NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Deputy Prime Minister is pointing to parts of the Covid-19 pandemic response the government will avoid in navigating potential fuel shortages, saying “our long-term future must not be eroded by short-term political theatrics”.

David Seymour, who was highly critical of parts of the previous government’s pandemic response, spoke to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday morning about “the event affecting every part of business right now”.

He said there was no point pretending the conflict in Iran was “abstract or somebody else’s problem” given the impact it had on an “isolated island nation like ours”.

He referenced current fuel stocks as being robust, and said “if, and only if, there is a risk of running out, would we go to demand-side restrictions”.

Seymour then outlined five lessons to learn from the Covid period, saying it would be “mad to ignore a live experiment in politics and policy during a scary global situation” given the country was facing another global event that “could be scary”.

1. Avoid the time trap

He said the first and most important lesson was not to let the situation “warp time”.

He said during Covid, 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”. He also said the fiscal situation was the “most obvious time warp victim”.

To date during the current global situation, he said the financial support announced by the government in response to the current crisis was targeted, timely, temporary and funded.

2. Balancing human needs

Seymour said he was still astonished at how quickly education was “glossed over” during Covid.

“How educated the population is will trump any other variable across a generation. But, in the Covid time trap we abandoned it,” he said.

Seymour said he did not think students should be learning from home because of the fuel crisis, “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”.

He said education would not be sacrificed if the government needed to move to demand-side rationing.

3. Do it with, not to, the people

Seymour said the Covid response “took on its own momentum” and by the end of 2021, “we’d been in a state of crisis management for 18 months”.

“Many others felt the response was being done to rather than with them,” he said.

That was why the current government had been working “double time” behind the scenes to “keep fuel supply up and be ready to manage demand as a last resort”.

“Rather than jumping to the podium, we are quietly making plans we hope to never use.”

He also encouraged businesses to come directly to the Ministry for Regulation with suggestions for where regulations could be relaxed.

4. Remember we’re all human, all New Zealanders

He said when it came to democracy, the Covid response was a lesson in “what not to do”.

“People accepted the suspension of democracy and the rule of law so easily.”

He said any move to ration demand or limit normal activity would affect millions of New Zealanders, so people were entitled to know the rules and 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.”

5. Learn from the world, and don’t reinvent the wheel

He said New Zealand’s isolation was a big factor in the current fuel situation, similar to Covid.

“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.”

He said if the government could see what was coming, it could take time to prepare, and watch what others did to plan New Zealand’s 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.”

He concluded these lessons mattered because the government could not let “today’s crisis erode our country’s future”.

“Fiscal discipline is what stops the first shock being followed by a second one.

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

He said with “cool heads” the government could respond to fuel shortages from the war without committing the “knee-jerk mistakes made during Covid”.

“We cannot prevent every external shock. But we can make sure New Zealand responds with fiscal discipline and common sense.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A search is underway for a person that went overboard from an Interislander ferry on the Cook Strait overnight.

A KiwiRail spokesperson said the incident happened from its Kaiārahi ferry.

Police said they were alerted to the incident about 2.20am on Tuesday.

They said while they are trying to locate the person, they’re are not seeking anyone else in relation to this matter.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Police are investigating a report of a hit-and-run in South Auckland on Tuesday.

They were called to Johnstones Road in the suburb of Ōtara after a pedestrian was hit by a car around 5.30am.

Upon arrival, police were not able to locate the victim – and witnesses at the scene saw the car leaving the area.

The Eagle helicopter located the car a short time later in Māngere and were speaking with the occupant.

Enquiries were ongoing to establish the exact circumstances around what occurred, police said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A forestry group wants the industry to be listed as critical in the government’s national fuel plan, saying it’s crucial to regional economies and supports other key sectors.

The plan lists agriculture as a critical customer for fuel that would be prioritised under a fuel supply crisis, but does not specifically mention the forestry industry.

Forest Owners Association chief executive Elizabeth Heeg told Morning Report on Tuesday there was concern in the industry that it was not specifically noted in the plan.

“The guidance that came out with the revised fuel plan on Friday did say that it’s food supply and primary production that would be prioritised during time-critical periods, but we’re just looking for assurance that forestry is included in that primary production.”

She pointed to time-critical work such as clearing trees felled in storms before they attracted fungus, ruining their usability as timber.

“But we also were a critical part of the food supply chain. You know, pallets are either made out of plastic, wood and we’re not seeing a lot of plastic come into the country right now where those supply chains are threatened by the crisis. So wood pellets are going to be quite critical to food shipping as well as wood crate and building materials.

“So we’ve got an element to play in supporting the other economically important services.”

She said there was 1.8 million hectares of forestry requiring active management, and it was “really difficult to turn that off and on, because you end up having impacts to both the forest and to the mills and the infrastructure that supply those pallet makers”.

“Look, I think we’re committed to working with the government and working within our own supply chain to try and make it economic where we can and to work across to keep things turned on, but to recognise where we need to make some efficiencies. But it’s a really difficult situation, with some mills that have closed in the last two years. We’re under a lot of pressure.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Giving aid to shore up your strategic position in the world isn’t the way to go about it, says an expert – because your aid won’t help if you’re not trying to help

If New Zealand’s foreign aid programme focused only on need, most of our money would go to sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, the lion’s share goes to the Pacific.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to foreign aid expert Terence Wood, but it’s not purely based on largesse, either.

“Geo-strategic thinking is starting to motivate where we focus our aid and that’s just not a good driving force for aid-giving, you really want to be thinking about need, not who you perceive your threats to be,” says Wood.

“If you want to give aid effectively you really need to prioritise it based on the needs of developing countries and not your own geo-strategic preoccupations. Your aid won’t help if you’re not trying to help. And once upon a time New Zealand had pretty good motivations for giving its aid … its aid was more likely to help .. [but] the new cold war with China in the Pacific is undermining the quality of our aid, and that’s quite depressing.”

In the case of aid sent to the Pacific, “there are both good and bad reasons” for doing so.

“The good reason is that we have strong historical ties with the Pacific, or some Pacific countries, and then also it’s just kind of good aid practice to specialise in one part of the world. If you don’t spread yourself too thin you can build up country or regional expertise.

“The bad reason is that we are increasingly preoccupied with China’s presence in the Pacific.”

And it’s not just governments’ reasons for aid spending that are changing. Increasingly, countries are reducing their aid and backing out of commitments.

“Globally [the World Food Programme] had a 40 percent cut in our funding in 2025, and that’s massive. We were at 10 billion and we are now at about six billion. So it is a collective trend as opposed to an individual one,” says Samir Wanmali, the World Food Programme’s regional director for Asia and the Pacific region.

Much has been reported on the US dropping out of commitments, but Wanmali says globally, there’s been a “progressive reduction” in funding from OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries, most notably from Europe.

He puts some of that down to post-covid budgets, and also to the war in Ukraine.

“I should also note that New Zealand and Australia have actually maintained your funding, so you have not reduced.”

But that’s funding to WFP – which is only a small part of the picture.

A report released last October by the Australian foreign think tank The Lowy Institute painted a grim picture. It said that over the next two years, New Zealand is expected to reduce foreign aid funding by about 35 percent.

Aid contributions are generally measured compared to the size of an economy, in a metric called the ODA over GNI (official development assistance over gross national income.)

“Generosity should really be measured compared to what you’re able to give,” says Wood.

“New Zealand’s never been a particularly generous aid donor.

“It’s around the median of OECD countries but it’s not particularly good and it’s also going to fall, as our aid budget falls, we’re going to end up looking worse on that metric.”

The same report said that Australia is filling the gap, making up about half of the funding to the Pacific region.

But Wood says that Australia’s not doing so well either.

“Australia gives a lot more aid than us in an absolute sense because it’s got a much larger economy but on the ODA over GNI metric it actually scores quite a lot worse. So they are more tight fisted than us – at least at present – we may overtake them in the race to the bottom though.”

Wood says that countries – including New Zealand – sometimes manipulate the figures.

“Often countries like New Zealand really are trying to cook the books.”

He says climate change is considered a ‘cross-cutting’ issue, and some aid can be claimed as helping countries adapt to climate change.

“It’s that type of aid where an awful lot of greenwashing goes on.

“So the New Zealand government will claim that all sorts of things that have really got very little relationship to helping countries adapt to climate change are in some way related to that.

“When we are presenting at international fora and so on we want to seem like a country that is concerned with these things but we don’t want to fork out any extra money.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand