[2] Jones contested the new West Auckland electorate, but was defeated by the Labour Party candidate, Jack Elder.
[5] Jones is known as one of the few New Zealand MPs to have been injured in a politically motivated attack; in 1980, while serving as a National Party MP, he was stabbed in the chest by an elderly constituent in his electorate office leaving him with a punctured lung.
More recently, there have been frictions between Jones, Doug Woolerton and New Zealand First social liberal Brian Donnelly over the repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961, legislation that allowed the use of parental corporal punishment against children (or spanking).
[8] He also attracted criticism in February 2008 from Winston Peters for suggesting that New Zealand First had received large anonymous donations.
On 15 February 2008, Jones was returned to Parliament as a list MP once more, replacing Brian Donnelly, who had been appointed as New Zealand's High Commissioner to the Cook Islands.
In March 2008, he was critical[10] of fellow NZ First MP Peter Brown's views on Asian immigration.