Peters Winston: General Debates 
Peters Winston: General Debates 
[Volume:612;Page:8973] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. I wish to speak today about the disgraceful conduct and deceitful actions of this Government and its Ministers. The saddest thing for this Government is that the people of this country are at last beginning to understand what it is about and that is being reflected in the polls. This Government is now indirectly admitting by its actions or in most instances— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Forty-six percent. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: It was 46 percent was it? Well in the last campaign which lasted exactly 1 month Labour lost 13 percent in 4 weeks flat. Next time we will have a longer run at it and it will lose a darned sight more when the balloon goes up. The Government is now indirectly admitting by its own action or in most instances by its lack of action as is the case within the rapidly deteriorating health system that the continual open-door immigration policy is exacerbating— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Who wrote this? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I am able to write my own speech unlike that dummy over there. He has a whole research unit to write his speeches. Over here we can write our own. This Government has no idea about ordinary New Zealand families. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: You can’t read it very well. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Well I do not read like a dog with a cleft palate do I? The Government has no idea what the cost of immigration is. It persistently hides behind policies that it says were introduced by previous Governments. Every day Government members rise in the House and blame some other Government. It is about time they stopped blaming someone else. It is time that Helen Clark and her Ministers stopped passing the buck. If they want to go back and blame other Governments they should go back to the years between 1984 and 1990 when they turned this country upside down when they had an economic revolution and when Australia heading down the same path grew a third larger in the same space of time whilst these “loony tune” political and economic alchemists stuffed New Zealand up. 
The worst thing about that party over there in Government is that the deceit starts at the top. Yesterday the Prime Minister was asked a simple question: how many people are on hospital waiting lists for elective surgery? Would she answer it? No she would not. She obfuscated delayed and used every device possible to avoid answering the question. Worst of all when she finally got caught out she did not give the accurate figure. We know that tens of thousands of New Zealanders have been shifted off the hospital waiting lists and today my colleague Peter Brown gave a classic example. 
 What did the Prime Minister do? She got her office to track down the case—real fast. The spin doctors from the Minister of Health’s office got the Prime Minister to get up in the House and the first thing she did was to tell the House something that was absurdly patently not true. She said that the case Mr Brown was talking about depended upon a further investigation. Sorry—that investigation occurred 8 weeks ago. So why is Mrs Grimsdell not getting an operation? Because Helen Clark has no heart. She is more obsessed with running around the world spending money on refugees and illegal immigrants and trying to get herself a job in the United Nations for after the next election. 
Helen Clark is trying to get herself a job with our money and with New Zealanders’ sacrifice and agony as the base for it because she knows that when the next election is over she will have lost. She will be looking for a new job. That is why she spends all her time betraying the interests of New Zealanders. That is why she does not give a damn about the almost 60000 people who today need an operation in New Zealand and cannot get one. She does not give a darn about the 12000 New Zealanders who are waiting for urgent State housing but cannot get it. But boy can she spend money on the “hug an immigrant” campaign! Can she spend money on a guy like Zaoui who is over here and has already cost taxpayers more than $100000 and can she spend money on the fact that we now have hospital boards spending more than $4 million on interpreters! Ten years ago the Auckland Hospital Board had five interpreters. Do members know how many it has now? It has 285. It had five but now it has 285. But apparently of course it is good because it means we can go to different restaurants.