‘Dial it back’: Expert urges Santana to stop confrontation over controversial gold mine
Saturday, 21 March 2026
When Barry Page was shoulder-tapped last year by mining company Santana to join its Community Liaison Group, he said yes, believing it was an opportunity to have input into the company’s planned gold mine near his home.
But Page, who represented neighbours closest to the mine, has now quit, saying the group is “just window dressing”.
Australian company Santana Minerals plans to build a large gold mine in Central Otago, including four open pit mines, extensive underground tunnelling, and a permanent 2km-long tailings dam for chemical waste, in the Dunstan Hills between Tarras and Cromwell.
The controversial project has divided local and wider communities, with fears for the environment and negative effects on other businesses pitted against promises of jobs and royalties for the Government.
Read more:
How Central Otago’s gold mine debate is being turned into a class war
Poisoning paradise? The gold mine set to tear apart a community and country
Shane Jones a ‘bully and hypocrite’: Sam Neill fires back over controversial mine
In 2025, Santana established a Community Liaison Group to “help ensure local perspectives are heard and considered as the project progresses”.
It invited a number of people to join but the main group opposing the mine, Sustainable Tarras, refused to be involved, saying the initiative was “a cynical attempt” to influence the community by controlling information, because the group would be run by Santana.
The liaison group had its first meeting in September, with Santana representatives filling the chairperson and secretary roles, and others coming from the Tarras, business, and winegrowing communities, as well as a Central Otago District Councillor.
But after just two meetings, Tarras resident Barry Page has resigned from the group, saying it is just a box-ticking exercise by Santana so it can claim it has done community consultation.
“That’s exactly what I felt, and that’s exactly why I left. Because I didn’t think we actually had a meaningful role. I just felt there was nothing useful in it.”
Page, who lives about 8km from the proposed mine, was asked to join the group by Santana’s general manager, Paul Miles, and its senior manager for communications and government relations, Polly Clague, and accepted the invitation because he wanted to ensure that if the mine went ahead, it was done properly.
But after feeling the group wasn’t achieving anything, Page said the final straw was when Santana’s representatives said they were doing lots for the community but couldn’t talk about these things.
“So if we’re the Community Liaison Group, and they can’t talk about things they’re planning to do for the community, then what’s the point?”
Page felt Santana hadn’t really fronted on the potential negative aspects of the mine.
“Instead of saying, ‘Yes, there’s a risk, of course there’s a risk, but here’s what we’re doing about it,’ they just shout back, ‘Nah, we’ve got engineers, trust us’.”
Page said he had pointed out to Santana that they were asking the public to trust them on environmental issues, but their chairman, Peter Cook, had made comments denying climate change. On social media site LinkedIn, Cook said “anthropogenic climate change, if it actually has had any material impact, is unproven” and also said it was “ridiculous” we are in a climate crisis.
“How does that compute?” Page said.
“I’ve asked a lot of questions of Santana, and not really got many satisfactory answers, even though I was on the Community Liaison Group.
“Instead, they’ve tried the, ‘Nah, there will be hardly any impact’, knowing for most people that hear that, it will be true, because they live in Wānaka or Cromwell or Alexandra.”
Page commended Santana for some of their community work, including numerous drop-in sessions across the region.
“I’ll give them their dues, they’ve turned up at the Tarras Community Hall several times and had those fireside chats. I think they’ve done OK in that sense ‒ being present and visible.
“If you had to score them, I’d give them a solid six out of 10.”
And at the same time, Page criticised Sustainable Tarras for its “very strident opposition” to Santana.
“It’s been out and out attacks, so no one’s going to talk to them from Santana if that’s what their stated approach is.”
On social media sites where the debate has become increasingly ugly and polarised, Page frequently tried to provide balance and calm. Now, he has also withdrawn from these debates, “because you can’t say anything or express an opinion without being shouted down by someone else and being labelled.
“If you express concern about the environment you’re a Greenie. If you express something that says you don’t want the mine here, you’re a NIMBY, or rich prick.
“And if you do express a strong opinion, you risk losing relationships, alliances, friendships.
“You can’t have a sensible conversation because people are just throwing rocks at one another.”
At the table or outside the tent?
Another member of the Community Liaison Group, Dewald de Beer, agreed debate had become increasingly heated, and the community more divided.
“But I don’t think it’s isolated to the mine. I think it’s where we are as a society in general. We’ve lost the ability to sit down and respect each other’s views, and disagree.”
De Beer, a Cromwell financial planner, believed Santana had been excellent in liaising with the community, and couldn’t have done anything more.
“They want to engage, they want to answer the tough questions, and the problem is, the other side aren’t willing to be in the room. It’s easy to criticise from the sidelines.”
(Sustainable Tarras says Santana won’t address hard issues at drop-in sessions, and points out it asked Santana more than 50 questions nine months ago that remain unanswered.)
Another Community Liaison Group member, Terry Davis, admits concerns have been raised within the group about its effectiveness, during its three meetings.
However, Davis said Santana’s regular information sessions throughout the region had been a massive exercise in consultation. “You can’t fault that.”
And he agreed with de Beer that people shouldn’t criticise Santana if they weren’t prepared to sit around the table with them.
Davis, an event organiser from Cromwell, represents recreational interests on the group, but is also secretary of the Otago Goldfields Heritage Trust and organiser of the trust’s World Gold Panning Championships in September, which Santana is sponsoring.
He also coached some Santana staff members’ kids at football, and had got to know them as community members, not faceless mining company executives, he said.
While debate over the mine had become tribal, emotive, and often exaggerated, Davis said this reflected the world generally, with people shouting at each other, and communities becoming split.
Santana Minerals’ CEO, Damian Spring, said members of the Community Liaison Group could step down or rejoin at any time.
Since June 2024, Santana had held 68 community drop-in sessions, delivered 50 presentations to community and business groups, updated the community via radio and social media, and attended regional events such as last weekend’s Wānaka A&P Show.
Spring said one of those visiting their stand at the show was Rural Communities Minister, New Zealand First MP Mark Patterson, who described their community engagement as “textbook”.
“So we are clearly doing something right,” Spring said in a statement to The Post.
“Our team lives and works in Central Otago. This is our community too, and we're committed to making sure people have clear, factual information about the project.
“This is not a project that has avoided scrutiny ‒ it has invited it ‒ but public debate on a project like this should be driven by facts, and we're confident in ours.”
Textbook or toxic?
Sefton Darby knows exactly what it’s like to front a controversial mining project.
He was Newmont Mining Corporation’s head of external relations when the world’s largest gold miner sought to extend excavations under houses in Waihi.
Darby was later the national manager of minerals for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and has continued working as a consultant with the mining sector.
He literally wrote the book on engagement between mining companies and communities: The Ground Between: Navigating the oil and mining debate in New Zealand.
Early on, Santana asked him to advise them on social aspects of the mine proposal, but Darby said the company seemed to switch tack when the Fast-track process became an option.
Now based in Australia, Darby said Santana’s approach to consultation was dangerous.
By appearing to align itself with the Santana Mine Supporters Group, a Facebook page with 7000 members where strong attacks are consistently made on the likes of Sustainable Tarras and Sir Sam Neill, Darby said Santana was choosing a more extreme position.
“To be blunt, they need to grow up a bit and dial it back, and set a responsible tone.”
While Sustainable Tarras’s questioning of Santana’s mine has increased in strength and stridency, Santana has also taken an increasingly aggressive stance publicly, including criticising media and opponents.
Darby says instead of taking the gloves off, the company should be stressing it was good for people to question the mine’s impacts, and even submit against it, because that tested the project.
Having grown up in Otago, with half his family and many friends in nearby Wānaka, Darby had been exposed to strong arguments from both sides of the debate, and followed the main Facebook pages on it.
“And I’m really concerned people are drifting to that one-dimensional social media view that there’s an argument that has to be won, and we want to be the winners, regardless of the really complex environmental, social, and economic issues.”
Darby said Santana had a long-term interest in the community coming through the process without becoming enemies, because the company would be here for decades.
“A lot of damage has already been done, you can see that. You don’t look at this and think, ‘Gosh, the community is going to be healthier on the other side of the decision.’
“I don’t know if they can undo the damage, but they can certainly pull it back. But it would require a pretty dramatic change of approach.”
Darby said his old boss at Waihi used to warn him they could win the official argument but end up unable to proceed because people hated them, and most successful mining companies stuck to a middle ground.
“But I don’t see that happening here. It seems pretty politicised, and pretty extreme.”
Darby said Santana had been emboldened by vigorous support from Resources Minister Shane Jones, who has promised to promote mining at “weapons-grade levels”, and labelled opponents “doom-monger, elitist-oozing naysayers” and “nutrition-deprived crocodiles”.
“I think the vast majority of New Zealand’s mining industry has been emboldened by Shane Jones’ comments. And I think that’s really bad for the future of mining in New Zealand.
“I just look at Shane Jones’ rhetoric, which is this zero-sum, ‘It’s the environment or the economy’, and that just takes the industry back 20 years, and he’s created division as a result.”
Darby had done considerable work on what makes or breaks trust between companies and communities, and the two main factors were whether the community felt heard and respected (“That’s something a Fast-track process drives a bloody truck through”); and having high-quality regulation holding companies to account and guaranteeing there would be consequences if something bad happened.
“And Jones has designed a political rhetoric and regulatory settings, which are almost custom-designed to destroy long-term trust in the industry.”
A road map for harmony
Darby lists four things Santana should do:
1. Decide what kind of community you want in the future, and work backwards from this to guide consultation and communication.
2. Don’t treat people expressing concerns as the enemy; and front-foot the mine’s negative aspects, instead of pretending it’s all “sunlight and roses”.
“If I invite someone round for a barbecue, and they just sit there and tell me how awesome they are all the time, I don’t invite them back. I don’t really believe somebody who only gives me a one-sided view of themselves. But there’s a dominant school of corporate communications and PR, which is about only telling people positive things, but I think that’s really damaging to trust.
“Actually respond to people’s concerns: Don’t write puff pieces, don’t give it to comms people to do ‒ be radically transparent about it. And that’s going to involve some really awkward conversations with people who have been having a go at you.”
3. Drop the rhetoric about “the other side’s full of rich pinot noir drinking actors”, and you’re a hypocrite if you oppose the mine but use minerals.
“About 15 years ago I used to make that argument, and I can confirm I never once changed a single person’s mind by calling them a hypocrite. It doesn’t build bridges.”
4. Ask for more regulation, not less.
When Darby tells his mining clients this, it freaks them out, and horrifies their accountants. But it’s proven to build public confidence, he says. Be proactive ‒ do things like setting up water monitoring stations, and make all environmental results public.
Just as those supporting the mine had legitimate concerns about having jobs to keep their children in the region, Darby said there were countless intelligent and capable people in Central Otago with valid questions about the proposed mine, who should be allowed to be heard by the company and the decision-making process.
“Some people may never be persuaded, but they can appreciate if that process has been fair, and the debate hasn’t put a bloody stake through the heart of the community in the process.”