It is a lovely sunny day in the far north!
The boy Shane is giving a speech in the school hall.
Can you hear a pin drop? Yes you can!
That is how quiet it is while Shane is talking.
Now he has finished his speech.
Everyone is clapping like mad!
One of the koros says,
That young fullah talks like he swallowed a dictionary,
but he’s hang of a good all the same.
One of the other koros says,
That young fullah could go all the way,
tell you what.
It is a different century!
The boy Shane is a koro now!
He has gone all the way!
He has carried banners, and marched, and said:
honour the treaty
in a big strong voice.
He has sat around tables with lawyers and said:
let me tell you fellows of erudition what this document really means
in a big strong voice.
He has sat around tables with fisherfolk and said:
let me tell you how Maui divided up the fish
and then let me tell you how this is going to go
in a big strong voice.
He has been a minister of socialism, and said:
We stand for natural justice and the progressive ideal et cetera, don’t belabour me with your neoliberal claptrap, it makes me hoha.
Now he is a minister of rabbit-holism and he says:
We stand for tinfoil and cookers don’t belabour me with your natural justice for progressive ideals et cetera it makes me hoha.
Shane has done so much!
But has he done as much as he can do?
No! Shane still has more he wants to do.
He has been able to make a pin drop
and he has been able to show up lawyers,
and he has been a handmaiden to progressive Clarkian ideology et cetera,
but now he wonders:
Can he get people to swallow whatever he comes up with?
Here is New Zealand’s big oil refinery.
It is at Marsden Point because one day the Prime Minister Ol’ Black Budget Nash put it there.
Did Ol’ Black Budget Nash put it there all by himself?
No, he did not.
Who helped him?
The Shell company and some other companies helped him.
They said:
We will help you build it because petrol is the future
and there’s definitely a bob in it.
What is a refinery?
A refinery is a place where you turn oil into petrol.
Are you thinking to yourself:
I wonder if the oil came out of the ground in Taranaki
and got sent up to Marsden Point in a pipe?
This is something you might be thinking
if you have a koro who listens to NewstalkZB
and talks to other koros
who tell each other
what they think they know.
But it is not a good way to find out about anything.
The oil that comes out of the ground in Taranaki
has never been sent in a pipe to Marsden Point.
They have never made a pipe for that,
and they never would have
because the oil that comes out of the ground in Taranaki
is no good for making into petrol.
But anyway, that is not what today’s story is about.
Where did the oil come from?
It came on big tankers from far away.
And it got made into petrol that we could put in our Morrie Thous and our tractors and our chainsaws.
One day the Prime Minister Mr Rob The Tyrant Muldoon said:
I have an idea.
Let’s make the refinery much bigger.
Then we could have even more petrol saved up.
And it would only run out after three months instead of one month.
Why did he say that?
Because everyone was worried the mad Arabs were going to hold us to ransom.
Did the mad Arabs hold us to ransom?
Not in the end.
But by then Mr Muldoon had spent lots of everyone’s money making it bigger.
Did that mean that we owned it now?
No. The oil companies still owned the refinery.
But now we could store up more petrol and we wouldn’t have to worry for three months instead of one month that we might run out.
Then Mr Douglas took over from Mr Muldoon.
He said:
Get a load of these numbers tell you what this is a dog’s breakfast let’s just give our share of the refinery to the oil companies.
So now the oil companies owned all of it.
But the owner was not called the oil companies.
It was called Refining NZ.
Then one day Refining NZ said:
This refinery is losing money.
It said:
The poor old refinery is very old and needs hundreds of millions of dollars.
It said:
Do we want to be pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into this thing?
And it said:
Yeah nah, let’s just close it and bring in petrol that’s already been made.
And everyone who owned Refining NZ put up their hand and said:
Yep, that.
Let’s do that.
Did Jacinda the Prime Minister put up her hand and say:
Yep, that.
Let’s do that.
No she did not.
Did Megan Woods the Energy Minister put up her hand and say:
Yep, that.
Let’s do that.
No she did not.
Why did Jacinda the Prime Minister and Megan Woods the Energy Minister not do this?
Because the government did not own the refinery anymore.
Did Jacinda close the refinery?
No.
Did Megan close the refinery?
No.
The owners closed the refinery because it was losing money.
But now Shane has decided to play a game with everyone!
He is going to pretend that the government closed the refinery!
Why would he want to do that??
It might be because he wants people to not ask him:
Shane, you’re the minister of energy, what are you doing to protect us from running out of petrol
or
Shane, isn’t diversifying into green alternatives the best way to get energy security?
or
Shane, could you not have been doing more to encourage people into other ways of getting around?
But it might also be because he has been talking for so long now he wants to see if he can make people believe anything at all!
Shane says in his big strong voice:
We used to refine our own oil until Jacinda closed it down!
Shane says in his big strong voice:
Thanks for closing it Jacinda, thanks for closing it Megan!
Does Shane know that this is not true?
Does he know that Jacinda and Megan did not close it?
Does he know the shareholders closed it?
Maybe he doesn’t.
But Shane has swallowed a dictionary
and Shane has sat around tables with lawyers.
So you would think he probably does.
Maybe he means the government should have bailed out the refinery with our taxes!
But would that have been a clever thing to do?
Because we would have ended up paying more for our petrol,
and we still would run out if the tankers stopped coming.
We always imported the oil.
We are still importing the oil.
The oil just gets refined somewhere else now.
Somewhere cheaper.
Shane knows this too.
But Shane just keeps saying:
We had fuel security and now we don’t.
Michael on Facebook knows Shane.
He keeps writing to him on his Facebook:
Why do you keep telling lies Shane,
do you have no shame?
But Shane only has Shane.
