That’s the thing about Shane Jones of Mangonui, he may very well have inherited his Dalmatian tupuna’s (ancestor) productive fecundity. His tupuna Andre Kleskovic and wife had 16 kids, Shane and Ngareta have 7. So when Jones says in response to watching those adult videos that he’s a red blooded male, yeah!.......it’s in his whakapapa.
That whole porn debacle is history, so-last-year, maybe not totally forgotten, but definitely forgiven by his leader Phil Goff. Shane did the right thing man’ed up, fell on his sword, wailed mea culpa and took the media fuelled flak. He scampered to the back benches and waited till the water was muddied by some other errant MP and all eyes were off him.
His self imposed banishment to Coventry paid dividends. He’s in line for one of the Labour big seats up front. He’s taking on Pita Sharples and the Maori Party in Tamakimakaurau. He won’t win. Sharples has done too much leg work in the area, not just during his time as a politician but his work with Kohanga Reo and Maori education has cemented his mana in the concrete jungles of Auckland. It’ll take a seismic quake to dislodge Sharples.
Taking on the co-leader of the Maori Party means Jones is on track to replacing former Minister of Maori Affairs Parekura Horomia. The hefty fellow might vacate his chair but don’t bet on the son of Ngati Porou ceding the seat of Te Tai Rawhiti. Horomia is no slug when it comes to his East Coast people and make no mistake about it, the tribe that has a whale for an ancestor loves this man. He brushed aside his cousin Derek Fox and the Maori Party in 2008, with little more than a huff and a puff. So if Labour doesn’t want to lose one of the two remaining Maori seats, then they need to hang onto Parekura’s coat tails for dear life.
If Jones takes over the reins as shadow Maori Affairs Minister, he won’t stop there. Jones is ambitious. He’s after the Finance portfolio and why wouldn’t he covet that cache. He’s made for the job. The 51 year old is well schooled in finance and business. He has economics and politics degrees from Auckland and Victoria Universities and he is a Harkness Fellow from Harvard.
He’s revered by both Labour and National Parties for smoothing the troubled waters at the Waitangi Fisheries Commission. Under his Chairmanship back in 2000, Jones succeeded in sorting out the flotsam piled up over years of litigation and battles among tribes and urban Maori. Tribal scrapping over the distribution of some $800 million in fisheries assets was fierce, brutal. Interestingly it was Horomia that put Jones in that lead role.
If Jones is a political pole climber, then what’s to say he won’t make a tilt for the top job? Will Jones be the first Maori Prime Minister? Jones himself detests it when people say he’s Prime Minister in waiting. In his own words, “…that’s to court the guillotine” He points to his mate John Tamihere as an example of what happens when the death knell ‘first Maori Prime Minister’ tolls. Tamihere the West Auckland champion of city Maori is now in purgatory, on talk back radio sharing spit and spittle with his urban brother Willie Jackson.
The thing about Jones is that he is a team person. If he gets the nod at the top job it’ll be because he’s the best person for the position at that time. He won’t do a Chris Carter and hatch a sure-to-fail coup; he won’t even attempt a sure-to-win coup. He’ll come by the job legitimately, because he’s loyal to the leader, his colleagues and his party. He’s pragmatic, practical and a realist. There’s nothing stopping Shane Jones from going all the way. All the way to where though, well that’s up to the Maori-speaking, white, square-head kid from the gumfields of Te Aupouri. So we wait and watch.
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