Fuel payments could be extended even if price stays under $3/litre, Nicola Willis suggests
Thursday, 23 July 2026
Finance Minister Nicola Willis says she is getting advice on whether fuel prices are likely to shoot above $3/litre again very soon, and may keep her extra payments in place if they do.
Early in the fuel crisis Willis announced a top-up to Working For Families for low-income families in work, which was designed to end if the price of 91 dropped below $3 a litre for four consecutive weeks.
Willis is using MBIE’s weekly fuel price monitoring as a metric, which has shown three consecutive weeks with petrol under $3 a litre.
Gaspy continues to have 91 at $2.89, suggesting another week of petrol lower than $3 is very possible.
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But with ships in the Strait of Hormuz once again under attack and the Houthis now attacking ships in the Red Sea, international oil prices are rising again ‒ leading Willis to worry that the relief from high petrol prices would end up being temporary.
She said she had asked for advice about potentially extending the payments even if the price of 91 technically met the four-week threshold.
“What we were very clear about as a Cabinet was that our temporary fuel support measures were intended to be there for so long as prices were sustained at higher levels. We set the four-week test as a way of saying: ‘well, at what point would we think that they've fallen down to sustainable low prices?’”
She said she had asked for modelling on what elevated international oil prices would mean for fuel in New Zealand, and this would inform any decision Cabinet made about removing the payment.
“I've asked them to do some modelling of what we're expecting to see with the price from here, so that Cabinet can be informed of that if the four-week trigger is hit,” Willis said.
“If we know the prices are going to continue to be high, then it may be appropriate to keep those temporary supports there.”
Willis said the Government continued to get a lot of information from fuel companies which gave them confidence supply was in a reasonable position, but price was a continuing worry.
“We retain confidence in the forward order book, which fuel importers are continuing to advise us of. But what we are concerned about is price. We do expect that there will be upward pressure on price.”
She said New Zealand was a long way away from needing to step up a phase in the fuel “response phases” to restrict actual usage and still had a $450 million contingency fund set aside in the Budget to help with the crisis.
“It means that I can look New Zealanders in the eye and say to them, if things get a lot worse at home, we have funds in reserves that will allow us to act in ways that are appropriate with that framework we’ve set: temporary, timely, targeted.”