label the levy a “gas tax”<\/a> which would be passed on to consumers, driving up power bills.<\/p>\nBut speaking on Morning Report’s politics panel on Wednesday morning, Willis said the official advice was that the new facility would provide more energy security, ultimately bringing bills down.<\/p>\n
“At the moment, in New Zealand, everyone pays a big risk premium for the fact that everyone is desperately worried that in the days when there’s not enough rain in the lakes and the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing, we do not have enough gas.”<\/p>\n
Willis said that risk premium would go down once the plant was built around 2028.<\/p>\n
“The advice we’ve received… is that the reduction in the risk premium will far outweigh the cost to the energy generators of supporting the development of the LNG plant.<\/p>\n
“We did all the analysis because we wanted to be clear that there would be more benefit than cost – and the analysis is very clear.”<\/p>\n
![\"Megan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4KPU5U6_240521_Caucus_6_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nLabour Party energy spokesperson Megan Woods.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone\n<\/p>\n
Responding, Labour’s energy spokesperson Megan Woods said that was “absolute nonsense”.<\/p>\n
“This is putting a gas tax on New Zealanders at a time when they’re already struggling with their power bills. The government hasn’t released the modelling. They haven’t shown us the alternatives they looked at.”<\/p>\n
Woods said National was scrambling for solutions after cancelling Labour’s whole work programme on affordable energy storage.<\/p>\n
“They are going for an expensive option that is going to be… taxed on New Zealanders each and every month, on their power bill, because this government has failed to do the work.<\/p>\n
“There’s a reason they didn’t release the modeling yesterday with all the other papers.”<\/p>\n
Willis said the government would release that modelling “pretty shortly”.<\/p>\n
“But let’s just remember: Labour’s decisions pushed power prices up. Our solution will save Kiwis money,” Willis said.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone Finance Minister Nicola Willis has committed to releasing all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[48,138,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-277839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-podcasts","16":"tag-public-radio","17":"tag-radio-new-zealand","18":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Budget](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4K70A2H_POLITICIANS_Budget_25_5_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n