Greenpeace launches campaign for Simon Bridges to be sacked

A new Greenpeace campaign targets Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges. Photo / Glenn Taylor

Greenpeace has launched a campaign calling for the sacking of Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges, saying "he doesn't have a clue what he's doing".

"On April 2, New Zealand's largest forest park was offered up for possible drilling and mining. Then a few days later Simon Bridges admitted that he didn't even know it existed," says the campaign press release.

At the time of going to press, almost 5000 emails had been sent to Prime Minister John Key, calling for him to sack his minister.

The letter sent to Mr Key is as follows:

"Dear Prime Minister,

I am deeply concerned that the Energy Minister Simon Bridges is failing to do his job properly.

Right after the world's top climate scientists sent a warning of of climate chaos for New Zealand, Simon Bridges announced that he and the Government have opened up the biggest ever area of New Zealand's lands and waters to foreign drillers and miners looking for polluting fossil fuels.

I was alarmed to then learn that he had signed off oil exploration and mining in the Victoria Forest Park, admitting he didn't even know this conservation area existed. It is an area of conservation land 200,000 hectares in size that DOC describes as 'pristine and untouched'.

In later questioning about the impacts that mining would have in our forest parks, he dismissed these concerns as 'emotive claptrap'.

This smacks of utter incompetence and a total disregard for the values that New Zealanders hold dear.

This is just the latest in a long line of ridiculous and disgraceful acts by Bridges: admitting he had not even read the Anadarko oil spill plans, outlawing protest at sea, and he's been accused in Parliament of telling 'blatant lies'.

As someone who is concerned about the future of our country, I demand that you sack Minister Bridges and replace him with a competent Minister who will embrace our own, cutting-edge clean energy industry, which could provide tens of thousands of jobs, and give our economy a multi-billion dollar boost.

And this means cancelling reckless plans to hand over our land and seas to risky drilling and polluting mining too."

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