New Zealand is a geopolitical chew toy – we need to electrify now

Monday, 20 July 2026

A file photo of ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the closure of which has a huge affect on the world’s fuel supply.

Verity Johnson is an Auckland-based writer and business owner.

OPINION: So apparently, the war in Iran is back on and the Strait of Hormuz is closed?

I say apparently because I’m sure that by the time this gets published, it may have been closed, opened, opened and closed, closed whilst also open and open whilst including, but not limited to, being closed.

Which is exactly the kinda clarity that you’re hoping for when your entire country’s food distribution, transport system, hospitals and basic functioning of everyday life relies upon imported diesel getting through it.

It’s like April all over again.

Foreign wars shouldn't decide whether New Zealand keeps moving, writes Verity Johnson.

Twitchily tracking tankers and nervously asking what the plan is, from a Government whose primary response was to pat us on the knee and say, “calm down, babe, she’ll be right”?

There was a brief reprieve in June when we thought the war was over, when you could practically hear the Beehive mutter, “told you so”. Yet, quelle surprise, here we are again in July again. With no idea what’s happening to our diesel. So perhaps, given that this is our second rodeo, we ask a more important question…

Namely, what the hell are we doing leaving the fate of our entire country’s diesel supply, and by extension our day to day functioning, in the tiny, tanned hands of a man who couldn’t find us on a map?

Surely, surely, the last almost six months showed us something? That yeah, “she’ll be right, babe,” may be soothing in the short term. But it doesn’t change the fact that, for as long as we’re importing diesel, we’re a chew toy in the jaws of slobbering superpowers. And we need to get out.

We need to electrify. Now. En masse.

Now that’s not just me pointing out the blindingly obvious. The Government was told in February 2025 how vulnerable we are to international disruption (like war) as an “end of the supply line nation” that imports all its oil.

The report was on fuel security, and it concluded the best, most cost-effective way to increase our fuel resilience was to accelerate our transition to EVs (and add trucking and diesel storage capacity.)

That same logic stands also for how we increase our national resilience in this weird, wild new world.

Electrify the backbone of NZ; everything we need for our day to day running.

Get everyone into EVs, yes, but also subsidise and support businesses to electrify their machines and factories, make sure our food distribution, ambulances, hospitals and trucking networks are electric, get our houses installed with solar (and slash our power bills to boot.)

Beef up our renewable generation and power the whole thing ourselves. Take advantage of our sun, our lakes, and our wind, and become self-sufficient. Get ourselves out of the jaws of geopolitical chaos and into independence.

After all, this isn’t a family WhatsApp group to discuss Christmas snack planning. We can’t afford to tap out ‘til it blows over and the mad uncles stop squabbling.

Te Āpiti Wind Farm, a renewable energy facility owned by Meridian Energy near Palmerston North.

It’s too important.

Now there was a point when you’d have said electrification was woke. But we’re long past that now.

Now, it’s not woke, it’s securing our independence. It’s not ‘going green’, it’s ‘not leaving our whole country’s basic functioning in the hands of foreign wars and foreign powers that we can’t influence.’ It’s not a bunch of hippies lecturing you, it’s the reality that unless we come up with an alternative to running on foreign diesel then we’re forever going to be a geopolitical chew toy.

You don’t need to be a petrochemical scientist to understand that running a country on imported fuel relies on bigger world leaders acting sensibly enough to keep trade routes open. And how’s that working out for us, team?

We still feeling confident that there’s a rational, reasonable, reliable rationale behind the last six months of international bluffing, bullying, bombing, blustering, and bafflingly blatant bullshitting that dragged us into the firing line of a war that we didn’t start, don’t want, and now have to pay for?

Even if we get another ceasefire, how long will that last? We don’t know, we can’t know, because there’s no sense or plan or reason in this war.

And, while we’re at it, do we really think that Iran is now going to happily give up control of the world’s most vital strategic asset and just let it all go back to how it was? Cos that’s the nice, polite thing to do?

Dear God, we can’t stake the secure running of our entire country on the hope that other countries will calm down and be nice again. That’s not “she’ll be right” thinking, that’s “she’s not in her right mind” thinking.

Right now, we’re over a barrel literally and metaphorically. We can roll off it, and electrify. Or we can stay on it indefinitely, waiting for America to make everything better again.

That’s not woke, that’s common sense.