Pee Kay: Don’t Anger the Matua. FFS!

On Monday I posted an article about politicians and their perks and privileges. I also added a footnote about Shane Jones over the top spending at a Canadian mining conference.

More information is coming to light about Jones trip.

This article, link below, if correct, exposes the level of Jones arrogance and his abuse of taxpayers funds!

Is the egotism and arrogance of Shane Jones and Winston Peters truly what we want in our politicians, what we need from our leaders ?

Don’t we desperately need politicians who respect that every dollar they are dispensing and spending so freely actually belongs to the taxpayers and it is not their personal pin money?

Peters and Jones are adept at hiding behind a mask of public service, but their actions expose a cynical pursuit of unadulterated self-interest. Has not Peters has proven time and time again his sole motivation is personal advancement; his policies are not built on conviction, but carefully engineered to buy the votes needed to feed his own ambitions.

Is it not time for New Zealand to purge politics of these opportunistic characters who exploit public trust for personal gain. Is it not time politicians treat public funds with absolute fiscal responsibility, recognizing that government revenue is extracted directly from taxpayers.

The political style of New Zealand First, epitomised by Winston Peters and Shane Jones, raises a fundamental question; should arrogance and self-importance define our representatives? They use, especially Jones, their undoubted rhetorical ability to be viewed as the epitome of public duty!

Peters’ political trajectory reveals a particular focus on securing personal leverage and prestige. His policy positions are fluid, shifting predictably toward whatever outcome best serves his private agenda rather than the national interest.

Shane Jones and Winston Peters spend taxpayer money like it is their own cash, they represent the worst of political ego and self-interest seemingly using public office to build personal empires.

Does Winston Peters care about policy conviction? No!

He shapes his platform entirely around securing his own power and position.

New Zealand needs fewer political opportunists who fake a commitment to the public good while milking the system for personal gain.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360997431/shane-jones-refuses-confirm-if-hotel-was-three-minute-walk-toronto-mining-conference?

Resources Minister Shane Jones and the Government are refusing to confirm or deny whether the hotel he stayed in to attend a mining conference in Toronto was in the building right next door to the convention centre where the conference was held.

Stuff revealed last Thursday that Jones had spent $63,000 on the trip to Canada, despite Cabinet only approving a spend of $33,000. It led to the Prime Minister’s office having to retroactively approve the spend, which only happened in February this year.

Stuff has been seeking clarification of where the minister stayed since we broke the story. We’ll explain why below.

The accommodation bill for the trip came in at $13,397.52 for two people for four nights. That works out to $1674.69 a night each.

Documents obtained by Stuff outlining the costs of the trip did not include accommodation receipts.

However, limousine receipts appear to show a pick-up and drop-off location, which matches with the InterContinental Hotel Toronto.

While the receipts don’t include an address – it appears to have been redacted – they do have a postcode of ON M5V 2X3.

Canada’s postal system assigns large office towers, shopping centres, or major hotels with their own unique postcodes. ON M5V 2X3 is the postcode assigned to the InterContinental Toronto Centre.

We asked Jones’ office to confirm whether he stayed there, they have not answered.

When we asked Jones directly where he stayed, he said: “I cannot remember the name of the hotel.”

We sent another follow-up email to his office seeking confirmation that the minister stayed at the InterContinental. We did not receive a response by time of publication.

We also sent an email to the prime minister’s office asking for confirmation as his chief of staff had signed off on the extra expense of the trip. They directed us to Ministerial Services at the Department of Internal Affairs.

Here’s why it matters.

Jones had a limo on standby for hours, but if he stayed at the InterContinental, the conference was right next door.

The minerals conference was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The convention centre has a different postcode to the hotel – ON M5V 2W6.

Google Maps estimates it would take three minutes to walk about 200m between the InterContinental Toronto Centre and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Jones noted it was “chilly cold snow blizzard riddled” Toronto when asked why he needed a driver on standby.

However there are questions as to whether the minister needed to experience the chilly temperatures if he stayed in this hotel, as there appears to be internal access between the two buildings.

The website for the convention centre notes that there is “indoor access to the InterContinental Toronto Centre” while a tourism website says the hotel is “attached to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre by a sliding door”.

We asked Jones whether his hotel was connected to the conference centre.

“May very well have been,” he said. “Look, I really can’t recall.”

A private driver was kept on standby for three hours one day, seven hours the next and 14 hours the following day – totalling 24 hours of standby time across three days. The full charge for the limousine service was just under C$4000.

Cabinet had approved a $500 budget for travel on the ground in Toronto, but the final expense for ground travel, roaming and service fees came to $5,959.47.

Stuff has asked for an itinerary of the trip to confirm why the limousine was necessary, but Jones’ office was not able to immediately provide it.

“So this SUV, which seated five people, which was used to move me around Toronto in a blizzard, as I recall, took me to multiple meetings in a range of places, not in the hotel or in the site of the meeting,” Jones said.

Stuff was told the limousine made 21 trips, but without an itinerary it wasn’t clear where – or how far – the limo travelled for meetings.

Records indicate Shane Jones’ hotel was a three-minute walk from his conference, raising fresh questions over his C$4000 limo bill.

“A number of them were quickly organised because they were meetings of investors, which fortunately, as a consequence of my advocacy, $200 million came to New Zealand,” Jones said.

The Department of Internal Affairs, which takes care of ministerial services, refused to confirm the name of the hotel Jones stayed in due to “security considerations”.

Stuff queried what security needed to be considered given the conference was over a year ago, and pointed out that details of accommodation including the room number Jones had stayed in while in Niue in 2025 had been released. Niue presumably has fewer hotels for ministers to stay at in future, if future security concerns were an issue.

Internal Affairs said that release was inadvertent and maintained its position of not releasing the information due to security concerns and directed our queries to the minister’s office.

On the matter of whether more than $1600 a night was reasonable for accommodation, the minister said accommodation was in high demand.

“Well, the reality is this is a very highly sought after event. Thirty thousand people going to a particular event, and I’m sure that the cost of the hotel rooms would have reflected the competition amongst 30,000 participants,” he said.

We asked whether he’d ever personally spent $1600 on a hotel room. He said “Unlikely.”

Pee Kay writes he is from a generation where common sense, standards, integrity and honesty are fundamental attributes. This article was first published HERE