1 June, Carters Beach, West Coast. This King’s Birthday weekend, a range of organisations and local community members have come together to envision a just transition away from coal and towards secure and sustainable jobs for the region.
The weekend began with a protest outside ANZ’s Greymouth branch — the bank’s only branch on the West Coast, and the banker for Bathurst Resources, the company behind a proposed 20-million-tonne coal mine on the iconic Denniston Plateau.
Protesters transformed the footpath into a theatrical scene of corporate destruction. In a mock “Bathurst Burger Bar,” protesters handed out satirical menus advertising ‘Classic Kiwi Burgers’ and ‘Steamed Native Land Snails,’ while a character named “Mr B. Hurst” theatrically ground red playdough kiwi and mimed attacks on actors in kiwi costumes — a biting commentary on the company’s real-life threat to native wildlife.
According to protest spokesperson and F&B West Coast branch chair Suzanne Hills, “ANZ is providing banking services to coal giant Bathurst Resources, whose monstrous coal mine proposal threatens not only the Denniston Plateau, but the climate we all rely on. ANZ is enabling the biggest coal proposal in NZ history because it has a short-sighted business model: profit now, climate collapse later.”
“We know that banks care about social licence and they could easily drop the worst of the worst: fossil fuel expansion companies. This isn’t about existing coal mines. It’s about massive, new fossil fuel projects like Bathurst’s Denniston mine on kiwi habitat.”
The Greymouth action capped off a nationwide week of protest, with ten demonstrations at ANZ branches from Auckland to Invercargill, calling out the bank’s role in funding climate destruction.
Over the weekend, we went door to door in Carter’s Beach to listen to community members’ thoughts about coal mining and a just transition.
On Monday, the focus shifts from protest to possibility. There will be a public event on Carters Beach from 10am, using collaborative art, sand sculpture, and community imagination to create a vision for a just, coal-free future on the West Coast. All are welcome at this family friendly event.
“West Coasters deserve better than relying on erratic boom and bust coal cycles while domestic tourism potential gathers dust. From unique mountain biking to an array of other tourist offerings, the Denniston Plateau and wider area have an opportunity to develop sustainable tourism and good, consistent, clean, unionised jobs for locals. It’s time for the government to put their money where its mouth is and invest in a community-based just transition. Bathurst should pay for much of this transition, including re-training of mine workers. From care work, jobs for nature, tourism, and building much-needed homes – there is a bright future for the West Coast if provided with the right support.” says Hills.
ANZ protest photos can be found here