Winston Peters and Shane Jones don’t like our questions. But here is what hasn’t been answered

Friday, 26 June 2026

ANALYSIS: It’s uncomfortable for politicians when they have to explain the things we pay for them.

So uncomfortable they forget details, or dismiss questions, or lash out and call a story crap.

The story Winston Peters has called “crap” this time is Stuff’s reporting on his deputy leader Shane Jones’ blown out travel bill. (Stuff playfully called him Stretch yesterday.)

Stuff revealed last Thursday that Jones had spent $63,000 on the trip to Canada, despite Cabinet only approving a spend of $33,000. It led to the Prime Minister’s office having to retroactively approve the spend, which only happened in February this year.

* Be Shane for a day! WIN your own private limo on standby for a day

And yesterday, we reported that according to the postcodes listed on his limo receipts, it appears he stayed in a hotel that is connected via an indoor passage to the conference he was there to attend - raising questions about why he needed the limo.

But after a week of our questions, the minister still hasn’t given us answers.

We still don’t know for sure where Shane Jones was put up for $1600 a night on the taxpayer, he says he can’t recall. His office has had that question for a week. And they’ve not reached out to tell us we’re wrong about the InterContinental.

We don’t know why he chose to fly business class when he only had approval for premium economy. Though we do know the business class flights were booked before he even got approval for the cheaper ones.

We don’t know why he chose to fly Qantas when Air New Zealand offers a more direct route for a seemingly cheaper price.

We tried booking the same fares three weeks from now like the minister did, Air New Zealand showed fares that were $14,560 return, Qantas was $17,569.

The stopoff in Sydney and Vancouver required for the Qantas flight meant a 30 hour travel time on the way over. Air New Zealands option from Auckland to Toronto via Vancouver had a travel time of 21 hours.

But when we asked why he flew Qantas, Jones said.

“Ah the Matua is here to talk about the environment and we’re not playing whack-a-mole, we’re not playing trivia pursuits about anything to do with any overseas trips, tena koutou katoa” he said, before walking off as our reporter continued to offer him an opportunity to clear things up. (You can watch that video above.)

His leader, Winston Peters did not invoke any game playing analogies.

“Yours is a crap story, you know that,” he said.

We tried to ask Winston Peters whether he’d be disappointed if Air New Zealand was cheaper.

“I’m not putting up with your unprofessional crap any longer, next question,” he said.

We don’t know how many meetings Jones had, where those meetings were and why he needed to keep a private driver on call for 14 whole hours one day, 24 hours in total across three days.

We asked for the itinerary, Jones’ office is processing that under the Official Information Act - so it’ll be awhile before we see it. But already Peters is saying its the meetings that happen off book that matter.

“You go to meeting after meeting after meeting. The idea of committing them to your diary straight away is the last thing on your mind. You want outcomes,” he told us.

And we don’t know why he said it was blizzardy when keen-eyed Stuff readers have found no such evidence of snow in Toronto during his trip. We have been sent weather reports, timelapse web cam footage, there appears to be no snow. But to be fair it was cold. And blizzared may have been subjective.

In contrast, we went to ask Todd McClay, the Trade Minister, who travels a lot whether he always checked to make sure there was no unnecessary costs in his travel bills.

And instead of fobbing us off, he offered up that he had in fact overspent on a recent trip to Cameroon.

“I've recently travelled to Cameroon for the WTO ministerial trade negotiation, where, as a result of the war, there are a number of changes to flights, and therefore we had to go and seek additional funding. In essence, it was because I had a member of the opposition travel with me as well, and therefore the amount is larger,” he said.

How much extra - quite a bit actually.

“From the top of my memory no, but it wasn't double, but it was probably $40- 50-$60,000 extra for three people to travel there as a result. And again, it was the middle of the war, and flights have been changed and cancelled.”

Reasonably large blowout there. Let’s see if that one’s justified when the receipts are released.

* Be Shane for a day! WIN your own private limo on standby for a day