Shane Jones is caught up in what I strongly suspect is a premeditated election strike on behalf of the New Zealand First party to distance themselves from their current arrangement known widely as the coalition government.

He's had a crack at the Indian community and the perceived issues around immigration and arranged marriages.

Jones delicately entered the debate with a small amount of petrol and a match and invited them, if they didn’t like things the way they are, to jump on a plane and head on home.

Job done, Shane. Off they went with plenty of upset, fury and hand-wringing, and sadly for poor old Ardern that dreadful position she's increasingly found herself in, where she puts on her best stern face, says something about it not being the sort of thing she'd do, or it's not government policy, or Shane Jones needs to read the Cabinet manual.

Saying enough to make it look like she might be doing something, but never in reality convincing enough to have you believe it's anything other than the obligatory noise about a person in her Cabinet she simply can't control.

Jones has how taken it next level. He's wandering around hinting at New Zealand First policy for the next election that will be directly tied to race. This, for those who can remember, is the classic New Zealand First of old. This is Winston Peters from the early days, this is the stuff that lit the New Zealand First spark 30 odd years ago.

The trouble though is this, those days were about being forever in opposition.

In opposition, as an outlier, you can say anything you want. Sort of like Labour did when Jacinda Ardern promised light rail in Auckland by 2021, or when they promised to cut migration by up to 30,000, or they promised 100,000 houses because there was a housing crisis.

When you're not expecting to get to government you can stir any pot you like.

Now that Peters is well and truly ensconced in government, and presumably keen to stay there, his position on foreigners has changed a bit.

For a start he upped Labour last election by some margin. He was cutting migration to 10,000 net a year. But have either come remotely close? No, they haven't.

So when Jones drums up his new anti-Indian policy or whatever detail emerges, the very obvious question to ask is, is any of it actually going anywhere? The answer, given their current record, is fairly clearly no. So why would you vote for it?

And in that is the problem with MMP. Just what is it you're voting for?

Given you haven't the slightest idea of what sort of party combination will emerge, you as a voter simply don't know where you are at. Mind you that wont stop Jones or New Zealand First.

If there is a single thing that’s got them on the map its xenophobia. And, you watch, xenophobia plays well to a certain constituency, whether it's getting implemented or not.