"Helpful" if Shane Jones had left funding meeting, but no harm done, says PM

Mon, 11 Mar 2019

By Pattrick Smellie March 11 (BusinessDesk) - It would have been "helpful" if the minister responsible for the Provincial Growth Fund, Shane Jones, had not been in the room when a decision was made to fund a Far North District Council Maori tourism initiative with a $4.6 million PGF loan, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says. But while Jones had not managed "perceptions" of a conflict of interest well in a final meeting on the proposal, Ardern insisted that he had taken all appropriate steps to inform the Cabinet Office and to ensure that a...

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