Goodwill on campaign trail tested by fuel crisis

Chaos on the campaign trail, chaos in the air. The oil crisis that has stranded travellers – MPs and journalists among them – seems like a fitting end to this election campaign.

Given the barnstorming final days of the campaign, when the leaders crisscross the country and schedules are tight, the likely impact of delayed and cancelled flights will mostly be frazzled nerves and even shorter tempers.

In just the past two days, few who are on the move have been unaffected by flights being bumped or delayed.

While that is just a microcosm of what is happening across the broader population, the Government has moved swiftly to deflect any residual grumpiness among the travelling public from washing up at its doors.

Drafting in the New Zealand Defence Force to deliver emergency fuel supplies

It beggars belief that virtually all of Auckland's aviation fuel supplies can be shut down by a lone man on a digger. Quite apart from the obvious disruption, it seems to suggest a fairly cavalier attitude toward the potential for terrorists to exploit Auckland's vulnerability.

shows how seriously National is treating the potential for the crisis to drag on and test the public’s goodwill.

The timing couldn’t be worse for National.

The digger debacle feeds into the Opposition meme of third-world infrastructure caused by government neglect over the past nine years.

Certainly, it beggars belief that virtually all of Auckland’s aviation fuel supplies can be shut down by a lone man on a digger.

Quite apart from the obvious disruption, it seems to suggest a fairly cavalier attitude toward the potential for terrorists to exploit Auckland’s vulnerability.

The emergence of a 2012 report warning that there should be a backup plan does not help.

But voters will place most of the blame at the foot of the hugely profitable oil companies, which own the refinery.

National’s swift response will likely deflect any wider fallout; though if the crisis worsens, all bets are off.

But, like the farmer protest targeting Labour, it will probably only harden or reinforce the attitudes of those who were already thinking of voting one way or the other, rather than cause people to change their votes.

And it will mean a potentially – and fittingly – chaotic end to what has felt like a never-ending campaign.

There’s a leak in the 168km pipeline that carries jet fuel, petrol and diesel from the oil refinery at Marsden Point in Northland, above, to Auckland.