{"id":1767,"date":"2013-06-07T12:54:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T00:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/new-zealand\/press-release\/oil-slick-politics\/"},"modified":"2024-07-12T15:29:03","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T03:29:03","slug":"oil-slick-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/aotearoa\/story\/oil-slick-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil slick politics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week, documents released to the Labour Party revealed that Government Ministers Steven Joyce and Simon Bridges had met with oil giant Shell to thrash out a back-room deal to criminalise protesting at sea.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing new here \u2013 it\u2019s called crony capitalism and it\u2019s something that the John Key Government does well. It\u2019s his bread and butter. You take a company \u2013 in this case New Zealand Inc \u2013 and you use it to line the pockets of your mates.<\/p>\n

Yet, it seems that in a desperate attempt to show that the Government is wagging its own tail, Simon Bridges has been caught out misleading Parliament. Originally telling Parliament that he had had no contact with oil companies about the controversial law changes, it has emerged that he had met with Shell just weeks before making his draconian decision.<\/p>\n

No details of that secret meeting have so far been released, but at a previous meeting with Government, Shell expressed their concern about offshore protests. Simon Bridges then presented to Cabinet that:\u00a0 \u2018the upstream oil and gas industry has sought a more robust government response to threats of, and actual, direct protest action\u2019. A month later it was passed in to law.<\/p>\n

It is typical of how the Government is making laws in New Zealand. We\u2019ve seen it with Sky City and the pokies; Warner Brothers conspired with John Key to rinse the tax payer of tens of millions of dollars and now big oil are getting in on the act.
\nThe hand of big business now holds the pen of our democracy and our Ministers are supplying the ink.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we\u2019ve demanded that Simon Bridges release all the details of this meeting. The public deserves to know how much influence overseas oil companies have over our law makers.<\/p>\n

It is also the only way the public can be sure that he has not lied to them and is acting in the interests of all New Zealanders, not some of the country\u2019s biggest polluters.<\/p>\n

The timeline of meeting and events run like this:<\/p>\n