Latest / Best of Business / Jessie Creedmore: Buller petition organiser on the growing support to expand Bathurst Resources' Stockton site

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Jessie Creedmore: Buller petition organiser on the growing support to expand Bathurst Resources' Stockton site · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk ZB. Follow this
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  Speaker 2: Nearly 3,000 people in Westport have signed an open letter
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  Speaker 2: backing a local mine. They're keen on extending mining at
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  Speaker 2: Stockton and Denniston, which is the community's largest employer. And
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  Speaker 2: of course, it's going through the fast track process for
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  Speaker 2: that at the moment. One of the organisers of the
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  Speaker 2: open letter, Jessie Creedmoor, is with us right now.
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  Speaker 3: Hi, Jessie. Hi, Jessie. Kia ora from Buller on the
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  Speaker 3: West Coast. Thank you for giving us a chance to
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  Speaker 3: speak for our community.
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  Speaker 2: You're more than welcome. Now, what made you feel like
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  Speaker 2: you needed to sign this letter?
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  Speaker 3: Me personally. So I've travelled around a lot. I visited
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  Speaker 3: the South Island about 20-odd years ago and fell in
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  Speaker 3: love with the place. And at this point in time,
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  Speaker 3: I can honestly say that Buller is a place that
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  Speaker 3: I live at, Cape Falwyn, and they'll be taking me
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  Speaker 3: out of here in a body bag. But essentially, for
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  Speaker 3: me personally, and I don't like to speak for myself
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  Speaker 3: because this is actually about our community, but the world
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  Speaker 3: still needs steel. Hospitals, bridges, wind turbines, our Westport flood walls.
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  Speaker 3: And I think there's another key thing that just came
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  Speaker 3: out last week. The UN's report confirmed the world will
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  Speaker 3: overshoot 1.5 degrees, and that overshoot will be decided by China, India,
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  Speaker 3: and the United States. So between then, most of the
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  Speaker 3: world's steel and most of the world's coke and coal
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  Speaker 3: will And our Stockton here produces about 1.1 million tonnes,
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  Speaker 3: and that's 0.1% of global supply. So, you know, if
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  Speaker 3: it closes, the same steel gets made from Australian, Mongolian,
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  Speaker 3: Russian coal, and global emissions do not move. But this
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  Speaker 3: is key to me. What does move here is the
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  Speaker 3: people and the jobs. That is what gets lost. And
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  Speaker 3: looking at the feedback that's come through, it's astounding. And
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  Speaker 3: what I think, and the update is that more than
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  Speaker 3: 3,170 people have signed. The letter, and in the Bullard district,
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  Speaker 3: you know, that is one in four adults. In Westport
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  Speaker 3: town itself, that's, you know, three quarters of the households.
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  Speaker 3: And the feedback resoundingly isn't asking for coal forever. They're
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  Speaker 3: asking for time. They're asking to be heard. And they
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  Speaker 3: really aren't bucking the process. You know, a lot of
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  Speaker 3: people agree that it has to go through that sort
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  Speaker 3: of process. Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Are you worried, though, Jessie, that without sufficient support from
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  Speaker 2: the community, vocal support like this, the fast track application
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  Speaker 2: might be declined?
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  Speaker 3: I think that's always a risk. And as far as
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  Speaker 3: I understand, the fast track process is pretty rigorous. I
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  Speaker 3: think people that think that a fast track is a
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  Speaker 3: rubber stamping exercise, that's not correct. It's probably more a
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  Speaker 3: fast track in terms of the length of time. But
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  Speaker 3: the risk, obviously, is still there, and this community have
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  Speaker 3: lived through it before. And we're still, a lot of
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  Speaker 3: people might say, we just need to diversify the economy.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm involved in a lot of projects that we're
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  Speaker 3: all trying to do that, but you can't really diversify
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  Speaker 3: a collapsed economy. Well said.
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  Speaker 2: Well said, Jessie. Hey, thanks, man, and good luck with it.
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  Speaker 2: That's Jessie Creedmoor, organiser of the Open Letters.
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