KEY POINTS:
Shane Jones, the boy from Awanui, is supposed to have a penchant for Armani but he is looking a bit of a scruff the day I see him.
This is mostly because of what he calls "designer stubble" and what I would call about as designed as a
scrubby stand of manuka. I forget to ask about his nice suits so I ring him later. He ticks me off, mildly, for ringing with "a gratuitous question" when I'm always going on about interviewees ringing me back.
Ahem, he did ring me back, first, ostensibly to make sure I had all I needed and the right spelling for his kids' names. He has seven, which seems a huge number to me, but he and his wife come from large families and he says, "I don't know," when I ask why he has so many.
"I don't think it was a well-conceived plan," which is the worst line I've heard, possibly ever. The youngest is 11; Te Aumihi, known as Pretty Girl. I say "you can't call her that; it sounds like a budgie!" He said, "No, I can't. It's like a pet, eh?"
He likes this sort of chat and is good at it - so it will take a while to get near the reason for going to seeing him - which is the wero, and his rarking up other Maori about it.
He does groan about the Armani and says he does have a couple of suits but that his puku's too big and he can't get into them. He says Steve Maharey told him, "we have to get you back into those suits. You need a makeover".
Jones says "the rural boy" in him can't quite embrace flash dressing, at least not all the time, but presumably he bought the things in the first place.
The boy from Awanui in Armani has a nice, alliterative ring and would be true, but it would take you only so far. He is the boy from Awanui: where he went to primary school, "where I fell off the horse, where I got my arse kicked, where I had my first ... but we can't put that in the story".
This is a fairly typical bit of Jonesey carry-on (his mate, the Far North mayor Wayne Brown calls him Jonesey; he calls Brown, Browny.) It's the rural boy talking. On the tape, and even in the course of a short telephone call, he can sound like two different people.
When he calls back I don't recognise his voice, which is the St Stephen's, Harvard educated one. You can also add into his mix his Pakeha, Welsh and Dally ancestry and the fact that he was early on the chosen one - in the peculiarly Maori sense.
He is now, of course, the Labour MP, the new boy, "two years old" in terms of his parliamentary career, and even newer minister as of the Cabinet reshuffle in November. The "designer stubble" is for the holidays. "That which Annette King has told me will disappear by Tuesday, February 12. Yeah, well, perception and image counts for a lot in politics."
Let's not mention Armani, eh?
Every politician (and journalist) knows about image; it is not every politician who announces it, without prompting.
Or who says, "I'm a politician", frequently. As in "hey! I'm a politician. I told you that. I said it three times!" This was in response to me telling him he was dreaming when he said he'd rather not be compared to Winston Peters but to "Arnold Schwarzenegger, in terms of physical prowess. I'd rather have that one. Or Buck Shelford, if it's in the Maori world. Stacey Jones! My nephew." Obviously we know he's a politician but most MPs hardly ever use the word about themselves: they're selling themselves as people.
I didn't compare him to Peters. I'm asking about recent accusations (although he's heard it all before when he was chairman of the Fisheries Commission) that he is "too colonised", and what that actually meant, and whether it got up his nose. He says, "it's said about Winston on a regular basis and I seem to be about to occupy Winston's sort of shoes in the pantheon of personalities in Maori politics".
This, you would think, would be a worry. "Well, his puku isn't as big as mine and he's better looking. I don't think he'd ever turn up wearing an odd pair of socks on the marae but I am, unfortunately, compared in the North."
This odd reference has come up because four years ago, a rather mysterious bloke called Chris phoned and told me I should interview Jones. Chris said he'd arrange it (he didn't) because Jones had been known to forget to put his shoes on if somebody wasn't around to remind him.
"Umm, no, no. I have been known to turn up on the marae with different coloured socks on. Well, I suppose, you know, in the staid world of politics, you've got to be permitted a few oddities."
What an odd way of putting it, or admitting it at least. As though this little quirk is not an example of endearing absent-mindedness, but one he cultivates. So he does it on purpose? "Yeah, there's always been a little bit of the jester in me. I've always employed humour, I wouldn't say as a survival tactic, but just as, you know, one of the arrows in the quiver."
I didn't mean, by the way, that he puts on his different voices, like the socks, deliberately, to suit the occasion. I doubt he even knows he does it. I think he's simply very good at fitting in. He's done it in Wellington, by listening and learning. He says it's just like boarding school, like being a third former again. Which doesn't mean that it's not "bruising" to the ego.
Jones released another of his arrows in time for Waitangi Day when he had a go at the wero, and the teachers of the traditional challenge which greets visitors.
He used the words "growling like underfed mutts" to scathingly describe the bastardisation of the wero. It was coming to represent a subculture of gang culture creeping on to the marae.
What good timing. "Yeah! No, let's be straight about this. The time to generate interest and korero about outstanding issues on the race relations front is around Waitangi Day."
It does also rather help validate the Prime Minister's continued refusal to go to Te Tii marae on the day, doesn't it? "Aah, you could draw that connection."
You could also draw the connection straight to creating a controversy. "Yeah, well, we are politicians."
Image. Perception. Does he think the perception of him is that he is to the left or right of the Labour Party? "I think on Maori issues etc, dealing with Maori and gangs and all that, I'm probably to the right of our party." He used to be a radical and there is a great photo of him from 1984 with Hone Harawira and two other activists, about to cause trouble at Waitangi. (In honesty, he looks too smiley and happy to be a scary sort of radical.) Now he turns up in his suit and gets called a sell-out and accused of being too colonised. It doesn't get to him now, he says.
"Well, it's designed to bug me. When I was the chairman of the Fisheries Commission it probably did bug me because, really, of the inability to explain that the whole Treaty has been a process: first you kick up dust, then you create a din, then you try to remedy by using the law and politics. Well, you try explaining that on February 6 with 250 people in a tent who, if their patience has not been worn thin by the temperature, it's been worn thin by visits to the local hotel."
Now, he says, the insult designed "to stifle you, has the opposite effect with me, as God is my witness, if anything's likely to bring me out in a rage. Let's get serious. What are people actually saying? You're too colonised. It means you're likely to do things or say things or challenge things that undermine the past or force Maori to change what they're doing and change it, possibly for the purposes of modernity".
He is the very model of a modern Maori politician - depending on whether or not you accuse him of being too colonised, of course. He shot himself in the foot with one of his arrows by mentioning the Winston comparisons because he's given me an easy cue: that he's the latest in a fated line of those picked to be the first Maori PM.
"Oh, God! I need a cup of coffee." Which he ambles off to get, making the getting last a good long time. He grimaces (what else could he do?) and says, "let's cut to the chase here. You come into politics and you really back yourself to see how far you can go. The reality, though, is commentary and questions like that are a curse because you exist in a political party and you exist on the strength of your colleagues' views and your colleagues' views are immediately jaundiced. They think that you're flashing it about in order to take over, which is what Shane Jones does not do".
It hasn't caused friction, he thinks, because "despite a lot of fears and anxieties Shane Jones has been a team player."
Right, so does he want to be PM then? "Now how am I going to answer that without getting my arse kicked by Annette King? No, no, Shane Jones is going to resist comment in that regard."
Shane Jones, I say, is talking about himself in the third person. "Ha, ha," laughed Shane Jones and said, "Shane Jones said, 'shut your trap, do the mahi and earn the respect of your colleagues'."
I asked if he was a natural team player and he said, "umm, that's a very good question. There is probably a little bit of the lone wolf in my personality. [But] in parliamentary politics, just open your eyes and see what happens to people who will not accept the ethics of team playing? Hell, would you want to sit between Taito and Gordon Copeland?"
He said, on the phone, "I'm sure you've interviewed people cleverer and better looking than me." That's both the Awanui boy, (playing the cheeky bugger) and the politician (the silly bugger.) They're both half right. Winston and Stacey are better looking. The list of cleverer people would be shorter, and he'd be even higher on it if he stopped that third person talking.
