Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 23 March 2026

Well, kia ora, good afternoon, everyone. Today I’m joined by Finance Minister Nicola Willis to provide an update on the global fuel crisis and how we’re navigating it. I’m also joined by Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones, who has responsibility for fuel security, to talk about the changes we are making to fuel specifications.

Look, it remains the case that New Zealand has sufficient levels of fuel for at least the next seven weeks. There are healthy stocks of petrol, diesel, and aviation fuel in the country, with more on the way, and the market is operating as normal. However, as we outlined last Thursday, our Government is planning for scenarios where future fuel supplies could be disrupted.

Before I update you on our response to the global fuel crisis, I do want to talk about the economic backdrop. Last week, we saw modest growth reported for the last quarter of 2025, which, coupled with the previous quarter, meant that New Zealand’s economy grew 1.1 percent in the second half of last year. Before the conflict in the Middle East, as we’ve talked about before, forecasters had been predicting growth to further strengthen through the year, rising towards 3 percent in 2027.

This conflict, of course, will have an impact on our economy and future growth, but the extent of that will ultimately depend on its duration and intensity, which is obviously out of our control. And as I’ve said many times before, we must focus on what we can control, and what we can control is our response to the fuel crisis and how we manage the economy. The lessons from the COVID inquiry and the recent news from Fitch over the weekend reinforces that in times like this, responsible economic management really matters, and it is critical. Had this conflict happened two years ago, the economic impact for Kiwis would likely be heavier and also longer. In that time, inflation and interest rates have come down significantly, and that does make a difference when people are paying less on their mortgage than they were two years ago because they’ve refixed at a lower rate.

However, and of course, it is still very tough for people who are looking at fuel prices rising by the day and struggling to make ends meet, which is why our Government is considering options to help those in most need of support. We’ll have more to say about that very soon, but the reality is that we are not going to be able to alleviate the pressure of rising prices for everyone. But what we’ve been clear about are the parameters for any support that we provide, which is that it must be targeted, it must be timely, and it must be temporary, and not drive inflation or debt higher, because as we steer New Zealand through this immediate challenge, we must also continue to look to the future and bend the debt curve down over time.

The impacts of the fuel crisis on households and businesses will obviously differ depending upon individual circumstances. Our first priority is ensuring that we have sufficient fuel supply to keep New Zealand working. We need fuel to ensure that workers can get to work, that kids can get to school, farmers can farm, and freight can get to where it needs to get to, so fuel security is, without doubt, the most pressing issue, particularly for diesel, which is critical to freight and many of our key industries here in New Zealand. A shortage of diesel could affect thousands of jobs and incomes, so that is why ensuring fuel security is always our first priority.

I will reiterate that we currently have healthy stocks, again, of all three types of fuel, and the market is continuing to operate as normal. In planning for a future scenario where that may not be the case, I expect to be talking to the leaders of South Korea and Singapore in the coming days. As you well know, New Zealand gets the majority of our refined fuel from those two countries, around 51 percent from South Korean refineries and about 31 percent from Singaporean refineries, so I’ll be talking to Prime Minister Wong and President Lee to better understand any challenges that they may have with accessing crude oil for their refineries in the coming weeks.

I’ve also been talking to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and we’ve agreed to work together as much as possible, and also we have encouraged our Ministers to continue to talk to each other as counterparts. Shortly, Shane will talk you through the detail of changes that we are making to fuel specifications to align with Australia’s, but before that, I’ll pass to Nicola to quickly talk you through some other updates.

Thanks, Prime Minister. I’ll make just a few remarks and then hand over to Shane to talk about fuel specifications, which are, of course, incredibly important because we are trying to maximize New Zealand’s options for securing fuel supply. As Minister of Finance and Economic Growth, I have two main areas of focus when it comes to events in the Middle East. They are the impact of the conflict on fuel supply and the impact of the conflict on fuel prices and the wider economy.

First, on fuel supply, you will have seen that today MBIE has released new information about our supplies of petrol, diesel, and jet fuel. These confirm seven weeks of petrol, more than six weeks of diesel and jet fuel, either in the country or in the water on the way here. The next update will be on Wednesday. The latest data is consistent with normal levels, and it accords with what I saw and heard at Marsden Point yesterday. There is no cause for concern about fuel supplies in the short term. To date, all shipments have arrived as scheduled, and fuel importers have not raised any concerns about shipments that are due here in future.

However, it remains the case that we have to be prepared for the possibility of disruptions in the medium to longer term, particularly because the refineries in Southeast Asia from which we import more than 90 percent of our fuel may have challenges getting the feedstock crude oil that they need. I’m going to say more later this week about how we are planning for that possibility.

On the second issue of fuel prices, let me just acknowledge that this conflict is impacting just about every New Zealander. It has pushed up the price of petrol, diesel, and jet fuel, and those increases are already hurting our people and our businesses. Unfortunately, the Government is not in a position to mitigate that impact on everyone. We got a pointed warning from the Fitch Rating credit agency on Friday that it is watching our Government debt levels closely. Borrowing large sums of money to insulate New Zealanders from this conflict, a conflict that is not of our making, would increase debt and debt servicing costs and potentially lead to a credit rating downgrade. Why does that matter? Because that would further push up borrowing costs for the Government, for business, and for households.

However, we are very conscious that the conflict is particularly impacting on low and middle income working families with children, many of whom have no option but to drive the kids to school and drive themselves to work. Therefore, the Government will shortly be announcing timely, temporary, and targeted measures to support these households most affected by fuel price increases. Cabinet did take decisions today and we will announce the details of this tomorrow. The approach we are taking is consistent with the findings of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the response to the COVID pandemic, which highlighted the damage that can be done by untimely, untemporary, and untargeted spending. That’s it from me, and over to you, Shane.

What the Cabinet decided today is to harmonise the specifications enabling fuel developed/refined internationally on its way to Australia to be made available to New Zealand. It’s a measure that aligns both the standards and it broadens the ability of us to draw fuel from a wider range of sources. We have also left further improvements to this policy to the Finance Minister and the Associate Ministers of Finance.

It is a set of changes, however, that does not deal with one issue which has excited elements in the motorist community: whether or not we would allow sulphur-rich fuel into New Zealand. As the press statement says, at this stage it’s not our intention to do so. However, we will take advice should the situation change and that could be an option that expands our supply.

A simple example: if a vessel is coming, a long-range vessel, which probably carries 120 million litres—I remind you we chew through 24 million litres a day—47-odd percent of that, 45 percent is diesel, between a third and 35 percent is petrol, and the remainder is aviation fuel. Should such a vessel be on its way to Australia, then we would have the ability to also benefit from such a vessel. Had we not agreed to harmonise, it would restrict our options at a time where we’re conscious that the refineries in Southeast Asia may face challenges with feedstock, and we do draw the vast majority of our supply from South Korea, occasionally from Malaysia, but in particular from Singapore. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Shane. Thank you, Nicola. With that, we’re happy to take questions. We’ll just try and go in a bit of decorum. Jo?

Just on the fuel specification stuff there, Mr Jones, is what you’re saying here that we are going to allow dirtier fuel into New Zealand?

I think that it’s unkind of us to refer to our Aussie compatriots as dirty. In many respects, some of the specs that exist in Australia are slightly higher than what we have in New Zealand. There has been the point made that some of the fuel destined for northern Queensland may not work in the frigid south, so where importers are bringing fuel consistent with the Aussie standard it must be fit for that purpose. This is something that we will lay upon the importers. But the suggestion that we’re bringing soiled fuel is fervid imagination.

You’re talking about the specifications. You’re not necessarily just talking about, say, the cleanliness. You’re talking about whether the fuel is actually appropriate to the conditions within New Zealand.

Yeah, there’s two things: whether or not fuel used in a high-temperature, northern Australian environment—we’re advised that a lot of that fuel is suitable for the North Island. Where the case remains dealing with the South Island, the fuel importers assure us that they will have the optionality to service both of those markets. But I stress it is wrong—it is mischievous—to describe Aussie fuel as dirty fuel.

On the Australian meeting that you had on Friday with State Ministers, what did you glean from them about what they’re doing and other tips and tricks, for want of a better description, that you could get from them?

Well, obviously the PM is talking to the leader of Australia but we engaged with all the State Ministers. I think it’s fair to say that the Kiwis are well organised. We don’t have the burden of dealing with various states. They understand that their logistical problems are probably slightly more arduous than what New Zealand has. We traded notes. We pushed the idea that at some point in time we should explore an ANZAC pact, and I would say to you this is the first step that we’re taking in relation to joining forces to ensure that Australasia—who at the end of the day has probably got all of about 30 million people, PM?

Yes.

Yeah. We’re a relatively small market for these global oil giants.

Yeah, Shane’s right. I mean what we’re trying to do here is—you know, if you think about a global oil market, they’ll look at Australia and New Zealand as being very much the same market. It doesn’t make sense for us to have our own bespoke standards. Where we can align and harmonise with Australia, we should and we must.

The targeted and temporary ethos in response to the current circumstances, are you actually telling us that these standards changes are going to be permanent or are they part of the temporary and targeted ethos?

With respect to the fuel standards and specifications?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sorry, is it permanent or is it temporary?

We’re just about to answer that.

So, for the purposes of the initial alignment, it’s dealing with the immediate challenges that we have, but it’d be fair to say that I’ve got a fair degree of support in our Cabinet to actually move towards permanent harmonisation of not only these standards but a variety of other standards in the economy, but that’s beyond my pay grade.

And I’d just say on that one, Sean, is that you’ve seen us already—you know, I’ve got a lot of appetite for harmonisation with Australia as much as possible, you know, genuinely so. When you look at—a bit of a distraction but when you look at building costs, for example. Opening up to Australian registered and certified building products, when you’ve got 140,000 new plumbing products that are now available in New Zealand, leading to lower building costs because of more competition, greater scale of using the combined market, all of that’s good stuff. We’ve talked about if drugs are going to get approved in Australia and Singapore and other jurisdictions, then it should be good to come here as well.

So it sounds like this is going to be permanent in one way or another.

Yeah, so initially we said we’d sign off for a 12-month period but, you know, I just think, you know, it just makes sense for us not to create complexity if we don’t need to have it. Where there is good justification for doing our own thing, we should do that, but actually we’ve got to make sure that’s not code for “we’re different and we’re special and therefore we don’t need to align with others”.

I also wanted to ask, you’ve used the word “crisis” several times already today. Only 20 percent of the world’s crude goes through the Strait of Hormuz. We’re told that there are alternative delivery mechanisms for some of that now, through pipelines across Saudi. Are we in danger of scaring ourselves into a crisis here? Surely we have a challenge, not a crisis.

Look, I think what you’re hearing from us very strongly is, look, we are giving you constant reassurance that the actions that actually the Minister took, you know, around getting our national fuel plan in place in the middle of 2024, of lifting up our minimum stockholding requirements at the beginning of 2025, has stood New Zealand in good heart even relative to other countries, and I think, you know, Shane needs to be commended, and the Cabinet, for making those decisions quite early and quite quickly. That is all good. So we’re reassuring you that we don’t have a supply problem. But we are right to make sure our system and our Government is thinking about what possible future scenarios could emerge that we are planning for.

But are we in a crisis right now?

Yes, and I would just say to you—I’d just say to you, Sean, if you are someone who’s just faced a 30 percent increase in your fuel bill or a 60 percent increase in your diesel bill since the actual crisis has—you know, since this conflict has commenced, it’s real. And for people out there, they are doing it tough, and we hear them and we understand that. And what we have to find is a balanced approach where—we cannot do the COVID learnings and mistakes, which was just spray a heap of money around that has short-term gain but long-term pain, massive long-term pain, and equally we’ve got to find a way to get people’s support in a targeted, temporary kind of way, and that’s the balance that we are striking.

Just in terms of that support, you are doing the announcement tomorrow but can you give us any indication of will there be an income threshold for particular whānau that this will target?

Yeah, I’ll let Nicola talk to that.

We’ll obviously announce the details tomorrow. We’ve been clear that our focus is on workers, our focus is on families with children, and our focus is on lower to middle income households.

Why wait until tomorrow? Why can’t that be announced today?

There are some implementation details to confirm ahead of the announcement and we will be confirming those before we announce it tomorrow. I want to be—

Are those—

Can I just be clear that the difference between announcing it today and tomorrow will not impact how speedily the support can get to families.

Hang on, guys. Hang on, guys. Hey stop. Hey, listen, it’s not going to work. We don’t talk over each other.

When will it actually start to roll out? Will it start rolling out tomorrow or will it be—

I’ll announce that tomorrow. I’ll make clear when the income support will reach those people we are targeting.

Minister Willis, you already have abatement rate thresholds changing on 1 April for Working for Families. You could make a temporary change to those abatement rate thresholds quite easily to give a lot more money to people with the in-work tax credit. Is that the line of your thinking?

I will announce the details of our package tomorrow.

Will 1 April be the date when it goes into effect?

I’ll announce it tomorrow.

Can you explain what’s going on with diesel at the moment, why it’s gone up so much more than petrol, and how worried you are? Is that going to have an effect on food prices? It’s hitting farmers pretty hard.

Twenty-four million litres a day. 45 to 47 percent of that is diesel. We rely on the production of the diesel from two sources of supply. One has already made decisions that they are freezing to last year’s level of availability. The Singaporeans, because we’ve got a very important pact with them, which the PM can no doubt elaborate, they are still accessing feedstock. Diesel keeps our economy flowing. The elasticity between petrol and diesel is vastly different. Any suggestion that we should be casual or insouciant about the supply of diesel means we’re selling our economy short. That’s why we’re focused both on the fuel plan, the advice that we’re taking, and the regular contact we’re maintaining with the refinery and the importers. They all understand how existential access to diesel is for our economy.

On that point, where are you at with the design of any alert levels or level system to try and dampen demand, particularly in that diesel market?

Well, what the national fuel plan released in 2024 outlines is a series of response phases to any disruption to fuel supply. We are very much only in the initial stage of that. We will be making announcements later this week about how we envisage that fuel plan applying to this scenario.

In the first instance, our focus is on ensuring we have fuel supply. And that’s why we’re moving quickly on specifications, that’s why the Prime Minister is focusing his attention on our diplomatic channels, because in the first order of events what we want to happen is that fuel importing companies can actually source fuel from around the world. It may be from different places than usual but that is the first focus of our response. And even in the plan published in 2024 it doesn’t envisage demand restraint measures until there has been some disruption, some significant disruption to the fuel market. So we will be outlining the assessment and the triggers that we will be considering later in the week.

Have you got something ready to go as to which the critical industries are, which industries need access, and who will be able to access it?

Yes, we have given consideration to that.

Is it ready to go? Like, if we need to hit the button tomorrow, does everyone—

We won’t need to hit the button tomorrow because we have currently seven weeks of petrol, six weeks of diesel, so we will not be having to hit the button tomorrow. But we will outline what our proposed phasing of response is, including addressing some of the questions you’re putting to me, because we recognise that it’s useful for people to understand what could be coming under a range of scenarios.

We have stock in-country, right, but ships on the way. We’ve got seven coming next week, one coming the week after, with diesel. That kind of feels like we might need to start thinking about maybe not putting so much gas in the car.

Well, I can assure New Zealanders that right now there is sufficient fuel that you can go about filling up your car in the usual way. You don’t need to change the way that you are doing that. But I’d also just say it’s pinching people’s pockets already and that is changing people’s choices. So Auckland Transport have reported they had their biggest day of public transport use in seven years. I think that’s people deciding to use their cars a little bit less because it’s pretty expensive right now. We are also hearing across the country of reports of people taking different steps to minimise the cost for their household of those increased petrol and diesel bills.

Can I just—

Those two weeks’ visibility that we have right now through what’s being publicly reported, do you have a longer-term insight into what’s on the way and can that be factored in at all into public reporting?

Yeah, that’s why we’re working so closely with the—

Fuel industry.

—fuel importing companies. Because what we’ve said to them is, “Look, if you have any sense that you can’t fill future orders that you’d normally have in, that you’ve got disruption either in the form of ships that you thought you’d secured turning around, or being delayed, or you have any indication that we’re going to have problems, we want to hear about it straightaway.” So I’m able to advise you that we haven’t heard about that at this stage.

And, sorry, that’s really important, Jenna. That’s one of the learnings out of COVID is that we have a daily conversation with the fuel importers and the fuel industry to get a sense of exactly those issues, are they seeing any problems in their supply chains, and we’re getting that information in pretty real time, which is really good. There’s very good alignment between—now that we’ve been working together for 15 days or so—between, you know, the fuel companies and what the Government is wanting to do. We’re very aligned on that, which is good.

I’d just say to you again we don’t need to panic. We just need to work through this in a very calm and measured way, which is what we’re doing. We’re reassured that we’re in a very healthy position with respect to our minimum stocks, thanks to some decisions we took in the last year. But equally we’re trying to make sure that our system is imagining scenarios that may or may not happen but could happen, and therefore we want to be prepared for those with a series of escalations and actions. And I think that’s just being prudent, it’s being responsible, and it’s just being calm and measured about it.

So we’re not panicking about it. I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea that they should be panicked about it at all because that’s not the case. But equally we are doing what you would expect a good Government to do, which is to think ahead in case.

Are we going to, in a few weeks’ time, look back at this moment as the critical moment where we could have started implementing some of those measures and saved some fuel for down the line when there might be a problem?

Again, the national fuel plan and the move between the different phases of response will guide us, and the triggers for what will trigger those responses are very clear in our heads as to what they will look like and what they will be, but we will talk about that towards the end of the week. But I just—again, there is a real lag in time effect. I need to reassure you that we are good for now. We are clearly thinking about the triggers that would lead to a different phase of response, but that is not for right now.

People individually and businesses are making some independent decisions. I’m telling you even Government agencies, we’ve asked them to start to think about how they might think about using their resources in a more, you know, smart way, and that’s all good stuff. Sorry, Thomas.

I’m going to quote the MBIE website: “Introducing fuel rationing or restrictions before there is clear evidence of a genuine shortage won’t create more fuel in the system. At this stage, we are not experiencing the types of sustained, direct supply impacts that would affect everyday access to fuel in New Zealand. Monitoring and planning are underway to ensure we are ready for any changes.”

Now Thomas has got a question and it’s a great one because—we should all listen to it very carefully. Thomas, let’s go.

Have you got any advice on whether you need legislation to implement the national—the fuel plan? The legislation underpinning it is 50 years old. It relies on you demonstrating that normal prudent levels of fuel cannot be maintained in order for you to implement or use that legislation. Will you need to alter that legislation or have new legislation put in for it?

Yes, we have asked officials to look at the adequacy of the Petroleum Restraint Act, and the initial advice, which we’ll provide more detail on later in the week, is that it may need an update.

Would you need to pass that legislation under urgency in order to have it ready?

We’re considering our options there. But as I say, we face no urgent, imminent supply issue that would require that Act to be passed under urgency this week or in—so long as we have that uninterrupted supply.

You probably need it passed within the sitting block.

We’re looking at our options and considering what the best way forward is.

But, Thomas, no disrespect, we’re not going to get hung up on process. If we need to move, we’re going to move. You’ve seen us do that with respect to fuel standards. We’ll do a bunch of things. The priority is fuel supply. We’ll make sure that we—whatever process we need to get things done, we’ll get it done.

Prime Minister, the issue is that if you don’t have that legislation you’re opening yourself up to legal challenge, which would mean the courts could kneecap you.

Rest assured we’re considering those things and we’ll work our way through it.

Should low-income families who are thinking about filling up tonight wait until your announcement tomorrow? What is the nature of it?

Well, no, they should fill up when they need to fill up their car. What we are—what we’ve been clear about is the way that we will be targeting support is through income rather than changes to the price of fuel.

Prime Minister, on public transport and diesel, about 80 percent of the buses in New Zealand run on diesel, which is obviously going up a lot. The Transport Minister said today he was going to meet with the heads of public transport operators. Are you confident that they have enough—that their supply of diesel will mean that they can keep prices where they are, or is there a chance that public transport prices will go up just as other transport prices go up at the same time?

Yeah, look, I mean Minister Bishop actually met with them this morning, the leaders of the public transport authorities, and they had a very good, constructive conversation. He was very impressed with the fact that they were bending their minds to all of these sorts of issues. For right here, right now, that’s—you know, they’ve got a—I mean, do you want to talk about the—I don’t know how much I want to go into it but—

Well, it’s also the case that with more people catching public transport, they’re getting more revenue from that as well.

Revenue, correct.

But we are absolutely looking to work closely with them to ensure there’s enough capacity so that those New Zealanders who want to switch to catch a bus or a train are able to do so, particularly at peak times coming to and from work, and we are also talking to them about the cost pressure they face with the increasing price of diesel. Minister Bishop is working through those issues.

You’re confident you won’t let fares go up?

Well, what we’re confident about, Henry, is that there’s a 10 to 30 percent increase in capacity that’s possible across the public transport network, and you’ve seen some people starting to choose, in their own cases, public transport as it is. The second piece is that, you know, there’s actually an ability and a flexibility expressed by those public transport authorities to move services to where there is peak need and demand, and obviously that creates more revenue for them in terms of how they might collect revenue as they go forward with more people using the service more efficiently with better capacity utilisation. So I’m sorry, I don’t want to get too complicated but that’s kind of the guts of where it is. So we’re very comfortable that we’ve got a good partnership there, we’ve got a good flow of information, and that they have everything they need to be able to support that.

On Saturday, you said you added New Zealand to a statement saying that you’d be ready to go and help in the Strait of Hormuz if needed.

Yeah.

Have you had any response from the US or anyone else about whether that help would be needed? And if we do go, what kind of assets would we look to send?

Yeah, let me clarify that statement. So the first thing is that we’ve got New Zealanders facing increasing pressure at the pump and the reason why that’s happening is the Iranians are stopping ships—about 3,600 of them—getting through the Hormuz Strait. And we, with like-minded partners, called out Iran and condemned their actions to say, you know, indiscriminately hitting, you know, ships that have got nothing to do with this conflict or haven’t been involved in this conflict is not right. And that’s what that statement was about, standing with our friends.

With respect to the second part of that—which is what you’re alluding to, is any multilateral action to protect or, you know, to get into the Straits of Hormuz—there has been no proposal, no discussion, no debate about that whatsoever. Should there be in the future, and that’s a lot of shoulds and a lot of hypotheticals in there, obviously that’s a decision we’d take back to Cabinet and have a conversation about.

Would you need a Security Council declaration for that to be something New Zealand [Inaudible]—

I think you’re getting way—

—or could you act outside of [Inaudible]?

I think we’re getting way ahead of ourselves, way ahead of ourselves. What that statement was about was making sure that we send a message as like-minded countries to say, hey, listen, this is not consistent, to stop ships freely trading and moving around the oceans of the world. And doing the blockade, essentially, that they are doing is not fair and it’s not right and it’s not consistent with, you know, our rules-based system, and as a result, you know, we wanted to call that out.

Prime Minister, in that statement you obviously condemned Iran’s actions, but obviously this war was started by strikes that were done by the US and Israel. So far today, we’ve only acknowledged that position. I’m wondering whether or not New Zealand has formed more of a clearer position when it comes to the United States and Israel in this conflict.

Look, there’s nothing changed from our position that we’ve talked about in the Parliament or public statements that the Minister of Foreign Affairs and myself have made in the past. We were not party to these strikes. We’re not involved in this action. It’s independent action from the US and Israel and, as I’ve said before, it’s up to them to explain the justification for the strikes.

What we’re talking about now is a second-order consequence, which is Iranians holding hostage a whole bunch of ships that should be freely travelling to bring fuel and critical supplies to places like New Zealand, and when they don’t, it ends up with higher, you know, prices at the pump, and that’s not acceptable. And that’s why, in standing up for our view of those things, consistent with other friends and like-minded countries, that’s what that statement was about.

Even before Iran closed the straits, in the early days of the conflict, you were quite vocal in criticising Iranian attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Gulf states and in the region. The US President says he has issued an ultimatum saying if the straits don’t reopen, he’ll start attacking power infrastructure in Iran, civilian infrastructure. Would you condemn that if that were to occur?

I mean, what we want to see is a quick resolution to this conflict, and that means that actually respecting civilians and civilian infrastructure is really important, upholding international humanitarian law is really important, and making sure that we get the parties to a negotiated settlement is really important for the world and for New Zealand, obviously. So, you know, our position hasn’t changed in that regard. You know, we want to make sure that this— you know, we’re concerned about the rising death toll. We’re concerned about civilians being protected or not protected. We’re concerned about making sure that we get the resolution in place.

So the Americans should not target civilian infrastructure in Iran?

Again, we think the best thing is de-escalation. This is not good for the world economy, it’s not good for people, and it’s a classic case—as I’ve been talking about now for over two years—where if you don’t have security, you end up putting prosperity at risk, and the two are intertwined and interlinked now.

What happens if our minimum fuel stocks go under the minimum standards? Is that where the demand-side measures would kick in?

There’s currently a legal obligation on all fuel importers operating in New Zealand—an enforceable legal obligation—that they have minimum stock holdings that they need to meet, and of course those minimum stock holdings require them to have 28 days of petrol, 21 days of diesel, 24 days of jet fuel. So that is the requirement and it remains in force.

What happens if they can’t, if no fuel is coming in? Is that when the demand-side measures—

Well, obviously it’s really important that we keep sending the fuel importers the message that we want them to have enough fuel in the country to meet those minimum stockholding obligations. Those obligations remain in force.

Cabinet considered and is implementing an extra seven days’ diesel on hand from 2028, I believe. Why did you make that 2028? Wouldn’t that be helpful right now?

The 2028 figure is traceable back to the closure of the refinery. When the refinery was closed, what we saw was the degradation of the storage capacity at the refinery. There is nigh on 700 million litres worth of storage capacity at the refinery. About 50 percent of it is currently in operation. We were advised it would take several years for the fuel companies—bear in mind, ever since the fuel refinery was closed, we went to a just-in-time model. The just-in-time model obviously works when everything’s rosy. We’re learning that you cannot increase the amount of diesel you hold in New Zealand unless you can store it, and it can only be stored by upgrading storage capacity. There is another 10 more days’ worth of storage capacity at Marsden Point. To date, the oil companies have not done that. We gave them additional time to upgrade the storage capacity. But I don’t want anyone leaving this press conference without remembering part of our insecurity is the closure of the refinery and the attendant storage capacity.

Minister Jones, the Prime Minister is on one hand saying we have healthy stocks and there’s nothing to panic about. You, on the other hand, are saying being casual about diesel supply sells our economy short. Where is the Government position?

No, that’s the message that I’ve given on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance to the oil companies. They have told us that they have access for the foreseeable future to levels of fuel that enable them to meet their statutory obligations. The only thing that we have seen that is a potential insecurity is the absence of feedstock to feed the refineries that the oil companies are reliant upon. Never once have Nicola and I been told that there is a problem with the supply, but we have warned them that these are legally enforceable obligations.

OK, we’re going to have one more question, finally, from Jo Moir.

It’s two legs, then. The first leg: our most like-minded partner, Australia, was not a signatory at the weekend on that statement. Have you spoken to them about why and can you share what the rationale was behind that?

I don’t know why they didn’t initially. I understood that they signed up over the course of the weekend, after we had signed and others had signed. There was an initial group of countries and I understand that’s built out to 22 or so.

OK. The second leg: Lawrence Wong. You are talking to him tonight, I understand, and are going to Singapore in May, I think you said on air this morning. Can you just talk a little bit more about what conversations you’re having with Singapore at the moment? Are they getting close to potentially needing to kick in any of their end of the deal around food supply? Like, what’s sort of going on there with those two?

No, it’s just making sure—you know, a big part of actually having these relationships with leaders around the world is to make sure that we are in constant, you know, communication with each other. Again, the conversation tonight is to get a sense from him as to how his refineries are handling it, to think about how they may be thinking about alternative sources of crude if they need it down the road, inevitably are there any bumps that they can foresee coming, obviously our own observation of the trajectory of the conflict and where that goes—those are the kinds of things we’re talking about.

As you know, when Prime Minister Wong was out here, the two of us, you know, put another feature to our relationship as we’ve stepped up to a comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries, but obviously added also the essential supplies component, put more definition around that for in the case of a crisis, we would provide Singapore with food, they would provide us with fuel and pharmaceuticals, and as we go to May we’ll talk more about that. But, you know, we want to deepen up the relationship between New Zealand and Singapore quite a lot. We see Singapore, Australia and New Zealand as quite critical partners in this region and we want to continue to deepen that up. OK.

In a world where—because you talked about operating Australasia as one market, would there ever be a world where Singapore would loop in with that as well, given—

Already, increasingly, between the three Prime Ministers and what we’ve been doing together over the last two years, you know, we are doing more and more together, the three of us. Naturally we do that bilaterally, we do it as a threesome, you know, we do it in a number of different ways.

So that’s a viable option, that the three would become one market in some way?

We’ll, I’m not—I’m not saying—I don’t want—again, there a lot of hypotheticals. But I’m just saying to you we have put in place mechanisms to make sure that we’ve got key relationships deepened and broader with a key partner of ours in the region, which is important. OK, team, we’re going to carry on. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Can I just ask you a quick couple of questions about fishing for a colleague before you go? Please? Thank you.

See you, Shane.

Yeah, ka kite.

How confident are you that the Fisheries Act Amendment Bill will be passed?