Jones Shane: General Debate 
Jones Shane: General Debate 
[Volume:643;Page:12865] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 Kia ora ano tatou Mr Assistant Speaker. I te tuatahi me mihi ahau ki to tatou iwi i roto o Aotearoa no te mea kua tae mai te kanohi Maori tuatoru ki roto i te kahui teitei o te Kawanatanga. 
I greet all our Maori whanau out there and remind them that the third Maori has arrived in the Cabinet of the Government that is heading towards its fourth term. I did not bring a hammer an apron or a hard hat. However I certainly look forward to adding to the great mahi of Mr Clayton Cosgrove who despite Dr Nick Smith’s best efforts at muttering meandering and irritating has advanced the interests—and I hope to emulate him in this—of those who were afflicted through poor regulation in terms of weather-damaged housing. 
 We have addressed the concerns of the hundreds the thousands of men and women who shoot down to ITM Carters and PlaceMakers on a Saturday morning in order to put up a trellis tend to the rose garden or put up a garage in which to stack all the policies and brilliant ideas that they are seeing from us on a regular basis. We deliver on our ideas from this side of the House. Those people will not need unnecessary levels of licensing. They are known as our greatest fan club—the DIY builders. We will continue with those good policies. 
In addition to that I had the pleasure last night to represent both the department and the Government at the awarding of prizes to apprentices. We must not overlook the fact of course that I and the great international rugby athlete Glen “Ozzy” otherwise known as Osborne from Wanganui did share a story or three on rugby but with a mind to my future I made the stories very short and largely irrelevant to my role as a Minister. However we were able to present prizes to 10 young men. I actually wait for the wahine apprentices who are about to complete their apprenticeships. I told every single one of those apprentices that when they go back to their mahi their workplace they should thank Dr Cullen and Helen Clark because through their stewardship apprenticeships are now a part of the labour market. They are a goal that every New Zealand family can commit its young people to achieving. 
In the time of Dr Lockwood Smith— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Yeah who repealed the Apprenticeship Act? 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: That is right. In the time of that tired crowd over there trade training and apprenticeships were swept aside by “Scrooge” otherwise known as Mr Bill Birch whose hand was known to go down into the lavatory and into parts of his anatomy perhaps to get a 5c piece. However he destroyed the apprenticeship scheme completely devalued the worth of trades and left the long-suffering construction sector with a problem that we fortunately are overcoming by funding encouraging and leading young people to come and achieve in the trades. 
Let me continue. Dr Cullen has taken up the cudgels and will lead with his characteristic intellectual flair and decisiveness the Treaty settlement programme. I contrast what he will be doing with what my whanaunga from the Maori Party have been doing: beating a dangerous drum of discord and divisiveness amongst our people in the Bay of Plenty. I say to them that as troubling and as hurtful as some of the images on television may be about that part of the Bay of Plenty it is better that they wait as MPs and parliamentarians until the facts are placed before the court. There is plenty of time to search out for soothing words and to offer calm advice to the families. They need to wait and see what the self-styled “King of Tuhoe” Tame Iti has actually been up to. 
However let us continue. As my colleague has said here in relation to our party conference we can look forward to tax cuts. When we had Mr Tony Ryall standing up on his two hind feet today he reminded me of what Helen Clark said because in the front row there is not just the one-trick pony; there is also the show pony. The show pony has searched every nook and crevice for every sort of bad story he can dredge up to blast against our new Minister.