{"id":17703,"date":"2026-06-18T17:25:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=17703"},"modified":"2026-06-18T17:25:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:25:06","slug":"winston-peters-defends-shane-jones-63k-travel-bill-including-private-limo-on-standby-for-24-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=17703","title":{"rendered":"Winston Peters defends Shane Jones’ $63k travel bill including private limo on standby for 24 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Finance Minister has criticised Shane Jones for a $30,000 budget blowout incurred while attending a mining conference in Canada, saying he has made “significant errors”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Jones has immediately fired back, telling RNZ, Nicola Willis “must be in possession of information I don’t have, because to the best of my knowledge there were no errors made by my office”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking from Christchurch, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon struck a more understanding tone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It genuinely was an administrative error,” Luxon said. “I expect it won’t happen again.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Luxon said he expected his ministers to stay within their approved budgets for overseas travel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is defending his deputy’s travel expenses including a private limousine on standby and an upgrade to business class flights, saying it’s “nothing out of the ordinary”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Shane Jones travelled to Canada in March last year to attend the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention, said to be the world’s largest mining conference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The original trip was budgeted and approved by Cabinet to cost $33,000 but ended up blowing out to $63,000.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Significant errors – Willis<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Nicola Willis told RNZ on Thursday afternoon that she took spending limits set out by Cabinet for international travel “extremely seriously, as does my office”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Having reviewed how we’ve come in against budget on all of my international travel, we’ve consistently spent less than we sought from Cabinet, and that I think is good practice, that you should never exceed what Cabinet grants you in terms of your travel budget, and I think this reflects significant errors on the part of the minister and his office.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Asked if New Zealand First was out of touch with New Zealanders who are doing it tough, Willis told RNZ that was a matter for that party but she had a track record of sticking to budgets, and others should do the same.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Willis said all ministers “including Mr Jones” should take budgets set by Cabinet “very seriously”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Nicola<\/div>
Nicola Willis says all ministers including Shane Jones should take budgets set by Cabinet very seriously.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Samuel Rillstone<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Asked whether Willis was interfering, Jones told RNZ, “look, I’ve been down this track before”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I will compose myself and keep political firepower to the six weeks before the election – but I’ve got a message for my coalition partners – provoke the matua at your peril.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking to media on his way into a select committee scrutiny hearing as Regional Development Minister, Jones said his officials were responsible for his travel costs and sign-off was overseen by the finance department – “well above my pay grade”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It’s reported Jones had a private limo on standby for a total of 24 hours over three days at a cost of C$3791.15, while the original budget for land transport was set down and approved at $500.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Asked why he needed the limo, Jones said “I presume that’s when I was in chilly cold snow blizzard-riddled Toronto”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He said whether he should have taken a taxi was a matter for officials who he “presumed” booked his trip.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When asked if he requested the limo, Jones said, “look, all those details – I’m up in the wheelhouse – all those details would have been attended to by the trip organiser”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As to why he flew business class when premium economy was approved for the trip, Jones blamed a booking error.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“To the best of my knowledge there was some sort of cock-up with the original booking, and then it was corrected, and by the time they corrected it there must have been a change in the cost structure of the trip.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I tend not to book my own travel,” Jones said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I mean, these things are detached from the politicians, so that there’s accountability, and the system runs the budgetary travel, and then it’s signed off, I think, by the Prime Minister’s department or something like that.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nothing out of the ordinary – Peters<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Peters was also stopped by reporters at Parliament on Thursday morning where he insisted Jones had done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“There’s nothing out of the ordinary on this matter at all, and by any other comparison with other ministers<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“They made a budgetary mistake at the start as to what it costs were when I saw that, actually I couldn’t believe that they were so low, so what you’ve got is normalcy in this case, and there’s nothing for us to apologise here for,” Peters said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“You can say there might be a budget, but when you get there, you have to deal with the realities.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On the upgrade from premium economy to business class, Peters said that was within the rules when it’s 20 hours of flying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’ve flown personally half way around the world on economy and nobody’s ever reflected on that, have you?…but in this case what he did was normal.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ministerial Services began chasing an explanation about an initial $20,000 overspend in May last year, and had to send several follow-up emails.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In January Jones wrote to the prime minister’s chief of staff seeking retrospective approval, which was approved the following month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Responding to the delay between Jones being asked for an explanation and the approval being sought, Peters said those sorts of issues often take a lot of time “and it’s not the minister’s fault”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This will be the system’s delay – that’s why things take that long,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Labour leader Chris Hipkins has also piled in on Jones, telling reporters he was not “walking the talk” and living up to the government’s rhetoric around fiscal restraint.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“They’re telling everybody else to tighten their belts and make do with less [while] Shane Jones is living it up large around the world.”<\/p>\n

Source: RNZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Finance Minister has criticised Shane Jones for a $30,000 budget blowout incurred while attending a mining conference in Canada, saying he has made “significant errors”. But Jones has immediately fired back, telling RNZ, Nicola Willis “must be in possession of information I don’t have, because to the best of my knowledge there were no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17705,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17703\/revisions\/17705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}