March 22, 2026 • 8 mins
The Green Party is offering its support to National to fast-track a fossil fuel relief package, bypasssing other parties with their combined 63 votes.
The proposal includes three months of free public transport, a windfall tax on fuel companies, and targeted payments for rural and low-income earners.
The Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick told Kerre Woodham, "we have put a sensible and urgent fossil fuel crisis relief package on the table, and we're really willing and able to work with the National Party to make it happen."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Carrywood and Morning's podcast from News
Talk SADB.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
As we've been discussing, the Green Party is offering its
support to National to fast track a fossil fuel relief
package by passing other parties with their combined to sixty
three votes. The proposal includes three months of free public transport,
a windfall tax on fuel companies, and targeted payments for
rural and low income earners, as well as seeking to
boost MILO traits for twenty three thousand care workers and
(00:35):
restoring disability transport support. Green's co leader Chloe Swarbrick joins me, Now,
a very good morning to you, Mordener.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh no, that's great. What sort of response have you
had thus far from the suggestions?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
So far nothing from the government, but of course I'm
going into cabinet this afternoon and based on the kind
of language that we've seen change from you know, at
the end of last week, the Prime Minister and Minister
of Finance both saying that they're expecting that they'll be
announcing something on Monday, and the Prime Minister at today
softening that language to say people can expect something later
this week that does indicate that there may potentially be
(01:11):
some challenges amongst the coalition parties and coming to agreement
around that support, particularly for low and middle income New Zealanders.
And I think that's just really important as to why
we cut through this noise right now. We can get
this done. We have put a sensible and urgent fossil
fuel crisis relief package on the table and we're ready,
willing and able to work with the National Party to
make it happen.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Which is fantastic. Have you done the costings for what
the targeted relief would cost, so that.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Depends how you cut it. And basically I think that
this is the golden question and one which the government
holds a lot of the cards on in terms of,
for example, the impacts of the increased costs on New Zealanders.
We heard the Minister of Finance say that she has
some figures, I believe from Treasury last week which show
that the average increase of a cost to fill up
the average person's tank is around twenty to thirty dollars.
(02:00):
The average person is filling up their tank around two
times a month. But you know there's those obviously you
have to use their cars quite a lot, and that
can mean four times a month, so it's really a
matter of how you cut it. But what we do
have some pretty sound costings on is the cost of
rolling out free public transport, because people will recall that
during the COVID nineteen that are coming out of that crisis,
that there was the subsidy also off the back of
(02:22):
the Ukrainian invasion illegal invasion from Russia, where public transport
was made half price. So we have extended out and
extrapolated those costings, adjusted for inflation and demand, and that
will cost around one hundred and forty three million dollars.
But I think it's really important to understand that in
the context of some of the other things which we
have put to the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance
(02:43):
in this letter, because if we can just take a
step back, it's not a mystery as to how this
crisis evolved. It has come about as a result of
dependence on fossil fuels, and we therefore actually have the
answer to reducing this vulnerability that looks like investment and
diversified renewable energy generation, which also has the co benefit
(03:03):
of massively reducing New Zealanders cost of living. We have
an abundance of renewable energy sources, innovative people in supply
chains of solar panels and electric vehicles which don't actually
need to go through the strait of hummas. So this
is a drop in the bucket in terms of spending.
If the government were to cancel the projects that it
tends to move ahead with, which would increase our fossil
fuel dependency, the likes of the Daft liquefied natural gas
(03:26):
import terminal at the cost of a billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The problem with that, though, and I have absolutely no
problem in using and sourcing renewables, is providing that link
between what our dependence is now to what the future
looks like. There is a big gap that needs to
be bridged exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
And that's why it's really critically important that I mean,
you know, it serves nobody for anybody to sit here
right now and go told you so we should have
invested in renewables in the infrastructure five years ago. But
what we can do right now, noticing particularly that our
supply chains for solar panels and for evs don't need
to go through the straight of humors. They can, for example,
be directly imported from China, we can be investing in
(04:10):
that resilience right now, whereas instead what we have on
the table from the government is a number of proposals
to the tune of billions of dollars not only for
this alery input terminal, but also for a bunch of
low value, high cost roads of national significance, which we
know return on investment would be far better if we
were investing in public transport, for example around our towns
(04:31):
and cities. And just to address that point, you know,
frequently when we're talking about investing in public transport, the
Greens are critiqued for not caring about the regions. This
is actually about reducing demand on fuel for everyone who
actually needs it freed up for them, but also in
turn reducing our climate changing emissions, which of course contributes
to more frequent and extreme weather events. So this is
(04:54):
just about how we make sensible investments as a country
and we do not need to wait for the worst
case scenario to be investing in and building our resilience
right now. We think that's just common sense And finally enough,
it's interesting to hear off the back of all of
this in the midst of this weekend New Zealand for
is coming out and saying that they support the Green
Party's proposal for breaking up the gendailers. If that's the case,
(05:15):
we call on one of our co Deputy Prime Ministers,
Winston Peters, to support our members bill, which would do
exactly what he announced on the weekend.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The idea though, that we can just switch from one
source of fuel to another almost overnight, which is what
appears to have happened, that we say right, no more
oil and gas exploration, we stop now, it has left
a big, big bridging gap.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Oh, I actually just want to address some of the
facts on this because I think unfortunately the government has
been repeating this lie time and again that now it's
kind of just seen as the truth. The reality is
that it takes sixteen years to go from fossil fuel
exploration to production. So even if that ban for new
exploration didn't come into effect in twenty eighteen, if we were,
(06:02):
for sake of argument, to have found new fossil fuel,
it would have taken until at least the mid twenty
thirties for those fossil fuels to actually come online. So
therefore there's been no material impact on our immediate availability
of fossil fuels as a result of that ban. But actually, again,
if we can just talk about what is currently being
produced in this country, we know that right now we
(06:24):
are producing gas, natural gas, and half of that is
being taken by a company called method X, turned into
a cheap commodity called methanol and exported offshore. And we
are actually paying that company for the privilege of taking
half of our gas through the emissions trading scheme free
allocation subsidies to the tune of tens of millions of
(06:46):
dollars over the past decade. We are doing some things
in a really daft way as a country and as
an economy, and we can make different decisions to improve
our resilience and reduce our reliance on and therefore vulnerability
to fossil fuel crisis like this.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Do you see potential for working with the parties across
the political spectrum? Is there? I would love to see
an indo tribalism where we can look at different ideas
and judge them on their merits. And I'd love to
see political parties doing that too.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I would love to see that as well. I mean,
that was my very earnest and perhaps and I hope.
When I first came into Parliament, you've got every politician
who stands up and gives their maiden speech and beats
their chest about how they want to work across the aisle.
But then you know when you read into the fine print,
it tends to be only on their terms. And this
is why the Greens have been quite earnest nerds about
(07:39):
the fact that if we could have some objective, clear
eyed criteria about policy that makes sense, then I think
that we would be able to get into a place
of actually making decisions that are far more transparent and
beneficial to regular everyday New Zealanders. In lieu of that,
the incentive structure inside of our parliament is for short
term headline grabbing and controversial rhetoric as opposed to actually
(08:02):
solving problems. But I think in the midst of this
immediate crime, New Zealanders don't care about politicians bickering. They
expect us to knock our heads together and sort this
thing out. So that's what we're putting our votes on
the table for, and we're really looking forward to working
with whoever is really willing and able.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Thank you very much for your time. That is Green's
co leader Chloe Swarbrick proposals being put to the government
for short term relief in the midst of the fuel crisis.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
For more from carry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
news talks that be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Carrywood and Morning's podcast from News
Talk SADB.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
As we've been discussing, the Green Party is offering its
support to National to fast track a fossil fuel relief
package by passing other parties with their combined to sixty
three votes. The proposal includes three months of free public transport,
a windfall tax on fuel companies, and targeted payments for
rural and low income earners, as well as seeking to
boost MILO traits for twenty three thousand care workers and
(00:35):
restoring disability transport support. Green's co leader Chloe Swarbrick joins me, Now,
a very good morning to you, Mordener.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh no, that's great. What sort of response have you
had thus far from the suggestions?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
So far nothing from the government, but of course I'm
going into cabinet this afternoon and based on the kind
of language that we've seen change from you know, at
the end of last week, the Prime Minister and Minister
of Finance both saying that they're expecting that they'll be
announcing something on Monday, and the Prime Minister at today
softening that language to say people can expect something later
this week that does indicate that there may potentially be
(01:11):
some challenges amongst the coalition parties and coming to agreement
around that support, particularly for low and middle income New Zealanders.
And I think that's just really important as to why
we cut through this noise right now. We can get
this done. We have put a sensible and urgent fossil
fuel crisis relief package on the table and we're ready,
willing and able to work with the National Party to
make it happen.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Which is fantastic. Have you done the costings for what
the targeted relief would cost, so that.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Depends how you cut it. And basically I think that
this is the golden question and one which the government
holds a lot of the cards on in terms of,
for example, the impacts of the increased costs on New Zealanders.
We heard the Minister of Finance say that she has
some figures, I believe from Treasury last week which show
that the average increase of a cost to fill up
the average person's tank is around twenty to thirty dollars.
(02:00):
The average person is filling up their tank around two
times a month. But you know there's those obviously you
have to use their cars quite a lot, and that
can mean four times a month, so it's really a
matter of how you cut it. But what we do
have some pretty sound costings on is the cost of
rolling out free public transport, because people will recall that
during the COVID nineteen that are coming out of that crisis,
that there was the subsidy also off the back of
(02:22):
the Ukrainian invasion illegal invasion from Russia, where public transport
was made half price. So we have extended out and
extrapolated those costings, adjusted for inflation and demand, and that
will cost around one hundred and forty three million dollars.
But I think it's really important to understand that in
the context of some of the other things which we
have put to the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance
(02:43):
in this letter, because if we can just take a
step back, it's not a mystery as to how this
crisis evolved. It has come about as a result of
dependence on fossil fuels, and we therefore actually have the
answer to reducing this vulnerability that looks like investment and
diversified renewable energy generation, which also has the co benefit
(03:03):
of massively reducing New Zealanders cost of living. We have
an abundance of renewable energy sources, innovative people in supply
chains of solar panels and electric vehicles which don't actually
need to go through the strait of hummas. So this
is a drop in the bucket in terms of spending.
If the government were to cancel the projects that it
tends to move ahead with, which would increase our fossil
fuel dependency, the likes of the Daft liquefied natural gas
(03:26):
import terminal at the cost of a billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
The problem with that, though, and I have absolutely no
problem in using and sourcing renewables, is providing that link
between what our dependence is now to what the future
looks like. There is a big gap that needs to
be bridged exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
And that's why it's really critically important that I mean,
you know, it serves nobody for anybody to sit here
right now and go told you so we should have
invested in renewables in the infrastructure five years ago. But
what we can do right now, noticing particularly that our
supply chains for solar panels and for evs don't need
to go through the straight of humors. They can, for example,
be directly imported from China, we can be investing in
(04:10):
that resilience right now, whereas instead what we have on
the table from the government is a number of proposals
to the tune of billions of dollars not only for
this alery input terminal, but also for a bunch of
low value, high cost roads of national significance, which we
know return on investment would be far better if we
were investing in public transport, for example around our towns
(04:31):
and cities. And just to address that point, you know,
frequently when we're talking about investing in public transport, the
Greens are critiqued for not caring about the regions. This
is actually about reducing demand on fuel for everyone who
actually needs it freed up for them, but also in
turn reducing our climate changing emissions, which of course contributes
to more frequent and extreme weather events. So this is
(04:54):
just about how we make sensible investments as a country
and we do not need to wait for the worst
case scenario to be investing in and building our resilience
right now. We think that's just common sense And finally enough,
it's interesting to hear off the back of all of
this in the midst of this weekend New Zealand for
is coming out and saying that they support the Green
Party's proposal for breaking up the gendailers. If that's the case,
(05:15):
we call on one of our co Deputy Prime Ministers,
Winston Peters, to support our members bill, which would do
exactly what he announced on the weekend.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
The idea though, that we can just switch from one
source of fuel to another almost overnight, which is what
appears to have happened, that we say right, no more
oil and gas exploration, we stop now, it has left
a big, big bridging gap.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Oh, I actually just want to address some of the
facts on this because I think unfortunately the government has
been repeating this lie time and again that now it's
kind of just seen as the truth. The reality is
that it takes sixteen years to go from fossil fuel
exploration to production. So even if that ban for new
exploration didn't come into effect in twenty eighteen, if we were,
(06:02):
for sake of argument, to have found new fossil fuel,
it would have taken until at least the mid twenty
thirties for those fossil fuels to actually come online. So
therefore there's been no material impact on our immediate availability
of fossil fuels as a result of that ban. But actually, again,
if we can just talk about what is currently being
produced in this country, we know that right now we
(06:24):
are producing gas, natural gas, and half of that is
being taken by a company called method X, turned into
a cheap commodity called methanol and exported offshore. And we
are actually paying that company for the privilege of taking
half of our gas through the emissions trading scheme free
allocation subsidies to the tune of tens of millions of
(06:46):
dollars over the past decade. We are doing some things
in a really daft way as a country and as
an economy, and we can make different decisions to improve
our resilience and reduce our reliance on and therefore vulnerability
to fossil fuel crisis like this.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Do you see potential for working with the parties across
the political spectrum? Is there? I would love to see
an indo tribalism where we can look at different ideas
and judge them on their merits. And I'd love to
see political parties doing that too.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I would love to see that as well. I mean,
that was my very earnest and perhaps and I hope.
When I first came into Parliament, you've got every politician
who stands up and gives their maiden speech and beats
their chest about how they want to work across the aisle.
But then you know when you read into the fine print,
it tends to be only on their terms. And this
is why the Greens have been quite earnest nerds about
(07:39):
the fact that if we could have some objective, clear
eyed criteria about policy that makes sense, then I think
that we would be able to get into a place
of actually making decisions that are far more transparent and
beneficial to regular everyday New Zealanders. In lieu of that,
the incentive structure inside of our parliament is for short
term headline grabbing and controversial rhetoric as opposed to actually
(08:02):
solving problems. But I think in the midst of this
immediate crime, New Zealanders don't care about politicians bickering. They
expect us to knock our heads together and sort this
thing out. So that's what we're putting our votes on
the table for, and we're really looking forward to working
with whoever is really willing and able.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Thank you very much for your time. That is Green's
co leader Chloe Swarbrick proposals being put to the government
for short term relief in the midst of the fuel crisis.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
For more from carry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
news talks that be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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