Summarised by Centrist
NZ First is promising to spend $1 billion mapping offshore oil and gas reserves, despite having supported the Labour-led government that banned new offshore exploration permits in 2018.
Former ACT leader Rodney Hide accused Winston Peters and Shane Jones of performing one of the most “shameless policy pirouettes” in recent New Zealand politics.
Bound by Cabinet collective responsibility, Peters and Jones publicly supported Jacinda Ardern’s ban while serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Regional Economic Development Minister.
Hide said they had traded “the future of the energy sector for ministerial titles and coalition perks”.
“Two men kept their jobs; hundreds of Kiwis lost theirs,” he wrote.
After returning to Parliament in 2023, NZ First made reversing the ban a coalition bottom line. The government has since repealed the policy and established a $200 million fund to co-invest in new gas developments.
NZ First has now proposed a further $1 billion National Subsurface Development Survey to map offshore basins and attract exploration, arguing the resources could generate “Norway-scale” wealth.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon described the proposal as “deeply ironic”.
“They stood up on stage with Jacinda Ardern and Megan Woods and they killed it,” Luxon told Newstalk ZB.
Luxon said the previous ban had made it “bloody hard” to persuade overseas investors to return, because companies had many other countries competing for their capital.
“New Zealand First was part of it and they’ve got to front that and they’ve got to own that,” he said.
Hide described the shift as “ruthless pragmatism dressed up as nationalism”, arguing that NZ First’s political principles have repeatedly proved negotiable when power and public spending are at stake.
Read more over at Newstalk ZB and Brash and Mitchell
