# The boogeyman with the DeLorean

_Novelly and Bakunin on nuclear-free New Zealand._

**Cast:** novelly, bakunin  

**[00:00] Narrator**

From The Kiwi Dialectic — kd-dialogues. Episode three.
On the second of July 2026, a Missouri oil heir named Jared Novelly
presented his credentials as United States Ambassador to Aotearoa
New Zealand. The next morning, standing beside a car from a nineteen
eighty-five film, he told the country its nuclear-free policy was a
boogeyman he'd like to help us get past. Tonight we bring him a
guest he did not schedule — Mikhail Bakunin. A warning, comrades:
Bakunin is Bakunin. He swears. He shouts. He does not, at any
point, ask permission.

## I. The Boogeyman

**[00:42] Narrator**

Act one. On the third of July, the new US ambassador holds a
press conference beside a DeLorean, and offers his services on
the nuclear question.

_Dialogue begins [00:52]_

**Novelly**

[calm] Look — you need to see these things and realise that
it's not some sort of boogeyman that you have to worry
about. This is a policy from nineteen eighty-five. Nineteen
eighty-five. I mean — [laughs] — I want to get in the
DeLorean and go back to nineteen eighty-five, perhaps I
could fix this nuclear thing. All I'm saying — as your
ambassador — is I'd really like the opportunity to work
with New Zealand on that exact topic. That's all. Just...
the chance to have the conversation.

**Bakunin**

[angry] The CHANCE. The chance. Do you hear him? He arrives
on the second of July, and by breakfast on the third he is
already asking for the CHANCE to unmake a law it took this
country a generation of bloody, marching, harbour-blocking
struggle to write. Boogeyman, he says. Boogeyman! You
fucking clown. The boogeyman is not the bomb — the
boogeyman IS YOU. It is the boogeyman in a navy suit,
smiling beside a film-set car, telling a small nation
that its dignity was a childish superstition.

**Novelly**

[calm] Well — that's colourful. But respectfully — the
Rainbow Warrior was forty years ago. The Berlin Wall came
down. The security environment is not what it was. You
know, President Trump is a disruptor — he might rub some
people the wrong way — but the world has moved on. And it
is my job, as ambassador, to bring the alliance forward.
That is all I'm saying. Nothing more sinister than that.

**Bakunin**

[angry] Nothing sinister! Nothing SINISTER. [pauses] Listen
to me, arsehole — because you keep saying "just the
conversation", "just the chance", "just the opportunity"
— as if the empire ever came to a small country and did
not, in the end, take what it wanted. A ship comes into
your harbour. It will not tell you what it carries.
Neither confirm — nor deny. That was the whole
nineteen-eighty-fucking-five game. Nuclear-free was not a
superstition, Mister Ambassador — it was the ONLY moment
your imperial fleet was ever asked, at the door, to
declare itself. And you were told — no. And the sky did
not fall. The sky is still there. And now you want in.

## II. Carry Your Own Water

**[03:05] Narrator**

Act two. The ambassador turns from nuclear to defence spending
and, along the way, mentions his family business.

_Dialogue begins [03:14]_

**Novelly**

[calm] Look — New Zealand is certainly playing its part.
There is a strong reliance, a real camaraderie between our
countries. But — and I don't mean to scold anyone — every
country has to carry its own water. It's important that
you care as much about your defence as we care about your
defence. And that does mean increasing spending. On oil —
because it came up — I know enough about the oil business
to be dangerous. [laughs] As a plug — the US is a net
exporter. You want oil? I got it all for you.

**Bakunin**

[angry] [laughs bitterly] "I got it all for you." Did you
hear that? Did you HEAR that? The ambassador of a nuclear
empire, at a podium in the country he has just been sent
to represent his master in, saying — as a fucking plug —
"you want oil, I got it all for you." The mask, comrades,
is not off. The mask was never on. This is not a diplomat.
This is a salesman for his father's terminals — a heir
to an oil bankruptcy that paid pennies on the dollar to
the small creditors — and now he is telling a farming
nation of five million that we must "carry our own water"
— meaning, we must buy his water, from his tanker, at his
price, or we are freeloaders on the empire.

**Novelly**

[calm] That's a — that's a bit of a stretch. Apex is my
father's legacy. FutureFuel makes biofuels — actually the
cleaner end of the industry. And I'll tell you what I said
at Waitangi: I am here to listen, and to help New Zealand
in whatever way makes sense. Nobody is forcing anyone to
do anything. This is a partnership. It always has been.

**Bakunin**

[angry] A partnership. A partnership! Between a whale and
a minnow — a partnership. Bullshit. There is no such
thing as a partnership between the wolf and the lamb;
there is only the digestion that follows it. And do not
— do not — invoke your father's legacy in a country whose
harbour your father's ships would have poisoned had they
been allowed to call. You want to talk about legacy? The
legacy in this country is Fernando Pereira, drowned in
Auckland by an ally's secret service, on a boat trying to
bear witness to your bombs. That is the legacy. And it
was answered — not by more bombs — but by a LAW. A law
you are now, on day two of your posting, asking for
permission to erase. You have not earned permission,
comrade. You have not earned it.

## III. Whose Friends

**[05:44] Narrator**

Act three. A poll comes up. The ambassador is disappointed. And
then he explains who New Zealand should consider its friends.

_Dialogue begins [05:51]_

**Novelly**

[calm] Look — there was a poll, from the Asia New Zealand
Foundation, that suggested more New Zealanders now view
China as a friend than view the United States as a friend.
I'm very disappointed. I don't mean to scold New Zealanders
— but disappointed that they feel that way. Because —
honestly — you know what you know about President Trump,
and you know what you know about America, because of the
free press. That's not what you get in China. So — I
question the poll of whether you really know who your
friends are.

**Bakunin**

[angry] Oh — oh, this is EXQUISITE. Do you hear what he has
just said, comrades? He has said: you know America because
you have a free press. And you do not know China because
they do not have one. Therefore — QED — your suspicion of
America is a failure of your education, and your suspicion
of China is not. This is the imperial mind at its most
naked: MY propaganda is journalism, THEIR journalism is
propaganda, and if you cannot see the difference, you are
a child who does not know his friends. Comrade Novelly, I
have some news for you. The New Zealander who watched
Fallujah on her television, who watched Gaza on her phone
in twenty-twenty-four and five and six, who watched the
empire's own free press explain, patiently, why the
bombing must continue — she knows. She is not confused
about her friends. She is not disappointed in herself.
She is disappointed in YOU.

**Novelly**

[pauses] Well — we clearly see the world differently. I
hope, in my time here, we can find some common ground.
I've been told the Kiwis are practical people. I'd like
to work with them. That's really all I want to do.

**Bakunin**

[angry] Then work with them! But work with them on THEIR
terms — not on the terms of an oil family from Missouri
that thinks a small country's law is a boogeyman and its
poll is a mistake. Here — here is the common ground.
[pauses] The harbour stays clean. The ships declare
themselves at the door, or they do not enter. The
spending goes not to your carriers but to our hospitals,
our marae, our schools. If the empire cannot accept that
— then the empire, comrade, is not our friend. And no
amount of DeLorean charm, no amount of "just the chance"
— no amount of your father's fucking oil — will make it
one. Ka kite. Do not — I beg you — come back before you
are ready to listen.

**[07:24] Narrator**

You've been listening to The boogeyman with the DeLorean — Novelly
and Bakunin on nuclear-free New Zealand. Sources, transcript and
further reading are on the kd-dialogues repo. Creative Commons,
attribution, share alike. Ka kite anō — and keep the harbour clean.


## Sources & further reading

- [RNZ — New US ambassador would like chance to work on NZ's nuclear policy](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/660035/new-us-ambassador-would-like-chance-to-work-on-new-zealand-s-nuclear-policy) — Lillian Hanly, 3 July 2026 — all Novelly quotes verbatim
- [The Spinoff — US Senate confirms Trump's pick for ambassador to NZ](https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/27-05-2026/us-senate-confirms-donald-trumps-pick-for-ambassador-to-nz-billionaire-jared-novelly) — background on Novelly's Apex Oil family and Republican donor history
- [ProPublica — Trump team financial disclosures, Novelly Jared](https://projects.propublica.org/trump-team-financial-disclosures/appointees/novelly-jared/)
- [St Louis Magazine — Novelly's push to unseat Kestelman](https://www.stlmag.com/business/jared-novelly-basketball-australia/) — March 2025 corporate raid on Illawarra Hawks / NBL
- [Justia — Apex Oil Chapter 11 appeals (960 F.2d 728)](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/960/728/) — 1987 bankruptcy; self-dealing allegations unproven; creditors paid 64–86¢/$
- [Nuclear Free New Zealand Act 1987](https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1987/0086/latest/DLM115116.html) — the law Novelly wants "the chance to work on"
- Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873) — chapter on the alliance of church, state, and capital
- [The Kiwi Dialectic](https://kiwidialectic.substack.com) — full course notes and further reading