FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Petrol Price Madness – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

Welcome to Kapiti, petrol price capital!

By Roger Childs

If you can find a higher price for petrol, we will match it, plus 10%! This seems to be the message from dispensers of the vital fluid in Paraparaumu.

On a recent trip to New Plymouth we failed to find any petrol station which could equal the extraordinary prices on the Kapiti Coast. How’s this for 91 at British Petroleum outlets:

Paraparaumu 1.10.9
Otaki 1.01.9
Bulls 1.95.9
Wanganui 1.00.9
New Plymouth 1.93.9

What is going on?

Crusher failed to solve the problem, can the new government?

You might expect higher prices in places far from the distribution points, but should Taranaki enjoy petrol nearly 9% cheaper than the Kapiti Coast?

This is not new issue as you all know and Crusher Collins, the National Government’s last Energy and Resources Minister, was going to do something about it.

It was definitely a tougher proposition than destroying the cars of boy and girl racers.

One gets the distinct impression that, not for the first time, drivers are getting ripped off by the oil companies. It seems that certain centres are subsidising cheaper prices elsewhere, and BP, Caltex, Mobil etc … keep laughing their way to the banks. The banks are doing pretty well too.

It will be interesting to see if the new government can do anything about it. Surely Winston has something to say about this.

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti’s proposed Te Uruhi Gateway at Paraparaumu Beach has been voted through after a day-long debate which include a haka in the District Council chamber and angry protests.

The Kapiti council faced a government deadline for $4.45 million project, with half to come from the Covid Recovery fund.

Vote went 7-4

It wasn’t until after 5.30 pm when the councillors and mayor voted 7-4 to give the go-ahead. The four anti votes came from councillors Jocelyn Prvanov, Gwynn Compton , Martin Halliday and Bernie Randall.

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.

As you may know by now, the Commerce Commission approved the sale of Gull NZ to Caltex Australia back in July 2017.

Gull NZ now has the capital to start expanding, and I believe that they are now seriously looking to find a suitable site in the Wellington area to move into.

This can’t come soon enough as the big players in the fuel industry will find they have got some real competition, and we will find out fuel prices going down.

We were in New Plymouth 2 years ago and the fuel prices there then were higher than Kapiti.

The Government don’t want to intervene as they are coining in the revenue from the fuel costs.