Come Again?

Gerry Brownlee often seems to be badly placed in the National party energy portfolio.

I was taken aback particularly by this account in Kiwiblog
of his speech at the Convention at the weekend.

Then Gerry Brownlee on energy. Gerry said that if we found Maui field today, it would be worth around $50 billion. Said that concern over carbon emissions doesn’t change the fact that replacements for current fuel sources are not extensively available, so demand will stay high. NZ second only to Canada in our mineral endowment.

There does not appear to be a copy of the speech online so it is a bit unfair to highlight this but I just can't work out what Brownlee could possibly be talking about.

Our near neighbour Australia for example has an entire continent worth of minerals, is the world's largest coal exporter and has large resources of iron, aluminium and uranium to name a few. Not to mention natural gas that is actually being mined not imagined.

The list of countries with larger "mineral endowment" (I love that phrase) than New Zealand would I think be quite a bit longer than this!

I look forward to the full speech appearing.