New Zealand Listener

Politics

Jane Clifton

- JANE CLIFTON

Shane Jones’ latest escapade has the makings of a mawkish Christmas story: The Little Fir Trees No One Wanted. Since the shops get the seasonal baubles out in October these days, it’s definitely the right time of year for this sort of thing. And when it comes to Jones’ Regional Economic Developmen­t gig, Christmas is an all-yearround event, in any case.

His chief purpose is to tour the provinces and bestow presents. He has a $1 billion fund for the regions and a flapping chequebook. Like any good Santa, he reads the letters the mayors have sent to his Beehive North Pole and supplies accordingl­y: a Lego kit for a new wharf here, a Meccano set for a new shipbuildi­ng crane there.

But it’s in his overlappin­g Forestry Minister capacity he has strayed into pathos. His ever-controvers­ial Think Big scheme for trees in the provinces has taken an embarrassi­ng swerve towards the mulcher.

It’s a small cock-up in the great scheme of things but it does raise awkward questions about whether there are enough checks before the cheques.

An early project in his provincial forestry scheme was to plant 1100ha in the Far North as part of a $32 million joint-venture with the Ngāti Hine Forestry Trust – a partnershi­p that is intended to proceed to even greater greenery in future years. More than a million seedlings were procured to start this block, but now the time has come to plant them, it’s down-shovels. Only 191,000 pine and mānuka seedlings can be accommodat­ed among the land’s thick scrub and weed cover, which, somehow, no one had cleared – though everyone thought someone had.

ONE-AND-A-HALF MINISTERS

Jones shrugged this off, saying the cost of the unused seedlings was only the equivalent of a backbenche­r’s annual salary. Other estimates make that more like two-and-a-half backbenche­rs, or, indeed, one-and-a-half Cabinet ministers, and the irresistib­le idea dawns that a year’s ministeria­l scrub-cutting labour might be fitting atonement for the oversight.

The fact that there was no system in place to ensure somebody knowledgea­ble overflew, or better still, bestrode the forestry block to check its suitabilit­y in a timely fashion – like, before the plants were ordered

– is pretty dismaying. If the Treasury were permitted such licence, it would now be issuing a press release saying, “Told you so!”

Officials had already judged the planning for Jones’ $240 million forestry grants and partnershi­p scheme inadequate, and sure enough, it has stumbled at the first project since its framework was announced. Bizarrely, Jones says more details of the scheme will be ready in a couple of weeks. Even in the darkest arts of politics, it has always been the tradition that one settles details of a scheme first, and then implements it. This approach looks suspicious­ly like doing a bunch of feel-good things and back-filling a rules framework around them later.

Meanwhile, someone will presumably need to be put in charge of watering several hundred thousand orphaned baby pines and mānuka.

Acting Prime Minister Kelvin Davis contradict­ed initial portents that the plants were for the chipper, saying there was other forestry-ready land available. Plant not, mulch not.

But if the long-planned Ngāti Hine planting suddenly turned out to be mostly nonviable, how can we be sure about the next one?

The trouble here is, New Zealand First has determined that Jones’ projects will rise totara-like, and at top speed, even while the rest of the Government’s major policy initiative­s

A year’s ministeria­l scrub-cutting labour might be fitting atonement for the oversight.

proceed at glacial pace. As Labour’s low-vote coalition partner, the party is desperate to get popularity runs on the board and grow its voter base. Understand­ably, NZ First has bristled at the charge that, although the holder of the balance of power, it lacks the legitimacy to be such a big part of the Government.

SLOW AHEAD

Just about every other major Government initiative is on a precaution­ary delay button pending a working party, expert study or exhaustive consultati­on round, but Jones is allowed a modus operandi of “Ready, fire, aim”. That’s fine for a politician who has built lots of political capital in advance. But Jones is still on probation with the public after a rather chequered career.

He’s endearingl­y sincere and passionate about these projects, and his ambition of “getting the ne’er-do-well nephs off the couch” by providing work and training is unarguably laudable. The Opposition can often be seen flounderin­g to find points of disagreeme­nt about the actual projects. But Jones’ blustering politicisa­tion of the process makes it a target-rich hunting ground.

He’s notoriousl­y impatient with what he regards as a querulous and even inert response from officials to his action plans – and he’s hardly the first to chafe at that. Former finance minister Steven Joyce would upbraid officials for “doing nothing but telling me why I can’t do things”.

There’s the eternal tension that politician­s are on the electoral clock, and officials are not. But nay-saying officials are there to keep the likes of Jones out of trouble, quite as much as they might be covering their own butts when they slow him down.

This seedling business was just a cock-up. But because of the rhetoric and the sums of money Jones is administer­ing, the political impact of anything worse, like corner-cutting or actual malfeasanc­e by some recipients, would be catastroph­ic. Already, due diligence has fallen short about the suitabilit­y of a prospectiv­e Provincial Growth Fund grant recipient.

In forestry, a further danger is that neither the grantee nor the grantor may know enough about what it’s doing. It’s about 25 years since the Crown had any direct involvemen­t in forestry. Forestry knowledge globally is being revised and refined all the time. This old-style “public works” approach may no longer be an efficient model.

A seasoned State Services official has been seconded to oversee the Provincial Growth Fund. But given this failure in the forestry-grants offshoot to get boots in the scrub for even a quick inspection, it’s hard to see how more embarrassm­ents can be avoided.

Still, there’s scope for Santa Shane to host a pop-up mini-Christmas tree market to find scrub-free homes for those lonely little firs. His catch-cry, of course, will be “Hoe, hoe, hoe!”

The eternal tension is that politician­s are on the electoral clock and officials are not.

 ??  ?? Shane Jones: Minister of Mulching.
Shane Jones: Minister of Mulching.
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