Written By:
- Date published:
10:07 pm, March 27th, 2026 - 23 comments
Categories: covid-19, national/act government, nz first, Shane Jones, winston peters -
Tags: fuel crisis, Nostradamus
A rare moment of insight by Shane Jones today saying that the govt isn’t Nostradamus & they can’t forsee all scenarios.
Good to see some reflection from the NZ First Deputy Leader, but two very important points here:
Labour’s response was globally lauded & now confirmed by two NZ Royal Commissions as “among the best in the world” with strong health, social and economic outcomes.
Yet NZ First & this Government spent another $15m to try to find dirt on Labour despite knowing how challenging and uniquely unforeseen that time was. Winston Peters was also advocating for Kiwis to get vaxxed ASAP then but now pretends he didn’t. National were calling for the government to take on more debt. David Seymour appeared on pro vaccination videos and said Kiwis should get tax rebates to get vaccinated (more debt) yet all have spent the last few years attacking Labour – again very bad faith.
2. This current war driven crisis is very serious, but far more predictable. Analysts everywhere have spoken of the impacts to supply chains, economy, inflation.
This government could act now, but instead, is only implementing what can be called the “head in sand” approach. Possibly because they’ve spent 2 years undoing everything Labour did while cementing our future into fossil fuels and calling environment & strategy “woke”. Incompetent, un-serious and a donor oriented government.
PS Mark Mitchell apparently believes climate change is still up for debate. These figures no longer earn the position of being in power
I don't rate Jones, and agree with much of your criticism especially that they're criticising Labour's handling of the pandemic while we are on the edge of a very serious crisis.
But disagree with this,
The worse case scenario is NZ runs out of fuel. That means food and medicine shortages, and basically collapse of society. It's not primarily an economic/inflation issue (the economy would collapse as well). Few people can get their head around that, the enormity of it and that it might actually happen. I've been reading various trusted people for a month and I still have no idea how likely this is. It's a huge unknown, and incredibly hard to plan for. No government is going to talk about that out loud this early on because it will cause panic if they did.
The lesser but still very serious crisis is that we don't run out of fuel but have medium to severe restrictions on fuel. The issue here is that the government has to balance the economy with the preparation. If they go early, restrict fuel, push NZ into a deep recession and then it turns out it wasn't needed, not only is that the death of this government in November, but it actually harms the country.
I don't think they've got the settings right, I think a Labour led government would handle it differently and be more precautionary, but that balance between economy and planning is real. And not easy to predict.
I wrote a long reply but it somehow got consolidated into "This". I must have accidentally deleted it.
Disagree – I think you will find that even as far back as when Winston Peters was claiming this war would be over more quickly than people realise, that supply chain disruptions were already confirmed.
Second, the IEA last week encouraged govts to tell their people the truth. Apparently yesterday, per someone that watched the presser, our government effectively said that the people of the country are on a need to know basis.
Third, economic impacts yes but as you yourself mention – and widely reported elsewhere – food supply is a larger issue. To me ultimately no matter which way you cut it, that comes down to economic for some.
Fourth, there are an enormous array of things that can be done right now. From mitigation to prevention to contingency, etc it's bizarre that we are seeing nothing. At the very least leisure users of diesel even – and it's because this impact is so far ranging and consequential that the govt's actions are so important.
Finally, the above article speaks mostly to the hypocrisy of this government. Wanting understanding for themselves but pretty maliciously not giving it to the last – despite the actual evidence and chain of events
That in itself is an immorality that doesn't deserve the halls of power. And in this situation, non-action is not the right action. There is a lot of data that supports that this fuel situation isn’t a blip but the government’s head in sand approach will only make things worse. My 2c
I think you might have misunderstood my point.
Supply chain disruptions are already baked in, but we don't know how bad (because we don't know how long the war will run, nor how a 20% constriction on fuel supplies globally will affect the global economy nor NZ. Too many variables
National aren't doing enough, I said in my comment that I agree with a lot of your criticism of the government, and I think National are getting this wrong.
My point was about the idea that this crisis is far more predictable than the pandemic. Almost no-one is talking about people in NZ starving, and no government can talk about that at this stage, because people will panic over food as well as fuel, and probably there will be a run on the banks as well. Have you seen any first world nation government talking about this?
National could be giving citizens better information, I don't particularly trust them in competence nor ideology. But that wasn't my point. My point is we have no idea what is going to happen apart from the already baked in supply line disruptions. Those aren't the worst thing that might happen.
I do disagree with that.
Covid-19 was a new virus, corpses were literally piling up around Europe, UK, Asia.
There's no playbook for it – the intensity, fear, risk is much quicker, much more consequential
There were fears of global depression, unknown virulence of the virus, unknown trajectory etc
This is a well documented situation where impacts are known, but take time to work through the system.
There's no words to my mind of how unqualified this govt is – it feels like they are just waiting for it to happen before they act more, which is interesting but compounds the perception
A week or so ago Nicola Willis claimed she was given scenarios by Treasury putting worst case at 3.6% – that in itself is an absolute joke and another economy guy modelled that that would assume oil was well under $4
In other words, this government is either telling us that officials are unprepared and/or they themselves are, but given the prevalence of data and modelling out there, I'll put this on this government.
One more point that's hard to put across here is the govt has access to extremely detailed reports on precise impacts – whether to plastic, food supply, diesel, transport etc. They aren't in the dark, and they have excellent people around to advise them if need be. The decision here isn't a short term economic save anymore, in my view it requires a far more wide ranging and long term lens as to how our strategy pivots and how we protect the country particularly around food and safety, as well as "economy".
of course. I've been writing about resiliency in the NZ context for 10 years. National are ideologically incapable of thinking that strategically around that, and they're not alone.
The world cannot be faulted for the regularity and scale of warnings of massive crises to come.
The oil crisis v climate change on now is just the current obvious one.
hopefully more people will be on board with the need for NZ to move towards reslience now, but it could go that other ways, with people becoming conservative as hard times hit.
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Absolutely. The decision to bury head in sand by the CoC is a concious one. I mean how much warning do you need?? Iran clearly has stated the consequences of an attack and with climate change the warnings have been endless. The CoC made a concious decision to ignore it all and then bowed and supplicated before Trump and Netanyahu just to cap everything off.
Even Nostradamus wasn't Nostradamus. One can find many "predictions" of his that came true, but which were only identified/interpreted as predictions long after the forecast event had actually occurred. As far as I'm concerned, the final nail in his coffin came once the year 2000 had passed, and Paris still hadn't been destroyed in a missile attack, as prophesied in one of his less impenetrable and equivocal quatrains.
Did he not predict that a Muslim empire would arise in the middle east early in this century. I remember that from the Orsin Welles documentary movie about Nostradamus, The man who saw tomorrow. Given current events in the region that may even be possible.
An Arab one, one of the Moslem law, who would conquer Europe. Arab Moslem rule in Spain had come to an end, but the Ottoman empire held land of both Europeans and Arabs back then. It bordered Iran.
https://timemaps.com/civilizations/ottoman-empire/
AI Overview
True Tyrian purple is not a single flat color; it shifts between red and blue-violet depending on the light. Tyrian purple, the prized ancient dye known for its deep purple and red hues.
Rich (global) sea trade route, two between Africa and Iran, each side of Arabia.
Inferred meaning, the Moslem regime that controlled the ME region between Europe and Asia would have global trade power importance.
I think the prophecy mentioned by Welles was to occur this century, if my memory serves me correctly.
The world of the time and a little knowledge of history would have informed him of the geo-politics.
Then it was the Moslem Ottoman empire between Europe and Asia. Behind them is Moslem Iran (pre Islam the Sassanids and Parthians were in this role). In even earlier times Persia had a confrontation with Greece.
I should add, that the term/word stan is used in Farsi and Turkish languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-stan
The great Saturn.
The IRGC knows of the quatrain.
Taking land Tyran Fosia. Yemen.
I have a deep suspicion that National and Act condemn Labour, Ardern, and Robertson not because they failed the people of Aotearoa – but because they SUCCEEDED. Whilst not everything went well (and I had my criticisms), by and large the plans and action succeeded in (a) saving businesses from collapse and more importantly, (b) saving lives.
As I've said ad nauseum, Sweden's covid death toll was EIGHT TIMES ours. But their population is only twice that of our country.
Some estimates put a potential death toll at 20,000-plus here in NZ had we not acted.
Ardern and Robertson succeeded during an emergency where MIQ had to be set up at speed and our borders closed to tghe outside world. There were the usual moaners – such as the three young women on Newshub/TV3 news who were whi ning they couldn't bring their boyfriends into the country. Or the person who complained at the "poor views" from her MIQ hotel in Rotorua. Or – and I love this one – the couple who complained the food was TOO GOOD and why were taxpayers paying for it!?
The media – including RNZ, by the way – happily platformed all this grumbling.
Meanwhile, overseas, millions wereperishing from this wretched virus.
That's what Ardern and Robertson saved us from. They were successful, and by the gods, the Right can't have that! They can't have Labour looking good, so Atlas shills like Stuff's Luke Malpass are encouraging the narrative of incompetence/waste/etc.
I didn't mention Winston Peters above. His agenda is slightly differently in that he doesn't want to smear Labour's success – he's re-writing history to pander to the anti-vax/conspiracy cookers. All for votes. That's the kind of deeply cynical man he is.
I think most New Zealanders are waiting for an Ardern/Robertson-style proactive response from this rotten government. Sadly, they'll be waiting a long time.
BTW; good piece, Mountain Tui!
Or even a 3rd rate Carnival sideshow impersonation..NACT1 strike me as some kind of sleazy medium (as per Kelvin Cruickshank et al) albeit lacking the cold reading ability.
Re
And this from the Minister for Emergency Management and Recovery?! FFS.
Do any of NACT1 actually accept Anthropogenic Climate Change? And NZ's part in, and plan to mitigate?
Rhetorical really…as IMO, No!
That’s a good question and the answer is: less so and it’s dropping fast.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/27/widening-political-gap-deepens-cracks-in-nz-climate-consensus/
That is a good question, and Sam Crawley’s answer is troubling. Might 'The Centrist' (launched by James 'Oil and Gas' Grenon) and other media organs be playing a role?
How to ensure the (continued) concentration of wealth and power? Follow the $$$$
Apologies for the 'all-bold' text at the end, due to my error in a last-minute edit.
NACT1's Climate Goals…are not what we in NZ, and our Planet Earth, desperately require. Their goals are specifically for the selfish and sorted 1%ers : (
I was reading the following RNZ article with quite an interesting Header ! And was again thinking that the Minister in Charge : Energy Simon Watts, is a man promoted wayyy above his actual appropriate pay grade. As proven many times by his (lack of) knowledge base,and (in)competence level.
NACT1 : a coalition of dunderheads.
Watts Simon, been up to…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Watts#Second_term,_2023%E2%80%93present