{"id":483079,"date":"2026-06-18T05:09:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/483079\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T05:09:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T05:09:14","slug":"jones-made-significant-errors-with-travel-budget-blowout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/483079\/","title":{"rendered":"Jones made ‘significant errors’ with travel budget blowout"},"content":{"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”.<\/p>\n

By Jo Moir of RNZ<\/a> <\/p>\n

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

And 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

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

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

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

\"Nicola<\/p>\n

Nicola Willis (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n

“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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

\"Shane<\/p>\n

Shane Jones at the PDAC International Ministers of Minse Summit in Canada, 2025. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

“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

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

“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

Peters was also stopped by reporters at Parliament on Thursday morning where he insisted Jones had done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

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

“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

\"Winston<\/p>\n

Winston Peters and Shane Jones of New Zealand First. (File image). (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

“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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Finance Minister has criticised Shane Jones for a $30,000 budget blowout incurred while attending a mining conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15656,42,43,135,40,38,41,39,136],"class_list":["post-483079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-air-travel","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-winston-peters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}