OPINION
Who would’ve thought it. Shane Jones goes to the very place where the Labour Party was founded, Blackball, and, representing a centre-right coalition government, he gets a standing ovation! This electorate is traditionally a Labour stronghold: the mighty West Coast. This should have Labour MPs faces reflecting the colour of their party but it won’t. As Shane pointed out, Labour lost interest in the working class, the hard grafters in this country, a long time ago.
Shane spoke with Jamie Mackay on “The Country” and I have taken some extracts from his chat. Jamie asked him at the start whether any lizards or skinks would be harmed as a result of the interview. Shane replied, “The only skinks that will be harmed as a result of my rhetoric have two legs – they have a false ideology otherwise known as political drivel from the Green politburo. They are the only skinks in my line of sight.”
He continued, “We went into the hall to a standing ovation, there were nigh-on 300 there.” He went on to say, “Let’s cut to the chase: in New Zealand, you and I are driving around in vehicles dependent on oil and gas, we are flying around New Zealand and no one flies more than the Green Party lady who’s under investigation, I can’t think of her name…Darlene, so there’s the hypocrisy.”
“They don’t want Kiwis to mine; they don’t want Kiwis to enjoy resilience through using our own resources but they quietly hide away when we bring in these rare earth minerals from China, from the Congo, from Brazil, where the environmental standards and the health and safety standards are vastly different from New Zealand’s, so I’m calling out this hypocritical Green drivel.”
He then discussed the Labour Party. “Labour no longer honestly, credibly, embrace mining, the extractive sectors, farming, fishing […] They’ve turned their backs on their ancestral ideological roots from Blackball and I went there to recover that legacy as a key part of New Zealand politics.”
“Megan Woods had the usual vacuous nonsense about we need new jobs, we need sustainable carbon reducing strategies…Name me one thing the woman did other than close down the refinery, get rid of oil and gas? We have fewer jobs, they opened up the gateway of immigration so per capita, GDP-wise, Kiwis are poorer as a consequence of her stewardship. I suspect she’s in the departure lounge like Freddie the frog.
“We use less than one per cent of the DOC estate. There’s a portion of the DOC estate called stewardship land: that’s not DOC land; that’s land that should be made available for industry, not the playground, not the ideological sandpit for these people who are unwilling to make the trade offs and actually contribute to New Zealand’s economic resilience. It’s all very well stroking Papatuanuku and caressing the earth mother, but if you’re going to do it from a position of impoverishment or economic uncertainty then you’re going to wake up every day devoid of choices because you’re still going to be poor.
“That’s not the mission of the Government I belong to or the party that has formed me. Consequently, every opportunity I get I’m going to stand up for farming, I’m going to stand up for fishing, I’m going to stand up for forestry, I’m going to stand up for mining and as God is my witness we are expanding mining in New Zealand to boost our economic resilience and I don’t care about these woke-riddled munchkins who want to fry eggs on solar panels.”
If ever the left side of parliament needed a wake-up call about what the electorate think of them, they just got it from the people of the West Coast. The sight of a politician from a centre-right Government getting a standing ovation, in Blackball of all places, should have alarm bells ringing all over the place. But it won’t.
How long since we have heard such straight talking from a politician? No beating about the bush, no prevaricating, no lies, no nonsense: just speaking honestly, giving us the facts and explaining how, as Minister of Resources, he is going to play his part in getting New Zealand out of the economic crisis Labour has put us in. This man deserves our full support in his endeavours to improve the lot of every Kiwi and others living in this country.
GO SHANE!!