Jones Shane: General Debate 
Jones Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:665;Page:12765] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 I te tuatahi e te Mangai o te Whare tena koe i roto i tenei wa o te reo Maori te wa i whakaritea ai e whakapumautia ai to tatou reo Maori hei reo motuhake mo Aotearoa. E nga mema o te Whare tena koutou tena tatou kia ora tatou katoa. 
[ 
Firstly Mr Speaker of the House I extend greetings to you in this time that has been set aside to celebrate the Maori language as an official language for New Zealand. To the members of the House greetings to you greetings to you and greetings to us all. 
]  
Yes the locomotive is back on the track and I assure Mr Quinn that road kill is at the upper part of my mind. This is the time in the middle of the 3-year cycle when we expect to see and to hear what the framework or the narrative put forward by the Prime Minister is for our country. But what people up and down the country are actually observing is that there is an absence of boldness an absence of courage and a fascination with visiting grandeur on small petty things. There is an inverse relationship. The Government chooses small initiatives that will not create wealth and are unrelated to jobs but with the Government’s co-conspirators in the media it talks up a story as if there is a narrative behind this Prime Minister. There is nothing. 
As he eats morning and day he sups like a fruitcake poll-driven leader. Everything that this leader takes as a sense of direction for the future is taken from polls. There is no underlying commitment as to what do we do to not only educate our children but also to ensure that families do not go to bed worried about Baycorp worried about creditors and worried about bills from schools. Why is there no sense of passion and belonging that people can see in the face of this Prime Minister? They cannot see that and it is because despite his sunny disposition he spent too long out of our country and he has not grown or lived through the organic changes that have got us to where we are today. 
We heard today a great use of the word “gap”. Well of course the previous Labour Government in our time sought to address many of the gaps between Pasifika tangata whenua and the rest of society. We had today from Gerry Brownlee a dissertation on the “gap”. The gap that needs to be lessened is the one in his head; the one in his head because it was vacuous and it was devoid of any confidence or any answer that tells an exporter a firm an investor or a schoolteacher what our country is actually doing under that Minister’s leadership and the Prime Minister’s leadership on the economic front. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: Nothing. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: It is beyond nothing; it is actually a hoax. There is this great strategy of focusing on marginal issues admittedly aided by the media and turning it into wallpaper so that the underlying emptiness is plastered over. That is catching up with them and it is why they lost their courage in relation to delivering a strong message against poor drinking habits and reducing carnage on the roads. 
There is also another reason why—and the previous speaker from Taranaki Shane Ardern knows it—there is no leadership in the rural sector. The reason that the institutions pertaining to the rural sector are in disarray is that there is an absence of leadership or willingness on that side of the House to step up to the plate and rationalise those sectors in such a way that New Zealand Inc does not suffer any longer. 
Our well-being does not depend on the rhetoric of the Prime Minister; it depends on bold policies that move us from our historical sources of earnings with clever technology and a willingness on the part of the Crown to invest real money with people who are prepared to take a risk and be entrepreneurial. But what we actually have is this total unwillingness to spend any political capital. Up and down the country people ask why is it that this Government came in with such an enormous level of support but has done nothing with it. The Government is determined to try to squeeze through more miserable policies a greater level of sweat out of people who cannot afford to live on their current earnings etc. That is miserable it is sad and it is an indictment on the current Government and the Prime Minister.