Ryan Bridge: The real message in the Government's fuel plan

The most interesting thing about the fuel ration plan has nothing to do with fuel rationing.

Read the Q & A script the Minister's office provided and you quickly realise this thing will probably never see the light of day in any practical sense.

Trump would probably need to drop a nuke for us to get there.

And there's no prioritisation until 'level 4'.

It's all very high trust and that's probably for the best.

But what the plan spells out, clear as day, are the most important industries, businesses and government agencies in the country.

The ones that actually matter.

And top of the list, literally first in line for a 100% fuel allocation, are ambulances, Fire and Emergency and Police.

Tell me the last time these guys were given proper resources to do their jobs effectively?

Paramedics are now, according to the union, being asked to do cleaning. They're being told not to change the sheets on gurney's after every patient to save on laundry.

They're not fully funded and must go cap-in-hand to keep themselves running.

The firefighters spend as much time striking for adequate trucks to fight the fires as they do, well, fighting the fires.

And as for Police, yesterday we learnt a third of resignations are due to officers being poached by the Aussies.

Some of this stuff is funded by levies, some by taxes, and the rest is just not funded at all.

This is not a cry for more taxes to find them, but rather a suggestion that anything not on the critical list is where you'd start cutting costs.

What the government has just done, wittingly or not, is tell us exactly what keeps this country running.

It's not a fuel rationing list. It's a blueprint for who is actually important in this country. Emergency services, food, freight, farming, airports, roads. We should be directing resources towards them and cutting red tape around them.

That, surely, would be one way of getting the country 'back on track'.

Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.