Do we like Shane Jones?
Our score: 2 out of 10. Repeated put-downs of Indian migrants and iwi in his own words, plus a push for new oil and gas, with only thin good to set against it.
Jones grew up in Awanui in the Far North, where his grandmother taught him te reo Māori, whakapapa and the Bible. He chaired the Māori Fisheries Commission, entered Parliament for Labour in 2005 and made Cabinet in Helen Clark's last year. He left Labour in 2014, later landed with NZ First under Winston Peters, and is now its deputy leader and a senior minister who calls himself the Prince of the Provinces.
The big stoush of 2026 was his “butter chicken tsunami” line about the India free trade deal. He told a radio interview he would never agree to one, said immigration had been “snuck into” the deal, and defended it as hyperbole that gets him cut-through. Indian community groups condemned it, Labour's Chris Hipkins said it was racist “at the least”, and the PM called it “alarmist” but stopped short of using that word himself.
Then there is his pattern with iwi. In May he told Parliament “the growth and intelligence will take a lot longer for Ngāti Ruanui”, and the Speaker ordered him out; the iwi lodged a formal complaint. An opinion piece in The Spinoff's Ātea section lists earlier barbs at Ngāti Kuku, Ngāti Kuri and Ngāi Tahu, including a video where he reportedly called one hapū “self-entitled cultural vultures”. He has been approached for comment, and the Ātea author argues the attacks play to NZ First's mining-linked donors.
On the planet, he was the minister who announced the reopening of oil and gas exploration across the whole country in 2025, after the repeal of the 2018 ban, and the Greens said it was no way to lead on climate. I found no words of his own about LGBTQ+ people, so there is nothing to put on either side of that ledger. The harm here is the migrant and iwi rhetoric and the fossil fuel push, and it adds up to a fail.
The recent run has been messy even by his standards. In April he said Finance Minister Nicola Willis's behaviour might be “an outcome of losing too much weight”, then apologised within about an hour, saying “I owe an apology to Nicola Willis”, and she accepted. In July came the knee pads line, which he blamed on the media and “wokeism” for reading too much into it.
In June, Willis said his March 2025 Canada trip, approved at $33,000, cost $63,000 because of “significant errors” by the minister and his office. The bill included a limo on standby for 24 hours and business class flights. Jones said there were no errors by his office and blamed a “cock-up with the original booking”. Retrospective approval was granted in February 2026.