In today’s tiresome world of prefabricated media grabs and rehearsed campaign slogans uttered by cardboard cut-out ministers, it is not often a politician wanders onto the screen with laugh-out-loud honesty.
Shane Jones, New Zealand’s Associate Energy Minister, appears to be something out of Chris Bowen’s nightmares.
‘What is New Zealand’s policy toward Net Zero?’ asked Rowan Dean, our Editor-in-Chief, on his Sunday show Outsiders.
‘Oh, brick-by-brick we’re dismantling it, mate. We have re-instated a licence to re-establish the coal industry in New Zealand. We’ve gone beyond this unicorn-kissing view that only clean energy will keep the lights on.
‘We’ve spent $200 million, or put it aside, to re-invigorate the gas industry as a repudiation of Jacinda Ardern’s industrial-crippling decision to cancel the gas industry in New Zealand.
‘So, brick-by-brick, we are dismantling it. We are going into an election next year, September-October, and know this from me: the party that I belong to, and our leader, Winston Peters, a key part of our manifesto will be a complete inversion of this commitment that Jacinda signed us up to.
‘Quite frankly, the dead weight cost of these climate policies is a burden that our economy cannot bear.
‘We probably are a bit further ahead of the curve than where you are in Australia. The [New Zealand] public have now worked out that energy is totally over the top in terms of how expensive it is. We run the risk of deindustrialisation.
‘I think you’ll find that the rhythm and the underlying message in New Zealand is we’re not going to maintain a set of targets or expectations that our economy cannot bear.’
The interview came about on the back of criticism that the conservative coalition government was not living up to its bold election promises.
This criticism may be fair.
In January of 2025, the government unveiled a ‘bold’ 2026-30 plan to cap emissions at 205 million tonnes of CO2. According to one article:
The Climate Change Response Act outlines a 2050 Net Zero goal for all greenhouse gases except biogenic methane, which has its own reduction targets … the updated plan incorporates eight high-impact policies, including renewable energy expansion, 10,000 EV charging points by 2030, and agricultural emissions pricing.
Another article on this Act adds:
One of the key components of the Act is the establishment of a Climate Change Commission, an independent body tasked with providing expert advice to the government on climate change policies and strategies.
There are mixed signals coming out of the government, but not from Mr Jones.
It is certainly true that some of the worst pieces of legislation have been trashed and the most damaging restrictions on critical industries are in the process of being removed.
Unfortunately, as many are warning in Australia, unpicking Net Zero is difficult. It has been embedded in complex laws, economic traps, while the critical industries which were dismantled cannot be flipped back on. They have to be rebuilt.
Asked what Net Zero policies had done to energy prices and grid reliability, Mr Jones replied:
‘The real problem is we were a low-cost energy system. We grew up on the back of our forefathers building the hydro-dams and the geo-dams and I’m not entirely sure what the social mindset is that gripped New Zealanders in Jacinda’s time, but the reality is the power prices have not come down as a consequence of wind and solar. If anything, last winter, I believe we had the highest spiking prices for electricity in the entire OECD.
‘And what’s driven this? A hatred of fossil fuels.
‘A false belief that you can run an economy without peaking power without firming power derived either from coal or gas. We went through a 180-degree turn and basically buried Jacinda’s thinking.’
Later, he added:
‘We are not going to be intimidated out of using our own coal because sadly, month by month, up to a million tonnes of coal we need to bring in from Indonesia because of historic, juvenile, unicorn-kissing thinking that we can grow rich without using our own resources.’
‘This is wonderful,’ replied Rowan Dean. ‘This is so good.’
It is not surprising that, as a host, he was thrilled. Getting a straight answer about energy from anyone, including most of the Coalition, is damn near impossible.
Net Zero is not a New Zealand problem, it’s a global ideological virus that infected Parliaments via the lobbyist class who caught it hopping into bed with the renewable industry. Overnight, every single government started tossing billions of dollars at foreign companies to ‘fix’ a climate extinction narrative fabricated for cheap votes a few election cycles ago.
Net Zero has become a Band-Aid that allows this extinction date to be pushed out beyond the careers of sitting politicians without them having to prove a single fact or figure. Every warm day is proof more public money needs to be spent, and every beautiful day is proof of their success. We used to call this a ‘rigged game’.
As Mr Jones said on Outsiders, ‘We have bought into the mindset of climate cultism without fully appreciating, do we have the sustainable mandate amongst garden variety New Zealanders so they have the ability to bear the cost? I think the next election, quite frankly, is going to be about re-setting, re-balancing, and avoiding deindustrialisation.’
He also spoke about ‘quarantining’ critical industries, such as agriculture, from Net Zero. Farms were, under former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, were a target for public outrage about ‘evil carbon’. Culling cows and sheep was seen as a top priority. In 2022, Jacinda Ardern’s government first floated their agricultural tax on methane emissions. ‘No other country in the world has yet developed a system for pricing and reducing agricultural emissions, so our farmers are set to benefit from being first movers.’
Or, more likely, no other nation in the world was stupid enough to disincentivise food production.
It was scrapped in 2024. And no, farmers didn’t ‘benefit’ from being ‘first movers’.
Mr Jones had a warning for Australia, which is on a nation-ruining path under the direction of Labor, cheered on by the Greens, and manipulated from all sides by activists, academics, lobbyists, and foreign CEOs.
‘All I can do is remind [Australia], if you do not have affordable energy in your economy, then your economy is going to deindustrialise. That is the challenge that I, as a regional, centre-right, patriotic politician, am dealing with every week.’
He added:
‘It’s going to take quite a deep dive. These viral influencers have embedded themselves in the infrastructure and the scaffolding of the state. And there’s all these elements trying to outweigh democratically elected politicians.
‘You may or may not know, over the last week we had to get the greenies and our wildlife department to back down because of decisions they were making that upheld the status of lizards above human beings.
‘We are not going to have the weaponisation of frogs, lizards, and dead moths against jobs, investment, and continual prosperity. Simple as that. And the Kiwis are on my side.’
Champion.
