The fuel shock isn’t an accident – it’s political

Tuesday, 7 April 2026

Dave Armstrong is a playwright and satirist based in Wellington. He is a regular opinion contributor.

OPINION: As we watch our politicians deal with the fuel crisis – with furrowed brows and denying that there are leadership rumblings – we get the impression that the country is facing a massive external event over which we have no control. New Zealanders who remember the lockdowns of Covid get a feeling of “been there, done that”.

Except there’s one major difference.

Covid was a situation over which we had, until a vaccine was invented, absolutely no control. Whereas the fuel crisis is entirely man-made and largely created by one man, Donald Trump. It’s been over a month since the US and Israel breached international law, assassinated Iran’s leaders and started a sustained bombing campaign. According to Al Jazeera, this has included the targeting of over 300 healthcare facilities.

Forget that the highly erratic 79-year-old president has one minute said the US has no benefit from the Hormuz Strait being open because the US has enough oil, yet the next minute is swearing at the Iranians via social media about what will happen if they don’t open the strait.

Imagine if Australian trade unions banned oil from reaching New Zealand. The “bloody Aussie unions” brigade would be in full swing. Our politicians would make incredible political capital as oil companies organised protest marches against the ban.

Yet even though the US president has caused us so much inconvenience, our Government has not uttered a single word against the bombardment. All it did was condemn Iran for retaliating. While precious reserves of the world’s oil get destroyed by US or Iranian attacks, here in New Zealand we look up to the sky and pretend it’s all an act of God.

Would this present Government have condemned France for the 1985 Rainbow Warrior bombing, or said they felt sorry for the French whose nuclear-testing Pacific islands were breached by unruly protest ships?

If our Prime Minister wanted to resurrect his flagging popularity, all he would have to do is voice what many Kiwis are already thinking – “If bloody Trump hadn’t bombed Iran, we wouldn’t be in this awful mess!” But he cannot – it would be like advocating free dental care.

Our foreign minister can be an opinionated lion when it comes to vaccine mandates or unisex bathrooms, but he’s a cuddly lamb when it comes to condemning US aggression.

Given the recession we are in and the increase in petrol prices, $12 billion of extra money could come in quite handy. It would not just help the unlucky rural tradie who can’t afford diesel, but the worker in elderly care who must fork out some petrol costs from their own pocket. Sorry, that money has been earmarked to buy weapons and other military equipment to stave off the threat from our biggest enemy, China.

Wait a minute – China the biggest threat to peace in our region? According to the US, Five Eyes and our Government, if you look for the subtext in much Defence Ministry jargon. The same China that has played no part in the bombing of Iran except to condemn it?

Given increased tensions worldwide, our Government decided to almost double defence spending as a percentage of GDP. Much of the investment is in equipment, not personnel. Much of that equipment would likely only be used with the US and Australia in a conflict with a country like China. “China’s assertive pursuit of its strategic objectives is the principal driver for strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific,” says the government’s Defence Capability Plan, released a year ago. The reference in the document to “enhanced lethality” sounds like something out of the Pete Hegseth “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” songbook.

Being so closely aligned with the US is like being friends with the high school bully. They might protect you now and again, but your friendship means you end up in an extraordinary number of scrapes.

I couldn’t agree more with Helen Clark, John Key and Don Brash, who called for New Zealand to maintain equally good relations with both the US and China.

And let’s not forget we have an Iranian Embassy in Wellington. We used to do quite a meat trade with them. I know that they’re a terrible regime who execute dissidents – but many of our current trading partners are also far from perfect. I mean, Saudi Arabia?

Why not take a page out of Donald Trump’s book and do a deal? Loudly condemn the US bombing of Iran, mumble some platitudes about world peace and human rights, then get a deal with the Iranians to allow some oil to pass directly through the Strait of Hormuz all the way to Wellington.

Of course, we might be condemned by Trump for cowardice, but so has most of Europe, a large part of Asia and any US general who opposed sending ground troops to Iran. Perhaps New Zealand’s new credo needs to be “Where the US goes, we don’t go; where she stands, we quietly exit and deal with all the sensible people in the world”.