 If reality check radio enriches your day and life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Shane Jones is going to be a regular guest on the show, checking in from time to time to keep us updated on progress of this government. But I wanted to talk to him about Freddie the Blind Frog and what he was really saying to people out there in the economy and the rest of New Zealand. There'll probably be a few truth bombs dropping here. He joins me on the line now. Welcome back to the current Shane. Good to see you here. Yeah, Merry Christmas folks and it's a pleasure to have a few words at the tail end of this year. Well, we're allowed to say Merry Christmas again, aren't we? Yes, well those traditional greetings reflect in ethos that we're in the business of re-legitimising after a long period of time where the government of the day didn't even do the basics well, but it tried to kind of get rearrange what you and I have taken for granted in terms of the articles that define us as Kiwis. Yeah, and that's the thing that we had last week, these, you know, rowdies, rent-a-mob, go and invade to Papa Museum and deface a display of the treaty because they disagree with the articles as they're written. But we can't change the words, can we? Well, all of these people that are bringing their voices of rage and manufactured grievance, they don't seem to understand that this government, no other government, you can't erase the treaty. It stands as a feature of our background. It's a time where the British Crown came to New Zealand and I was astounded to hear the actual Board of Te Papa confirm that they would take, they would give due consideration to their concerns. Their concerns are, number one, irrelevant, number two, deeply disturbing, and number three, represents sacrilege. I mean, if the Te Papa display for international visitors and the public can't create an opportunity for people to learn, and if necessarily debate, then it's a type of fascism that these self-appointed wannabe reformers, and they've taken it upon themselves with no mandate, no legitimacy, to rewrite history. Well, I'm sorry, you have neither the authority, the brains, and your insect, your sort of native click-beatle-bloody behavior is no place. Well, that's the thing you say that it's a fascist behavior, but that's the reality that we're dealing with. If you raise questions or even want to have a debate about this, you're held down as racist, you're brow-beaten by the media who are aligned with these rowdies, and even demonized. I mean, watching these kinds of people call you and Winston Peters, Casey Costello, racist, whilst it's amusing, it's rather serious as well. Yeah, I think it'll take a while before more members of the public develop a sense of confidence and boldness to push back, but know this from me. We have a mandate, we have a platform, and every time we encounter these excesses, we're going to meet them both full on, but the people that have the loudest voices and the most theatrical behavior in parliament, they're in opposition. And rather than work constructively and address the deeper, and quite frankly, frightening problems of our economy, they're wanting to posture and wanting to bring in a type of pantomime, and that just shows their powerlessness. And if they think for a moment that their inflammatory rhetoric is going to undermine both Winston and I, or indeed the other members of our caucus, then they're in for a serious wake-up call. Yeah, I mean, Debbie Nairi would pack a couple of weeks ago was saying that ACT with 8% and New Zealand First with 6% don't have a mandate to do the things that they're doing, says she who is the co-leader of a party that got just 3%. Yeah, yeah. Look, it's a bit of a judgment call. I've never really had anything to do with Debbie. I've never really heard of her. She comes from one of the tribes on her Māori side, but look, she's very cosmetic. She has no serious standing in the affairs of the Māori world. She does have a few followers, but most of them are inebriated with wokamania and their sense of place is grossly inflated because they've been able to get away over the last three years with flinging around indiscriminately quite incandescent rhetoric, actually. And now that they've met someone with a fire hydrant who's going to delouse them, they don't like it. Well, it's called democracy, and we're entitled to have different views, and those views have to channel the interests of all Kiwis, not just the narrow concerns that she has decided to elevate to the national level. Number one, they hate mining. Number two, they pretend to be the guardians of the planet to save the climate. And number three, they're fostering more and more ill will because their creed and their agenda is to divide us. And New Zealand First doesn't want to participate in that type of debate. It wants to lift up the narrative to a much higher level so that all Kiwis have confidence that the country's got a robust future in front of it. And that's the key aspect that we really have to focus on, isn't it? The economy is what drives the success of this nation. And you guys have been in as ministers really for just a bit over two weeks or three weeks at the end of this week. What are you finding as you start into your ministry, into your various ministries? What are you finding out about the legacy that's been left by the Labour Party? Well, the mini-budget's going to be trotted out over the next few days, and I think Kiwis themselves will be... I won't want to say overwhelmed, but they're going to be astounded how many promises were made over the last two or three years. And those promises represented checks that were being written that you can't cash. So unravelling that is going to be disruptive, getting rid of legislation that actually impedes economic growth. That it's actually quite liberating. It hasn't been done for such a long period of time. I mean, it's astounding, the sort of socialist fair pay agreements that were going to be imposed from Fobo Strait to Kaitaia, getting rid of these vanity signalling transport projects like Light Rail, and quite frankly, putting into the dustbin of history the replacement of the RMA. All of that shows underneath that people have believed for three years that you can regulate yourself to prosperity, that you can regulate the growth and the emergence of industry. No, you can't. You have to trust and rely on the infinite capacity, imagination and entrepreneurial risk-taking endeavours of ordinary Kiwis, firms and businesses. And where you do encounter some excesses and bads, well, that's when you regulate, but you don't start from the point of pulling your regulatory pistol out and then imagining that the money is going to flow. It doesn't work like that. In the respect of energy, look, it's been particularly uplifting for me to be able to stand and say, for those of you who thought that the gas industry and the oil industry was an irrelevant part of New Zealand's future, a new government has arrived. We are going to have a sustainable, durable energy strategy and gas is going to be an integral feature of keeping the lights on. And if you want to go and live in a country that has brownouts and blackouts, well, this country under our leadership is not going to do a burnout. In the reality is we are going to take a pragmatic approach to energy that is not driven or overwhelmed by all the loud discordant voices to do with climate change, most of which is built around a sense of hysteria and trying to intimidate the New Zealand public. Well, the majority of the public have rejected that type of behaviour, which is why we're the government. I've always maintained that a government should facilitate the use of the natural resources in this country that God gave us for the betterment of the entire country, rather than rather narrow focuses like, keep the coal in the hole and at the same time will import it from Indonesia. There was just insanity that has been going on. If you're burning coal in a furnace to generate power that we do at Huntley, which creates actually the base load that fixes the holes that all of the renewable resources can't produce at particular times. Like solar can't produce at night and wind power doesn't produce anything when the wind's not blowing. You need to have that base load. That's what Huntley is for. But the biggest belief that we stopped using our own coal in our own furnaces and started burning massive amounts of Indonesian coal. Well, it's a dirty secret that's never been fully owned by the last government. They promised plans and strategies. But look, at the back of Huntley is a coal mine that's already functioning. And no doubt it's keen to extend its life and under this government it should look forward to a rosy future. We have a host of precious and rare minerals in New Zealand. Yes, it's going to take a while before we can encourage people to go and look for them, but we need to incentivize it. We need to reward people that are willing to take a risk. And all this apocryphal nonsense that somehow just because I said we're not going to tolerate a blind throg impeding mining. And number one, why they didn't like that type of language is these are the people who trade in hyperbole. Well, you met an orator and a rhetorician that can beat you at your own game. And the reality is that those minerals represent a brilliant opportunity for New Zealand to have a leading position, not only our own resilience, but with other nations around the world. And if they're here, we're going to go and find them. And we're going to incentivize people to go and find them and simplifying the process to use a bit of common sense and human ingenuity. What the hell's wrong with that? Well, there's nothing wrong with that, but that was the prevailing attitude that we've had for six years, at least six years. But there's also people that are infecting even major parties, like the National Party, for instance. I mean, I consider that the RMA, which was a monster created by both Simon Upton and Jeffrey Palmer to be probably the biggest piece of legislation that caused economic vandalism in this country. Yeah, well, as you may know, during the negotiations, we secured a commitment from the National Party to create a new piece of legislation, which is a fast-track process. And that fast-track process will genuinely live up to its title because it'll be strategic. And you'll come to Wellington. You'll come to the politicians to get your consent. No more wandering around in the thicket with Doc. No more being overwhelmed and forced to act as a subsidiary to some rare bat or blind frog. We are going to have infrastructure that's delivered in a timely fashion because in 2026, you guys will obviously be reminding us that it's all about delivery. And we want to be capable of demonstrating that we stood up, we were counted, and point to the projects that we've delivered, whether they're the modest projects through the Regional Infrastructure Fund or the larger projects that all Kiwis need to see happen in an expeditious and efficient manner. Watch this space. That's a key point you make there because the media are on full attack to get you guys right now. I don't see that abating. They gave Jacinda Ardern a free ride. You know, the lofty promises that were made by her party, building 100,000 homes, planting a billion trees, all of that sort of stuff, right? The media never held them to account on any of that. It was people like David Farah or myself that kept a tally of just how poorly they were performing. The light rail, another example, they're supposed to be light rail to Mount Roscoe now. It's supposed to be built. Three years ago, it was supposed to be completed. Not one millimetre of track has been laid. And so people will hold your government to account, but they'll hold you to account far more than the Labour Party was ever held to account. Are you ready for that? Yeah, well, we've got to ensure that when we pass our fast track legislation that we emulate what David Parker did, and he actually legislated some projects in Parliament. In Parliament. Now, no one really knows that. One of them was the water storage dam up north, where I hail from, up in Taitokirau. In the mid north. So look, there are devices. There are ways that we can genuinely create a pipeline. And then we've got to have the confidence that the private sector, whether it's mining or aquaculture or energy, has been given a green light through such a piece of legislation. And will uncork the pent-up pressure to actually do things and deliver things. I feel in the areas where I'm active, I feel very confident because both Winston and I have the experience of working closely with Christopher Bishop. He's got a full dance card. We're working closely with Simi and Brown, both of whom I have to say, taking to their roles with a huge amount of passion and with a great deal of clarity. And of course, I'm working closely on some development, things with Judith Collins. And Judith, congratulations to her on becoming a KC, but she's got a deep reservoir of experience. She knows what levers you have to pull on the state to actually kick the roll. So I think your listeners should have confidence that there's a blend of youthful energy and direction. And there's some slightly older members of the House in the government who have been there before. Yeah, anecdotally, the feedback that I'm getting whenever I'm interacting with the public or talking to Uber drivers or getting your hair trimmed, the feeling I get is that there's this immense relief from people, that they are free to speak again, that they are free to say out loud the things they've been thinking. And it's really hard to put an exact emotion onto it, but it is almost like relief that there's a lot of people out there that are expressing to me that hallelujah, at least we're doing sensible things. You know, your comment about Blind Freddy, the frog, I've had so much feedback about that. It's like hallelujah, people are saying the things that we've been thinking for so long. But the interesting flip side to that though, Shane, is that you've got the media running headlines every day about officials say this and officials say we need to keep the fair pay agreements in place and the officials, in the U.S. when the government changes, the officials change. We don't have that here. Maybe that's something we need to either implement or have a policy of fit in or air for off. Well, I pushed that idea and just in this time, as you well know, got set to Coventry. I think at the moment though, we've got such a tremendous level of momentum such structural change to the state services or whatever the hell it's called now. That's something that can be put on the work program. But I just remind everyone we've got a 100 day plan. And look, there's a host of things from our coalition agreements that are not in the 100 day plan. So we're staggering a work program so that people can come for the ride. It's not just the equivalent of a one night stand mate. It's a three, six, nine year journey because some of the potholes that need to be fixed up are not just physical. It's turning the temperament. It's turning the ethos and uplifting the spirit of our nation in terms of what is the most liberating role a government can play. And I keep telling you the dead weight hand of the regulators. It's going to take a while before we saw off those diseased limbs and new people will emerge. New opportunities will be supported. That's how a vibrant economy and the rest of the Western capitalistic world thrives. You're checking off quite a few in the 100 day plan. I still remember that video that Jacinda Ardern threw out on social media. It's about the only thing she ever did effectively was sit and put something on TikTok or Instagram. She did this 100 day thing about what we've achieved and they were all just bumper sticker slogan stuff where they had made an announcement and claimed it as an achievement. Whereas we've actually seen you guys repeal pieces of legislation that you promised to repeal. We're seeing definitive action in the 100 days of very large things that are being done. This is the feedback that I'm getting from people that are saying, wow, we've got a government that's doing things rather than talking about things. Now, I couldn't agree more. In my area of mining, obviously it was John Key who made a throwaway remark that there'll be no mining in world heritage areas and that killed off mining in those areas. Then you had Jacinda inserting into her speech from the throne, well, that speech from the throne, there'll be no mining in dock land. Well, both of those were in temperate remarks and both of those took the rest of us by surprise and sure, I'm not suggesting that mining would replace the dairy industry or something like that, but when politicians are unwilling to stand up for these extractive industries and join the fray and quickly dismiss them for a sugar hit, well, we shouldn't be surprised with a lot of our young people buggering off over to Aussie because they want to dig up that country and make a lot of money. I just think that some of the issues that we're highlighting, the desire and the passion that we're showing has changed the way I might call it the Wellington Orthodoxy is an old saying out of the classics, cleaning out the Georgian stables, getting rid of all the detritus and then new spring growth will come forth. I guarantee it will, mate. Look, I have no doubt that it will. It's always been my view that governments should provide the framework to allow businesses to thrive and then as a result of that, then that will drive employment and all of those sorts of things. Spraying billions upon billions upon billions of dollars in a profligate way like Grant Robertson has done hasn't helped the economy. In fact, it's hindered the economy because now it's shackled with billions and billions of dollars are dead and you're old enough to remember the days of Muldoon when we were shrieking about balance of payment deficits that a tiny fraction of what they are now, we were shrieking about the borrowing that Robert Muldoon did which was a tiny fraction of what has been done in the last, particularly the last three years. No, absolutely. Well, I better wind up here, but thank you very much as we reach the tail end of this year for the opportunity to share these thoughts. I was asked the other day on television, what are you going to do over Christmas and young Chloe said, oh, well, you know, there's three grinches coming for us. If you're a renter, you're going to be hassled. If you're looking for a fair pay outcome, you're going to be hassled. I said, oh, I thought to myself, oh, give it a rest. I'm going back up north and I'll celebrate my Dalmatian Croatian ancestry by drinking copious quantities of red wine. I'll remind myself that many years ago, my ancestors came on a walker by having an inordinately fat hangi and then like a precious boa constrictor snake, I'll find a tree and sweep it off for several days. Catch you all in the new year, mate. Well, thank you very much for coming on The Crunch and hopefully you and I can quarrel a little bit more frequently next year. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Welcome, Shane. Thanks. There's a short but sweet interview with Shane there. As I said, more than a few truth bombs. Personally, I think he's a bit under the weather from a Christmas social event, but you get that in politics. Don't forget to send comments on Shane's interview to inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057. Thank you for tuning in to RCR Reality Check Radio. If you like what you're listening to, just like what you're listening to, either way, we want to hear from you. Get in touch with us now. Text us with your message to 2057. That's 2057. Or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio. We would love to hear from you. So connect with us today.