Regional Development Minister Shane Jones to embark on regional tour of NZ, while copping Labour Party flak for prior trip

Resources Minister Shane Jones. Photo / NZME

Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is embarking on a regional roadshow to discuss “regional priorities, aspirations and opportunities” for the Government’s $1.2 billion Regional Infrastructure Fund, a successor to the Provincial Growth Fund.

Jones will visit Nelson, Greymouth, Hamilton, Kaikohe, Whakatāne, Marton, Gisborne, Hastings, and as-yet-undetermined locations in Otago, Southland, and Taranaki.

“The Government is focused on strengthening and growing our economy. Supporting the regions to prosper is key to achieving this. Through the RIF [Regional Investment Fund], we are looking to invest and co-invest in resilience infrastructure that improves regions’ ability to absorb, adapt and respond to stresses and shocks.

“We will also invest in projects that support growth through well-connected and productive regions,” Jones said.

Jones said he wanted regions “to identify their priorities themselves”.

He said the regions should “leverage existing opportunities, investment and strategies, and bolster the ambitions of local communities. This starts with conversations about central government and regional priorities and where they align, how we maximise the impacts of strategic investment and where we can work together”.

The roadshow comes as the Labour Party has called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to haul Jones in for a please explain after critical reporting on one of Jones’ prior tours of the regions.

Newsroom reports that Jones had dinner with the heads of three mining companies in Westport. The meeting was not part of Jones’ official diary when it was released, an error he put down to sloppy office work.

He also said the meeting was random and last-minute, however further reporting has shown the dinner had been arranged four days in advance.

Labour’s resources spokeswoman Megan Woods said Jones was being “disingenuous at best about meeting with industry representatives like this”.

“Far from a ‘last-minute thing’, the minister used his ministerial office to arrange this dinner and then hid it from public scrutiny,” she said.

Woods noted that one of the invitees, the Stevenson Group would have been likely to use the meeting to “ask for their Te Kuha coal mining project, which has been declined in the past, to be approved under [the] Government’s fast-tracking legislation”.

Jones declined to be interviewed for this story, saying he had cleared the matter up when news of the meeting first broke.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the Press Gallery since 2018.