Peters Winston: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePeters Winston: Social Assistance (Portability to Cook Islands Niue and Tokelau) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4455. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): On the National Party side there are those people who have campaigned over the years for nomination as a candidate and who have put up their Māori background and one even has a Cook Islands background as one of the reasons they should be chosen to give the party narrow as it is a greater diverse dimension. They did so on the promise to those people who backed them that when they got here they would actually do something—put up their hands for them on those occasions when they should show because of their unique background as they claimed it their special understanding of their needs. This is such a moment.Jono Naylor: Last time I checked it was a Government bill.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: As for that member from Palmerston North I say to him that if you cannot win Palmerston North when you have got a swing going with you then I think it is time to not say much when you get to Parliament. I think it is not a time to get to Parliament and show off one’s ignorance. I am talking about those Māori members and their names are Reti Paula Bennett Jami-Lee Ross—whose greatest contribution to this debate is to get up and seek to terminate it—Jo Hayes Mr Korako Hekia Parata—Jono Naylor: Where’s this in Part 2?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: This is Part 2 where you get to the change to that critical clause that says that it is not just for those people who live in Tokelau Niue or in the Cook Islands—not as to 10 years but 20 years which straightaway is prejudicial—but if you happen to be a European critical to the infrastructure like heading the Companies Office or like heading the Crown Law Office there or like working for those critical Government departments like education helping the local infrastructure in that case you are to be forgotten. That is where it is in Part 2 of the bill I say for the sake of the list MP for Palmerston North. Read the darn thing! I know that the Minister for Social Development has not read it because the Minister got up and again parroted in her explanation how little she understood about this subject. She tried to make out that if you came from the Ukraine or Poland you were the same as a New Zealander working in Tokelau the Cook Islands or Niue. This is so base and sad but we know that one day soon it will change because there will be support for New Zealand First’s amendment to the original bill and to this matter.On the question of affordability I say to the Government: do not allow 73000 to come to this country and be here for just 10 years have no requirement to pay tax and then tell me that you cannot afford my amendment. Or is it that nowadays we favour some other country and not our own? We want the capital “S” put back into the special relationship between us and these three Realm countries. It is that simple. Do not tell us you cannot afford it because 73000 have done just that.Of course Government members remind me sometimes of that famous line in The Mikado—the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone all countries but his and all nations but his own. That is about what you hear from them day in and day out. They cannot explain themselves. They cannot explain why they are doing it and they are following a Minister who cannot read the legislation herself. They are praising all centuries but this one and every country but their own. When it comes to their citizens they have left them high and dry tonight.I come back to Mr Ngaro because he is the one unique person there whose powers of—how shall I put it—evangelical persuasion should have convinced his caucus members a long time ago of the unfairness of what they were doing. It should appeal to a man of the cloth to reach down for the ordinary people not the barons but the important people for whom the National Party is so famous—like the legislation earlier tonight where it backed Shell Todd Oil Services. I am not against the Todd family—the Government backed the Shell organisation a big huge multinational; it said “Jump” and the Government said: “How high?”—but some ordinary New Zealand people who work in that part of the world just want a fair go so that they can stay there and not come back here for 5 years dislocate their ownership their businesses their assets and what they critically can do for the Cook Islands some of which the Cook Islands cannot afford to lose nor can Niue or Tokelau and they will not move.Let me say to those members as Douglas MacArthur once said to the president of the Philippines: “There will come a time soon when your boss will want to talk to us and we’ll want to talk to him.” Make no bones about that and we are going to remember those days. We will remember them very very clearly and with great purpose because it comes down to this question: can you be trusted with the needs desires hopes and aspirations of ordinary people? And all we are hearing tonight is no. We have heard every reason except the right reason. If the reason is cost then pray tell me how 79 or 100 people could be anything like the 73000 thus far defended by them—73000 as against maybe 100? Or is it because these Island nations are not unique? Is the small “s” to come back into the relationship?When this measure was promised by New Zealand First and taken up by this Government over there it was to the New Zealand people who have spent parts of their lives serving those nations in the critical arrangement that we have with those three Realm countries. Is that too much to ask for? I am asking Reti Bennett Jami-Lee Ross Jo Hayes Korako Parata—oh and Simon Bridges. There is someone who discovered his iwi after he got into Parliament. What are they going to do? Are they going to say “We understand those people’s needs and we’ve something special to say?” or are they going to be just thumbed down by the whip and by the Minister misleading the Committee as she has done?Again I say to the Minister that if you go to the purpose of this legislation and then to the change we seek to make you will see that it does not have the effect that the Ministry of Social Development has laid out. How many times have I seen certain ministries miswrite the facts—Treasury countless times?Treasury has been telling the Minister of Finance that this country is the best-performing country in the OECD. The sad thing about that is that he believes it. That reminds me of J P Morgan who went of course to the American President one week before the great collapse of Wall Street and told him his country was performing unbelievably and that it had the greatest economy in the world. A week later the whole thing crashed worldwide.I want that Minister to explain to us why it is that those few people often in such critical jobs—and I have seen them over there heading up the law departments over there acting as the Solicitor-General over there acting as the head of the Companies Office doing critical things in the health department and in the education department—would be punished by being omitted? We do know that when Mr Andrew Bayly was over there he promised to take home their message and ensure that they got a fair go. When Mr Ngaro was over there—and it is not a matter of humour about Trader Jacks or the Swordfish Club; that was where those members were holding their meetings and where they gave this promise unconditional that when they got back they would do something about it.Mr Ngaro you cannot get away with the excuse that you were not there that night because these people are intelligent they are bright and they know that the proxy was left to vote it down. They know that. This time there is a chance to be in a personal sense self-redeeming. Just get up and walk across the Chamber at the critical time. No matter what happens in what looks like it might be a brief career back home they will always have a job for him. More important back home because of our change there will be superannuation when he gets to 65. This may not be very far away. The fact is that even if I can appeal to his narrow greedy instinct—he has got to be personally a beneficiary. They say that in politics there is no sin like ingratitude. There is no sin like ingratitude. Mr Ngaro has got a chance to fix up all those promises he made and to ensure that tonight his party for the first time for a long time does the right thing.