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- Date published:
10:12 am, July 31st, 2025 - 31 comments
Categories: corruption, energy, nicola willis, politicans, Politics, Shane Jones -
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You might be able to tell from my writing that I have never liked Shane Jones.
When he was a Labour MP he always struck me as being glib, lazy and his values were difficult to ascertain.
He charmed and talked his way onto the Labour list. When he talked he was so expressive that he was always entertaining, at least superficially. But when you tried to identify the substance of what he said there often was none.
I have personal experience of meetings that he attended as a Minister where he was late, completely unprepared, and I had to wonder about the utility of him being a Minister or an MP.
He then contested the Labour Party leadership, bombed badly, and then resigned as a Labour list MP.
I summarised his career two years ago in this paragraph.
If there is something that I can abide less than a Tory politician it is someone who starts off being radical for the kicks, tacks to the middle as career prospects beckon, becomes a Labour politician because people were impressed with his verbal dexterity, embarrasses the party because not only he is really lazy but he also is that stupid that he uses his Ministerial Credit Card to watch porn, leaves Parliament to take up a doozy of a Diplomatic post offered to him by Murray McCully and the National Party, then joins a total waste space of a party because it was again good for his career opportunities, as part of NZ First supports his former party because there was no other way he would be a Minister, gets voted out of office and then joins a retrograde Government that wants to trash Te Reo for political advantage even though he is a self professed Te Reo expert and then he chooses to join in the sacrificing of the future of the human race because the supporters of his party that operates near the margin of error expect it.
Fast forward to this term and Shane has a few strings to his political bow. He rages against wokism, rails against Maori “privilege”, and takes particular delight in wanting to sacrifice the environment so that more minerals and oil and gas can be extracted.
And he has spearheaded fast track projects. Even though this raised concerns about donations for political parties being linked to favourable treatment.
This RNZ article writted by Farah Hancock from two months ago highlights the perils.
From the article:
Ministers Shane Jones and Chris Bishop continued to make decisions about several fast-track projects despite their respective parties receiving donations linked to the applicants.
One political scientist says such donations could be perceived as a conflict of interest and erode public trust in government.
However, both ministers said that donations to parties were not considered to be a conflict.
“The long-standing approach of the Cabinet Office to donations to political parties is that they are not generally treated as resulting in a pecuniary conflict of interest for individual Ministers belonging to the party,” a statement said.
Political donation data released last week shows NZ First received donations from seafood company Sanford, mining company McCallum Bros and the Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust.
National received donations from Russell Property Group and the company’s director, Brett Russell. It also received a donation from Gibbston Valley Wines, which has directors linked to the Gibbston Valley residential project. Projects from these companies are included in the Fast-track legislation.
Jones recent activity relating to the ending of the off shore oil drilling ban has raised eyebrows.
He has taken the extraordinary step to recommit a bill already in its third reading and introduce a last minute amendment which on the face of it winds back potential liabilities of oil companies for decommission costs of oil fields.
The explanatory note to the amendment bill says this:
Currently, existing and previous permit holders (and licence holders and persons with a participating interest in a permit or licence) are liable for unmet decommissioning costs under the Crown Minerals Act 1991 (the Act). Trailing liability for the performance of decommissioning obligations has applied since December 2021. Under that liability, if a permit holder fails to decommission or meet the costs of decommissioning (either directly or through a financial security), the Act places a liability on all former permit holders.
The Crown Minerals Amendment Bill (the Bill) as introduced (in September 2024) proposed to limit trailing liability for unmet decommissioning costs to the most recent permit holder or participant who transferred out.
Amendment Paper No 214 (released in November 2024) proposed to extend trailing liability to a wider range of people, beyond existing and previous permit holders, by adding various persons having a controlling interest in a body corporate to the list of persons who are currently liable for meeting unmet decommissioning costs.
This Amendment Paper proposes to reverse the position of both the Bill as introduced and Amendment Paper No 214, so that only existing permit holders (and licence holders and persons with a participating interest in a permit or licence) are made absolutely liable in the Act for unmet decommissioning costs.
To simplify this:
As said by Marc Daalder in Newsroom:
Alongside repealing the 2018 offshore exploration ban, Jones proposed to limit trailing liability to only the immediate prior owner. In select committee, submitters raised concerns about these changes, saying they created a loophole where the industry could structure their businesses and transactions in a way that avoided trailing liability.
An amendment to fix the loophole was introduced in November, ahead of the legislation’s planned passage in December. However, the oil and gas industry revolted, saying the new requirements were now too strict, and the bill was put on the back-burner while officials sought a new solution.
The new fix was finally revealed on Tuesday, more than eight months after the bill was originally due to pass. Trailing liability is no longer automatically imposed on any former owners or permit holders. Instead, it will be imposed at ministerial discretion by an agreement with the party seeking to transfer its stake – if no agreement can be made, the minister is empowered to reject the transfer.
Why require Ministerial discretion over such transactions? Why not just have multiple parties potentially liable for the clean up costs if the legal test is met?
The worry is that oil companies will ply the ruling parties with donations, as has happened with the Fast Track scheme.
There are further issues. The Ministers who would make the decision are currently Jones and one Nicola Willis. She has some rather strong family links to the oil industry. I suspect their collective flex in responding to requests from the Oil industry would be to make it easier.
The process used is appalling. The changes to the bill came up after a public process had well and truly finished and after numerous submissions relating to the bill being made to the Select Committee were considered.
Jones then took this process offline, talked to the Oil companies only, consulted Maori by talking to himself, and then came up with this last minute change which was dropped without notice on Parliament.
On Morning Report this morning Greenpeace’s Russell Norman savaged the proposal and Jones’ justification for it.
He pointed out that the changes allowed liability to be avoided whereas currently it cannot.
He also poured scorn on the Government’s claim that the power crisis directly related to shortage relates the drilling ban. He noted that there had been little if any gas discovered in the past 20 years and that any discoveried that may have been made would not be on line yet. Repeated claims by the Government that the drilling ban was liable was described as being completely false.
Jones’ bill breaches various principles contained in the Regulatory Standards Bill including “the importance of consulting, to the extent that is reasonably practicable, the persons that the responsible agency considers will be directly and materially affected by the legislation”. The public at large could become liable for considerable expense. We should have been allowed the chance to have a say on this change.
The change is shoddy, underhand, environmentally disastrous, and increases the potential for corruption.
And it is definitely not a fix for the system. Jones’ real intent, disclosed in February, was to limit industry liability for the clean-up costs of oil wells. This will go at least part way to reducing oil industry responsibility for oil rig clean up costs.
Just another week in the work life of Matua Shane Jones.
To be brief – NO!
He's got to be the most corrupt politician currently in parliament (and there's some pretty strong competition!).
Shane Jones? Corrupt?? NO, he can’t be!!!
Thanks Drowsy, made my day
Hell no.
An untethered loose cannon.
Hell no indeed.
I suspect it all hinges on why Labour shot him up to the top so fast. One could argue that natural talent powered him like a rocket, but look at this:
God's will? If not then whodunnit? Helen Clark? Several folks onsite here believe she's intelligent. I've never seen any evidence of that, but I do acknowledge the technical possibility, so I will wait to see if those folk point out that his mana is due to her intelligence in empowering his rocket.
Every now and then people are so good at being slippery sneaky people it fools the best of us , he'll I bet there's readers of the standard that think you're completely straight up and above board, !!
Such bitterness, but why – Hell hath no fury…? Try a little kindness – or the B-side
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Clark#Awards_and_honours
Such slippery evasion of why she promoted him seems like a classic exhibition of leftism. Notice though that I did flag the technical possibility of a collective decision so I wasn't defaulting to an autoblame position. I'm not up with whatever set of decision-making rules Labour was using at the time. You could argue I'm being too generous to Helen in assuming she would yield to the yoke of collaboration rather than default to classic hierarchical dictatorship as per democratic tradition…
Quite right Dennis, you so rarely default to an autoblame position
Still, since you've "never seen any evidence" that Helen Clark is intelligent, perhaps your memory or powers of observation could do with a check-up.
perhaps your memory or powers of observation could do with a check-up
Oh, very likely, due to my elderly status. Still, you seem to continue to evade the point about why Labour was so quick to promote our local pontif(icator).
Their evaluation of his character and potential is the logical reason, n'est ce pas? Not so much with the seething, either. Just simple curiosity.
?? I’m not challenging that ‘point’. Rather, it was another point you made @3 – that you've never seen any evidence that Helen Clark is intelligent – which struck me as deluded defaulting. Did you ever converse with ‘the cabbage'?
Some people never manage to live up to their potential – to make the most of their gifts; to have the impact they'd hoped for. How one deals with that can be a real test of character – and naturally there's a temptation to default to belittling those who continue to enjoy greater recognition.
No, I was just telling the truth about her (as I see it). Like anyone else, I observed her performance throughout – one of relentless mediocrity.
I was happy to see her eliminate the Nats in '99 but never expected much in the aftermath. I agreed with her replacement of the Employment Contracts Act at the time but saw it as cosmetic, not substantial. But it ain't all about me, as you seem to think. It's all about Labour's promotion of Shane due to their perception of his merit, and how pathetic it makes them look now, as they get off on pretending that history never happened…
"Relentless mediocrity" – more default belittling – your truth.
You say "it ain't all about me" – ain't that the truth. Best of luck.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-03-08-2023/#comment-1962738
I agree that the Employment Relations Act 2000 was really just cosmetic and the softer friendlier version of the Employment Contracts Act it replaced.
The evidence of that is the continued weakness of the Union movement. It has never got close to rebuilding to where it was before 1991.
But even more obvious evidence is the fact we have had two right wing governments since then. This current one is extreme right. And they have not repealed the ERA, which clearly shows they are more than comfortable with it.
Their RMA Amendment Bill clearly shows their uncomfortable
Oops – Their ER Amendment Bill clearly shows they’re uncomfortable.
I think you will find that Labour ministers are elected by caucus and the portfolios then allocated by the PM whereas a Natz PM decides both. Helen Clark would therefore only have been able to decide the portfolio allocation.
So Helen put Jones into a position with a very limited scope for damage, because it had a professional team that constrained the stupidity of a first time minister. Similarly his associate ministerial positions had competent Ministers. Wikipedia
Even so, with about a year he screwed up politically several times in Immigration, wanking, and a daft shower head decision – some of which showed up afterwards.
He kept getting elected inside caucus, but was muzzled because he was a loose lazy and stupid cannon. I was so glad when he left Labour because his only skills appeared to be self-promotion, and stumbling over his own feet.
Helen Clark on the other hand was the most commensurate politician I have known in NZ, not only because of competent execution, but also because she kept a consistent and clear sense of direction for the whole of the time I knew of her – which started in 1981 (when I helped the campaign against her).
The only other politician with that kind of balance was probably Jim Bolger. Disliked many of his ideas, but he was also consistent, competent and balanced and kept moving forward regardless of the people in cabinet around him. Both were notable for looking across the political boundaries when making long-term decisions.
BTW: Don't rate Muldoon, Key, Lange, Douglas, Ardern, Peters, or any Act leader in the same way.
I appreciate your feedback and overview. It seems accurate despite that I haven't been able to take Labour seriously since Kirk was PM. I can concede she was a competent manager of the neolib status quo – just not intelligent enough to see that neoliberalism itself is the problem. We need leaders who are keen to develop a positive alternative (resilience via economic design etc).
What a cold and lonely political hole you live in.
You think? It's true that elderly folk often live alone, yet there's a subtle solidarity in the mass effect of that. Experientially too, the minority of one is a social category occupied simultaneously by many at any point of history so I can't realistically privilege myself.
I suspect you formed that impression due to partisan default thinking: anyone residing between us and them is an incomprehensible loner. Yet is comprehension of independence really that difficult to mentally encompass?
Perhaps partisans default to that stance habitually. You'd think that polling and election results since the mid-1980s would have alerted everyone to the measure of a third of the electorate being independent is normal. The partisan is so reluctant to accept this social reality of western countries that they autoregard any independent as solitary – to deny the mass effect.
Irrationality on that huge scale is a terrific identifier of partisan thinking. Yet the good news is that anyone can wise up anytime, even partisans…
You see yourself as an independent rational loner who’s morally and intellectual superior to partisans and just about everybody else. You must concede that you fail to acknowledge your blatant bias and jarring cynicism. You won’t wise up to this because you’re not intelligent enough.
She knew it and its problems, just as she knew the problems of the neo-socialism of Muldoon. The problem in politics usually isn't recognising those ideological threads. It is how do you proceed to embed changes.
Clearly your problem is that you aren’t intelligent enough to understand the difficulties of engineering embedded solutions in politics. Or more likely are are too impatient and want immediate results that won’t stick. Revolution seldom sticks, you have to make solutions that survive political swings away.
The problem is how to chart a course to change that isn't massively disruptive and destroyer of lives, economies, and societies. Doing gradual change successfully so it gets embeeded is way more tricky than the dumb-arse revolutionary tricks of someone like Douglas.
The Clark government managed to embed Kiwisaver, because it was argued out across political lines. Douglas failed to do that. His super scheme was put in as a revolutionary measure in 1974 and chucked out by Muldoon who'd used it as cause to win the 1975 election – and a much poorer and short-sighted system substituted.
You can see a lot of those long-term measures going in over the course of the 5th Labour government. Some weren't great – the ETS for instance. But they mostly stuck.
You're seeing a classic example of this at present with this coalitions attempts at revolutionary change just causing a short recession into a persistent stagflation. Their attempts to save government expenditure are causing a massive drop in government revenues.
You'd be hard-pushed to see many of the CoCked up measures that will survive a change of government. Charter schools will fold back into the public system because where government funding goes, so does the auditor-general. Pay parity can't be scrubbed by legislation and a mythical replacement scheme as it is a legal equity issue. etc..
Clearly your problem is that you aren’t intelligent enough to understand the difficulties of engineering embedded solutions in politics. Or more likely are are too impatient
I plead guilty on the latter point. On the former, I did enough years of political activism to get a rough idea of those difficulties. I could concede your years of engaging them have given you more insight.
The Clark government managed to embed Kiwisaver, because it was argued out across political lines.
Seems valid to me as evidence of intelligence. Your bleak view of the current govt is same as mine, but it depends how many of their loony schemes Hipkins has itemised for reversal if he gets back in. He seems reluctant to commit himself to much. A real leader would call their bluff due to knowing it’s what followers expect from a leader.
Currently only a few are being set for automatic removal. Many of the measures are deeply unpopular outside of their selected voter groups (notably like the gun lobby, landlords, tobacco interests), or will be when the effects are felt (the opposition to strip mining the Taranaki Bright fro instance).
There isn't any point in Labour doing more than opposing them in the house, statements by individual MPs, and leaving explicit action until closer to the election. National and their coalition parties are currently doing a pretty good job of exporting grand kids and their parents through some really stupid economic moves.
It is a balance between Labour providing a target to be shot down, and encouraging activism.
Lots of noisy activism from Greens and TPM. Statements by individual Labour MPs. And from various groups representing those hurt by foolish government actions. Very little encouragement of activists required.
The desperation in the calls by National for Labour to release policy now is a reflection of their dependence on the first.
No point in helping National by providing a target for them to rail against….
Like Peters, Jones has become a cartoon of himself.
Not sure if anyone else here remembers what he was like in 2013 campaigning within Labour to be leader of the party. His jokes were straight 1980s cossie club groaners, and he came across as a boorish slob then.
The Labour Party had lots of trust in Jones once upon a time: it slected him as a candidate and appointed him to Cabinet. He was just as sleazy and corrupt then as he is now but the difference is that he was Labour's sleaeze bucket and that makes all the difference. Appparently.
When we read Dirty Politics and The Hollow Men he did not figure, so hind sight is a fine thing. Same with Winnie. They have swapped horses, not us.
Another good well thought, Linked and indeed summed, Post MS. And yes, although Tony Veitch has already succinctly said, in a word ? NO.
I read varied Environment News sites and I wonder if you or others had seen the following? I absolutely remember the shocking spill (Newsroom/Marc Daalder are good !)
I sincerely hope we can kick sordid Jones, and the rest of his NACT1 cronies and creeps to the deep,change direction, and regain NZ. Before the damage is permanent.