Jones Shane: Address in Reply 
Jones Shane: Address in Reply 
[Volume:652;Page:1157] 
Hon SHANE JONES (Labour) 
: 
 I have not repeated the error that you Mr Assistant Speaker unfairly pointed out last night when I did not address you properly. But being a suitable representative of Tai Tokerau I say that I would not treat a man of the south in such a fashion. 
We have just heard from the Minister of Education who has been predated upon by Mr Peachey who is sore and angry that he did not get the role of Minister of Education. Of course when the Minister goes to South Auckland the police are hoping to join her because when she talks to the youth gangs in the schools there she will send them to sleep. 
Paul Quinn 
: Are you taking your own bitterness out in terms of the leadership? 
Hon SHANE JONES 
: We are hearing from Mr Quinn. I am not entirely sure whether Mr Quinn has stepped down from the New Zealand Rugby Union yet. He is on parole from there and he has a role here. He has just told us that he enjoyed having pies after his rugby games. He has eaten pies before his games too many times. He seems to think that he can come in here and enjoy roles in other parts of public life. Unless he changes that status we will painfully point out to him that one standard pertains in private enterprise but when one is a public figure unfortunately that person will be possessed of a degree of hardship and pain. Of course the pie went from over here and up to the upoko up to the brain and it swelled. I will not waste any more time on Mr Quinn other than to say that when an excessive number of pies are consumed things swell. In his case it was the matenga the head. 
However let me come back to this dreadful pitiful piddling announcement called infrastructure—an example of 100 days of plagiarism. Let us go to an area where our friends from the Maori Party have obviously failed. They have failed to secure the necessary support. They have failed to sell the idea that the most profound sort of investment in infrastructure to advance the affairs of the Maori community is in housing. Not one single house can be built in the rohe of Tai Tokerau Hone Harawira’s area despite him wildly saying that the best thing since sliced bread was his now communing with the National Party and that we will see a massive improvement in his area—69 houses. Pathetic! But what is really sad is that it is a reflection of how weak and irrelevant their contribution is. 
Of course this infrastructure development is very timid. The small reference the Government makes to housing overlooks the fact that it has now cancelled the new housing out in west Auckland in Whenuapai—Hobsonville. In addition it has canned the previous Government’s proposal to spend a billion dollars on making houses warmer more insulated safer and healthier—all of which was to be funded by the emissions trading revenue which was killed off by Rodney Hide. In the zest of the Prime Minister going to Peru he agreed much to his current embarrassment which has led New Zealand to slip right off the pace in relation to greenhouse gases. 
But let us go back to this infrastructure decision. Not only is there no new money and no new projects—these projects are well known—but also it shows how timid and frightened those members are. I fear that the Prime Minister has already fallen prey to Treasury. As is its role Treasury takes a very conservative pettifogging finicky approach and we are seeing that type of thinking at a time when New Zealanders are not only concerned about their jobs but also want to see evidence of the bold leadership that Bill English and his team promised prior to the election. He promised a narrowing of the trans-Tasman wage gap. We have not seen that. If anything National’s treatment of the minimum wage shows that the gap is likely to grow. 
Secondly what about the ideas that they brought forward of additional investment in productivity? The best we have had served up to us is the current Minister of Education who wanders around New Zealand. She has not a single policy or clue to offer as to how our young people can be encouraged to stay in school or how practical application will be given to National’s wild rhetoric. National’s members are afraid to admit it but they fall back on the ideas of my excellent colleague Mr Chris Carter who was ably funded by Dr Cullen. Gosh New Zealanders are beginning to appreciate that they voted for change but what they got was first plagiarism and now this very timid fearful approach from Bill English—how embarrassing. The man goes to Australia not to get ideas but to work out how it will salvage its economy so he can come home and shoehorn that result here in New Zealand because he has nothing to offer. 
We are going to wait and see whether National will have a mini-Budget and what the elements of the Budget are going to be. In October Dr Cullen and the previous Prime Minister announced that if Labour were re-elected there would be a mini-Budget and the focus would be on joining environment and economics such as marginal hill country and all those kinds of projects that would soak up relatively unskilled labour. It is worth funding. That type of deficit is worth suffering because it takes more vulnerable New Zealand families into the workforce and keeps them there. 
Forestation can have massive benefits on our Maori land but that is something we never heard anything about from Hone Harawira or Dr Pita Sharples. You know it is almost as if the Maori Party members because of historical grievances teamed up with National and having achieved a small measure of status have given up trying to influence National. Perhaps they are waiting for the Queen of Persia Hekia Parata to advocate for them behind the scenes or Tau Henare who sits wild and angry that he has been passed over or Georgina te Heuheu hoping that she will be a representative for Dr Pita Sharples. 
Of course when the Maori Party agreed to this pact it was a diminution of the status of the Minister of Maori Affairs and a very very sad day for that portfolio to diminish in that fashion. We saw the difference today. There was Parekura Horomia. He asked fantastic questions and he was capable of capturing the same message in so many different ways. It was fantastic. The man has shown how far away Dr Sharples is. But of course I am going to give Dr Sharples a chance because sitting behind him is Tau and as I said royalty from Persia. We need to give him an opportunity. I say to them that if they want to maintain the confidence of the people then come up and demonstrate where their projects are. Do not just copy. 
We are capable of defending our own record on issues such as infrastructure. Look at our housing. Fix up our marae. Fix up our kura. Do not just come to town with the same tired rhetoric that colonisation is the blame for everything and the Labour Party took the seabed and foreshore; we have been there done that. 
Of course what we saw at Waitangi is that the Maori Party seems to think that just because it enjoys two positions in the executive it will no longer be challenged and the protest movements will now fall into line and march—kotahi te whiu o te wae—in some sort of frog-like sense. But no we find that our own young people from the kura kaupapa movement can see through this charade. They want to see the tangible results and the financial benefit not the tired jaded rhetoric at the point where the National Party has hit the high-tide mark. Until we see that we will know that this is just a 5-minute wonder. 
The infrastructure was an opportunity to bring Maori projects forward rather than the piffle that somehow public-private enterprise investment strategies within which Ngai Tahu and Tainui are given a chance to own the roads the bridges and the State-owned enterprises. Fortunately the members of those tribes if not the leaders are not foolhardy enough to be sucked in by that. So there is no content no substance and clear evidence of rhetoric as is the case with this entire infrastructure announcement—[ 
Interruption 
]—and pies to everyone. Kia ora tatou.