Jones Shane: General Debate 
Jones Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:648;Page:17341] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 E te Kaihautu o te Whare tena koe. Huri noa i to tatou Whare i tenei ahiahi tena tatou katoa i te ahuatanga o to tatou reo e whakatairangatia ana e whakamaharatia ana hei reo pumau mo Aotearoa i tenei wa. 
[ 
Greetings to you Mr Assistant Speaker and to you also throughout our House this afternoon in respect of the promotion and commemoration of our language at this time as a language of New Zealand for all times 
.] 
I greet my fellow parliamentarians and you Mr Assistant Speaker in Maori Language Week and as a reminder that Maori is one of our official languages. Before I launch off into the less charming aspects of my speech—because they are directed at the Opposition—we should bear in mind that this is one of our official languages of Aotearoa and it is kept alive as a consequence of the zeal and the interest of families to maintain bilingualism. All of my fellow Maori members of the House who are pursuing that—my whanaunga Hone Harawira along with myself and indeed Tau Henare—have been if not zealots in ensuring that our kids carry on the language then very very supportive of it becoming a reality. 
It is very sad that there has been an outbreak of amnesia from the other side of the House in search perhaps—and we see it on the front bench—of some sort of analgesic. However the reality is that they are holding unsuccessfully the proud member of Ngati Wai the leader of Aotearoa Tuatahi to a level of accountability they refuse to observe themselves. Not for them the detection or revelation of the Waitemata Trust and its shadowy funders coming back from overseas to Aotearoa. 
Of course the crowning folly offered by Mr Key is whilst he is chomping on Winston’s hind leg—presumably he is cocking the other one—he refuses to rule out the fact that National mistakenly hopes it can work with him. In addition National refuses to acknowledge that it has been the recipient of handsome amounts of lucre. But why will those members not observe the same level of laxity in relation to Mr Peters that they apply to themselves? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but two members who do not have the floor are interjecting on each other. That is not permitted. 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: I follow Mr Williamson who unfortunately has left the Chamber. Mr Williamson spoke before I did. He recited a potted but stilted version of history. If there is one group of politicians whom the public associate with furtiveness in relation to funding their activities it is the members on that side of the House. They attack Winston Peters forgetting that it was litigation that first brought him here. If any of them go out and repeat as Matthew Hooton was unwisely doing—soon no doubt to be at his cost—ridiculous unsubstantiated dangerously libellous things about Winston Peters on National Radio etc. then they will face the full force of that litigiousness again. 
Of course the last thing that our colleagues from the other side of the House want to do is talk about who is going to pay for their excessive promises in relation to tax cuts and who is going to pay in relation to responding to the special-interest groups—obviously Australian insurance companies which is a joke. They complain about the anaemic nature of the New Zealand capital markets. They complain about the large numbers of Kiwis who are going across the Tasman. 
The first asset they line up to sell to the Aussies is one of the most successful flourishing enterprises with a very handsome endowment of capital invested in a wide array of destinations employing some very competent New Zealanders. The first thing they will do is gouge it then they will bleach it and then they will hock it off. 
I hope that the person who leads along with us the attack to stop that from happening is our friend the co-leader of the Green Party. He if anyone would know the dangers of what could happen if we let too many of them loose and I am sure he could speak at length on that matter. However the first thing National will do is destroy accident compensation. That is why it will not be successful.