Jones Shane: General Debate 
Jones Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:675;Page:21284] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Firstly it is important to acknowledge in respect of the fiasco around the Rugby World Cup on Friday night that there actually were service workers who tried their hardest and there were security people—no doubt enjoying very minimal wages—who were stressed and trying their hardest. There were the police who tried their hardest. The person who did not try his hardest was the Prime Minister who went to Eden Park exploited an opportunity delivered a half-baked insipid speech and deliberately went out of his way to show that he does not govern for all New Zealanders. He waited for a manene he waited for a visiting European to bring just a small measure of our indigenous language into a greeting. When the Prime Minister did that it showed that he was willing to exploit the limelight but that when the acid was going to come on him he would run from the attention. 
Why are we angry on this side of the House? There are concerns about the health of the young people because a number of us in this House were down at the Viaduct Basin on Friday night where we saw the thronging crowd and we saw the poor organisation. We were deeply fearful that had there been a spark of incivility had there been a spark of violence bad planning would mean our security forces would never have coped. We should congratulate the majority of the Kiwis largely young people who were there and who answered the call. Unfortunately it has proven to be a siren call from the Prime Minister: “Come and party!”; “Haere mai ki te whakangahau!”. 
Well he obviously thought he could use those terms a year 18 months or 2 years ago and that would overlap in terms of a feel-good factor for the election. Well it does not feel good now because media around the world have picked up on that egregious lapse of organisation. It is inevitable that the Government wants to blame someone else because we have never had a Prime Minister more skilful at shifting liability or shifting the blame. New Zealanders know and they are not happy at the prospect of a showcase like this being used to diminish our reputation internationally. The media had every right to ask questions. 
Of course the majority of people who managed to get there on time had a fantastic opportunity to see some of the finest sentiments showcased at Eden Park. We had the Pasifika influence the Maori influence and we had the broad Kiwi influence. What we did not have was a Prime Minister showing the influence of his office and agreeing to stand up and be counted. 
What did the Government do? It blamed the hapless Len Brown who had no formal authority and who has no power whatsoever over Auckland Transport and indeed who has very little influence over its budget. To make matters worse the Government then invited Minister Steven Joyce to further humiliate the super-city. The super-city is an autonomous unit but in this case it is not responsible for the debacle that we saw in terms of the failure in security and crowd control and in the transport woes that the Auckland Council is endeavouring to fix up. Every time it comes up with an innovative idea that might have reduced the prospect of what we are dealing with in terms of Rugby World Cup transportation it is humiliated. It is a further example of a small coterie of Cabinet Ministers who intensely dislike Len Brown. They will not rest until they have had the opportunity to wear the man down. 
The real agenda here is not to improve the prospects of running the Rugby World Cup for the next 7 or 8 weeks; the Government is using it as an opportunity to humiliate and deprecate a person who has a larger mandate than any single member of the House. We should call it on that. This is being done under the cloak of the Rugby World Cup fiasco to settle personal political scores. No one is doing it with more alacrity than Steven Joyce. He is the man who the National MPs tell us has the nickname of “Figjam”. We want to hear about the problems of traffic jams and the solutions to traffic jams. 
I will go on to explain why we hold the Prime Minister to account. It is not good enough to want to bask in the glory of the work that Helen Clark and Tana Umaga did in actually securing that concession for New Zealand. When the Prime Minister stands we want him to be the Prime Minister for all New Zealanders and we want him to be a Prime Minister who stands up and is willing to be counted when things go wrong because inevitably things do not always go swimmingly well. But what we see is a person who not only is willing to blame Len Brown but also is unwilling to take responsibility. As a consequence of this National’s election campaign does not look flash.