Ryan Bridge: Energy Crisis - Where are Labour in all of this?

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

Hundreds of decent hard working Kiwi provincial Union jobs are hanging in the balance today.

Electricity spot prices peaking at $1000 per megawatt hour in the last couple of weeks. Power companies, they are basically cancelling deals for Kiwis to heat their homes this winter, and businesses are literally shuttering operations, rationing power, producing less.

Think of the ports that will be affected by that in provincial New Zealand, think of the competitive advantage that we are losing.

What's the problem? Not enough sun, not enough rain, not enough wind for our renewable energy sources, plus we have a gas shortage.

This problem will continue, in part, because Labour cancelled oil and gas exploration into the future.

Now the rubber has hit the road. The oil and gas investment and exploration has gone through the floor, investment confidence has gone through the floor.

Where are our leaders in this crisis? Well, Jacinda's in Chicago doing Kamala mania, probably still dining out on the nuclear free moment. James Shaw, Grant Robertson, they're both in very cushy 1% jobs, probably not worrying about putting the heat pumps on.

Megan Woods was the Minister of Energy who signed off on the ban and she is still in parliament, she is the shadow Energy Minister.

So where is she today? The Government yesterday issued a challenge to Labour to help dig our way out of this crisis at 4 p.m. Major announcement. What has been the response? Not one tweet, not one Facebook post, not one press release from them.

They were unavailable to our producers for an interview at 5:45 this morning.

Folks, this is spray and walk away politics.

It's a classic case and it looks a little bit now that they aren't talking like it's cowering in a crisis too.

And they were warned, MBIE told them a ban would cost $1.2 to $23 billion in lost royalties. They told them that Methanex would up and leave if this went ahead. She disagreed, she sprayed and then she walked away.

I'm sorry, if you've got the energy and resources to boot this sector up shit creek at least have the decency to front up.

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