Richard Hills is the very model of a politician who can keep things positive, constructive and productive.
He gets the small things attended to, he patiently steers voters and politicians towards the biggest goals that matter most.
A true MVP.
But don’t just take my word for it, let me show you how he does it, day in day out on Facebook.
This is the very best response I’ve seen to the prevailing scapegoat cop-out response the usual suspects have been embracing i.e.: Labour put us in this mess by closing Marsden Point.
As we see in the following no, wrong and bullshit and Jesus you people.
But of course he never puts it that way, and I salute him for it. The very reason we’re hardly getting anywhere is because so much of all our politics has become a soup of polarisation and invective.
Do people realise the fuel refined at Marsden was nearly all from off shore, before the closure it mostly came from the Middle East. Crude oil extracted in NZ has long been for the export market and NOT used in NZ, we still produce oil, we have just never been able to use or refine that type of oil here.
Now we just import refined oil for retail use, instead of importing crude, which we’ve always done before 2022. I know Shane Jones and many pages on the internet want you to believe something else, but it’s just not true.
The Marsden Point owners closed the refinery side of the business. Because it wasn’t viable. If tax payers bailed it out, we just would’ve paid twice, once to the commercial owners through our taxes and again at the pump.
The thing is, we actually have access to more markets now for refined oil than we did for crude, and crude usually took longer to get here. So technically we may be slightly more resilient at a time like this compared to before.
Putting aside the fact the government has reversed nearly everything that was trying to reduce our dependence on oil that would’ve helped cushion us from a shock like this:
- Removing EV incentives, and industrial decarbonisation incentives
- Subsidising fossil fuel exploration
- Ending climate investment funds
- Weakening/delaying carbon pricing in major sectors
- Cutting public transport subsidies and walking and cycling funding to provide alternatives.
- “Jacinda closed Marsden” (she didn’t) but regardless it isn’t actually a factor in all this.
I just as roundly recommend this one
This concludes an unpaid and unsought endorsement of our most excellent Auckland City Councillor for the North Shore ward.
A couple of years ago, when I put on that play, some of you - Hello Helen! Hello Hazel! - came a good long way indeed to join us and I really did appreciate it.
And one had driven up from Whanganui and was patiently passing the time in his car when I arrived in the car park a couple of hours before the show.
It’s always marvellous to get to chat with any of you who’ve made yourself a welcome daily friend in the comments section. Andrew Lovrin was most assuredly that, a disbeliever in the NeoCon swizz, a jaded spectator of Rogernomics and everything that followed. We sat in his car that afternoon and riffed on all that at length and he told me some of his story as a sound recordist in broadcast journalism, for TV and for Communicado and how he’d more recently moved down to Whanganui to be with new family and a more affordable place to be. He sounded to be enjoying it.
The sad truth is that most of us who gather here are nearer the end than the beginning and there will always be a drumbeat of farewell, assuming I even know there’s a goodbye to be said. More often it will just dawn on me months later that a voice seems to be no longer here.
Last week, an old friend of Andrew posted on Facebook that he was gone, and I see there was a remembrance over the weekend. I’m sorry I couldn't be there Andrew. I’ll miss your wry words and your heart. Go well.
Playing this because they use it such good effect in DTF St Louis on Neon which this little newsletter is enjoying v much indeed.
Also the Murdoch thing on Netflix. Lordy.
