‘Significant errors’: Nicola Willis lashes Shane Jones over $30k travel overspend on limo
Thursday, 18 June 2026
NZ First and National are at odds over an overseas trip by Shane Jones last year, with Finance Minister Nicola Willis calling a $30,000 overspend a “significant error” and Winston Peters saying there was nothing out of the ordinary.
Jones travelled to Canada in March last year to attend the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention, the world’s largest mining conference.
Cabinet had approved a $33,000 budget for the trip, but the final cost reached $63,000. The overspend was attributed to a private limousine kept on 24-hour standby and business class flights, according to a report by Stuff.
It was reported that the prime minister’s office had to retrospectively approve the spending in February - almost a year after the trip.
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Willis told reporters that she always stuck to the budgets that Cabinet approved for trips.
“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,” Willis said.
“When I go to Cabinet and seek approval for my budgets for international travel, I take that spending limit extremely seriously, as does my office. Having reviewed how we've come in against budget on all of my international travel, we've consistently spent less than we sought.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins criticised the spending, saying he did not think Jones was “walking the talk when it comes to what the Government's telling everyone else to do”.
“Winston Peters was talking about throwing people in jail for putting out misleading information yesterday. So, does that mean Shane Jones is on his way to the clink?
“Shane Jones is living it up large around the world, he's not living up to the expectations that his own government are creating of other people.”
Jones said his officials were responsible for the overspending, citing flawed travel costings. He said he couldn’t remember taking the limousine and would not have known it was a private hire. “It’s just a vehicle — it materialised.”
New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters, defended the spending when stopped by reporters outside a select committee on Thursday, saying the overspending stemmed from an initial budgetary mistake about the trip’s cost and was “well within the budgetary guidelines for Cabinet ministers”.
“There's nothing out of the ordinary on this matter at all, and by any other comparison with other ministers.”
When he saw the costing he couldn’t believe it was so low. “What you've got is normalcy in this case, and there's nothing for us to apologise here for.”
On the limousine, he said “that's the nature of things when you're offshore”.
Peters said the upgrade from premium economy to business class was within the rules when it was 20 hours of flying.
'I've flown personally halfway around the world on economy and nobody's ever reflected on that, have you?“
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it genuinely was an administrative error and he did not expect it to happen again.
“My expectation is ministers work within the confines of their budgets. In this case, there was an administrative error.”
Trade Minister Todd Mcclay, a frequent traveller, said he was not sure what happened on the ground but it was important that ministers were able to do their job over there while taking account for what they did overseas.
According to Stuff, Ministerial Services began seeking an explanation for an initial $20,000 overspend in May last year and sent several follow‑up emails.
Jones then wrote to the prime minister's chief of staff In January seeking retrospective approval, which was given the following month.
It was reported the original budget included $15,600 for two premium economy flights, $10,000 to cover four nights of accommodation for two, $2200 for meals, and $3193 for two VIP all-access passes, $500 for transport and a contingency of $1575.
The airfares came in at $41,116.90 for two business class flights, the hotel bill was $13,397.52 and a private limousine from Jassi Limousine Services cost C$3791.15, a major blowout from the approved $500 budget.
It was reported the limo driver was kept on standby for a total of 24 hours across three days.