NZ Engine

Source: New Zealand Government

How can lessons from the COVID Response help navigate fuel shortages?

Thank you, Matthew, and thank you all for being here this morning. 

I’d like to speak plainly to you about the event affecting every part of business right now. I’d like to cast it through another lens we try not to think about, let alone see the world through.

Current situation

There is no point pretending this conflict in Iran is abstract or somebody else’s problem. As soon as the waterway that carries around one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption is thrown into uncertainty it becomes real for an isolated island nation like ours. Insurance costs, supply chains, energy markets, all the bills businesses pay, and the prices families see at the pump are all affected. 

Right now we have sufficient fuel stocks in New Zealand and we are working hard across diplomatic, commercial, and industry channels to ensure that remains the case. 

Here are the facts:

Our national fuel stocks continue to be robust across petrol, diesel, and jet fuel.

Latest projections show that New Zealand has 59.3 days of petrol supply, 54.5 days of diesel supply, and 50.4 days of jet fuel supply available nationally. We have five ships expected to arrive in coming days and another ten ships a few weeks away. 

Last week we announced a fuel plan detailing the planning in place for if this situation worsens. Introducing restrictions on fuel use is NOT the plan, but it is better to have a plan you don’t use than get caught with no plan at all.

Plan A is to keep working with energy companies and foreign governments to ensure supply keeps up. The supply-side comes first. So far, the available days of supply has bounced around, and people have argued over which ships to count, but supply has stayed over six weeks’ worth for the last three weeks. Our first goal is to keep it that way.

If, and only if, there is a risk of running out, would we go to demand-side restrictions. 

Finer details of the plan are still being worked on. Government departments are talking to people in different industries every day to work out how the plan could work if it came to that. 

There are still details to come, we are continuing to work on it and will give updates as soon as possible.

However, for now, we have enough supply, and our aim is to use the supply side to keep it that way.

Five lessons from the COVID response

Nobody wants to relive COVID, but that period had many lessons if we want to learn them. We’d be mad to ignore a live experiment in politics and policy during a scary global situation.

I spent those years in opposition, but I half joked that I wanted to be the ‘leader of the proposition.’ During that time we didn’t just criticise the Government, as was our party’s constitutional role, we also put up a series of papers about how we’d do it better.

Today we face another event that is global, could be scary, and has already invoked a response from Government. What a time to dust off some of those reflections from that time.

Avoid the time trap

The first and most important lesson was not to let the situation warp time. During COVID the Government slowed down time. The daily press conferences made 24 hours seem like a year, and the first 24 minutes we spent waiting to hear the day’s figures felt like a month.

We forgot that New Zealand would outlive the pandemic, and our country would have a big future, but decisions made then would cast a long shadow on that future.

The fiscal situation was the most obvious time warp victim. The figures were eye watering. The Government borrowed a net $100 billion in the four years from June 2019 to June 2023.

That’s why the financial support announced to date is:

Targeted, at low-income working households with children
Timely, it can be done with existing tax credits rather than creating a new mechanism
Temporary, it will end in either a year or when regular petrol falls below $3, linking it to the problem
Funded, it comes from within the allowance announced in the December Budget Policy Statement, so it will require savings elsewhere instead of new spending

The time trap lesson also puts a stark lens on some of the other proposals being put about. We’re told we should cancel excise taxes or road user charges, cancel road projects, or enable online learning. 

These ideas would all have long tails of effects that we cannot ignore.

Balancing human needs
Do it with, not to the people
Remember we’re all human, all New Zealanders
Learn from the world, and don’t reinvent the wheel

Education points to the second COVID lesson. We need to keep all of New Zealanders’ goals in perspective. I am still astonished at how quickly education was glossed over.

In many ways, education is the only investment that matters. Thoughtful people can solve lots of problems. Unthinking people can cause lots of problems. How educated the population is will trump any other variable across a generation. But, in the COVID time trap we abandoned it.

Last week I was asked countless times whether I thought students should be learning from home because of the fuel crisis. I said of course not, because we cannot afford to put education back at the bottom of the totem pole after working so hard to get students back at school. And I wondered, as I was being asked that question, whether attendance had actually fallen significantly. It hadn’t. We know that because we’ve made daily attendance data available online.

In response to a crisis, you have to think about all human priorities and you have to follow the facts. That’s why education, for one thing, is not going to be sacrificed in the event this Government needs to move to demand-side rationing.

The third lesson was to work with, rather than against people.  The COVID response took on its own momentum. By the end of 2021, we’d been in a state of crisis management for 18 months. The then Prime Minister’s nearly belligerent refrain ‘if you want to do x, y, or z, get vaccinated,’ confirmed she had gone too far.

But vaccination was only the most infamous flashpoint. Many others felt the response was being done to rather than with them.

There was the school that had its Australian approved RAT tests confiscated, how dare they, take initiative?! 

There were the Auckland restaurants who were told one morning they could open for the America’s Cup that day. They had to explain that they were very grateful but to serve lunch they needed to roster staff and order food the night before, at least.

There were the hairdressers and event promoters who showed they could operate as safely as very similar industries, but found deaf ears and frustration.

That’s why the Government has been working double time behind the scenes to do two things: Keep fuel supply up and be ready to manage demand as a last resort.

There are extensive discussions with businesses of every sector about how those steps are or would be taken. Rather than jumping to the podium, we are quietly making plans we hope to never use.

The Red Tape Tipline

We’re not only working with business and community to help solve problems we know about, we’re open to hearing new solutions altogether.

For all the briefings we get from officials – in fact I’d be at one right now if I wasn’t here – there will also be businesses on the frontline who are experiencing the strain firsthand and experiencing what is going on before a government department has figured it out.

If we’re learning lessons from our COVID approach, we might as well do the same from other countries. Taiwan implemented an approach during the COVID outbreak where they went ‘this is a tough time for everyone, since you’re the ones dealing with it every day, what do you need us to do to help?’. Through public feedback they were able to develop tools that improved their response, with apps that helped with contact tracing and collated data.

That’s why I’m also encouraging businesses to come directly to the Ministry for Regulation with areas we can relax regulations and support the response. 

In a disruption, every unnecessary delay matters. If there are rules, forms, approvals, or compliance requirements that make it harder to import, store, distribute, or use fuel efficiently, those issues should be identified now, not when the pressure is at its peak.

People can submit examples of regulations that could be reviewed, suspended, simplified, or better coordinated to support New Zealand’s fuel resilience via the red tape tipline.

This could include barriers affecting fuel transport, storage, distribution, local delivery, freight movements, business operations, or the ability of firms to adapt quickly to changing supply conditions.

The tipline has already fixed many things that matter to Kiwis, whether it’s allowing them to build sheds on their property, fixing scaffolding regulations and ending prohibition on medical conferences taking place.

Already there’s been more than 75 submissions, with some very interesting ideas. These are currently being analysed to see which amount to the most common-sense changes and will be able to have the most tangible impact on our response. I’ll have more to say on that soon. 

We are lucky to have democracy and due process. They give each person the dignity of being seen and heard. The COVID response was a lesson in what not to do. 

The closure of Parliament can be debated. Other countries closed more, our still functioned online at times, but there was something else I think we should worry about. 

People accepted the suspension of democracy and the rule of law so easily. When the Police Commissioner said the police would follow people around and perhaps ‘take them to our place’ without any actual law to enforce, people shrugged. When the Leader of the Opposition couldn’t get to Parliament, too many people including the media shrugged again. 

It’s essential that any possible restrictions on normal life are done clearly and transparently, with no short cuts on democracy or due process. That matters in a fuel crisis just as much as it did in COVID, because any move to ration demand or limit normal activity will touch millions of ordinary New Zealanders. If people are being asked to change how they live, they are entitled to know the rules, the reasons, and the legal basis for them.

Otherwise, you risk ignoring the fourth lesson, and people feel they haven’t been listened to. That’s when you get riots on the lawns of Parliament.  

New Zealanders during COVID could be forgiven for thinking we were the only country on earth. Everything had to be done our way, as if it was being done for the first time.

Those Aussie-approved thermometers being confiscated was a good example. Today we’ve already harmonised fuel standards with Australia, in stark contrast to that approach.

Like COVID, our isolation is a big factor in the current fuel situation. Then, we had several weeks’ notice as each variant crawled across the globe. Today, we’re tracing back ships coming to Marsden Point from Korean and Singaporean refineries, and then the ships going to those refineries. 

If we can see what’s coming, we can take time to prepare, and we can watch what others are doing to plan our own response. We should never be too proud to learn from another country. We’re pretty good, but we don’t have a monopoly on wisdom.

Why the response matters

We can’t let today’s crisis erode our country’s future. 

The latest Treasury figures put net core Crown debt at $191.4 billion. That alone is a reason to treat every new commitment seriously, because every dollar we borrow today is a dollar we lose the freedom to use tomorrow. 

Fiscal discipline is what stops the first shock being followed by a second one. It is what helps contain inflation pressure. It is what protects interest rates from staying higher for longer. And it is what means that if genuine hardship support becomes necessary, government can provide it without making everything else worse.

So, when we say do not take your eye off the fiscals, we are not changing the subject.

You can already hear the other instinct from the opposition. More spending. More intervention. More borrowed relief. More politics built around the appearance of action. That’s what would be happening if the other lot were in charge for this. 

With cool heads, we can respond to fuel shortages from the Iran war without committing the knee-jerk mistakes made during COVID.

It means understanding that our long-term future must not be eroded by short-term political theatrics. That is the approach we have to bring to this response.

We cannot prevent every external shock. But we can make sure New Zealand responds with fiscal discipline and common sense. That will be the evidence that we’ve learnt our lessons. 

Thank you.

Source: NZ Ministry for Primary Industries

Manufacturers of agricultural chemicals and veterinary medicines looking to enter or expand into the trans-Tasman market can now take part in an improved registration pathway pilot to get their products into the hands of customers in both countries.

New Zealand Food Safety and the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) are inviting expressions of interest from industry for joint Australia–New Zealand product registrations.

“By streamlining the registration process for agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines across our 2 countries, we are working to remove obstacles for the primary sectors and the communities that depend on them,” says New Zealand Food Safety deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle.

“We have similar regulatory approaches, so it makes sense for us to increase the scope of our teamwork to position Australia and New Zealand as an attractive region for new product launches and innovation.” 

We are seeking expressions of interest from companies with:

• new products intended for registration in both Australia and New Zealand, or
• products already registered in one country that could be advanced more quickly in the other market.

The groundwork for this landmark collaboration was laid on 24 November 2025, when APVMA and New Zealand Food Safety signed an updated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) strengthening the longstanding trusted regulator relationship between the 2 agencies.

Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) [PDF, 1.3 MB]

The updated MoU is designed to streamline regulatory pathways for crop-protection products and veterinary medicines by increasing acceptance and reliance on scientific assessments undertaken by either regulator.

Since signing the updated MoU, both agencies have been working closely to align processes in preparation for shared assessments.

From the expressions of interest received, applications will be selected for joint assessment. This pilot will allow both regulators to test and refine shared-assessment processes, while offering participating companies the opportunity to benefit from accelerated regulatory pathways.

For further information or to submit expressions of interest, email:

Source: New Zealand Police

A new custody training facility designed to replicate real-world policing environments has been officially opened at the Royal New Zealand Police College (RNZPC) today.

The purpose-built facility includes cells, CCTV systems, monitoring equipment and a custody van, allowing staff to train through realistic, end-to-end scenarios.

The opening ceremony was attended by Police Minister Mark Mitchell, Assistant Commissioner Capability and Infrastructure Sam Hoyle, Assistant Commissioner Deployment Jeanette Park, and some of the staff central to designing and developing the facility from the National Custody Team and the RNZPC.

Assistant Commissioner Sam Hoyle says this facility represents Police’s commitment to safety in custody.  

“Around the country, Police manage around 100,000 people in custody each year and we’re responsible for their care. Often the people in custody are vulnerable and require intensive monitoring and support,” he says.

“This facility allows us to train in conditions that closely reflect the realities of working in the high-risk custody environment.”

Assistant Commissioner Hoyle says already seen the value of scenario-based training through Scenario Village, opened in 2024.

“This will be especially useful for cell extractions, which are complicated, technical and require staff to operate with precision to keep everyone safe,” says Assistant Commissioner Hoyle.

“As well as being equipped to monitor those detained in the custody training facility the cameras in the facility will also be used to record training and provide feedback.”

The facility will be used to deliver training to a wide range of staff including recruits and Authorised Officers.

Assistant Commissioner Hoyle says delivering this facility was a joint project between the National Custody Team, districts and the RNZPC to deliver a functional space.

“This project has shown what we can deliver with innovative thinking and collaboration,” Assistant Commissioner Hoyle says.

“Being fiscally responsible was at the forefront of our planning. The space for the facility was previously an unused garage at the RNZPC that has been repurposed.

“A lot of work has gone into the development of the new custody training facility to ensure it is as realistic as possible. This will be significant for strengthening our training for custody.”

ENDS

Issued by the Police Media Centre

Note – B Roll of training in the facility is available on request for media outlets

Source: Privacy Commissioner

31 Mar 2026, 09:00

Agencies often associate the Privacy Act’s security requirements with technology controls that can protect personal information, such as IT systems and cyber-security protections.

However, many notifiable privacy breaches result from failures in things like robust physical record-keeping practices, or building and maintaining staff capability and awareness through effective privacy training.

Agencies failing to implement these controls cause a range of privacy breaches that are reported to our office, often because of unauthorised or accidental access to, or disclosure of, personal information.

The Privacy Act states that the loss of personal information is also a privacy breach (section 112).

‘Accidental loss’ privacy breaches can result in agencies being unable to determine whether personal information has been accessed, and therefore whether serious harm has been caused to affected individuals as a result. If it’s unclear whether serious harm has occurred as the result of such a breach, agencies still have an obligation to assess whether it’s reasonable to believe serious harm is likely to occur, and notify us if that is the case.

An unsecured USB stick containing personal health information was lost

We were notified of a breach where a health agency had lost a USB stick. The device was not encrypted or password protected and contained personal information belonging to over 2,000 individuals. This included their names, dates of birth, NHI numbers, types of services accessed, and some medical conditions. It also included pay history for some staff members. 

The information had been copied onto the USB stick from the organisation’s IT systems to support a data modelling task. The staff member was unable to complete this exercise within the health agency’s cloud environment and downloaded the relevant data to the USB stick as a workaround solution. The staff member went home at the end of the day, having thought the device was secured in their desk drawer. They were unable to locate the stick the next morning.

After retracing their steps inside and outside the office, including checking their house, driveway and car, the staff member reported the device’s loss to their manager. The agency then conducted an internal investigation and notified OPC of the breach once the device’s loss was confirmed.

In this instance, the agency’s investigation found the staff member had not followed its information and privacy policy when copying information from the cloud to the USB device, and in failing to password protect the device prior to its loss. 

The agency advised us it was not aware of any harm caused from the breach, and considered the device was likely still within its premises or had been accidentally disposed of. The agency notified us on a precautionary basis but did not believe a notifiable breach had occurred.

Identifying the breach as reaching the notifiable threshold

Section 113 sets the following criteria for assessing whether a privacy breach is likely to cause serious harm to an affected individual, for the purpose of determining whether a breach is notifiable: 

• any action taken by the agency to reduce the risk of harm following the breach
• whether the personal information is sensitive in nature
• the nature of the harm that may be caused to affected individuals
• the person or body that has obtained or may obtain personal information because of the breach (if known)
• whether the personal information is protected by a security measure
• any other relevant matters.

We assessed this incident against section 113 as follows:

• Efforts to locate the information were unsuccessful and therefore could not reduce the risk of harm.
• The information that was lost included health information, which is inherently sensitive. The sensitivity of this information and the vulnerability of some of the          affected individuals increased the likelihood of serious harm occurring from this breach.
• The breach posed a risk of humiliation or loss of dignity, or damage to an affected individual’s reputation or relationships, if the information was/is made known to others.
• The person or agency that could have obtained this information, if any, was unknown. Any mitigating factors such as the likely intent of a recipient or containment therefore not could be determined.
• The device was not encrypted or password protected, leaving the device vulnerable to unauthorised access on an ongoing basis.

We formed a view from the above considerations that it was reasonable to believe this breach was likely to cause serious harm to affected individuals, in turn meeting the notifiable privacy breach threshold prescribed by the Privacy Act.

In addition to notifying our office, agencies must ensure affected individuals are notified as soon as practicable after becoming aware that a notifiable privacy breach has occurred, unless certain exceptions under the Privacy Act apply. 

After further follow-up, we were satisfied the agency had met its notification obligations.

Our regulatory response

We considered options for responding to this breach using our Compliance and Regulatory Action Framework.

This matter raised concerns under Information Privacy Principle 5 of the Privacy Act as well as Rule 5 of the Health Information Privacy Code 2020, which require agencies to ensure reasonable safeguards are in place to protect personal (in this case, employment) information and health information respectively.

While the agency had privacy and security policies in place to help ensure information is appropriately safeguarded, these policies were not followed. Therefore, this breach indicated weaknesses in staff awareness of privacy and security requirements.

We accepted the agency’s view that the incident was a result of human error, but considered gaps in privacy awareness should be addressed to ensure the agency’s information and privacy policy is correctly followed by staff.

The agency engaged positively with us, ensuring further training was delivered to improve staff awareness of privacy obligations, including further promoting its existing information and privacy policy. The agency also investigated the technical issue that caused the initial download to address the ‘workaround’ issue which led to the breach. This provided us with assurances the agency had taken reasonable steps to respond and improve its privacy safeguards.

We advised the agency that we would take no further compliance action in response to this breach, as it had met its notification obligations under the Act and had taken reasonable steps to mitigate the risk of similar incidents in the future.

What your agency can learn from this incident

Accidental loss of personal information held by an agency can constitute a notifiable privacy breach under the Privacy Act, even when it seems unlikely that a third party will locate and access it. We have published guidance to help agencies’ considerations when assessing breaches against section 113 of the Privacy Act.

Human error and failure to follow process are common drivers behind many breaches that are reported to us, with root causes ranging from high staff workloads and time pressures to operational workarounds that all increase the likelihood of mistakes.

Agencies must ensure they continue to promote and maintain privacy awareness and build staff capability to mitigate the risk of breaches arising from these issues.

Keeping information secure isn’t just about having robust policies in place for staff to follow. Some reasonable safeguards in these areas include:

• Reviewing organisational policy about the types of information that can be stored on a portable device.
• Using extra security measures for portable devices such as encryption, password locks, and remote wiping.
• Ensuring papers, computers or other electronic devices aren’t visible in homes, public places or in parked cars.
• Developing and implementing a privacy training programme that covers how to appropriately collect, use, protect, disclose, and dispose of personal information, supported by documented policies and procedures.
• Using privacy awareness activities to reinforce training programmes through regular reminders.

Resources

Source: New Zealand Government

Water infrastructure at Mystery Creek near Hamilton is being upgraded with the help of a Regional Infrastructure Fund loan of $1.35 million, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones and Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson say.

“The existing water infrastructure at Mystery Creek is more than 50 years old. It has reached the end of its serviceable life and is starting to fail. The venue also needs to increase its water storage volume to cope with increasing visitor numbers and more than 1000 exhibitor sites,” Mr Jones says. 

Mystery Creek is where National Fieldays is held in June each year, showcasing New Zealand’s primary sector and attracting more than 110,000 visitors over four days. The event generates $528m in total expenditure, including $213m in the Waikato region.

More than 100 other events are hosted at Mystery Creek during the year, ranging from community to national events.

“The Mystery Creek event centre also serves as a critical infrastructure location for Civil Defence in Waikato and would act as a logistics and supply hub during a large-scale emergency,” Mr Patterson says. 

“The site needs to be safe, accessible and resilient. This includes a reliable water supply.”

Work involves replacing the existing reticulated water network and installing one 600,000-litre water tank. Up to seven jobs will be created during construction. The work, which has already begun, is on track to be completed in time for this year’s Fieldays. 

The Regional Infrastructure Fund loan will be made to New Zealand National Fieldays Incorporated Society, which is contributing $1.35 million to the project. The society owns the Mystery Creek event site. 

“This investment will help future-proof the economic contribution the Mystery Creek venue and the National Fieldays event makes to Waikato and nationally,” Mr Patterson says.