Let’s be honest: walking around New Zealand right now, you wouldn’t exactly think we’re rolling in cash. We’re constantly told to tighten our belts, our infrastructure is creaking, and our political establishment is perpetually stuck in a loop of “tinkering around the edges”. We look at petty policy fights, like the Nats squabbling over a dinky KiwiSaver starter boost, or the Greens pratting on about free shoplifting coursesfor the homeless and 100% taxes for anyone who’s rich (excluding the Green MPs because they recycle and because of their inherent righteousness, of course), and it just feels small.
Especially when you look over the edge of the earth at Norway.
Norway is eye-wateringly, staggeringly rich. They famously captured the profits from their massive North Sea oil and gas discoveries, filtering off a tax into a sovereign wealth fund. Today, that fund is valued at over $2 trillion, so massive that it can easily give every citizen a massive financial head start, free universoty education…
So, why can’t eN-Zed do the same? We have the resources.
New Zealand sits on top of valuable minerals, oil, and gas deposits. And let’s remember the crucial baseline here: these are publicly owned goods. They belong to the country and its citizens. Our economic footprint expands far beyond the dry land we stand on or even our standard 200km Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). We own all of Zealandia, the vast, submerged continent under our waters, teeming with untapped wealth. (No, it’s not Treaty of Waitangi stuff, it belongs to all eN-Zedders).
Fortunately, someone is finally pointing out that we can no longer ignore the immense potential in our deep-sea basins. At New Zealand First’s campaign launch, Winston Peters laid out a massive game-changer: a $1 billion “National Subsurface Development Survey” to fully map out our offshore assets using modern technology, rather than the outdated, primitive data we rely on now. The goal? Stop being dependent on international supply lines, slap a royalty above 50 percent on all mature extractions, and establish our very own Norwegian-model sovereign fund (although we won;t have to speak Norwegian and eat pickled herrings, I hope).
Predictably, the political hand-wringing started immediately. Chlöe Swarbrick and the Greenies will absolutely hate the idea of drilling or mining, but let’s be frank: they also don’t understand the basic economic leverage it provides. You can’t fund a world-class, green, high-tech society purely on good vibes and high taxes on small businesses, like Chloe thinks. You need a powerhouse engine behind the economy and, looking around the world, that means either ultra-efficient manufacturing or mega primary resources wealth. Meanwhile, National’s Simeon Brown was quick to throw stones about past political coalitions, completely missing the forest for the trees. He’s doing a good job running the Ministry of Health and that’s what he should stick to for now and leave Winston and Shane to ‘drill baby drill’.
Norway proved that you can responsibly manage natural resources to build an absolute fortress of financial security for your people. They didn’t just spend the money as it came in; they invested it for the collective good of their citizens. All citizens, not just the ones who self-identify as you know what.
Instead of thinking small with modest, state-subsidised savings accounts, New Zealand needs to start thinking about real, transformative wealth generation. The prospective basins are right there, ready to be harvested for our economic sovereignty. If the resources beneath Zealandia belong to us, it’s time we stop leaving our collective inheritance buried in the seabed and start acting like the wealthy shareholders of our own country’s future.
eN-Zed 