The missing diary entry that’s still dogging Shane Jones
The minister defended the diary omission as a 'cock-up', but not everyone is so convinced.
Mōrena, and welcome to The Bulletin for Thursday, July 18.
In today’s edition: The lessons of 1984 as Juggernaut draws to a close, the Darleen Tana report is finally released (in part), and Ashley Bloomfield reflects on the role of trust in science as he reviews a new book. But first, why an undeclared diary entry is more serious than it may seem.
A minister with many hats
Shane Jones is a busy man. The regional development minister, reported BusinessDesk, is about to head off on a 15-stop national tour to plug his $1.2bn regional infrastructure fund. As the de facto second-in-command of New Zealand First, he’s often in the media acting as the mouthpiece for Winston Peters while the foreign minister is out of the country, such as this week criticising independent MP Darleen Tana for refusing to leave parliament. Earlier in the month, as the NBR reported, he was in Australia wearing his resources minister hat and meeting with mining companies. In other words, his diary is as full as you’d expect from a senior government minister. But it’s a missing entry from that diary that’s also landed him in hot water, or at least seen him drizzled in it, with a series of headlines dating back several months questioning the omission. As we’ll get into below, there are now escalating calls for intervention from the prime minister and parallels with previous ministerial (non)disclosure dramas being invoked.
A ‘cock-up’ or a conspiracy?
Regular readers of The Bulletin will be familiar with this saga, but we’ve only discussed it in passing so it’s understandable if the key threads have passed you by. Let’s start at the beginning. Newsroom’s David William has led the coverage of this, beginning in May when he reported on an undeclared dinner between Jones and mining boss Barry Bragg a few months prior. Undeclared meaning this meeting was not available on Jones’s public diary until after it was reported on. Ministers are expected to publicly declare all meetings related to their ministerial business.
The meeting was newsworthy because Bragg claimed that he was encouraged by Jones to put a project forward for consideration for the government’s controversial fast track bill, which opened the door to concerns that it amounted to undisclosed political lobbying. Jones is one of three ministers expected to have decision-making powers under the fast track bill, as my colleague Shanti Mathias explained last month. Jones defended the diary omission as a “cock-up” rather than a conspiracy, reported RNZ, saying not all meetings fell under the disclosure rules. “It depends what pōtae I wear. A pōtae is a cap. Some caps are NZ First, some caps are ministerial.”
Open and transparent
The reason this saga has dragged on from May until now comes down to Jones himself. The latest update from David Williams, also reported on by The Post’s Thomas Manch, was just this week when it was revealed that while Jones had initially claimed the dinner was a “last minute thing”, it had actually been teed up by one of his staffers. As Williams reported, Jones has “refused” to answer follow-up questions and his press secretary told Newsroom “the matter is now closed”. That may be how the minister views it, but in politics, perception is everything. And the perception of transparency (or a lack thereof) has brought down ministers in the past.
It was an undisclosed meeting that saw the end of Clare Curran’s political career back in 2018. As the Herald’s Nicholas Jones reported at the time, Curran was removed from cabinet after a meeting with entrepreneur Derek Handley. There were several added complications, such as that it was Curran’s second offence, that she was the minister for open government, and that she had once uttered the now immortal line that Labour would be “the most open, most transparent government that New Zealand has ever had”. Nevertheless, at its core, Curran’s fall came down to a failure to disclose a meeting. One that – like Jones – she claimed had been informal.
The fallout, and the ongoing questions
Labour’s Chris Hipkins was asked about Jones while on his morning media round yesterday, telling TVNZ’s Breakfast that the prime minister should be pulling Jones into line. And he invoked a more recent ministerial scandal that saw Christopher Luxon, then opposition leader, calling for a punishment. "In the last government, ministers lost their jobs for not declaring things," Hipkins said, a reference to former minister Michael Wood’s undeclared shares. At the time, reported the Herald, Luxon had criticised Hipkins for being “weak” for failing to intervene earlier. Of course, in that instance it was a Labour leader being asked to punish a Labour minister. This time around, the one person we haven’t heard from is Winston Peters, Jones’s boss. As parliament returns next week, expect further questions to be asked.
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What the left and right still get wrong about 1980s politics
It’s just over 40 years since the snap election that brought the fourth Labour government into power and triggered a wave of reforms that echoed through the subsequent decades. All of this is covered in exceptional detail in The Spinoff’s political podcast series Juggernaut, which wraps up this morning. Writing for The Spinoff this morning, Juggernaut host Toby Manhire looks at the breakdown of the relationship between key figures in that government. The deterioration, writes Manhire, centred on a fundamental difference of policy and philosophy.
Meanwhile, Max Rashbrooke looks back at how the economic reforms of the ‘80s are viewed today, reflecting on the lessons both the left and right have failed to grasp.
Listen to episode six of Juggernaut – Breakup
The Lange-Douglas relationship frays further as the prime minister unilaterally pulls the pin on a flat tax package signed off by cabinet. A furious Douglas flies back from Europe, but the split only deepens, as Lange declares it’s time for radical reforms to pause and calls for a “cup of tea” and the two Beehive offices go to war, with Douglas loyalists putting the blame on Lange’s lover, Margaret Pope. Something has to give, and soon it does. Follow now to make sure you get every episode.
Juggernaut was made with the support of NZ On Air.
Tana investigation claims ousted MP was likely aware of exploitation complaints
An investigation into what Darleen Tana knew about allegations of migrant exploitation at her husband’s business claims it was “more likely than not” the former Green MP was aware of several complaints. The Green Party released the executive summary of the report yesterday, over 120 days after Tana was stood down from parliament. The Post’s Kelly Dennett has broken down five key points from the report, including claims that Tana’s dealings with her former party while the investigation was being carried out were inconsistent. Tana, in a lengthy interview with 1News, so far her only media appearance in the wake of the report’s release, has maintained that “natural justice wasn’t served”.
Meanwhile, reported the Herald, the business at the centre of the exploitation claims – Newmarket’s Bikes and Beyond – is in liquidation.
Bloomfield: US Covid response was ‘heavily politicised’
It’s been about three years since the last Covid-19 lockdown, and yet it’s still a period people talk about frequently (for understandable reasons, given the economic tail is still being felt). But what’s interesting is that many of the architects of that lockdown, and of the similar Covid-19 shutdowns around the world, are now rarely heard from. Things have got back to “normal”. On The Spinoff this week, former director general of health Ashley Bloomfield has reviewed a new book that examines the US pandemic response, though I was more interested in his reflections on how things played out at home and his views on trust in science more broadly.
Bloomfield writes:
“The response to the pandemic in the US became heavily politicised and communication to the public was visibly inconsistent and often confusing, which worked to undermine rather than build trust. This was clearly not the experience in some other countries, including our own, where there was a focus on open and consistent communication about the science and key decisions, including what was and wasn’t known.”
Click and Collect
A new report from RNZ’s Guyon Espiner reveals NZ First minister Casey Costello quietly ordered a 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products.
The former boss of the Symphony Orchestra quit after claiming an accommodation allowance to stay at the exclusive Wellington Club while renting out his own city apartment.
Stuff’s Hamish McNeilly looks at the ongoing saga involving a Dunedin flat that was given 350 litres of free alcohol, prompting a potential license suspensions.
The Defence Force is set to lay off civilian staff and implement a hiring freeze as it aims to close a budget hole.
New Zealand faces a $115 billion bill for upgrading public health infrastructure over the next 30 years unless it changes how hospitals are maintained, procured and delivered (paywalled).
Mental health advocate Mike King offered damage control advice to leaders accused of having a toxic workplace culture.
New poll: Nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
The Emmy nominations have been released with Shogun leading the way. I was, personally, pleased to see the love for Netflix’s Baby Reindeer and Apple TV’s Slow Horses (even if The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive opined that the spy show has somewhat lost its charm).
Mike Joy shares the incident that “radicalised” him to fight for freshwater. Litia Tuiburelevu meets tapa artist and champion of Pacific studies Mauatua Fa'ara Reynolds. Gabi Lardies squints at David Seymour's claim that he's an “old fashioned lefty”.
Pop culture picks, with Alex Casey
The Spinoff’s senior writer shares her weekly reading list from the world of entertainment.
Really enjoyed this story on The Cut about how the NDA became the defining pop culture acronym of our time. "At once ominous and farcical, hinting at both the oppressive measures corporations and powerful individuals will take to keep people quiet and the absurd lengths people will go to in an attempt to win back the privacy we no longer have."
Also can't stop reading about Katy Perry's trainwreck return to music with what is essentially a Typo girlboss mug from 2016. The Guardian simply asked: what regressive, warmed-over hell is this? "You could be a Rosie the Riveter type (but, like, hot) or a businesswoman or a big sexy bionic horse. Women can have it all! Thank god someone finally said it."
Finally, the question we've all been wanting the answer to: which horror movie villain could you beat in a one-on-one fight? "I’ll fight Gill Man on the beach or in the shallow end of a pool, but ideally we come out of the spat understanding our differences and willing to have a few ales at a swim-up bar after we drop the gloves." Luvvit.
That’s it for this morning, thanks for reading. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.
Let me know in the comments, or get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz, if you have any feedback on today’s issue or anything in the news.
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*but in politics, perception is everything* - there is also a strong perception Luxon is hiding out in Hawaii because he is too weak to confront Peters over Costello.