Crayfish diplomacy: Inside Waitangi’s ‘party of the year’

Saturday, 8 February 2025

Shane and Dot Jones’s annual Waitangi party is renowned on the political calendar for hospitality and kaimoana, with invitations a hot ticket. This year, Craig Hoyle was among 500 attendees, and went behind the scenes to explore the diplomacy of food.

What happens when you cause a diplomatic spat with Mexico, then invite the country’s ambassador to your house party?

Well, it turns out the ambassador has a good Kiwi feed, and - for an evening, at least - there are no hard feelings.

Such is the power of party politics at the home of Shane Jones in Kerikeri. For more than a decade he and wife Dot have hosted an annual party a couple of days ahead of official commemorations down the road in Waitangi, seizing the moment while Aotearoa’s movers and shakers are gathered in the winterless north.

The event’s prominence has risen alongside that of Jones himself, who is now fisheries minister and a senior MP with New Zealand First. Politicians from both major parties regularly attend, regardless of who’s in power, and rub shoulders with diplomats, bureaucrats, media, business leaders and a wide cross-section of Shane and Dot’s local friends and whānau.

This week’s event saw 500 attendees - the largest gathering yet, with security deployed for the first time to avoid gatecrashers; a lesson learned after last year, when catering was planned for 300 people but 450 showed up.

“It’s a place to be seen, to be honest,” says political commentator Shane Te Pou, who has attended in the past.

“When people go up [to Waitangi], there’s the morning karakia, there’s watching the leaders go on and get a bit of shit, the beauty of the kōrero, the oratory, and if you’re lucky enough, you get invited to Shane and Dot’s party.”

A year in the planning

Chef Rick Codlin is matter of fact as he rattles off the numbers: 220 crayfish; 65 dozen oysters; 200 kilograms of lamb, beef and pork; 60 kilograms of fresh fish - “There’s no lack of kaimoana on this menu.”

Codlin is the director of Whangārei-based Cater Fresh Catering with wife Marrissa, and has been marshalling this party’s kai for a number of years now.

“Planning started 12 months ago, really,” he tells the The Post on Tuesday, the morning of the party, as he ladles tuatua fritters onto a barbecue hot plate beside the garage. His fritters are legendary - a mammoth effort that involves a team collecting a person’s bodyweight in shellfish from Northland beaches; an even larger team of shucking volunteers; batch after batch through Dot’s blender in the kitchen; then group feedback as the batter is perfected. “Less curry powder; more tuatua.”

Jones wanders past in shorts, singlet and jandals during this process, and is offered a fritter, but disappears before any feedback is received. Someone quips: “Typical politician.”

The Post spent two days on the ground at Shane and Dot’s to get an inside look at the party prep, which involved dozens of people - including a large catering team, friends and whānau, and most of New Zealand First’s parliamentary caucus, who shed their suits and ties to become catering dogsbodies and gardeners.

“I come up here and work for seven days,” says Codlin, who explains the “massive challenges” that come with feeding 500 people in a backyard. “We turn the back of a garage into a commercial kitchen, basically.”

Logistics have grown along with the guest list. The first party back in 2013 was an informal affair; just a few dozen people for a casual seated dinner. “It was a ‘let’s have a party’ type thing,” says Codlin, “and it’s progressed to pretty much a full-on corporate party.”

By 2018, an event also attended by The Post, the guest list had ballooned to 200 people, including an appearance by then newly-elected prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who spoke briefly in a gazebo at the top of the driveway and joked she “just came for the kai”.

Back then, Cabinet ministers were still showing up in shorts and jandals, but it’s now a more formal affair: this year’s theme is ‘Gatsby’, with guests encouraged to dress up in 1920s glamour. When a parliamentary press secretary arrives in a T-shirt sporting American rock band Kiss, she’s pressed into one of Dot Jones’s spare gold-and-black numbers - held in reserve for just such a wardrobe emergency.

And the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been: with 60 diplomats in attendance, including a number of ambassadors, it’s the kind of party that needs to go off without a hitch.

‘Not for the faint-hearted’

Hosting an event for this many people, says Shane Jones, speaking to The Post shortly before guests start arriving, is “not for the faint-hearted”.

“When you think of the planning and the stress that goes into just the average wedding, and this is done at our house with lots of improvised responses. But we both come from a background where we understand the importance of offering hospitality.”

Jones describes himself as “an organiser from a distance”.

“Dot and her team have done all the hard work” of planning the menu, organising accommodation, cleaning, gardening, and, yes, crafting the guest list.

“We first start with the ones that we’ve constantly had coming for the last 11 years,” explains Dot Jones, who works out from there in deciding who makes the cut. “Obviously Shane going back into politics has created new networks, so we’ve got some additional people that have come and joined on that guest list. And then just more local businesses that we wanted to approach. They’re big supporters, and we wanted to welcome them as well.”

Adds Shane: “It makes all the difference when you’re in power, as opposed to being tossed out of politics.”

Which gets to the heart of why this party is such a popular event.

“It’s good to engage,” says regular attendee Kris Faafoi, a former Labour Cabinet minister who is now here personally as a friend of Shane and Dot’s, and professionally as chief executive of the Insurance Council.

“Anyone who’s anyone in the political scene is usually here, so it’s not only good socially, but it’s good to catch up with people to get the message out.”

Plus: “The hospitality has always been so good that people wanna be here. There’s obviously people up here for Waitangi celebrations also, but I think a lot of the personality of both Shane and Dot is part of the reason why people come here.”

Greg O’Connor is another partygoer who’s attended with various hats over the years; initially as a cop and union representative, and now in his capacity as a senior Labour MP and deputy speaker.

“What you realise is that Waitangi is bigger than just the events that occur,” O’Connor tells the The Post, describing the importance of extracurricular gatherings where politicians can temporarily set aside their differences. His biggest regret tonight is that he’s been party-hopping with colleagues and can’t yet face Shane and Dot’s buffet.

“The more that’s happening, the better,” he says. “It means the only downside is you can arrive with a full stomach!”

That’s not a problem for Speaker Gerry Brownlee, resplendent in a blue Hawaiian shirt, who arrived on time and rates the kai “extremely good”.

“Shane obviously has very good contacts, and I think the local community that support him have really been very generous in bringing some absolutely superb seafood to this function.”

Brownlee, the most senior National MP in attendance - Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attended last year, but chose this week to commemorate Waitangi Day in the South Island - says it’s important now, more than ever, to have events that bring together “a complete mixing of cultures”, with different ideologies and communities rubbing shoulders.

“I think whenever you sit down to have some kai with people, that makes a bit of a difference.”

(At this point an ACT MP joins the conversation, realises it’s on the record, and slopes off again just as quickly.)

Anyway, says Brownlee, returning to his point, “any time that you get people mixing socially … some of the arguments that we have about, I suppose, expressions of culture, etcetera, really do fall to one side. We all pretty much want the same thing.”

But there are limits to how far collegiality extends. While former Greens leader James Shaw used to attend, this event is now an unlikely stomping ground for members of the Green Party - the ideological chasm is too wide. (A jaunty reprise of the ‘Ma is White’ Māori colour song is overheard: “Ma is white, whero is red, kakariki is communist.”) Likewise, while a number of senior figures from Māoridom show up, there’s little sign of Te Pāti Māori.

The diplomats in attendance are more likely recipients for Shane Jones’s famed bridge-building.

“We have to be conscious that not all of them have a penchant for the Kiwi menu, so we have to respect their differences,” says Shane.

It’s an olive branch, perhaps, after he drew controversy a week earlier for shouting “Send the Mexicans home” during a heated debate in Parliament in which he appeared to target Green MPs with migrant backgrounds. That led to concern being raised by Mexican ambassador Alfredo Pérez Bravo, who subsequently told reporters “the government of Mexico is dealing with the issue”.

Bravo, an experienced ambassador who is also the dean of the Diplomatic Corps, did not respond publicly to Jones’s offer that they “share a shot of tequila” to patch things up, and his arrival at the party was hotly anticipated, with Jones jocularly instructing guests to hold off on the diplomatic jokes.

On closer inspection “I don’t know if I’ve got any tequila”, Jones tells The Post, but adds “we’ll definitely smoke the peace pipe”, reaching into his waistcoat pocket to proffer said pipe.

As the evening wears on, it gets harder to tell diplomats from locals. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown greets The Post with a handshake that lasts slightly too long and begins waxing lyrical on the state of local media; a soliloquy that’s cut short when the ambassador for Papua New Guinea joins the conversation.

Then, diplomatically, the diplomats are shuttled off in buses, just as the dancefloor starts to heat up. Think John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads; Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline; and Stumblin’ In - the 2023 electronic remix by Cyril Riley, though, rather than Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro’s 1978 original, because despite an occasional hankering for yesteryear, New Zealand First is still here in the 21st century with the rest of us.

Truces, of course, don’t last forever, and over drinks some of the politicians are already gaming out their strategies for Waitangi proper. They don’t yet know exactly what will happen - David Seymour will have his microphone seized not once but twice; Shane Jones will threaten to cut future funding for the Waitangi Trust, which will be described by Greens co-leader Marama Davidson as an “abuse of power”; Māori protesters will disdainfully turn their backs on government ministers.

They have a fair idea though, with one partygoing MP getting a final word in as The Post departs.

“Tomorrow, we’ll be back to pistols at dawn.”