A child is now the quotable authority

In a stoush in the house between coalition partners Green and Red, Gareth Hughes had a go at Labour. It appears that Labour had the effrontery to honour an existing legal contract and this upset poor little Gareth.

GARETH HUGHES (Green) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does she stand by MBIE’s decision to extend OMV’s Great South Basin application last year, given the company is now seeking a consent to drill?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Acting Minister for Energy and Resources): On behalf of the Minister of Energy and Resources, the 2018 decision approved changes to some of the conditions of OMV’s work programme for the permit. This allowed OMV to seek more information on the underlying geology before commencing drilling. The application was made to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and assessed against the statutory criteria in the Crown Minerals Act. It met the criteria, and so the changes to the work programme were approved. This is not an extension of the length of the permit, which still expires on 11 July 2022.

Gareth Hughes: What does the Minister have to say to New Zealanders who thought the Government had banned new offshore oil and gas permits for good?

Deliberately misstating the situation for grandstand effect.

Hon DAVID PARKER: On behalf of the Minister, the Government, I think, has been clear that we are pursuing a transition away from fossil fuels towards clean, renewable, affordable energy. This has been very well publicised, and I think most New Zealanders understand the detail of it.

Gareth Hughes: Doesn’t this change to the work programme that OMV is benefitting from, and the 16 other possible extensions raised by the Minister in the industry over the next 10 years, undermine the historic oil and gas line we drew in the sand?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No; we don’t think so. We think that we are helping New Zealand transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy.

Gareth Hughes: Given we’ve already discovered enough fossil fuels to guarantee catastrophic climate change, why are we looking for more?

Get a grip, Gareth!

Hon DAVID PARKER: I think we have signalled a pretty clear direction. We are transitioning away from the use and exploration for fossil fuels. We’ve been clear that existing rights are protected, but we have blocked more block offers in the offshore area.

Gareth Hughes: Does the Minister agree with climate strike organiser Greta Thunberg, who said, “I want you to act as if the house was on fire,”? And isn’t looking for more oil we can’t afford to burn like pouring petrol on that fire?

Hansard

Now you have really lost the argument Hughes.  An appeal to authority is a common type of fallacy, or an argument based on unsound logic. When writers or speakers use appeal to authority, they are claiming that something must be true because it is believed by someone who is said to be an “authority” on the subject.

When the “authority” you appeal to is a misinformed and misguided child you are really scraping the bottom of the (oil) barrel.