Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged.

Emails show the Minister’s office invited the heads of three mining companies to dinner in Westport four days before the event, but the Minister previously said that the meeting was “very much a last minute thing”.

Shane Jones told media in May that “I meet people, mate, randomly, all over New Zealand. And to be in the middle of nowhere, which is largely the majority of Te Tai Poutini [West Coast], and decide to have a dinner is not a capital offence”.

“Shane Jones is being disingenuous at best about meeting with industry representatives like this,” said Labour resources spokesperson Megan Woods.

“Far from a ‘last minute thing’, the Minister used his Ministerial office to arrange this dinner and then hid it from public scrutiny.

“Shane Jones would have understood that Stevenson Group would use the meeting to ask for their Te Kuha coal mining project, which has been declined in the past, to be approved under his government’s fast tracking legislation.

Shane Jones’ office also offered the invitation to Bathurst Resources chief executive Richard Tacon, and Federation Mining vice president Simon Delander who both attended the dinner.

“The Prime Minister needs to ask Shane Jones why he failed to declare the meeting in the first place, and why he misled the public about it when challenged,” Megan Woods said.

“If the Fast Track Approvals Bill is passed in its current form, it would make him one of the decision makers on projects that these people he secretly met with want to see given the green light.”

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