Wearing a light blue suit with matching tie, Jones spoke to the very supportive crowd for about 45 minutes, covering immigration, economic development, mining and “wokeness”.
To frequent applause, he attacked former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern, the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori, which he referred to only by its former name, the Māori Party.
“We’re going to make it the Moa Party,” he said.
Jones raised the issue of immigration several times.
“Bear this in mind, ladies and gentlemen. Jacinda Ardern let a quarter of a million people into this country and it will not be long before they are all eligible for residency.”
Later, he put the figure a little higher. “Thanks to Jacinda Ardern, there are 267,000 foreigners about to become citizens, capable of getting a hip operation by the end of next year. New Zealand needs to wake up.”
This received a big round of applause.
“Next election,” Jones said, “we will put immigration at the centre of our policies. Look at what’s happening in Britain. And in Australia. We will not tolerate it.”
He called Ardern a “refugee in Harvard” and said: “I don’t see how she can ever come back to New Zealand.”
That also drew applause.
The NZ First party faithful wait for deputy leader Shane Jones to address them at a rally in Warkworth. Photo / Simon Wilson
On the Prime Minister’s poll results, he said, “They say Luxon is falling in the polls because he’s doing nothing. The leader of our Government is not doing nothing. He is doing something. He’s hiding.”
Jones also said NZ First will reform local government. “Regional councils will be abolished after the next election,” he declared.
The Super City will also be in the party’s sights. Noting that local Rodney Ward councillor Greg Sayers was in the audience, he said: “I don’t believe you good people in Warkworth and your cousins in Wellsford should have ever been in the Super City. Subject to electoral outcomes, after the next election, we’ll have more to say on that.”
Jones’s speech made liberal use of phrases and ideas commonly found in some social media forums. He complained about a “global world order”.
Referring to both the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, he said: “We’re not going to let the country go down the gurgler because of cultural Marxism.”
He attacked climate activists for not realising “the climate has been changing since the age of the dinosaurs”.
“Jettisoning the fiction around climate change will be number one business at our party conference.”
There was only one critical question from the floor, from a woman who spoke to Jones at length in te reo. She then explained that she thought he and the audience should attend debates with different points of view.
She also wanted to know why Jones had abandoned the radical activism of his own youth.
He quoted Corinthians, from the Bible, at her. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.