Rules for trucks and lorries will be relaxed to encourage more efficient diesel use – but some critics say such tweaks are only delaying the inevitable, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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Trucks could carry more, sooner
Heavy trucks could soon carry more weight per trip, take more direct routes, and run in the small hours. Regulation minister David Seymour and transport minister Chris Bishop yesterday outlined four proposed changes – heavier permitted loads, aligning licence-class thresholds for electric utes with their diesel equivalents, off-peak freight movement, and over-dimension access to Auckland motorways and toll roads – they say could be ready within days, Stuff reports.
The aim, as RNZ reports, is to squeeze more efficiency out of the freight system rather than restrict public fuel use, keeping New Zealand in phase 1 of the national fuel response plan. “We don’t want a repeat of the Covid-19 lockdowns,” Seymour said. “Doing the work to boost fuel efficiency now helps ensure we can stay in phase 1 for as long as possible.”
But should we already be at phase 2?
Latest MBIE figures show petrol stocks at 51.8 days, diesel at 41.3, and jet fuel at 45.7, down from 52.2, 42.3 and 47.4 in the previous update – though officials say movements “remain within expectations”. As Stuff’s Isaac Davison reports, not everyone is reassured. Australia moved to its level 2 last month, which meant cutting excise taxes, releasing fuel reserves and offering free public transport in some cities. South Korea, a major NZ supplier, has restricted exports and only allows public-sector workers to drive every second day.
Energy transition expert Nathan Surendran told Stuff at least two of the six triggers for moving to phase 2 had already been met and he was “deeply concerned” that NZ wasn’t taking a more precautionary approach. “The cost of acting early and being wrong is inconvenient, but the cost of acting late and being right is supply collapse in a 100% import-dependent economy”, he said. Seymour denied yesterday that a shift to phase 2 was being considered.
A 12-cent split inside the coalition
The fuel crunch has reopened a fault line over excise duties. Seymour wants the planned 12 cents-per-litre rise in fuel taxes to go ahead in January, while transport minister Chris Bishop told The Post’s Nick James he saw it as a political “death wish”. Seymour said he understood the tax rise would be painful, but “if we have roads being cancelled, maintenance being cancelled, roads full of potholes, if we borrow money to try and prop that up and leave debt and inflation for the next generation… that is also a failure”.
Bishop was less keen, telling The Post it was a “bloody difficult situation” that keeps him “up at night”: “I’m the poor sucker who has to deal with seven years of decisions around this. I mean, fuel tax has not gone up since 2020.” Labour leader Chris Hipkins has called for the increase to be scrapped.
At the end of the supply line
Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne reports that the fuel crisis is on track to double Air Chathams’ monthly fuel bill from $500,000 to more than $1m, forcing the airline to cut back regional flights. Even before the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the airline had gone to regional development minister James Meager with evidence that it might be forced to stop flying to destinations like Whakatāne, Whanganui or Kāpiti – “provincial towns that had already been abandoned by the two big airlines”, Milne notes.
Last week the government acted, announcing it was lending Air Chathams $17.2m at concessionary rates; Sounds Air will get $4.5m and Island Air $252,000. That’s on top of $1.1m already lent to Golden Bay Air. Milne says the threats to regional air have highlighted the shakiness of the energy trilemma– a “three-legged stool” of security, affordability, sustainability – and the importance of strengthening all three legs early, including by electrifying cars and buses. “Because it’s too late to do it when a big fat geopolitical crisis sits down on our wobbly stool with a crunch.”
