Shane Jones blasts Spark boss over 5G disclosure

Cabinet minister Shane Jones has attacked Spark chief executive Simon Moutter for going public with the interim decision by the Government Communications Security Bureau to block Huawei’s role in its 5G plans.

Jones said Spark should have considered the nation’s foreign policy ahead of its own narrower interests.

Spark had done its country a disservice and its reveal was “highly disruptive to our foreign policy”.

Jones’ comments are in contrast to those of his New Zealand First leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who has downplayed difficulties with China over the GCSB interim decision.

Jones told Parliament yesterday that he had a message for corporate New Zealand: “Do not arrogantly take upon yourselves the ability to influence foreign policy and make these unwise statements as Mr Simon Moutter did to the sharemarket, thus providing an opportunity for anxiety and stress for all of our exporters.

“Show judiciousness. Do not go beyond your corporate writ.”

Jones confirmed he was talking about the Spark chief’s statement to the NZX on November 28 — the same day Moutter was notified by the GCSB that the use of Huawei in 5G would raise significant security risks.

Spark said yesterday that it had been obliged to make the statement it did and it was not involved in later Huawei’s publicity.

If the story of Shane Jones and the conflict of interest over a tourism venture in Opononi has taught us anything, it is that more MPs watched the movie The Castle than they did Fatal Attraction.

The Castle references to the vibe, the pool room and the serenity have been used by MPs from David Parker to Judith Collins.

But Shane Jones’ use of the term “bunny boiler” to describe a journalist puzzled some — not least the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

When she was first asked what Jones had meant by it, she said she did not dare to try to interpret Jones’ musings.

By the next morning, she ventured to RNZ that she believed the reference was sourced to Fatal Attraction.

It refers to the horrific moment the leading man gets home to find the family’s pet rabbit boiling in a pot on the stove, placed there by his spurned lover.

It remains unclear exactly what Jones meant by it — possibly he was referring to the journalist’s dogged pursuit of the Provincial Growth Fund rather than in the sense it is usually deployed.

This all came to pass after questions were raised about Jones’ conflict of interest in funding for the Manea Footprints of Kupe project from his Provincial Growth Fund.

Jones explained his involvement dated several years to a time when he was not an MP and the group had a dream he would be their chair. He became an minister instead, with a fund the group wanted money from. Jones duly declared a conflict and withdrew from any decision-making, but stayed in a meeting at which ministers discussed it, and offered a positive view on the oversight and management of the group.

Jones declared he had shown “an excessive display of probity” by declaring it, since his links were historic and slim. However, he said he had to be like Caesar’s wife and seen to be beyond reproach.

He also said he still supported it and described its critics as being “like sea anemones, often difficult to tell the face from the rear end”. No, I’m not sure what that means either.

Cabinet rules require ministers to declare actual and perceived conflicts of interest. That is in their political interests, as well as in the interests of preventing corruption. It is far worse to be caught out in a conflict than to front foot one.

Jones was right to declare and recuse himself from any decision-making. Whether he was right to stay in the meeting when the matter was discussed, and put up a defence of the company’s oversight and management structure, was another matter. He was certainly not right to give the impression he had not attended any meetings in his responses to written questions on the matter.

Ever since the Provincial Growth Fund was created, Act’s David Seymour and National’s Paul Goldsmith have set about ensuring a miasma of suspicion settles around it and the man in charge of it. Every small incident like this adds another layer to that fug. Jones’ rambunctious defences do little to dispel it.

It is not without reason that National has dubbed it the NZ First Re-election Fund, since Jones makes it abundantly clear where the loot is coming from and NZ First’s role in securing it.

It did not help matters for NZ First that as all this was going on, another NZ First MP also inadvertently stepped up with an apparent funding-for-votes suggestion.

A tape was released from last December in which Ron Mark, the Defence and Veterans’ Affairs Minister, could be heard scolding veterans for not voting for NZ First.

Mark was speaking to No Duff, a group which supports veterans. He could be heard telling them the funding the group got was “courtesy of me”.

He went on to say that the reality was “I could be out on my bum after the next election” but if all the Defence Force “family” voted for NZ First, it could be at 15 or 16 per cent.

It had more of a tone of begging than threatening, but it did not take much for National to draw the conclusion Mark was suggesting future largesse might be contingent on votes.

The likelihood this type of approach will be successful for them brings to mind another reference from The Castle:

They’re dreaming.

Every small incident . . . adds another layer to that fug. Jones’ rambunctious defences do little to dispel it.