Jones willing to go where others still fear to tread
Just after the election there was a quip going around Wellington: it’s actually not that easy to spend a billion dollars a year in New Zealand. The target was Shane Jones, who had just been placed in charge of the billion-dollar-a-year provincial growth fund, possibly NZ First’s last best hope for political survival in a coalition under increasing scrutiny for its provincial credentials.
Jones has been hearing the suggestion longer than anyone.
Former finance minister Steven Joyce would have warned him during coalition negotiations with the National Party that it was hard to chew through that sort of money.
Finding things you want to fund is not the issue, doing it without major slip-ups is, given the bureaucracy is effective at slowing down anything which looks risky.
If anyone can do it, it is Shane Jones, who resembles a one-man blitzkrieg, where tanks are replaced with explosive, florid language.
Known for attacks on supermarket group Countdown and more recently Air New Zealand’s approach to regional routes, Jones is not one for letting the feelings of others get in the way of his goals.
Where most other ministers would cower at suggestions they were trying to influence the bureaucratic process, Jones openly craves the power to make top public service appointments.
This would allow ministers to ‘‘bring in their shit kickers to get things done’’ (his words), an idea which would reverse decades of conventional wisdom that the public service should be neutral.
Jones directly links NZ First’s survival at the next election with the Provincial Growth Fund.
‘‘At the end of the day, I’m going to go forward, in three years’ time, and stand on our record, and our record will be the allocation, along with the other three ministers, of the billion-dollar fund, in the areas of dire need.’’
The ‘‘other three ministers’’ Jones refers to almost as an afterthought, are senior Labour Cabinet colleagues Grant Robertson, Phil Twyford and David Parker. The trio’s role appears to be to keep the process in check, rather than politics. This is the Shane Jones Fund.
Will there be mistakes, or as Jones put it, ‘‘cases where the wheels on the fiscal cart get a bit wobbly’’?
Of course there will; there already have been, which is what makes his candour so remarkable.
Just days after the fund was launched in February it was pointed out that a man closely linked to a nascent energy-to-waste scheme on the West Coast, which had been awarded funding for a feasibility study, was under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
Jones said the officials ‘‘cocked up’’ and the funding was frozen, but the mistake could have been picked up with such cursory research that a cynic could suspect sabotage.
The West Coast scheme represents the inherent danger of such an intensive programme of spending – $20 million a week for the entire political term.
He can sprinkle millions of dollars into towns across the country and point to dozens of examples of regional regeneration.
If half a dozen turn out to be crooked, Jones’ reputation is likely to be indelibly linked to them. This could be his undoing.
Breaking down the fund, it is less ambitious than it seems.
As well as covering the cost of a plan to plant a billion trees (which stands at about three and counting), it will include rail projects, an easy place to spend a lot of money. Cabinet papers note that existing spending plans will be folded into the fund, although how much is unclear.
But Jones is still taking a ‘‘come one, come all’’ approach. Airports will be upgraded (Kerikeri), as will cathedrals (New Plymouth).
While he has in speeches appeared to rule out irrigation schemes, in fact what he only meant was ‘‘mega, uber’’ schemes like the proposed Ruataniwha project in Hawke’s Bay. Smaller schemes are on the table.
Beyond this, Jones, who called for the board of Air NZ to be replaced, said if an airline wants to apply for a subsidy to maintain a regional route, fire in a letter.
Jones is alive to the risk that all this creates, but is experienced enough to know everything in politics is risky.
A recent whirlwind trip to Australia put him face-to-face with the elite of Australasian infrastructure investors where he met Mike Baird, the former premier of New South Wales.
Once regarded as Australia’s most popular politician and a possible future prime minister, Baird is now an executive at National Australia Bank after a swift fall from grace.
Credited with transforming the state’s economy, Baird warned Jones that at his height, he made a poorly thought decision to ban greyhound racing. ‘‘Six months later I was unemployed.’’
Baird was also hit by the fallout from changes liquor laws which many blame for destroying Sydney’s nightlife.
But the lesson was that politics can be a random game. You might get tripped by something small or something you have no control over anyway, so you might as well just get on and try to get things done.