June 26, 2025 • 10 mins
The Prince of the Provinces, Matua Shane, wants the country rid of regional councils, starting with Otago. He also has no time for an endangered moth and DoC - both of which are hindering his unbridled ambition to “Dig Baby, Dig”. Does Trump deserve a Nobel Peace Prize? And is Shane our version of the Don?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good ay and welcome to the country. I'm Jamie Mackay.
Straight into it. Today's songs from nineteen eighty five. I've
got a rugby reunion in Riversdale, forty years on from
great times with some farmers down south. Our first guest
is of a similar generation to me, Shane Jones, Minister
of getting rid of regional councils? Where were you? By
(00:21):
the way in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Nineteen eighty five, my third child, tor Heir, was born.
I was helping Dad. I'd recently come back from Australia
grow strawberries on a couple of paddocks and we put
in a massive amount of watermelons and cash crops because,
as you may recall, those were the early days of rogernomics,
(00:44):
so things were pretty challenging.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, farming in those days was about to be described
nineteen eighty five the first year, first full year of
the Longey Douglas government, and farming was designated to be
a sunset industry. How wrong were they? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
While, as I recall, the vision was to create a
Switzerland of money changes and money lenders in the South Pacific,
nothing could be further from the truth. Mother Nature's given
us a bounty here and it's our job to use
it and completely ensure that our next generation better off
(01:20):
than you and I.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Now I alway did Harvard University fit in amongst all
of this? For you?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Born in nineteen fifty nine with four children, set off
in early nineteen ninety via Hawaii, washed up in Boston.
A couple of friends from Quebec came down, met us
at the airport. Found out where our flat was a
place called Brookline, not very far away from where the
famous political dynasty the Kennedys grew up. And therefore the
(01:49):
guts of eighteen months, two years with my late wife
and our four kids. So it wasn't for the fainthearted.
But at the end up the studies spent three or
four months touring around America campgrounds of America.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Now you've been upsetting people on the South Island, namely
the Otago Regional Council, because you want what are regional
councils anyhow, you've called them the Kremlin of the South Island.
Is this because they're not allowing you to dig, baby
dig at the mccray's mine and land from Dunedin because
of an endangered moth.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Okay, the Otago Regional Council is obviously the pollup bureau.
It is peopled by antagonistic, angry, smelly, hippie greeny sort
of characters. Tell us how you really feel thirty thousand
odd square miles that they're responsible for. At most, this
(02:48):
gold mining extension would cover a couple of hundred hec
desks at most, and just divide that into the thirty
thousand square kilometers and then you will understand why this
council and their reports designed to undermine and close down mining,
destroy jobs, get rid of economic wealth. They have no
authority to do it. And I dismiss all of their
(03:10):
reports as ideological graffiti. I know that they're stronger than
me because we're not checking them every day. So we're
going to disestablish the regional councils of New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So what's the new format then? Do we just have
unitary authorities?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, there's a great deal of sense. I mean today
there's a bad flood in and around Tasman Bay Nelson.
They don't have a regional council. I'm sure the people
up there are coping with the challenges. By the way,
if you want to know how to deal with floods
and changes in weather systems, then build stop banks. Who's
the guy who's found the two hundred million dollars to
(03:47):
build the stop banks? You're talking to him. That's why
I don't believe and I never have, and all this
moral hysteria to do with climate. And you should be
happy that I have announced that we have pulled out
of some oil anti oil alliance that just Cinda signed
us up to in twenty twenty one. I'm sick of
all these hippie health, after school care, just cinder orientated initiatives.
(04:10):
We've got to abandon them.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Ball Now you realize the Otago Regional Council, and a
good old Rugby mate of mine is actually I think
the vice chair he mightn't like this, but they're just
building a big, flash new building here in Indeed, and
I think it's worth something like fifty million bucks huge.
It's the size of an indoor stadium almost and and
I worry that they're going to fill up with bureaucrats.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, the Prime Minister has endorsed what I've said. The
Prime Mister has said after the RMA changes, there won't
be a need for Regional Council. So I can't comment
on why Otago whites are willing to put that level
of capital into a new building. But know this from me.
We had a summit recently with an investment purpose to
(04:53):
attract international investors. What do we have in Otago. We
have a tiny, unelected, unknown, own group of people. With
their deep hostility towards mining. They have elevated some sort
of naked moth found dead to a status that's more
important than mining, income, jobs, exports, and if anything, they've
(05:17):
turned the Regional Council into a sitting duck.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Now I'm reading from the Otago Daily Time Shame, where
you've made the front page today. You're saying all this
for a dead moth, it's an ideological attempt to defeat mining.
It's truly unbelievable. This is a part of New Zealand
where no one goes, and you're talking about the McCrae's
mine inland from Otaga. I want to remind you go there, Shane.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
The listeners. There's thirty thousand odd kilometers that this council's
in charge of. So they've decided where the landscape has
already compromised because there's been a mine there mate, the
judgment being exercised by these zalots. They're allowed to get
away with it because the councilors are too weak. The
(06:05):
councilors are either compromised with their ideological proclivities or they're
two week to haul in the scribblers that are ruining
our economy. That's why the councils have to go. And
I'm taking a remit to our party conference in September.
I know the party will back this remit. We're going
to the next election. It's good to hear the Prime
(06:25):
Minister encourage my line of thinking. And all of you
people who are currently working for regional councils acting in
a manner it's very hostile and destructive economic development. You
either change your ways or change your job.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
How do you realize? And I think he was a
former New Zealand first MP, Michael Laws as on the
Otago Regional Council.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, Michael Laws, without a sliver of doubt, will support
what I'm saying. But as I recall, Michael has always
locked in some sort of mortal moral debate with all
the Communists and the apparationticks from the Kremlin that populate
your council. I can't understand why the people of Otaga
(07:09):
allowing a tiny, unelected, unelectable group of Zealots write these
ideologically driven types of graffiti to stop jobs, stop mining,
stop economic development at a time where we've just introduced
fast just introduced only FasTrak, but foreign direct investment, legislative improvements,
(07:33):
and you've got a tiny group hidden like a bed
bug in the crease of an ideological sheet they.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Have to go just to finish on you. Have you
kind of New Zealand's Donald Trump in some ways? I
think is that a compliment? I'm not sure, Shane. He
said drill baby, Drill, You said, dig baby, dig, So
you're kind of a wee bit Trumpish or Trumpish there.
Do you think he deserves a Nobel Peace price? People
(08:01):
are talking about that.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Ah, yes, yes, yes, Well I won't grace your show
with an F bomb. But I'll tell you what. There's
a great deal to be said for the way in
which he intervenes and breaks mindsets, and he breaks people's
established orthodoxies, the way they are set in their ways.
(08:25):
And that's what we're trying to do through New Zealand. First,
we're breaking the grievance mentality of Marridom's largest tribe than
upoo He and God is my witness. It's going to happen,
probably happen after the next election. We are going to
get rid of regional councils and look doc doc represent
over thirty three percent of the country's landscape. Of course,
(08:46):
there are cases why we should look after national parks,
but the cohed Only National Park has got a lot
of minerals under it. We may need to revisit that
the next election.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Hey, do you realize that joint Tapooky Rug Club fundraiser?
You're very much the star. I'm just the minor support act.
Shane has sold out all those Kiwi fruit growers. They've
had a good season. They're going to wander along on
August the twenty second, and they're going to beg bid
up big time on the auction items. And they're expecting you.
They're expecting Shane Jones off, pieced off the chain and unplugged,
(09:21):
ah and maybe even unhinged. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Ah. Well, I shall endeavor mate to be an entertaining
personality from the political super anything to generate some support
or worthy local initiatives. You know that as well as
I do. That's the blood I come from, born and
bred just north of Kaitai. But I am very very
disturbed and work about your hippie orientated to cinder a
(09:51):
derned sand pit, people destroying mining in the Otago area
and we're not having it.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Dog baby deg Shane Jones, thanks for your time.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
See up.
Good ay and welcome to the country. I'm Jamie Mackay.
Straight into it. Today's songs from nineteen eighty five. I've
got a rugby reunion in Riversdale, forty years on from
great times with some farmers down south. Our first guest
is of a similar generation to me, Shane Jones, Minister
of getting rid of regional councils? Where were you? By
(00:21):
the way in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Nineteen eighty five, my third child, tor Heir, was born.
I was helping Dad. I'd recently come back from Australia
grow strawberries on a couple of paddocks and we put
in a massive amount of watermelons and cash crops because,
as you may recall, those were the early days of rogernomics,
(00:44):
so things were pretty challenging.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, farming in those days was about to be described
nineteen eighty five the first year, first full year of
the Longey Douglas government, and farming was designated to be
a sunset industry. How wrong were they? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
While, as I recall, the vision was to create a
Switzerland of money changes and money lenders in the South Pacific,
nothing could be further from the truth. Mother Nature's given
us a bounty here and it's our job to use
it and completely ensure that our next generation better off
(01:20):
than you and I.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Now I alway did Harvard University fit in amongst all
of this? For you?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Born in nineteen fifty nine with four children, set off
in early nineteen ninety via Hawaii, washed up in Boston.
A couple of friends from Quebec came down, met us
at the airport. Found out where our flat was a
place called Brookline, not very far away from where the
famous political dynasty the Kennedys grew up. And therefore the
(01:49):
guts of eighteen months, two years with my late wife
and our four kids. So it wasn't for the fainthearted.
But at the end up the studies spent three or
four months touring around America campgrounds of America.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Now you've been upsetting people on the South Island, namely
the Otago Regional Council, because you want what are regional
councils anyhow, you've called them the Kremlin of the South Island.
Is this because they're not allowing you to dig, baby
dig at the mccray's mine and land from Dunedin because
of an endangered moth.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Okay, the Otago Regional Council is obviously the pollup bureau.
It is peopled by antagonistic, angry, smelly, hippie greeny sort
of characters. Tell us how you really feel thirty thousand
odd square miles that they're responsible for. At most, this
(02:48):
gold mining extension would cover a couple of hundred hec
desks at most, and just divide that into the thirty
thousand square kilometers and then you will understand why this
council and their reports designed to undermine and close down mining,
destroy jobs, get rid of economic wealth. They have no
authority to do it. And I dismiss all of their
(03:10):
reports as ideological graffiti. I know that they're stronger than
me because we're not checking them every day. So we're
going to disestablish the regional councils of New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So what's the new format then? Do we just have
unitary authorities?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, there's a great deal of sense. I mean today
there's a bad flood in and around Tasman Bay Nelson.
They don't have a regional council. I'm sure the people
up there are coping with the challenges. By the way,
if you want to know how to deal with floods
and changes in weather systems, then build stop banks. Who's
the guy who's found the two hundred million dollars to
(03:47):
build the stop banks? You're talking to him. That's why
I don't believe and I never have, and all this
moral hysteria to do with climate. And you should be
happy that I have announced that we have pulled out
of some oil anti oil alliance that just Cinda signed
us up to in twenty twenty one. I'm sick of
all these hippie health, after school care, just cinder orientated initiatives.
(04:10):
We've got to abandon them.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Ball Now you realize the Otago Regional Council, and a
good old Rugby mate of mine is actually I think
the vice chair he mightn't like this, but they're just
building a big, flash new building here in Indeed, and
I think it's worth something like fifty million bucks huge.
It's the size of an indoor stadium almost and and
I worry that they're going to fill up with bureaucrats.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, the Prime Minister has endorsed what I've said. The
Prime Mister has said after the RMA changes, there won't
be a need for Regional Council. So I can't comment
on why Otago whites are willing to put that level
of capital into a new building. But know this from me.
We had a summit recently with an investment purpose to
(04:53):
attract international investors. What do we have in Otago. We
have a tiny, unelected, unknown, own group of people. With
their deep hostility towards mining. They have elevated some sort
of naked moth found dead to a status that's more
important than mining, income, jobs, exports, and if anything, they've
(05:17):
turned the Regional Council into a sitting duck.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Now I'm reading from the Otago Daily Time Shame, where
you've made the front page today. You're saying all this
for a dead moth, it's an ideological attempt to defeat mining.
It's truly unbelievable. This is a part of New Zealand
where no one goes, and you're talking about the McCrae's
mine inland from Otaga. I want to remind you go there, Shane.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
The listeners. There's thirty thousand odd kilometers that this council's
in charge of. So they've decided where the landscape has
already compromised because there's been a mine there mate, the
judgment being exercised by these zalots. They're allowed to get
away with it because the councilors are too weak. The
(06:05):
councilors are either compromised with their ideological proclivities or they're
two week to haul in the scribblers that are ruining
our economy. That's why the councils have to go. And
I'm taking a remit to our party conference in September.
I know the party will back this remit. We're going
to the next election. It's good to hear the Prime
(06:25):
Minister encourage my line of thinking. And all of you
people who are currently working for regional councils acting in
a manner it's very hostile and destructive economic development. You
either change your ways or change your job.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
How do you realize? And I think he was a
former New Zealand first MP, Michael Laws as on the
Otago Regional Council.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, Michael Laws, without a sliver of doubt, will support
what I'm saying. But as I recall, Michael has always
locked in some sort of mortal moral debate with all
the Communists and the apparationticks from the Kremlin that populate
your council. I can't understand why the people of Otaga
(07:09):
allowing a tiny, unelected, unelectable group of Zealots write these
ideologically driven types of graffiti to stop jobs, stop mining,
stop economic development at a time where we've just introduced
fast just introduced only FasTrak, but foreign direct investment, legislative improvements,
(07:33):
and you've got a tiny group hidden like a bed
bug in the crease of an ideological sheet they.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Have to go just to finish on you. Have you
kind of New Zealand's Donald Trump in some ways? I
think is that a compliment? I'm not sure, Shane. He
said drill baby, Drill, You said, dig baby, dig, So
you're kind of a wee bit Trumpish or Trumpish there.
Do you think he deserves a Nobel Peace price? People
(08:01):
are talking about that.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Ah, yes, yes, yes, Well I won't grace your show
with an F bomb. But I'll tell you what. There's
a great deal to be said for the way in
which he intervenes and breaks mindsets, and he breaks people's
established orthodoxies, the way they are set in their ways.
(08:25):
And that's what we're trying to do through New Zealand. First,
we're breaking the grievance mentality of Marridom's largest tribe than
upoo He and God is my witness. It's going to happen,
probably happen after the next election. We are going to
get rid of regional councils and look doc doc represent
over thirty three percent of the country's landscape. Of course,
(08:46):
there are cases why we should look after national parks,
but the cohed Only National Park has got a lot
of minerals under it. We may need to revisit that
the next election.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Hey, do you realize that joint Tapooky Rug Club fundraiser?
You're very much the star. I'm just the minor support act.
Shane has sold out all those Kiwi fruit growers. They've
had a good season. They're going to wander along on
August the twenty second, and they're going to beg bid
up big time on the auction items. And they're expecting you.
They're expecting Shane Jones off, pieced off the chain and unplugged,
(09:21):
ah and maybe even unhinged. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Ah. Well, I shall endeavor mate to be an entertaining
personality from the political super anything to generate some support
or worthy local initiatives. You know that as well as
I do. That's the blood I come from, born and
bred just north of Kaitai. But I am very very
disturbed and work about your hippie orientated to cinder a
(09:51):
derned sand pit, people destroying mining in the Otago area
and we're not having it.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Dog baby deg Shane Jones, thanks for your time.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
See up.
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