Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand is now in desperate need of bitumen for the lengthy and expensive roading rebuild – a quality product which Marsden Point was once producing for us locally until it was shut down. Now we are forced to import an expensive inferior alternative product from overseas.
The refinery should never have been allowed to close and now we will be reaping what we have sown. It was a shortsighted and futile exercise in virtue signalling.
The PM can make announcements about recovery and infrastructure rebuilding all he wants – but this is where being woke meets reality.
This happens when governments fail to have foresight and fail to make a stand for essential national industries – Marsden Point was always essential to the future of our country.
I worry when I agree with Winston but he is certainly right about this situation. Bitumen and CO2 are just 2 of the by products .Was this taken into account by the government?
No, cause risk assessment and forecasting risk/needs is not something this Labour Government does.
Nor do the Tories.
The risk assessment was done by MBIE. A total whitewash of the risks and consequences. We could have hoped a doctor of history (Megan Woods) would have been able to see the risks involved, but obviously not – too much knowledge and no understanding.
Any one who can think rationally would have been able to foresee the issues that we now face. I am sure many did see the issues, and MBIE delivered the report the government wanted.
Z Energy manipulated the destruction of the refinery.
Z Energy was 2/3 owned by the government thru ACC and the Superfund.
First they refused to pay the fee floor to the refinery.
To secure the sale of Z to Ampol the Refinery had to be closed.
We used to make the cleanest fuel in the world we now import the dirtiest. Thanks to the Ardern government.
Naomi James was a known hatchet woman and was brought to NZ to run the refinery into the ground.
The Refinery was made to pay the highest electricity costs of any NZ industry by government and could not even get a meeting with government to discuss a deal similar to Tiwai Point. Wellington is full of shitheads obsessed with the idea of dirty fossil fuel not tainting the governments investments. They have no energy plan for the replacement of fossil fuels at all however.
The refinery was a world class model that had the only hydra cracker in the Pacific and was the only refinery in the Pacific capable of making fuel to American military standards.
It was deliberate . A move by Beijing controlled NZ bureaucrats and dipsticks likes Shaw and Ardern who have no idea of what our fuel needs are.
We now have no facilities for the making of bio fuel. And are beholden completely to the Asian fuel industry.
Exactly, well said Shona. I would also add the incompetence in MBIE producing a report that did not identify these risks.
Quick question @Shona.
Is it true that in the early stages of the closure that the refinery management started filling pipes and byways with concrete? Or at least starting a prigramme of sabotague such that any sort of resurrection would make things harder?
From what I’ve been able to see, that is the case, And right under Megan Woods capability to smell things.
If so, I’m waiting to see how she smells the aftermath
And he is correct. This current Labour Government has done nothing much but damage this country.
At the end of the day RB the government did what right wing tragics prattle on about. Left it to the market. Yes the glorious market. They all preach small government but somehow scream at the government when all their right wing idols f’ck them over for a margin
Tthen it no longer matters if you vote left or right. And that is labours fault.
As i clearly have inside knowledge around the refinery closure . You need to print my reply to Trevor.
“essential national industries” – like horse racing, or the Shane Jones regional slush fund?
If Winston and his clan hadn’t been so belligerent, arrogant, and self-serving whilst in coalition they may have still been in parliament and may have been able to influence the future of the refinery.
How dare a coalition partner that actually gave the job of PM to Jacinda rather then Bill English have their own ideas and principles. Don’t they know their place.
The downside of MMP giving minor parties influence well beyond their electoral support. With the outstanding lawsuits at the time a coalition between Nats & NZF would certainly have been interesting.
without Winston Peters we would never had J. A as PM. think of that.
I believe without MMP NZF would only have had 1 seat.
Yes, NZF did us a huge favour by annointing Labour, but it was not for our benifit, purely his; and because of the ongoing lawsuits coalition with National could never have been a serious option, only ussd as a bargaining chip.
getting rid of anything before you have a replacement in hand is crass stupidity
Unfortunately it’s the whole country who reap the consequences of bad government.
Strategic assets have no place in the market….a real dumb move with all the geopolitical ructions that are going on around the world, we need to control our own destiny.
A casualty of the govt’s ill thought out climate change policy, to prove to the world that they were doing something, they threw them a bone to try to keep the rural sector onboard & shot the rest of us in the foot, driven by people who wouldn’t know a refinery from a raspberry!