Peters Winston: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Peters Winston: Budget Statement — Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2411. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 Today the country heard the “back to the future Budget” from the National Party as though it has been in some sort of time warp for the last 21 years. I can recall this Budget because I have heard it before. I heard it back in 1991 when one called Ruth Richardson came here with the “mother of all Budgets”. It helped create hardship and misery and tens of thousands of people lost their jobs State assets were sold and large chunks of the country were flogged off overseas. 
Remember those quotes that National signed up to back then? All are repeated today as though it has learnt nothing. Remember how National was going to solve all New Zealand’s economic woes and create a better future for all of us? This is what National said back then: “For too long we have struggled in a trap of economic stagnation and rising debt … No economic growth. Rising unemployment. And a huge overseas debt …”. Does that sound familiar? On New Zealand’s external debt this is what it said: “We now owe more to foreigners relative to the size of our economy than almost any other country of our kind.” Does that sound familiar? On National’s vision back then—again repeated today—this is what it said: “A society where the disadvantaged have access to high-quality social services.” That tells you that back then National had a sense of humour as well. It was repeated today. I will go on: “A society where workplaces are creative and dynamic; … A society that is prosperous confident and paying its way in the world.” Which society was it talking about? But I heard it all again today. And it went on: “to transform New Zealand from a declining debt-ridden country into a dynamic enterprising and prosperous nation.” And on asset sales—this is the best of all—“These sales are designed to free the assets for more effective and competitive private sector management … The whole economy will benefit.” Here again is the same old mantra 21 years later. Lastly it said on the fiscal position: “The improved fiscal position has resulted in major improvement in the outlook for public sector debt.” All repeated again today. 
And from that “mother of all Budgets” came the glimmer of an idea for Ruth’s less-than-gifted colleague a young Bill English. Not only did he listen back then to that speech in the House; sadly he actually believed it. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: This member voted for it.  
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I can recall him and Maurice Williamson— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: This member voted for it. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Well thank heavens for Maurice Williamson. I can recall Maurice Williamson and Bill English coming out of the caucus row we had and do you know what they said to me back then when I said “Your economic policy’s rubbish.”? They said: “Winston what are you going to say when it all works out?”. [ 
Interruption 
] Oh yes I remember. There is my evidence. “Winston what are you going to say when it all works out?”. To which I said: “And what are you going to say when it doesn’t?”. And 21 years on there he sits representing nothing standing for nothing and those members have learnt precisely nothing in that time. Today in a sincere tribute to Ruth Bill has decided to reproduce her 1991 Budget. What an act of political courage what vision what insight! It shows that they have learnt nothing. We hear the same old rhetoric the same old excuses the same old same old. 
To be fair though this is a great Budget if you are not a pensioner with a big power bill. Last year 30000 New Zealand households had their power cut off because they could not pay the power prices. To be fair it is a great Budget if you are not an exporter trying to sell goods overseas with a dollar that is out of control and without any Government support. It is a wonderful Budget if you do not have a student loan. It is a great Budget if you are not a mother or father with children to feed and educate. It is a great Budget for workers undecided about heading to Australia. It will certainly make up their minds. And it is a great Budget if you are not an elderly New Zealander with your grandchildren and children living overseas who knows that you are never likely to see them again apart from the odd holiday that neither you nor they can afford. It is a great Budget for those people. 
New Zealand is living through its biggest economic crisis as we know since the Great Depression and as with last year and the year before this Budget will simply make the situation worse. This crisis was created by financial manipulators in the United States. This financial crisis was the result of enormous greed—right out of power and out of control—in the States and we all know who they were and one of their former employees is supposed to be running New Zealand but he is running New Zealand into the ground. This Budget is the latest example of New Zealand stumbling like a punch-drunk boxer from one panacea to the next. The reason why National has brought in this Budget is it simply has no ideas about how to deal with the situation. Its only answer is to privatise sell cut back and hope. 
The very rich will not be hurt by this Budget today. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Great Budget.  
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: The National Party knows how to look after its mates. As Maurice Williamson just said it is a great Budget but he did not add “for his mates”. Remember how National was going to make New Zealand the financial capital of the world back then? Remember Mr Williamson how it was going to make New Zealand the financial capital of the world? And then just 3 years ago John Key gave that idea a rerun. What happened? He could not even get the cycleway sorted out. It is still not complete. Every now and then you know a light bulb goes off in the brains of the neo-liberal Neanderthals in the National Cabinet. If the country’s children acted like this we would put them all on Ritalin. 
Did you notice today that the cling-ons on the starboard bow—all along here—never got up to clap? Not one rose to clap. Even though they were extolled and lauded for their help for the National Government not one of those members rose to salute John Key—or anybody else for that matter. Did you witness National’s backbench clapping today? You know hands clapping up here; knees knocking down there. Let me have the list please. First of all this member Paula Bennett because of this Budget is going to be gone. Remember her? The Kate Moss lookalike. She is definitely gone. Next election because of this Budget she is out of here. Then there is somebody you have never seen before—“Miss Invisible” Nicky Wagner from Christchurch. She is going to be gone—out of here. Then you have got “I work for the bosses.”—this woman. Remember that? You ask me which one; I do not know. But this one here Kate Wilkinson she is gone. Then you have got this one who had a brief political flutter—the one from Auckland Central. Most definitely because of this Budget she is going to be gone—out of here. 
Then you have got “goodbye limousines” himself Pita Sharples. He is going to be gone as we all know. Goodnight the good life—all gone out the door. Then you have got “Mr Somersault Whatever He Can”—Peter Dunne. He is gone. He is definitely out of here. I want you to see it because it is important. I hope it is on national TV so you get to know what is going to happen here shortly. Then you have got “My life is tough at the bottom” Te Ururoa Flavell—he is going to be gone. There is no way the Maori people are going to suck up to that Budget and let him get away with it. He is definitely going to be out of there. Then we have got the possum caught in the headlights John Banks—he is definitely gone. He is definitely on his way out. 
And this one is going to be very sad because this one is all about paradise lost—he will be gone. Sam Lotu-Iiga is going to be out of the way. I like you Sam but your party let you down and you should have paid more attention at Budget time.  
 Then you have got “I’ve had enough of this already.”—Tariana Turia. She is gone. She will not be able to take any more of this because this is embarrassing. It is embarrassing to be seen to be signing up to that sort of economic rubbish and hoping to win an election. 
But that is not all; you have got these ones here. These are on the list. This one here Melissa Lee is No. 34—hello Pyongyang. No more National Party now. Then you have got Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. Is there another corner dairy available? He will be on his way. There is no way he can last—not with a Budget like that. Then you have got Jian Yang. I hope there is a Chinese restaurant in Dominion Road still not taken up yet. But he is going be gone as well. Nice men but they are going to be gone. Then you have got Alfred Ngaro. No more “kia orana”. The man from the Cook Islands he is gone because that is what happens when you are careless about a Budget. Then you have got—if you have seen YouTube lately—“Miss South Carolina” Katrina Shanks. Have you seen the YouTube interview? She is gone. And then “Uncle Tom”—Tau Henare—needs a new job. He is definitely going to be gone. And the man with the unfortunate name—nice guy—from the West Coast called Chris Auchinvole. A very unfortunate name that. I will not say any more than that. And the last one is the ventriloquist’s dummy—Paul Goldsmith. He definitely is going to be gone. This man is definitely going to be gone. 
You see the point is they have not been paying attention. National is spending tens of millions of dollars dragging us into free-trade agreements that make New Zealand look like some sort of international knock shop. And in the meantime the exporters the manufacturers the provincial engine rooms of the economy are totally forgotten. Look today in the paper this is what this man said. He is hardly a New Zealand First or Labour supporter I do not think. The Chief Executive of the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association John Walley said he did not have high hopes. “Will it do much for growth no because the Government has resiled from changes to monetary and fiscal policy … We will see much more of the same widening current account deficits more borrowing and more pressure on the currency [and] lower returns to exporters.” All there in a nutshell. My advice to him is wake up and smell the coffee and go and vote New Zealand First. He has a chance here. 
Every month we lose a bit more of our manufacturing base. Every month another plant closes and more workers lose their jobs. This happens because our currency is way overvalued. It suits the speculators and currency traders—the sorts of John Keys of this world. He made his money in that sort of exploitative greedy corrupt environment and we all know it because Merrill Lynch had to be bailed out by the American taxpayer—as did the financiers and the overseas banks. This Government drools over mining in our conservation estate and it gets excited about fracking for oil or drilling in a pristine ocean setting but it will do nothing to keep one factory open or help one exporter earn one more dollar or keep one more job. Tough times are ahead. Dairy prices are falling. We are staring down the barrel of really hard times. The real people in heartland New Zealand did not create these problems but this Government is going to make them pay for it. 
You know advanced economies like Singapore Sweden Germany and Norway have two things in common. First of all they have high savings—far greater than 10 percent of their GDP. Also they also have great manufacturing bases—far greater than 25 percent of GDP. And we in New Zealand were once like that when we were one of the greatest countries on Earth. We had savings well above 14 percent. Today they are negative. We had manufacturing as a percentage of GDP at 30 percent. Today it has now dropped to 13 percent. There sits Bill English and the National Party front bench and John Key and they have got no idea what they are going to do about it. I mean you do not have to be a rocket scientist but I heard not one word about how they are going to redress these two critical factors to make us like those great countries. Once we were greater than all those countries. 
 We will never get rich again without tax policies that encourage high savings research and development and investment in productive plant assets that create high-margin exports and jobs. We will never get rich when we flog off our timber in its most raw state without any added value. We will never get rich with a fishing industry part-owned by the Japanese or using foreign rust buckets with poorly cared for kamikaze crews. We will never get rich with the great Marlborough wine industry like all the others up to 50 percent foreign-owned and getting worse. We will never get rich with a political party with its cling-ons who has learnt nothing from this disastrous experience. We will never get rich if we ignore the need for new Kiwi IT industries to bloom and grow in a sympathetic tax environment that keeps them here that also starts up the industry yet gives them reasons to stay. 
To be fair though this Government does one thing really well. The millions it spends on public relations spin-doctors consultants media manipulators and navel-gazers creates an appearance of normality where chaos prevails. It is spending $120 million just on selling these assets—$120 million just on selling these assets. I am looking at the press up in the gallery. There is not one person there who could not do the job for free. Make an application because I tell you this is exploitation of the very worst sort. And do you know what the $120 million is going to? In some cases to Aussie banks to give us independent advice about how we should sell the assets. We are going to give Aussie banks all these millions to give us independent advice about how to sell the assets. 
This is a rotten Budget. It contains all the putrid elements of 20 years of failure. It did not work in 1991-92 and it will not work 20 years later in 2012. But there was one great benefit from the 1991-92 Budget and do you know what it was? Well we booted the legs out of first past the post and we got MMP. There was one great benefit. We saw these people sell the party down the line—as Maurice and them all did. They could not wait to sell the party out and down the tubes they went. They went from the biggest victory ever in 1990 to 3 years later a hung Parliament and MMP. So there will be some good coming out of this and do you know what it is going to be? An early election. For 21 years the Minister of Finance has come to Parliament at great expense to the long-suffering people of Dipton and the rest of the taxpayers and guess what he has learnt? He has learnt absolutely nothing in all those years since Ruth gave that stupid Budget. 
But of course who else is in charge of this? Well “Mr Spray and Walk Away” himself. Someone who was headhunted by of all people Michelle Boag who was found to have tried to corrupt a commission of inquiry in this country. Well that did not stop her from going on to be the National Party president. She was caught red-handed trying to corrupt the wine-box inquiry and she headhunted him. How appropriate. He is a man who trained in principles and ethics and sharp business practice at Merrill Lynch an outfit engaging in every shonky business practice that almost collapsed the Western society and economies back in 2007-08. That is his background. I know that there are people in this country who think: “Well he’s wealthy; he must be good.” But how did he get his wealth? If you are one who salutes Merrill Lynch then frankly you have no idea how damaging it has been to Western society and to ordinary people’s lives to people who in the main have lost in many cases everything they ever had because of this greed. That is the fact of the matter. He is a man whose time is well up and an early exit now awaits him and his incompetent party because frankly this country wants leadership not someone who does this in this photo—minces and simpers around the country. He will not miss a photo opportunity for anything. He goes to the opening of an envelope. But when it comes to the tough issues he is never there. He is a man who has actually put on All Blacks gear and modelled it but then he got confused as to who had just won the Rugby World Cup so he ended up shaking hands with both the president and the captain at the same time. 
I say that their time is up because they have proven in their fourth Budget that they have not got any ideas to be of benefit to their people and the sooner they go—and I believe that it will be long before 2014 when this term of 3 years is up—the better for everyone concerned.