Peters Winston: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Peters Winston: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3271] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 The National Party might be thinking it is looking at a three-term Government but we in New Zealand First know we are not. That is the first thing I want to say. We are back in 2003—[ 
Interruption 
] It is no use those members waving their hands like that; the reality is that the Labour Government is in serious trouble in many areas of our social and economic life and no amount of flimflam public relations and massive taxpayers’ expense will change that.  
Before I start I want to move an amendment to the amendment that has just been moved. I move  
To omit all the words after “this House has no confidence” and substitute the following words: “in the Labour minority Government because of: (a) failure to support New Zealand’s exporters and hence exports are declining; (b) its failure to provide proper training and education for New Zealanders resulting in excess immigration to New Zealand; (c) its failure to resolve issues surrounding the so-called principles of the Treaty of Waitangi; (d) its failure to recognise social ills in New Zealand resulting in increased youth suicide lack of skills for youth in New Zealand and a decline in self-respect for youth; (e) the breakdown of law and order and the failure to support our police force with adequate resources; (f) the decline in conditions for the poor in New Zealand highlighted by the increase in fees for the NCEA and decline in housing and health standards; and (g) its lack of support for agriculture in New Zealand 
.” 
 The Prime Minister this morning said that if it were up to her she would not bother to make that speech. We in New Zealand First totally agree with her. We totally agree at the start of the session that if she was going to put Mogadon out of business she could not have found a better speech than that one there—the most turgidly boring speech I have ever heard from a Prime Minister or read from any Prime Minister. It was a long slow-burning suicide note. 
Members can laugh all they like but this present Government has this record. Between 1990 and 1999—three terms in Opposition—they could not crack a majority. In May 2002 with the enormous forces of Mr Anderton they still could not crack a majority in this House and the Labour Party is dependent on three other parties to remain in Government. Its luck will run out because the speech that we heard today will not raise the hearts hopes and aspirations of the New Zealand people. 
Today I want to assure all New Zealanders that unlike others who are losing their heads when all about them is a matter of chaos; unlike other parties that have leadership problems; and unlike other parties that have all sorts of internal difficulties; we in New Zealand First welcome the start of the new parliamentary term and the challenges that lie ahead. We do not as a party need focus groups telephone polls media consultants team-building exercises “touchy-feely” sessions caucus retreats policy rethinks strategies frameworks visions or mission statements. 
Rodney Hide 
: That’s because it’s a one-man band. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: We in New Zealand First know what we believe in and we know who we are and we know where we are going and we know what we will do when we get there. [ 
Interruption 
] I know Mr Hide is out to try to roll Richard Prebble by March. Everybody in the commercial world in Auckland knows it. Everybody in the commercial world knows it because he has been telling everybody. But how that improves the chances of ACT I do not know. I mean it would be out of the frying pan into the ashes—not the fire. Does Rodney Hide have charisma is he a great orator is he great visually does he excite people when he speaks? No he does not. He does most of his addresses to telephone booth audiences and even then it is a packed house. 
The next person behind him is Deborah Coddington the woman who said on the question of ethics—very much paramount in the mind of ACT—about the wine box conspirators: “Well it doesn’t matter because they are going to spend the money on the New Zealand economy anyway.” That is the party that pleads on ethics. That party would not disclose its party funding as required by law in 1996 has pyramid selling schemes important investor conferences all sorts of scam shams and all of a sudden we have Ned Kelly talking about banks. It is unbelievable. 
New Zealand First will have a great year. My colleagues are ready for it. We know where we are going and what we are going to do. Our job in 2003 is to first make and then keep this disparate ragtag of a Government honest. It is a big mission but it is not impossible. Some strange people are on the Government benches. Mr English is right about Chris Carter at Waitangi. I have never seen such an appalling display of cultural ignorance. First of all he stepped on the 1835 flag—he did not know what it was—and then he gave a speech about two tribes having an attack which was not very relevant to the Treaty of Waitangi. One of the reasons this treaty was signed was to stop that sort of thing. Then he sang “Pokare Kare Ana” and he made Jim Anderton’s version sound like John Rowles. 
They suffer from a collective identity crisis. This bunch of gender-bending political do-gooders are selling out this nation that generations of past New Zealanders were prepared to sacrifice themselves for. Today the Prime Minister admitted it. Labour has forgotten where it came from. The people on the other side of this House have lost their roots and betrayed their party and Dover Samuels and every working-class man and woman knows it. They focus nothing on the workingman and workingwoman the poor the halt the lame the maimed—those deprived in our society. Oh no Labour is the Blair third way. Its members think they will somehow reach across the divide forget our past and with flimflam and handouts they will sell-out our people and stay in power. 
That is the party that once preached social justice as members will remember. That is the party that is now the party of the rich and powerful. Helen Clark cannot wait to get to the America’s Cup. She cannot wait to be associated with everything to do with wealth even though she has no record of creating any of that in our country in her whole political career. But if at the bottom of the heap we have the poor who are seeking a better deal they had better look elsewhere because no one in the present Labour Party will help them. 
In the Prime Minister’s statement today there is a lot we need to be bothered about. She said the economy was strong. Well no it is not. In fact the Deutsch Bank forecasts of July last year are coming true as we speak. They said in July last year that by this year and the end of it we would progressively slow to around 2 percent at the end of 2003 and they are right. That is why she produced the September figure because it looks better. She could not give the December figure. With all of Treasury and the Reserve Bank at her disposal she could not give us the updated figure because it would belie her message. 
Then she talked about the good things that are going on with respect to the economy none of which have anything to do with the Labour Party whatsoever. They are to do with a low dollar initially which New Zealand First is responsible for; farming returns which we are responsible for in terms of greater encouragement; and favourable weather which even we cannot take credit for. 
Do members know the scariest thing about today’s statement? If I asked any businessman or woman in any main street or any important rural export town in this country what the Government’s export plan is they would not know—which is no surprise because the Prime Minister does not know either. 
 Any Government of any country with no plans to export—to treble and multiply by five times its exports—in order to lift us into the First World has no plan and it is bound to fail. We have 33 months to expose this Government and we will take every minute of every hour of every day and do just that.  
The exchange rate is rising. What does the Labour Party do? What does Jim Anderton do? Nothing because it might get out of step with “business opinion”. The value of our exports is sliding. Where is the plan to reverse that? The Labour Party does not have one. Today we had the most boring unimaginative speech I have ever heard from any Prime Minister. When will the Government learn that New Zealand is totally dependent on what we earn overseas? When will exporters get a taxation policy for exports? When will they have an incentivised policy such as we see in Australia Taiwan Japan Singapore Ireland—in every other First World country? In New Zealand there is donuts. There is nothing whatsoever in respect of our long-term interests.  
It is hard to take the Prime Minister’s statement seriously when we had the revelation this week that Jim Anderton the “Minister of Meetings” has squandered more taxpayers’ funds on another fascinating study by the Ministry of Economic Development. Do members know what he asked the ministry to do? He asked it to calculate the benefit to New Zealand of having an additional 1 percent growth per year since 1970. How is that for a study? We have universities all over the place and all sorts of economists but he had a whole study done to find out what 1 percent growth extra per year since 1970 would mean if our economy had achieved that. Does Mr Anderton know what it would have meant if we had done that in 1984 when he was a Labour member and when all those people over there on the Labour benches were selling out this economy? We would be in the same position as Australia—with a growth rate one third faster than New Zealand’s since 1984 when the great Labour experiment began and which was later taken up by National and ACT. If we had 1 percent more growth we would be an “Australia” today in terms of competition. But today New Zealand’s economy is languishing. It should not take a taxpayer-funded study to work out what that means in spending potential for social services.  
But the most deceptive thing about the Prime Minister’s speech today was her statement that the net migration rate remains strong fuelled by fewer New Zealanders leaving and more returning home. That is demonstrably not true. I have Immigration Service figures here for the year ending December last year. Do members know how many non-New Zealander permanent arrivals came here last year? It was 70500. Do they know how many Australia took? Australia is seven times our size and it took 83000 and has done so for every year for the last 10 years. But little New Zealand is taking 70500. Every Maori member knows what that means. It is a sell-out—an utter betrayal of the working people of this country and of every patriotic New Zealander.  
The Government of course is predicating an economy on consumptive immigration and it is bound to burst as it has done elsewhere. The Prime Minister is advised by one Lianne Dalziel the Minister for Immigration who is so darn ignorant that she thinks immigration is the difference between outflows and inflows—in other words the net figure. Now any kindergarten child can tell us that those who come here to stay long-term are immigrants. Those that leave long-term are emigrants—beginning with an “e”—and the net figure is not immigration. When will some dumb group of journalists get through their heads that the number of people who came here last year—non-New Zealanders; long-term permanent arrivals—was 70500. That total is far greater than the population of Rotorua and the Government has the audacity to say that it has a Minister for Auckland who will solve that city’s transport infrastructure problems. Forget it! Even if we employed half of that total in Auckland every year no structure would work or transport problem be solved. The immigration figure disguises the state of our economy because we have all of these consumers coming in. It is a short-term binge with a long-term cost. When mistaken decisions are made about immigration they are permanent mistakes.  
Members should look at the UK or Europe today. I challenge the Member for Whanganui to name just one country that is doing just one fifth of what we are doing in immigration per capita. There is not a syllable or a sound—not a mutter or a murmur. Can that new member down the back who took over from Judy Keall—whose name is not known to us yet; what is his name?— 
Opposition Members 
: Darren. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Darren. Darren Hughes. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member knows to refer to a member by his Christian name and surname not just by his Christian name and he should do so.  
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I apologise. I am struggling to remember. It is Darren Hughes. He is a new member so I ask him to tell me which other First World country is doing one fifth per capita of our immigration? 
Darren Hughes 
: Tauranga. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Oh I can see how he won the nomination and he is one of Labour’s brighter ones.  
In the past few weeks the Labour Party has displayed just how it feels about the education system of this country. Do members realise that if they were at secondary school now and wanting to go for Sixth Form Certificate their fees would have just doubled? The fees are up to $150 for every secondary student who wants to sit that exam. This is the Labour Party—the party of Fraser who believed in education—of Savage of Kirk and of Nordmeyer. But no that party can get away with it so it is imposing that sort of cost on the young of this country. When we get back into Government we will repeal that cost and we will be back in 2005 or whenever the Labour Government cannot hold it together. [ 
Interruption 
] The member for Whanganui does not really matter because she has never really been a performer around here. [ 
Interruption 
] She should go and explain that to the people in Wanganui—the working-class city and export powerhouse that it is.  
I want to say something on the question of the Treaty which was raised by the Prime Minister in her speech. She is going to have another hui. This time it is a Hui Taumata Matauranga facilitated by the Ministers and by the leader of Tuwharetoa Tumu te Heuheu. I thought that that was funny. Can members guess what we had down here in Parliament back in October 1984? We had a Hui Taumata. It pretty soon ended up as a hui “no matter” because nothing happened. Maoris were taken for a ride over and over again. Are imprisonment figures for Maori falling? No. Is Maori performance in education rising? No. Is the quality of Maori employment improving? No—only in Australia. Can anyone tell me whether Maori development is really returning per capita incomes a magnum higher for Maori? No. So what do we want another Hui Taumata for? Because it looks good. It will be put on at enormous expense—like for example the Prime Minister’s breakfast at Waitangi to which she never had the decency to invite other party leaders. [ 
Interruption 
]  
 Oh no—just her. They are still laughing. Do members know why? They were desperate in the closing hours. They had to ring everybody to try to fill up the place because nobody wanted to come to a free meal—and being Maori they are all morning people. We are night and morning people.  
One last question I want to raise is on the issue of Iraq. It is important. If there is a war next week with Iraq I want to know from this Prime Minister whether we are in it or out of it. It is a simple question. This Prime Minister has access to intelligence. Her statement today that she thinks that there will be war within a week or that the issue will be resolved within a week tells me that she has been given information. Every New Zealand citizen and every mother and father of a boy or young woman who is about to be committed over there—for we are deployed there now and in my book deployment means that we are involved—needs to know. Are we going to be at war or are we not? Are we perceived by Iraq and the Arabs as in or out? The Prime Minister owes the country that knowledge. She owes it—not to try to placate the Americans or curry favour to try to get some free-trade agreement—but first of all to the security of this country and to New Zealand citizens. We have been involved in many wars—far too many that are not justified—and we in New Zealand First want to know from the Prime Minister why has she not shared that information with the rest of the New Zealand people. It is their lives that will be lost. It will be our lives that will be lost if terrorism happens here. We should know as a country and she should be taking this House with her—not in that pristinely arrogant maternalistic way that has recently been her penchant to display. Let us have that information known to everybody.