Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Monday, 25 May 2026

Well, kia ora, good afternoon, everyone. Look, firstly, can I just acknowledge the passing of Dame Jules Topp. Dame Jules, as you all know, was a trailblazing Kiwi icon, and with her sister, Dame Linda, she brought us a lot of laughter and music, I think, into all Kiwi homes. She leaves a legacy of humour, warmth, and joy, and she’s going to be sadly missed, and all in our thoughts are with her family and with all of her loved ones. Rest in peace, camp leader.

Look, on Thursday, the Government will deliver our third Budget. It comes at a time of much global volatility and uncertainty, which is putting pressure on every economy in the world, including New Zealand’s. This Budget will be about securing New Zealand’s future, protecting our economic recovery, maintaining fiscal discipline, and investing carefully in the things that matter most to all of us.

Over the last two years, our Government has focused on getting inflation down, easing pressure on interest rates, keeping taxes low, and restoring discipline to Government spending. We’ve also prioritised strengthening our relationships with international trading partners and forging new relationships, and adjusting our settings to attract investment and to support our businesses to grow. All of that work has put New Zealand in a stronger position than we would otherwise have been when the conflict in the Middle East began, which will help us bounce back much faster when the conflict comes to an eventual end.

A deluge of recent positive economic news confirms this, that despite the challenges, there are real reasons for confidence. New Zealand’s exporters continue to show real strength. In April, our total exports reached $8.6 billion, up $943 million, or 12 percent on the same month last year. Our trade surplus in April was the largest on record, at $1.92 billion. This positive trade news comes amid the ongoing situation in the Middle East, disrupting supply chains and driving up fuel prices. It reflects the agility of our exporters and the strong reputation that New Zealand has for producing quality goods and services.

For example, there is continued good global demand for our kiwifruit. You would have seen Zespri last week announce an outstanding financial result for 2025-26 with record global fruit sales of $5.9 billion, and a record $3.56 billion of that is being returned directly into the New Zealand growers across our regional communities. Another of our top export sectors is international education, which saw enrolments climb to over 92,000 international students last year, up 11 percent on the year prior, and this all suggests that the sector is now moving beyond its post-COVID recovery and into a new phase of growth.

Tourism is another success story, with new figures showing almost 360,000 international visitors arrived in March, up 15 percent on the same time last year. Annual figures show we welcomed 3.63 million international visitors in the year ending March, and that was up 9.2 percent on the previous year. Like the export news, this positive data is against the backdrop of a global fuel crisis, which reflects the confidence in New Zealand’s tourism sector. What all this positive economic data illustrates is that New Zealand is in a stronger position to withstand the impacts of the situation in the Middle East than we would have been had the conflict started two years ago.

Budget ‘26 builds on the work that we have done over the last two years to put our economy into recovery and to get it growing again. The decisions we have made in this Budget will help steer New Zealand toward a brighter and more secure future, even with all the turmoil that’s going on in the world.

Since the outset of the Middle East conflict, we’ve been clear that New Zealand can’t afford for the Government to try to ease the fuel pressure for everyone. We have therefore provided timely, targeted, and temporary support to those impacted the most by higher prices at the pump. But we know that many New Zealanders are still under pressure and worried about affordability. We also know that we cannot spend, tax, and borrow our way out of every and all challenges, especially when the world is becoming more unstable. Our job is to minimise the impact of global volatility as much as possible and to stay focused on a long-term plan that delivers more jobs, higher incomes, and greater choices for Kiwis.

That is why our fiscal strategy remains unchanged. We are committed to returning the books to surplus by 2028-29, and putting debt on a downward path towards 40 percent of GDP. That commitment will be reflected in this year’s Budget and, as we have previously signalled, the net operating package will be $2.1 billion, around $300 million lower than the allowance set in December. That shows that even in a more difficult environment, we are prepared to make tough choices carefully, reprioritise spending, and keep control of the Government’s day-to-day finances. At the same time, we will continue to back essential services such as health, education, police, and infrastructure that New Zealand needs to grow and to become more resilient to future global shocks.

Building New Zealand’s resilience to future global shocks also means improving energy security, which has been underscored by the current situation in the Middle East. Today, we are announcing that Budget ‘26 will deliver a new initiative to help businesses transition away from gas, helping them avoid rising gas prices, and saving New Zealand’s dwindling gas supplies for other users. The problem of a dwindling gas supply has been known for years, but the current situation in the Middle East has reinforced the benefits and the urgency of New Zealand securing its energy needs. I’ll now pass over to Nicola to talk through the details of the announcement, followed by Simeon and then Shane.

Thank you, Prime Minister. As I said last week, when Kiwi businesses do well, New Zealanders do well. Successful businesses create jobs and pay higher wages that make life more affordable and give people more choices. But the converse also applies. When too many businesses are struggling, New Zealanders’ job and income opportunities are reduced.

A focus of this year’s Budget is addressing long-term challenges that threaten New Zealand’s future prospects. This includes work to fix problems which can make being in business unaffordable. Energy costs are one such challenge, in particular those caused by the country’s rapidly reducing supply of natural gas. This shortage has added pressure to electricity bills and made life particularly difficult for firms who depend on gas to operate. A factor in some recent business closures has been the high price of energy to power industrial processes, with tight gas supplies causing some businesses to shrink or even shut. Dwindling gas reserves are affecting gas users directly, and they’re affecting all New Zealanders indirectly through the reduction in job and income opportunities that arise when employers are struggling. These gas shortages are not of those firms’ making. The previous Government’s decision to ban oil and gas exploration has left those businesses high and dry.

I support Government intervention in businesses or markets when it is very well targeted and where there is a compelling case to achieve broader economic objectives. The gas situation in New Zealand today meets that criteria. That’s why today we are announcing a Government-backed loan scheme to support viable businesses to substantially reduce their gas usage, or transition away from gas entirely.

The gas transition loan guarantee scheme will run at arm’s length from the Government. Banks will be the lenders, retaining their usual commercial disciplines. The exact terms of the lending will be subject to negotiations between the parties. The Government’s role will be to guarantee 80 percent of each loan made under the scheme, in return for banks extending more favourable terms to the borrowers. We know from previous schemes that that favourability could be worth as much as 1.5 basis points, 1.5 percentage in interest rate terms. This will make transitioning from gas more attractive and more viable for businesses.

Banks have previously taken part in similar schemes, such as that established following the North Island weather events scheme—so, over the past few months, our officials have engaged with banks on a similar scheme for firms who want to be freed from gas dependency. Commercial banks have so far indicated enthusiastic support and are keen to make the scheme work.

The scheme is expected to support total lending of up to $1.2 billion, with a maximum loan of $50 million per business. Each loan is to cover the costs associated with the borrower reducing their gas usage by at least 15 percent without—and this is important—without decreasing their production or output. Budget 2026 appropriates $48 million to cover potential losses under the scheme. To be eligible, a business must use at least 1,000 gigajoules of reticulated gas each year and be financially viable. Thousands of businesses meet that gas use threshold, from firms involved in food manufacturing to carpets, packaging, and vegetables, through to commercial laundries and those producing roading products.

Treasury is working with the commercial banks to put the final details to the scheme, which I expect to formally begin in July or August. From late this week, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, EECA, will have a website up and running for firms interested in exploring their options for transitioning away from gas. I encourage interested businesses to take a look and have a chat with their bank. I’d also remind firms that if they make investments in depreciable assets, they’ll also be eligible for the investment boost tax credit, allowing them to expense up to 20 percent of the cost of their investment against their tax bill. Let me hand over to Simeon now.

Thank you, Nicola, and thank you, Prime Minister. Whether it’s a greenhouse, flower growers, to glass manufacturers, and from the production of everything from prepared dinners and potato crisps to industrial steel and polystyrene, many New Zealand industries and manufacturers—and even more jobs—depend on gas to fuel their processes and operations. As a result of Labour’s reckless oil and gas ban, recent figures show New Zealand’s gas reserves at January 1 were 731 petajoules, a decrease of 217 petajoules, or 23 percent on last year’s figures.

ECA estimate that if the full $1.2 billion of lending goes ahead, up to 10 petajoules of gas use could be reduced each year by using alternative energy sources. And with our current gas fields reducing quickly, and gas becoming more expensive, and new contracts being offered, particularly for small and medium businesses, becoming more short-term, this Government is incredibly aware of the challenges being faced by these businesses, and this policy is about ensuring that we provide support so we can protect those businesses and protect those jobs.

We want to be exporting New Zealand’s goods, not our jobs, and that is one of the motivations behind also fast-tracking resource consent to get more renewable energy projects built or existing infrastructure substantially upgraded. It’s why we’ve reversed the oil and gas exploration ban and it’s why we have a procurement process underway for imported LNG. That can be a backup power generation if it’s needed to keep the lights on during peak demand periods.

While the pipeline of renewables is strong, New Zealand remains in a fortunate position of having an abundance of water, sun and geothermal energy to underpin an even greater renewable energy generation capacity. Today’s announcement of a loan scheme is just one more sensible thing we can do as a Government to add to providing a more secure, resilient and affordable energy supply for New Zealand households and businesses. I will now pass over to Shane Jones.

Prime Minister, this is not the first time I’ve been on this stage talking about a gas announcement, sans kabuki faces today.

Amongst other things, folks, that we are announcing today will be the passage through Parliament of a gas transparency bill. Since 2023, we’ve suffered a drop from 148 petajoules down to 85, a loss of 43 percent of known gas resource. Not only has this put extraordinary pressure on existing firms but it is driving up the cost of electricity.

Sadly, the state does not have adequate visibility as to what is happening with the remaining amount of resource, as it’s transacted between large industrial users and the gentailers. It is a difficult step to make when the state equips itself with additional interventionist powers to require information. However, this is a strategic challenge to us when we think through the importance, for example, of balance continuing to exist at a time where geopolitical pressures are threatening the very existence of our last agricultural input producer in New Zealand as they compete, with different elasticity challenges, against the gentailers.

So Minister Brown and I will be bringing legislation into Parliament to provide the Government with the capacity to require information from both the users of the residual gas resource and the producers. We will be mindful that in New Zealand, contract law is sacrosanct, but it is important that we have high quality information so that Cabinet Ministers have a good understanding as to what threats are materialising to the very existence of key features of our manufacturing and industrial estate.

This legislation will be introduced shortly. The responsibility will be shared between myself and Simeon. It is unlikely to have a particularly deleterious effect on the price of gas, but it will improve our ability to understand what is happening on a week-by-week basis and inform Ministers as to what interventions, if any, are needed. Yes, I know I hear a number of you saying, “Isn’t this extraordinarily intrusive?” but we are facing a very challenging set of circumstances with the loss of the availability of gas, and although we have the $200 million that is available for squeezing the remaining juice out of what we do know, we need to be very skilful in how we use the remaining resource and information will help us navigate through these challenges.

Thank you very much. Well said. Well, listen, team, why don’t we take questions on the announcement and then we’ll move to general issues of the day. Jenna?

Why did you not step in last year and stop some of those mills, like the Ruapehu mills, from closing down?

Well, look, we are always sad in our Government when any business is forced to close due to not being viable anymore. Our job is to look at what are the underlying conditions in which businesses are operating, and we have been 100 percent on the case of energy affordability. The truth is we have been left with a electricity system severely damaged by the last Government’s reckless decisions to prioritise wearing a climate change badge over New Zealand’s affordable energy needs. We are introducing this scheme today because we believe that these firms deserve to exist, and sometimes what they need is a little bit of help to make the investments needed so that they can keep producing profitably into the future.

Will you do anything to save the jobs at the Kaitaia mills?

Look, there are a number of steps that have been underway in terms of discussions with various mills. In the case of those Kaitaia mills, I understand that there is the potential that other businesses may take them over.

The National Party was heavily critical of the GIDI fund. Recognising there are some differences between GIDI and this scheme—

Very different indeed.

Well, one was direct grants. This is a Crown-backed loan.

One was picking winners. This is not the Government pretending to be a bank. The banks will still decide who’s credit-worthy and the terms for lending. This is the Government providing our backing, reducing the cost of this lending using our Crown guarantee. We’re not pretending to be bankers and we’re not picking winners.

Ideologically, why are you happy with Crown intervention in this case but you weren’t in that case?

Because I’m not replacing the role of the bank. I don’t think that Government is well equipped to get in there and look at the balance sheets and profit and loss records of every business in New Zealand. That is the role for commercial banks who are best placed to make those judgments. What the Crown can do is step in to reduce the cost of that lending with its backing, with its guarantee, and the conversations that our officials have had with the commercial banks is they’ve said this actually achieves two things: (1) yes, it will reduce the cost of borrowing for those firms, but (2) it shines a light on the need for transition. And what those banks want to see and what actually the energy companies want to see is firms planning for their future and having confidence that if they make these investments, they can be viable in the years ahead.

The Budget’s putting aside $48 million in potential losses. Do you think taxpayers are going to be fine with losing $48 million by investing in private business?

Look, that’s a provisional number. It’s very difficult to estimate what, if any, losses will occur. The most recent example we have is the North Island weather event scheme, which so far has lent, I think, approximately $1.7 billion. The losses on that scheme so far are only $2 million. So we’ve taken a prudent approach of provisioning for up to $48 million worth of losses.

The intent here is that commercial banks will lend to viable businesses and that therefore the loans will be repaid. No bank wants to give a loan to someone who’s not going to repay it. It will be up to them to assess the creditworthiness of interested businesses. The Crown’s role is to guarantee up to 80 percent of that lending, which dramatically reduces the cost of lending to those firms and will make the transition an option for some firms who right now might just think it’s completely out of the ballpark. It’s a sensible, prudent way to help.

Sorry, can we go here, and then we’ll come down to Mark.

You once called the GIDI fund “corporate welfare”.

That’s what it was.

Even having the money set aside for losses and the $6 million for helping businesses explore the option—

Let’s be clear, the GIDI fund was hundreds of millions of dollars.

—how is this not corporate welfare?

Well, the GIDI Fund was hundreds of millions of dollars handed out willy-nilly at the behest of a Minister. This is commercial banks determining who is credit-worthy and making loans so that firms can invest their own money in the transition. So this is not leading businesses off the hook for their own investments, as the GIDI fund was doing. This is simply about providing a Crown guarantee to support and accelerate that lending.

Okay, Mark?

What’s the message or signal that this sends to the market about the long-term future of gas in New Zealand? David Seymour last week was talking about the end of gas in New Zealand. Is that—not tomorrow, but is that where the Government is going? Is that where you see it going?

Yeah, I’ll let Shane answer that.

So we’ve done—we received, Mark, some information from our officials. You heard what I said about 85 petajoules. 2030, one forecast scenario is 50 petajoules, 2036, 25 petajoules, in the absence that those that we’re already working with are unable to bring other fields that where they know there is gas, for example, the Karewa field near Raglan. I don’t want to imagine that that’s going to happen with a great deal of ease because whilst we know there’s gas there, there are infrastructure challenges. So, your point— i.e. ongoing scarcity—is a point that’s important, and Simeon can address the LNG question at a different time, but it’s not as if we haven’t done some forecasting.

What we think we’re doing is we’re enabling people to transition to other forms of energy. There will be some—we’re told that the bakers, apparently, need to stay with gas because the process heat options associated with electricity don’t quite do it for them. And we’re hoping that firms like Essity, located in Kawerau, where it’s riddled with geothermal energy, hopefully this scheme will enable them to tap into geothermal energy. So I acknowledge your point, it’s a downward slope.

So we’ll go to Mark and then we’ll go to Tom and then we’ll come back to Sean.

Just on those reserves, you know, in 2023 the projection was we’d have, from now on, about double the amount of gas that we now think we’ll have. It’s not because we used it all, it’s because those reserves keep being marked down. How do you feel? What do you say to the industry? Do you feel like you can trust the information you’re getting from them now, given they were so wrong just three years ago?

Well, I think there’s several things that I’d say. When I’ve been sent overseas by the Cabinet, a number of people—and I believe they’re telling the truth—were on the verge of signing 100 million deals to spend genuine pūtea to invest and continue to expand known fields. They walked away from it and they continue to tell me, Nicola and the Prime Minister, they are not coming back. So it’s been a devilishly hard thing to get investors to come back because they’re fearful that with a change of Government—whether you believe it or I believe it, the problem is they believe it—gas has no long-term future. So there’s that element.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that the owners of the gas resource, in the sense of those who are investing in it, are not telling us the truth. But we do need greater surveillance powers within the state to ascertain what is happening with the diminishing resource we have, because I personally don’t want to see the firms like Ballance disappear and be outbid by the gentailers of the world, who have a greater capacity to deal with the elasticity in the energy markets.

OK, we’ll go to Tom and then we’ll come down to Sean.

Minister Jones, this one is for you. One of the criticisms that has come out of the Provincial Growth Fund is that only about 10 percent of what is supposed to come back has come back. How can you be so sure in this case that all of that $1.2 billion will come back?

Well, I don’t think you are comparing apples with apples. I mean, what the Minister of Finance has said is that this was based on the post-Gabrielle arrangements. And a host of the investments that were made under the Provincial Growth Fund, they went for—like the first $500 million went into the Billion Tree Project and those are very long-term projects where the trees take 30 or 40 years to grow, and a host of those projects were public good investments, not the least of which were water reservoirs.

But what the Minister of Finance has said is obviously the banks will do the due diligence, the banks will wear part of the loss, and the Crown will be the last woman standing. And sure, it’s a risk, but it’s something that we feel is a reasonable thing to do because we want these firms to continue to flourish and they tell us that they want to transition to other forms of fuel but they need a helping hand.

OK, Sean.

All four of you have mentioned the ban by Labour and I’m just trying to clarify in very simple terms. Is this that we don’t have any more gas and we’re going to run out, or a political situation exists where no one will go and look for that gas or extract it? Are we just leaving it in the ground and abandoning, because of politics, the idea of having gas as a major part of our energy future?

No. I mean, the oil and gas ban sent an absolutely chilling effect through international investors to say New Zealand is not open for business, we do not welcome your hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of capital for exploration, and that had what we call a chilling effect in the global investor community. As I’ve said, we shouldn’t end up in an energy crisis in a country like New Zealand with abundant natural resources, but there’s no doubt about it, that oil and gas ban sent a chilling effect out to investors saying we’re not open for business.

Why not spend this money on getting the explorers back in to extract the gas?

Well, what we’re doing is several things. It’s an “and, and, and”. So we’re putting $200 million aside to co-invest with potential explorers of gas here in New Zealand. We’ll continue to do that. continuing to work through our consenting process to make it easier to do. We continue to explore an LNG import gas facility, as you know. We’ll have more to say about that in the middle of the year once the procurement’s finished. But it’s about an “and, and, and”. We have doubling the amount of renewables going on. That’s fantastic.

But again, I want everybody to understand, we are thinking about energy not in the context of climate change, we are thinking about energy in the context of national security. We cannot have national security in a volatile world if we do not have more energy independence, and that’s why we’re actually up for doing everything we can around thermal energy, around renewable energy, and this is part of that process.

What are the things that the firms that have closed down, the mills and factories that have closed down, have noted is not just gas but electricity costs. Have you done any modelling on how transitioning away from gas to electricity is going to put pressure on the grid, and could that have an impact on households?

I’ll let Simeon talk to that, yeah.

Our entire policies have been around how do we make sure that wholesale electricity prices are more competitive and more affordable, and that’s where making sure we have a security of supply and reliable electricity is critically important. So the work we’ve done—you know, stopping Labour’s Lake Onslow boondoggle, which put a chilling impact on other investors to put in place renewable power, we’ve removed that. We got rid of the 20, 30, 100 percent renewable energy target, which was saying, “Don’t invest in thermal firming”, which also stopped renewable projects from going ahead because without firming, those projects aren’t actually viable. We also did the 20-year deal with TY, which has unlocked further generation by providing certainty to the market, and of course we’ve supported the gentailers in terms of the deal at Huntly to have the stockpile.

And all of that has seen wholesale prices for electricity drop significantly this year. They’re down $30 to $40 for a megawatt hour since February, and now we’re going through the procurement process for LNG. It’s all about security and reliability to then ensure we have more affordable power prices for companies to be able to not only remain in New Zealand, but also to grow.

Sorry, the question was: have you done any modelling on this policy and whether it will have an impact on the grid and household energy costs as a result?

Well, this will increase—this will provide businesses who can transition the opportunity to be able to do so with a Crown-guaranteed loan. Ultimately, in terms of the grid connection, some businesses, depending on where they are and what the grid connection is, may also have—have some challenges in that regard. Many businesses, though—you think about 1,000 gigajoules—many businesses will have just as well a reticulated gas connection as well as an electricity connection and be able to easily transition. So this is something which will provide businesses that support that they need in order to be able to—

I’m sorry, I’m just asking a very specific about [Inaudible]—

But your question is, “Is this going to increase the power of price?” No. The price of electricity? No, it won’t. It will support businesses to be able to transition. And we have a significant build-out of generation currently underway and we have seen a lowering of wholesale prices due to the policies that that we’ve put in place as a Government, and that is what really matters for businesses and industries.

OK, team, we’re going to take a few more questions we haven’t answered.

Will this transition, will it allow the transition to all other forms of energy, or will it just be renewables?

Yes, it’ll be agnostic in terms of the type of fuel or type of energy to transition. This is about making sure we can shore up New Zealand industry and businesses with rapidly dwindling natural gas. And so, for example, as Shane said, this could be a business which transitions to geothermal, it could be to electricity, it could be to put solar or other types of generation on the business, but it—

There’s no incentive for it to be cleaner energy?

No, it doesn’t—it could be that they go and invest in equipment which reduces the amount of gas that they use. I believe they’ve got to make a minimum of 15 percent reduction in gas. It might be that they invest in more efficient plant and equipment so they still use gas, but they become more efficient in their use of gas.

OK. Did you have a question? OK, right.

Prime Minister, is this you heeding the OECD’s warning that we do need to transition away from gas?

Well, again, we live in a country that last quarter, I think, ran at 98 percent renewable electricity, and that’s fantastic when there’s sun, wind, and rain, as we often talk about. But what we’re not prepared to do is end up in an energy crisis like we had in 2024, where we end up having this dry year risk. It builds in a massive premium into our electricity prices and then, actually, low and middle income working New Zealanders lose their jobs because of it. And that’s why I’m saying to—you know, we’ve said to the team, is, look, we want to pivot so that they actually think about energy independence in the context of national security, rather than just an end in itself to do 100 percent renewables. We’d all love to be 100 percent renewables, but the reality is we’re going to need gas and transition fuels for some time in our system.

And so we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can, whether it’s a strategic coal reserve at the back of Huntly, strategic diesel reserve sitting in Whangārei, the work that we’re trying to do here on gas and managing our gas reserves as best we possibly can, as well as encouraging renewable investment. It’s an “and, and, and”, foot on the accelerator, doing everything as much as possible we can.

OK, Jo.

Can I just ask quickly? People sitting at home might be thinking two things about this. One, if they live in a small rural town where they rely on industry that’s been under pressure, does this mean that they might keep their job at least longer? And also, back to Gina’s point about, are they going to be paying more, potentially, for their power bills this winter? What’s the answer to those two questions?

Well, yes, this is about protecting jobs, particularly in regional and rural New Zealand, and no, this is not about—this will not—this will not be increasing power prices. This is about actually ensuring that we can support businesses to have choices around the energy that they use. And ultimately, we have a massive boom of electricity generation underway because of the policies of this Government. Fast track has seen the largest wind farm in New Zealand recently consented in Southland. We’ve seen significant—we’ve had more applications coming through on fast track which is seeing a boom of generation underway. And that generation, alongside all of the other policies, is seeing a lowering of the wholesale market price for electricity and that is putting downward pressure on bills. That is exactly what we want to see happen in New Zealand.

OK, guys, we’re going to take three more questions.

Prime Minister, just moving on to another topic, are you planning—is your office planning on holding a bit of a review into what’s happened with the Fonterra and Z Energy lobbyists giving your staff documents?

Look, I think, you know, my office has already reached out to Ministerial Services and said, look, ideally we want everybody to be fully aware—well, not ideally. We need everybody to be fully aware of their obligations and so it’s a good reminder to do that.

But particularly on this issue, the Smith v Fonterra case, the reality is this is a decision made by Cabinet, period. And there was a lot of us as Cabinet Ministers coming into the Cabinet room—even well before this issue, even before we got elected—actually with very strong views on the subject that when you’re talking about climate change frameworks, they’re built up by governments over many years. And actually it’s the state’s responsibility, it’s not the court’s or businesses’, and actually the threat of creating a parallel system is something that causes huge amounts of uncertainty and that’s not right. So that’s the reason we made the decision that we had.

We talked to lots of stakeholders, whether they’re community leaders, business leaders. I expect my Ministers and staff to be doing that because actually a lot of the ideas for how we fix things in New Zealand and build out the future come from talking in those engagements.

Sure, I understand that, but you said that you’ve reached out to Ministerial Services to make sure everyone’s, you know, complying with what they should be doing. What’s your understanding of what happened here? Has someone in your office, you know, lost a document or not [Inaudible] or what’s happened?

Look, all I know is that we’ve got no recollection, no record of the interaction back in 2024. I know my office has reached out to Ministerial Services and said, hey, you know, ideally we should have that, and as a result, reminding everybody of their obligations. But the bigger issue here is really around this case, which is we’re not going to have duplicate systems in place managing climate change.

Have you asked Fonterra or Z who they gave document to?

No. No, I haven’t. But—

What do you think about the prospect of Stuart Nash being a member of a future Cabinet of yours?

Well, look, that’s—I’d just say to you I think the person who is going to win Napier is going to be Katie Nimon, so that’s a very hypothetical question. And with that, I think we might be finished. Guys, I said there’d be three so you’ve got one last question. Who’s it going to be? Henry, you haven’t asked a question today so let’s do it.

Would you advise any business looking to invest, create a new plant, to not use gas, and would you advise any homeowner building a new home to also not install new gas infrastructure? This is not replacing, this is new infrastructure.

Yeah, I mean a lot of this comes down to, obviously, price and cost, and particularly the type of business. So, as Shane said, if you’re a bakery, you know, producing lots of bread, you need gas. That’s what they’ve written to us and said. So this is actually about protecting what is remaining of the gas, as gas fields decline, to be there for businesses which don’t have choices. We want all of those jobs, all those opportunities here in New Zealand. Thank you very much.

Okay, guys, big week, we’re going to carry on.