Peters Winston: Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts Annual Rates and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Peters Winston: Taxation (Personal Tax Cuts Annual Rates and Remedial Matters) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16323] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I have to say how astonished I am to hear the party that has spent its last 20 years preaching the value of globalism internationalism getting offshore investment—whether or not it is a corporate raid on any company in New Zealand—that is allowing in all sorts of immigrants in their tens and tens of thousands and that has argued for everything to do with the international world now has its members get up and say they want to retreat. They do not want to be part of the real world when it comes to diplomacy and trade. If their idea is that they are going to go out on the campaign trail and win the campaign of tax cuts on the basis of stopping there being an embassy in Sweden then they have lost the plot entirely. Worse still they are the very worst specimens of what used to be a great political party. 
I can recall Brian Talboys—as can Dail Jones—30 years ago making this very speech. When the isolationists in the National Party who wanted to retreat from the real world got up at a conference and were starting to argue about why we were involved here there and everywhere else he said: “If we want to retreat to New Zealand wrap our blanket up around our heads and hide in the dark that would be a disaster.” That is what they are saying right now. The National Party members’ idea of how they are going to ply their trade our identity and our reputation around the world is by putting no money into it. All I have done is restore the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to have the level of personnel it used to have when National once had a decent leader. 
The National Government started the cuts in 1992 and when it had finished the ministry had declined in real terms by 40 percent. No wonder our trade is not what it should be. No wonder we are not exporting what we should be exporting. The reason is that we do not have people on the ground where we should have them. Some of the successful countries are Finland Sweden Norway Denmark and Iceland. They are the five parts of the most successful regional economy in the world. They are our size and we could learn a lot from them. We should have been there a long long time ago. That is why we are making the investment. But if John Key fresh out of plying junk bonds on the London stock market thinks he can talk about this country’s international reputation and engagement then that is an outrage. 
I thought that people like Lockwood Smith who pretends to know something about trade might have been in support of this. Oh no he would like us to be in the Philippines with all those millions of people with but two people on the ground. If one gets sick there is one person left. If one has to go out of town there is nobody in the embassy. That is exactly what the National Party had in mind. So if its members think they are going to win this debate on this issue of the value of these tax cuts on the basis of being able to deliver more on making massive savings in the area of foreign affairs and trade then firstly they are betraying their country; secondly they are destroying this country’s potential in the future; and thirdly we will spend decades trying to turn the situation back towards New Zealand’s improvement. Brian Talboys knew that. Holyoake knew that. Marshall knew that. But then of course that was a time when there was a party that was led by real leaders and had a fine front bench comprising people who were stand-out characters. Look at the front bench today— 
Dail Jones 
: Where are they? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: It would not matter whether or not they were there. It would still be the same value. But there is no one of calibre ability or experience. In fact it is a disgrace that with all that money—$7 million of taxpayers’ funds and all the Business Roundtable funding and all the capital markets money—those members are the best they can produce. 
It is a disgrace that with all that resource they have now produced a party with people who are so bereft of imagination and so lacking in understanding of the economy that they think that if they can somehow touch enough greed and avarice out there amongst people who think they can get tax cuts whether or not they are affordable then they are not going to win the next election. Mind you I always knew that. I always knew they never had the ability to win the next election and I will tell every pollster right now that the talent that is required to win the next election does not lie on the National Party front benches. That is why they will not make it. They can display all the cock-a-hoop feelings they have now but as time unfolds month on month to the election just watch the polls close. We shall see the kind of extremism they will go to even to the extent that they now agree with my immigration policy—do they not? I was a racist 10 years ago. Now it is their policy. On Maori affairs and equality of law I was anti-Maori. I was a Maori basher. Now it is their policy.