Peters Winston: General Debates 
Peters Winston: General Debates 
[Volume:613;Page:9957] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 Before I begin I will address some of the comments made by Matt Robson who has apparently been on an overseas trip—I know that because people are still laughing. Mr Robson had the temerity to challenge New Zealand First on the question of State asset sales. Unlike Mr Robson and his party New Zealand First puts its principles first. We walked out of the Government over the question of State asset sales. 
David Benson-Pope 
: The Government left you. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Labour members can laugh but one of the reasons the Labour Party went out in 1990 was that furry-headed people like the one from Dunedin who is shouting out sold out their birthright and happily supported the party regardless of it. Then he had the effrontery to say that New Zealand First would be put on the spot on the question of nuclear ships. This party before its formation changed National’s view on nuclear ships coming to this country. We take the credit for it. I was there. For Mr Robson to come into the House and make those statements tells us what a deceitful duplicitous person he is. He knows the facts full well. He is incapable of repeating them. 
The last thing I want to say to him and to his “NewLabour Alliance Jim Anderton party” and the other names of the Progressive Coalition party is that his party is over gone finished. We started a party after them got into Government before them and we will be back again when they are all gone. Today was a great day in New Zealand politics. New Zealand First announced that it would hand back real power to the people of this country by introducing binding citizens initiated referenda. 
Government Member 
: Ha ha! 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Labour members laugh. They laugh now but they will be crying later. New Zealand First has just announced the end of the political careers of 21 people in the House. We will put democracy back where it belongs—with the people not with the old parties and their political puppets. We will be very fair about reducing Parliament by 21 MPs. We do not care whether they come from Labour National the Greens or United Future but 21 of them will go. 
I know that turkeys do not vote for an early Christmas. I know that turkeys do not like Christmas. But I have bad news for the Labour Party. A stack of its members will go first of all at the election and secondly by way of reducing Parliament to 99 members and not the 120 that we have now. 
ACT and the Progressive Coalition are doing it to themselves. By the end of this Parliament ACT and the Progressive Coalition will be able to hold a meeting in a phone box. Binding citizens initiated referenda mean that when the people vote to reduce Parliament to 99 MPs we reduce Parliament to 99 MPs—no ifs no buts no maybes. People came out in 1999 and said they wanted Parliament reduced. Helen Clark said: “Run away. I am going to be in charge now I will do what I like.” New Zealand First says that we will do that and it is a non-negotiable element in our policy. When people vote for tougher sentences for offending and for more emphasis on the rights of victims that is what the New Zealand people will get. 
Only 7 years since the introduction of MMP first National and now Labour have pervertedly brought us back to the first-past-the-post system. They cannot bear the thought of all the people having a say in the running of New Zealand. Democracy in this country is a disgrace. All the tough decisions are made secretly out of sight of the people. The back-benchers of the Labour Party are a bunch of cannon fodder merchants. They do what they are told. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: They blew your men away. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I know what will happen to them. Those members can shout now but I can tell them that I have been here a long time and I will be here a long time after they have gone—make sure of that. New Zealanders are losing their country their identity their culture and their self-respect. This is government by stealth government by sham government by spin doctor and government by greed. It has all been taken away by a Government besotted with its own self-importance and self-indulgence led by the politically correct Prime Minister who struts around the world stage like a puffed-up Antipodean chambermaid. There she was in the Afghan desert looking like some sort of desert-dwelling beekeeper out to see our troops. Today she was asked why she cannot give $17000 of the State’s money to a decent New Zealander who suffered agony and put his life on the line and she will not move a muscle. She tosses money around like an eight-armed octopus to every fad and weirdo group in the country but for decent ordinary New Zealanders—nothing. Not even a cent. Let me warn Labour that its day of reckoning is coming.