16/8/2017 — General Lies, damned lies, statistics and social...

16/8/2017 — General
Lies, damned lies, statistics and social media
By Ross Louthean
No one in New Zealand would doubt that the anti-miners, Greenpeace and other anti-development groups are media savvy.
Over the decades I have heard the claims that are rarely questioned by the media, either because it is a good beat-up story line or it is believed by the few journalists not interested in allowing all relevant parties a right to be quoted.
Social media is now a big weapon and is well received by a couple of supportive websites or those just interested in cut-and-paste reports, without raising a question.
This has been seen with such issues as anti-oil exploration where seismic activity is now painted as “seismic blasting” a view years ago blamed by some for the Christchurch earthquakes – and now adopted as a term by some journalists.
The Coromandel has been a home for protest that first was raised when the Martha open cut began – a mine that could see locals mutating because of arsenic, mercury and other nasties.
The problem for the likes of Coromandel Watchdog and others is that many of the people living in Waihi either had an association with the original Martha underground mine or their relatives had. The alarmist bulldust did not ring true for most, but the idea of jobs in an area of then high unemployment did.
When the subsidence occurred on ground near the Martha pit, including the mine’s then administration office, the Greens Party claimed the modern open cut mine was responsible and must cease.
However, a subsequent report by GNS Science and other experts found that a decision by the early underground miners to stop backfilling stopes resulted in those voids progressively travelling upward to near-surface.
One of the current battlegrounds is the Trans-Tasman Resources approval for ironsands mining on the Taranaki Bight where job losses are occurring because of the collapse of the oil price. The protestors have claimed a substantial number of signatures to petitions.
The same scenario is evolving on the Coromandel where protestors have claimed that Karangahake, which produced so much of New Zealand’s early wealth from gold mining, was a “sacred mountain.” This was a phrase that alerted media copy tasters overseas to use the statement of protest against New Talisman Gold Mines Ltd’s (NZX & ASX: NTL) advancement towards re-opening the historic Talisman gold mine.
This was claimed to be a sudden situation against the wishes of the locals and that it would interfere with tourism in the area. However, NTL has spent more than a decade (originally as Heritage Gold NZ) getting to this stage and, in the process it has made available old mine equipment and artefacts for the Department of Conservation (DOC) to utilise at and near the old mine workings decked out for tourists.
One of the issues the anti-miners use is social media and some Kiwi observers and special market analysts overseas are seeing a potential abuse of these claims.
One observer told NZResources that Coromandel Watchdog and its associate Protect Karangahake have been deceptive by inflating their figures of support – including an impression that 1% of New Zealanders have signed an online petition against the Talisman redevelopment.
There are a series of protests and campaigns against the mine coming in the next month, and one of the issues will be how real are the statistics on supporters and whether they have any local relevance.
One IT company in the United Kingdom has looked at some of the anti-resource development campaigns in New Zealand and found serious issues with one website for the Coromandel and petitions produced.
A security expert at this firm observed two petitions- one on “save Karangahake Gorge” and petitions to the Hauraki District Council, Waikato Regional Council and DOC.
This security expert said anyone could today use fake emails to cast votes, as websites don’t always require email verification.
“As a controlled test we were able to cast hundreds of votes within a few minutes using artificial email addresses,” he said.
Websites, he said, do not always verify if a voter is human or not, and the Coromandel website viewed did not apply any such verification.
He said a website may not verify if the “voter” belongs to the country or region specified.
The security expert said with this type of unchecked system, anyone can exploit a voting system and cast fake votes with emails and computer Bots.
If British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was alive today then he may well have an addition to the famous quote: “There are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics.” You may well add the addendum of “social media.”