "Blade Runner" has an undue advantage (tests in Germany concluded his limbs used less energy than other runners') or disadvantage (he had a harder time at the start and running the curve). But it is all irrelevant.
The nature of athletic competition is that like contends with like. Sports' governing bodies come up with divisions - by weight and age, for example - all the time, in order to ensure that undue differences are erased. The essence of the Olympics' purest form, track and field events, is that - gender apart - competition is open to all-comers.
The corollary is that competitors show up with nothing other than what their genes and training regimes have equipped them with. The now-sophisticated drug-testing regime - and the ignominy that attends on those exposed as drug cheats - attest to our desire that competitors are not advantaged by science.
The question of whether Pistorius is advantaged or disadvantaged does not require answering. The fact that it even needs to be asked renders it redundant. One look at him is enough to tell you that he has no more a place in those races than somebody with a jet pack strapped to his back.
His achievements have been, and continue to be, an inspiration to people all over the world, whether or not they have had to overcome the formidable challenges he has surmounted. But he has no place in the Olympic Games.
0 comments:
Post a Comment