As the pressure mounts over building fuel crisis, Nicola Willis is showing why she’s there
Thursday, 26 March 2026
Janet Wilson is a regular opinion contributor and a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party.
OPINION: Every now and again, politics delivers a seismic event that threatens to blow the prevailing narrative side-ways.
Jacinda Ardern’s elevation to the Labour leadership seven weeks before the 2017 election was one and Nicola Willis’s adroit handling of the relief package for struggling families will go down as another.
As the spokesperson of the ministerial advisory group tackling the greatest fuel crisis in a generation, Willis will no doubt come under criticism for Tuesday’s package that was so targeted and seemingly so temporary it was wafer thin.
With about 143,000 households eligible for the in-work tax credit, getting an extra $50 a week for up to a year, or until 91-octane falls below $3 a litre for four consecutive weeks, that’s a lot of households missing out.
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Around 1,884,700, according to Stats NZ December 2024 figures.
But Willis has clearly listened to the likes of Treasury’s chief strategist Struan Little who has appealed to “not let the price of 91 at the pump today distract us all from the cost of net core Crown debt tomorrow”.
At a cost of $373 million for the year, this policy is fully paid for out of the operating allowance.
It’s a responsible first step but it’s one that will sorely test Willis in the coming weeks and no doubt months ahead, the longer this oil shock continues to roil supply and markets, in an election year.
For National, this crisis has arrived in the middle of the party’s own upheavals, as it battles plummeting polls and a historically unpopular prime minister.
It is also something of a reckoning for a government whose own books remain firmly in the red with net core Crown debt projected to rise while its finance minister continues to spend more than her predecessor. A fact that credit ratings agency Fitch embarrassingly emphasised on Saturday when it downgraded New Zealand’s “AA+” rating from stable to negative.
Given that kind of political baggage, making Nicola Willis the spokesperson of the ministerial advisory group charged with ushering the country through a fuel crisis came with risk, but she’s already proving why she’s there.
Until this week, the fact that we’re still at level one of the National Fuel Plan has meant she was confined to reassuring utterances as she tries to keep the economy afloat for as long as possible while the advisory group shores up the supply-side ahead of projected demand restraint.
Willis has also been an altogether more low-key yet authoritative figure than the defensive attack-dog seen in the House.
Her clear, thoughtful explanation of how the Government plans to tackle this crisis in her briefings to media has seen her achieve a level of trust that has made her a de facto leader. Which is just as well, given that the real one failed himself and his party comprehensively just weeks ago.
There’s a deja-vu about this crisis that’s only emphasised by the fact that this week marked six years since Jacinda Ardern plunged the country into a level 4 Covid lockdown. The pandemic is one reason we find ourselves here; with a grumpy exhausted populace after the previous government followed the drunken sailor economic playbook and spent $70 billion in total on its Covid-19 response.
As health minister during that time, then minister for the Covid response, Labour’s Chris Hipkins must take some responsibility for that; this week he found himself in the unedifying position of being on the sidelines of someone else’s crisis. He was reduced to huffing about the Government “stepping up to the pitch” and making wild claims about the Government getting rich off the back of it, which Willis strongly refuted.
Echoing the pandemic, too, is the National Fuel Plan’s talk of “levels” which most of us want to eye in the rearview mirror but are now forced to confront again.
So, at level 1 we’re forced to seek reassurance, noting that the country has 50 days’ worth of petrol, 46 of diesel and 45 of jet fuel.
As we anxiously scan the headlines for hints that the ships bringing fuel to our shores have been cancelled and the prospect of another level change looms, it’s timely to remember that as a country we must continue to work as much as possible through this crisis because as a country we can’t afford not to.
As Treasury’s Struan Little says, debt-servicing, estimated at $8.9 billion in 2024, is the fourth biggest item on the Government’s books. Until it’s absolutely necessary, we can’t afford the $60- $70 million a day Treasury estimates a Covid-style level 2 lockdown cost us back in 2021.
As John Lennon sang, “We’ve a long way to go, a hard row to hoe”, but Willis is leading the way.
While former British PM Harold McMillan’s famous explanation of what can throw a government off course - “events, dear boy, events” - is pertinent today, the opposite is also true.
With the right people at the helm, it can also throw a government on course.
An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that the previous government spent $140.9 billion on the Covid response. The error is regretted.