Jones Shane: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Jones Shane: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Sitting date: 13 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8492. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 On the question of intellectual capacity we will now see day from night. I would like to acknowledge the contribution made by that former foreign affairs official John Hayes who does have certain redeeming features. However that is for another day and many drinks later. 
I would like to direct our attention to a few facts. We had the unedifying sight recently of the joystick of the National Party “Mr Joyceification” saying there were five things that he was responsible for to drive forward the economy. No. 1 was improvements to the Resource Management Act. Of course he did not refer to the fact that the current Minister driving that reform the Minister for the Environment will turn into being the most unpopular ill-prepared and insulting politician who has ever held that portfolio. The first thing that she did was that she broke a longstanding constitutional convention and attacked personally the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who reports to this House. That person is a noted academic of international repute and Amy Adams took it upon herself to try to stigmatise and demean not so much that woman but her position. That is reflective of how hopeless and highly personalised she will be in taking forward this reform. That is the first thing that “the Joystick” has claimed credit for. 
Second he says that there is a new borer that will make a tunnel in Auckland. That reflects the mole-like impression that he leaves when his head is in the wrong position. That project Waterview Connection was started by no one other than my senior colleague on my left the greatest Minister of Transport to have graced the corridors of this institution the Hon Annette King. But the notion is that the arrival of that great big piece of machinery—German patented apparently and made in China—is somehow going to change the fortunes of the New Zealand economy. That boring machine is going to drill further down so the proverbial head of this ostrich-like Government goes where it belongs. 
Third it has been pointed out to us that the Prime Minister has been in Latin America. I do observe the convention that when the Prime Minister is away irrespective of what partisan hue he wears he represents the interests of the country. I am prepared to abide by that. But then his colleague the Prime Minister in waiting says that because our leader is away with the agriculture Minister and is actually too busy to come home and talk to the long-suffering Kiwis about the drought somehow that trip is going to turn the fortunes of the country round on some sort of agricultural basis alone. Mr Joyce has left only one thing out: the dung beetle. I am surprised that he has not sought to own the new sudden scientifically positive qualities of the dung beetle. There is a certain resonance between what he contributes and the capacity of that beetle to chew through refuse. 
There is very little in this Budget Policy Statement that is actually going to change the fortunes of the people from Kaitaia right through to Invercargill. The large economy of Auckland we are prepared to accept has its own dynamic. But go to Whangarei Turanga-nui-a-Kiwa Ngamotu—otherwise known as New Plymouth—or Invercargill and see that people down there have been neglected. People down there have been forgotten about. National is a party that holds those constituency seats and believes that the voters down there are like chooks—a few bits of wheat now and again and they will always vote in that direction. Without a doubt that is a dangerous and repulsive approach to take to regional New Zealand. Regional New Zealand our main settlements and our main centres there not only need an injection of capital and of ideas but most important need a friendly face that is willing not only to take on board their priorities but to change the priorities of the Government so that it serves the needs of those regional areas. We govern for the entirety of Aotearoa not just the narrow caste of economic tsars hoping to profit at the troughs of these State-owned enterprise sales but the entirety—the nurses the farmers and the schoolteachers who are unfortunately all about to become Baycorp. This is a hopeless document and a grossly inadequate attempt to turn the fortunes of the country round. Wait. Taihoa. Help is on the way. Kia ora tatou.