Jones Shane: General Debate 
Jones Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:670;Page:16837] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Kia ora ano tatou. Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. I have been told there are 40 weeks left until the day that the National Party and its discredited friends come over to this side of the House into Opposition. It will not be a clean transition. The most recent speaker Mr Gilmore will not be a part of that group. The No. 1 reason is that he will disappear like the much-vaunted assets he skites about when he stands in Christchurch—because there is no place for him on the list. We know that in order for the scintillating intellect of Mr Paul Quinn to be preserved and projected forward Aaron Gilmore has to go. That is a small but largely irrelevant piece of information. 
I come back to Mr Hide. Rodney Hide is the man who threatened to resign. He is the man who said he would not be blackmailed into resigning if Maori became members of the super-city council. Today we have seen dodging hiding concealing and camouflaging. That has been the style of operation from Rodney Hide. He introduced legislation reforming altering and adjusting the structures around the Auckland City Council and did not vote against the inclusion of a Maori Statutory Board a board that has turned into a fiasco. That board is costing a great deal of money—too much money it would appear to the Auckland ratepayers. 
I ask who is responsible. Not Mr Hide! I ask at what point Rodney Hide will explain to the ratepayers that he is responsible for the increase in their rates in Epsom or explain to Auckland ratepayers or his electors how Dr Pita Sharples outsmarted him. That may seem both a physical and an intellectual impossibility but the reality is that the person with bragging rights here is Dr Pita Sharples despite his having suffered considerable public injury for being ineffectual and for not bringing forward what ought to have happened to elected Maori representatives on the super-city. Taihoa I say to whanau in Tamaki-makau-rau—help is on the way! 
The Prime Minister said after the hikoi that nothing was set in stone. I bet that if he had the opportunity to say a similar thing now he would not use the word “stone”. “Concrete” comes to mind in so far as Mr Hide is involved because that man will not be back. He has misled Auckland he has dislocated the small number of supporters he had there and he has gone for popularity which has diminished. When that man comes under pressure he refuses to step up to the plate and take responsibility whether it concerns overseas trips or Mr David Garrett. Now it is the Maori Statutory Board. Rodney Hide was a key part of the architecture group; he refuses to admit it and he refuses to accept any responsibility. 
The person who is the most cunning of all in this I have to say is John Key. John Key needs to keep sweet with the Maori Party in order to govern again. That is why he is making only very mild remarks about the discredited Maori Statutory Board which does not have enough representatives from the great bulk of Maoridom in Auckland. But wait! Help is on the way: there will be two elected Maori representatives. We will not have committees that are just adjuncts which may actually cost a great deal of money that is not transparently arrived at. 
The board will pass slowly into history when we are in power and when our model comes to pass with two directly elected Maori representatives from the Maori roll. That model was originally demolished by Warren Cooper who was part of the dinosaur discovery that emerged from the earth when the Christchurch earthquake spread further down the South Island. One of his enduring features was to have tossed out that particular innovation which had been introduced in the time of David Lange. Help is on the way for Maoris in Auckland. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.