In a video posted to Instagram, Neill said he stood by his opposition to \u201ca big, actually a vast, open-cast goldmine that has proposed to be fast-tracked in my neighbourhood, in central Otago\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stand by those views, and I\u2019m glad I voiced them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I wasn\u2019t prepared for was the personal abuse I would come in for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neill said the backlash included criticism from Resources Minister Shane Jones.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that started with Shane Jones \u2026 he chose to make this personal, and I\u2019m baffled as to why he would do that \u2026 he\u2019s a guy I don\u2019t understand. Not at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said some online responses from supporters of the mine had gone further.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of personal abuse that came in online, all over the shop, was frankly very shocking and disturbing, including threats of physical violence.<\/p>\n
The Bendigo-Ophir project is Australian mining company Santana Mineral’s core focus. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some very unpleasant people among the supporters of this mine. I\u2019m not saying they\u2019re all like that, but boy, there are some loose cannons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neill also criticised a recent column by commentator Damien Grant on Stuff, calling it \u201cextremely personal\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s another one who doesn\u2019t seem to think I deserve an opinion about anything,\u201d Neill said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fight goes on \u2026 and we really need to stop this filthy mine. That will be the end of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposal is currently being assessed through the Government\u2019s fast-track approvals process, with a decision expected by late October.<\/p>\n
Ben Tomsett is a multimedia journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a video posted to Instagram, Neill said he stood by his opposition to \u201ca big, actually a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1903,3376,74,9092,1558,1853,90934,4241,202307,692,42,8454,13739,57537,18461,43,9629,1523,2849,29056,19764,18460,312,27043,8485,49954,26452,40,38,41,39,13118,20424],"class_list":{"0":"post-391215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-abuse","9":"tag-actor","10":"tag-after","11":"tag-against","12":"tag-been","13":"tag-central","14":"tag-disturbing","15":"tag-gold","16":"tag-goldmine","17":"tag-he","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-including","20":"tag-largescale","21":"tag-mine","22":"tag-neill","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-otago","25":"tag-over","26":"tag-physical","27":"tag-proposed","28":"tag-received","29":"tag-sam","30":"tag-says","31":"tag-shocking","32":"tag-sir","33":"tag-speaking","34":"tag-threats","35":"tag-top-news","36":"tag-top-stories","37":"tag-topnews","38":"tag-topstories","39":"tag-violence","40":"tag-violent"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}