In April 2018, Ardern dropped her bombshell: an immediate ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration permits. Bound by Cabinet collective responsibility, Peters (then Deputy Prime Minister) and Jones (Regional Economic Development Minister) stood behind the policy in public, despite clear private discomfort. They traded the future of the energy sector for ministerial titles and coalition perks. That was the price of power in 2018.
Two men kept their jobs; hundreds of kiwis lost theirs.
Fast forward to 2023. Out of Parliament and licking their wounds, Peters and Jones spent years on the hustings denouncing the ban as “economic vandalism.” They returned to government in the three-way coalition and immediately secured the repeal as a bottom line. Jones, handed the Resources portfolio, set about dismantling the policy he once helped enforce.
The pivot didn’t stop at repeal. In May 2025, Jones rolled out a $200 million Crown co-investment fund to de-risk new gas developments. By August 2025, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act had formally buried the 2018 ban. And this week Peters upped the ante: an election year promise of a $1 billion National Subsurface Development Survey to map offshore basins and unlock “Norway-scale” wealth for the state.
There is something almost comical about how politicians reach for a billion dollars the moment to signal seriousness. As an MP I used to explain in speeches a billion dollars: a bundle of $100 bills is $10,000 and is a centimetre high. A metre is a million. A billion?
That’s a kilometer high stack of $100 bills. I had one grizzled Southland farmer still looking confused. I asked if he could now picture a billion. He replied: “No, sir — I’m still trying to imagine a $100 bill.”
Yet here we are. NZ First’s latest promise is another billion dollars of taxpayer money to chase the very resources they helped lock away just years earlier. The same party that sold its soul for Cabinet seats in 2017 now positions itself as the great defender of energy security and provincial jobs.
This is classic Peters: ruthless pragmatism dressed up as nationalism.
In 1996, the price of supporting National wasn’t just the baubles — it was a $5 billion in extra spending, an eye-watering sum at the time.
It wasn’t even determined where the money was to go. It was just to be spent.
Such transactional politics is what MMP delivers. It is especially evident with a party in the middle prepared always to negotiate between National and Labour. There has never been an accounting of the cost of the baubles of office but it is many, many billions. We vote for it. And we pay for it. Over and over.
Two men kept their jobs; hundreds of kiwis lost theirs.
Fast forward to 2023. Out of Parliament and licking their wounds, Peters and Jones spent years on the hustings denouncing the ban as “economic vandalism.” They returned to government in the three-way coalition and immediately secured the repeal as a bottom line. Jones, handed the Resources portfolio, set about dismantling the policy he once helped enforce.
The pivot didn’t stop at repeal. In May 2025, Jones rolled out a $200 million Crown co-investment fund to de-risk new gas developments. By August 2025, the Crown Minerals Amendment Act had formally buried the 2018 ban. And this week Peters upped the ante: an election year promise of a $1 billion National Subsurface Development Survey to map offshore basins and unlock “Norway-scale” wealth for the state.
There is something almost comical about how politicians reach for a billion dollars the moment to signal seriousness. As an MP I used to explain in speeches a billion dollars: a bundle of $100 bills is $10,000 and is a centimetre high. A metre is a million. A billion?
That’s a kilometer high stack of $100 bills. I had one grizzled Southland farmer still looking confused. I asked if he could now picture a billion. He replied: “No, sir — I’m still trying to imagine a $100 bill.”
Yet here we are. NZ First’s latest promise is another billion dollars of taxpayer money to chase the very resources they helped lock away just years earlier. The same party that sold its soul for Cabinet seats in 2017 now positions itself as the great defender of energy security and provincial jobs.
This is classic Peters: ruthless pragmatism dressed up as nationalism.
In 1996, the price of supporting National wasn’t just the baubles — it was a $5 billion in extra spending, an eye-watering sum at the time.
It wasn’t even determined where the money was to go. It was just to be spent.
Such transactional politics is what MMP delivers. It is especially evident with a party in the middle prepared always to negotiate between National and Labour. There has never been an accounting of the cost of the baubles of office but it is many, many billions. We vote for it. And we pay for it. Over and over.
Rodney Hide is a former Minister and leader of the ACT Party. This article was sourced from HERE.
3 comments:
Rodney - what a silly column. Yep, a lot has changed. In 2018 there was no war that threatened world instability with cutting off oil supply. Ideally, in the perfect world reducing oil would be great. But then 2026 came along. Oddly enough the whole world has come to realise (hopefully even the deluded left) - we still need minerals/oil. Those deluded morons (the left) who still think we dont should be the first ones to go without - then listen to them squeal (more loudly than they already do - if thats possible) when they cant; heat their house, buy a tv, update their mobile phone, drive to work, drink their latte's etc.
So the need to secure our future is actually not a silly idea. You will remember the ramifications of the country going 'cold' under Ardern, she had to start importing dirty overseas coal to keep the lights on and the heaters running!. The left have not learned anything - and dont seem to have the ability to understand reality. Until we are completly off the requirement for dirty oil (and we are no where near that) then we actually need to DO SOMETHING about it. Winston is.
Agility is the buzzword and political flexitarianism leads to survival.
Peters should have pulled out of the coalition with Labour the moment Ardern pulled that stunt. A billion dollars will go nowhere near fixing this and the cumulative damage arising would already would be many multiples of that. Unserious people the lot of them!
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