Peters Winston: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Peters Winston: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 29 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7516. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I have no confidence in the Government for the following obvious reasons: first the interests of New Zealanders are repeatedly being ignored in favour of foreign big business; second all this Government offers young people is reduced pay and a lifetime overseas; third valuable State assets are being sold at bargain prices to overseas buyers; fourth unemployment is reaching crisis levels and little is being done; fifth the balance of payments is deep in deficit and the Government will not act; sixth the exchange rate is crippling exporters and manufacturers and again the Government refuses to act; and last the Government is dividing our nation between Maori and non-Maori by separatist policies it swore never to introduce in this country. 
 Sometimes we have the privilege of watching a great political event unfold. Sometimes we hear speakers inspire us with great vision. Sometimes a great leader shows us the way to a better and brighter future for our country. Sadly we missed out on all three today. It is no use flapping your hands around like a penguin Mr Prime Minister; the fact is that was a boring useless speech and we all know it. We all know it. The best part of the Prime Minister’s speech today was when he sat down. That was the very best part of that speech. The rest of it consisted of the same old same old neo-liberal free-market pixie dust. It sounded like he wrote it in the shower or in Antarctica or somewhere like that. 
The philosophy behind it goes something like this: one flog off the country to overseas investors; two create a currency speculators’ paradise; three change the labour laws again to kick the workers in the guts; four cut Government services; five starve the regions; six subsidise overseas businesses like Warner Bros and ignore chances to keep New Zealand enterprises going back home; and seven when in doubt build another motorway. 
New Zealanders’ great leaders were once people of vision. They did not spend their lives gazing into a computer screen. They did not spend their young lives betting against their country’s currency so that they themselves could become wealthy. They surrounded themselves with like-minded individuals. They wanted to make life better for their people. Their vision was of an independent nation making its own way in the world using its own New Zealand resources with educated and skilled New Zealanders who could expect some sort of fulfilment and satisfaction and they went on to create the greatest country on earth—all in the lifetime of some of us. We led the world with our social justice our care of the young and the old and the guiding principle was that simple expression that we have to give them a fair go. That noble concept of a fair go for all was the first casualty of the neo-liberal practice by the political neanderthals who have polluted this country politically since 1984. I know that Mr Banks might laugh because those words are rather large. “Neanderthal” is not a race and it is not a tribe. “Neo-liberal” is a political expression. Of course he leads the ACT Party and he does not even know what “neo-liberal” means. He leads the ACT Party and he knows nothing about right-wing economics or anything at all which surely is a recipe for disaster. 
What we have now is a Government that governs by photo opportunities sound bites and spin-doctoring. Seldom in our history has a Government assumed such an air of lofty arrogance— 
Hon Member 
: Conceit! 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: —in such a such time. Conceit vanity big-headedness—in more ways than one. There is no engine room of ideas no policies no plans or perceptions. As I travel around New Zealand more and more National people say to me: “What is this Government going to do about this?” and I say: “I don’t know but you voted for them.” They say: “But I won’t next time.” and those numbers are becoming legion to use an expression from the Bible. They are growing every day and that is why some of those—[ 
Interruption 
] Oh no no no. Listen lads. I know a bit about this business. I know what it is like to sit back there and be fooled by so-called leadership and in your case what you are going to see—[ 
Interruption 
] Oh the north. Is it not amazing? Northland. Why is Northland being led in the main from the National Party by such no-name do-nothing MPs? The whole province. What has that man up there done for Northland? Nothing. He was meant to attack the drug culture; it is getting worse. What has that man over there who was a Minister done for Northland? Nothing. But then again John Banks was there for years and what did he do for Whangarei and Northland? Zero. The province that should be at the heartland of this country is looking so backward because they made the fatal mistake of voting for incompetent MPs. But my message to them certainly is when we open our office in Whangarei next Monday to hang on up there because help is on its way. There is no doubt about that. We know where our support base is building. 
But back to the main theme of today: sound bites spin-doctoring lofty arrogance. The Prime Minister who is supposed to be a smart guy cannot understand the single biggest problem this country faces—that is we cannot earn enough money to make our way in the world because our currency is massively overvalued. It is out of control and every exporter and manufacturer knows this. The world’s best-performing economies know this. But here we have an original thinker in guess who Steven Joyce proclaiming that—and he was quoted as saying this yesterday—“He feels the currency will come down a bit.”—he feels the currency will come down a bit. There is no science no analysis and no research. Oh it is just a gut feeling. He said it is “a fool’s paradise” to intervene in the exchange rate. 
See this chart I am holding up? This is a chart of export profitability. See that? See how it goes down that way? See how it went that way? This is a chart that Mr Steven Joyce and his colleagues should look at because if you look at this chart it is the mirror image in reverse of the currency exchange in this country. The very peaks are troughs on the other side the very troughs are peaks on the other side and all against one group of people—New Zealanders Kiwis. I refer those backbenchers over there whose political future depends on this understanding to these two charts. There is the currency and here—[ 
Interruption 
] They are both up the right way. [ 
Interruption 
] Oh a very good question from the National Party backbencher from Kaikoura. He wants to know which chart is up the right way. Neither sunshine! Neither is the right way. Oh how sad. And he is from a farming background. Every farmer with about 500 cows knows he is losing $138000 a year because of an inflated currency. That man represents them. He does not understand diddly-squat. 
These charts paint a stark picture. That is export profitability and there is the US dollar exchange rate. It is clear: as the exchange rate goes up our earnings as a country go down. Yet we had Mr Joyce yesterday dismissing leaders of the manufacturing and export sector who had testified to the damage that a chronically overvalued dollar is causing. He just wrote them off. Who has credibility? The serious people who are actually running a business in a highly competitive world or a Minister out of ideas but who is too arrogant to consider he may be wrong? We need policies for this decade not policies stuck in the 1990s. Who has credibility? 
Mr Steven Joyce poses as a self-made millionaire but every morning he rises he points his head towards not Mecca but Pakuranga and he goes down on his knees and he thanks a man called Maurice Williamson who in the early 1990s was Minister of Broadcasting and under a Vickrey sales process gave him literally broadcasting licence after broadcasting licence for a pittance. Mr Joyce bid the highest bid but under Mr Williamson’s programme he was required to pay only the second-highest bidder’s bid. Do you like that? Do you like that? So he bids $1 million for the licence Mr Banks bids $100000 for the licence and I bid say $50000. Mr Joyce in this case gets the bid because he had the highest bid but he pays Mr Banks’ bid of $100000. What do you call that? It is a rort and that is how he became this extraordinarily wealthy self-made man who now knows all about exports too because apparently he is in exporting. We know what he is exporting: people. It is high time he got off his high horse. We know he has got a big head but this is no place to pose around here. 
Hon Steven Joyce 
: 30 years in here and doesn’t do a thing. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: This is no place to pose around here. Oh yes and 30 years gives me one thing over you Mr Joyce and it is a thing called experience and judgment. That is why you will be gone shortly. At the very first time you fly the white flag you are gone because you cannot even win a seat. You never could. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! The Speaker may well be gone but the member should not refer to it. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Well in that case you will both be gone. Where does the National Party find these people? 
We in New Zealand First do not accept defeat. Mr Key and his colleagues are strangling our manufacturers and exporters. Mr Key and his colleagues are sentencing them to commercial extinction with a massively overvalued dollar. All manner of experts from the IMF downwards confirm this. But no Mr Key and Mr Joyce know better. Well Mr Key’s Government is about working for currency speculators. It is not working for real New Zealanders. This is a Government of currency speculators by currency speculators for currency speculators. Our Reserve Bank bill will be back shortly for another rerun. We lost by one vote last year but it is more relevant every day now—every day now. This is an export-dependent nation and we have been that since 1882. Sooner or later those people out in the provinces are going to come round to understanding that this is now or never and for the National Party it will be never. I make this very very clear: there will be no Government after the next election when it flies the white flag that does not go along with this plan to deal to our massively overvalued dollar. By that time provincial New Zealand will get a chance. Workers will get a chance. They will have a future in our country because we will be back creating wealth in New Zealand. 
You know in the halcyon days when we were No. 1 in the world manufacturing in this country was over 30 percent of our GDP. What is it today? It is less than 13 percent and falling. And all of that means no hope or future for young New Zealanders. This speech could have been written by the National Party 40 years ago by people like Holyoake and Holland when we were No. 1 in the world. But no no this new bunch that have come along understand nothing about economics of course. They just read about it; they do not know anything about how it works. That is why Mr Banks can laugh while he is in a Government that has borrowed more money than all the other Governments in history altogether—borrowed more money than every other Government altogether. 
There he lies back lounging in his chair. There he is “Mr In Charge of Everything”. He will not be fixing up Novopay either I tell you now. He will not be fixing up Novopay. What he will do is sack them if he has got any brains and give a New Zealand enterprise the chance. Mark my words: he will fire them because they are incompetent. I have seen this before. Who was it who ended up having to fix up the computer programme called INCIS? Remember? Same thing—another blunder. Same policy—no plan. That is what is going to happen with Novopay. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Same party. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Same party. We know there are nervous Nellies amongst National’s backbenchers. Some of them are from the provincial regions. Take the guys from for example Southland. There is Southland with less than 3 percent of the population and more than 18 percent of the exports and National MPs everywhere and how wealthy is Southland? It is down at the bottom of the heap in this country. How could your most wealthy per capita people from the provinces from heartland National be at the bottom of the heap? Answer that question if you are from down there. I know that the man from Dipton does not know because he has not been there for a long time. The man from Dipton lives in Wellington of course. He has totally forgotten about the south. But there are other Southland members. How do you explain your most wealthy per capita people whom we desperately need in our country being at the bottom of the economic heap? It should not be. Who is at the top of the heap? Oh all National’s friends in Wellington Central and Auckland Central who do not export anything. That is a fact. The highest per capita earners the ones who create the wealth are getting the rawest deal at the bottom. We are going to fix that. Our message to them very shortly is to line up this time—help is on its way. But it goes like this: vote first reward second—vote first reward second. 
Oh and one other thing: Mr Key recites the global financial crisis. You know how he states “global” financial crisis? It was never a global financial crisis. It is a Western financial crisis and someone in this House knows more about it than anybody else and his name is John Key. Because he used to know all those guys and he used to work for them and he knows about the malfeasance and malpractice that led the Western economies to the very brink of collapse. Does he own up to it? Do you know what he actually said in the House? Excuse the language but he said: “Oh when I worked for them they were a bloody good business.” That was what he said in this House. It is in the  
Hansard 
. Good business? When the darn global financial crisis that he refers to—but actually the Western financial crisis—all the Wall Street trickery was exposed who was No. 5 to go belly up and require the American taxpayers’ bailout? An outfit called Merrill Lynch. I know that there are some people in the gallery who think that wealth means goodness that wealth means morality that wealth means talent but some of us know better. Often all wealth means is hedonistic greed and sating one’s own interest at the expense of the country. Well whatever was wrong with New Zealand First no one over here has ever spent part of his career investing against his nation against his nation’s interest— 
Maggie Barry 
: Not Brendan Horan anyway. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: —and very very proud of it. Oh leave out the flower power girl at the back! I mean if there is a disappointment it is that North Shore keeps sending people here who cannot hold a candle to George Gair. They keep on sending nondescript people who look good on paper but cannot perform in this House. They have not got the skill the talent or the sheer resolve commitment aspirations and dreams to make good MPs. Just because you have a flower show does not make you fit for Parliament. 
But back to my main point. We are not here just to criticise. We are here to support policies that are good for this country—that are good for this country. Let me just say this. You know right now in Auckland—and I will give you an example of what is going wrong—I know real estate agents who have told me of foreigners coming in and buying houses sight unseen as investments. It is all a fact. But of course the man from MediaWorks will not mind that because that is what he likes. He thinks all money is good. He thinks all money from overseas represents a thing called foreign investment. He does not know what a corporate raid from abroad looks like. He thinks it is all good because somehow the money goes somewhere. Except that anybody in this world who understands reality knows that ownership of money is what matters and the benefit from that money should be the people’s benefit not just for the few and the very few—or as I say these tarred tawdry tired over-mighty subjects who spend so much time in the National Party’s pocket sad to say. 
 There are people who wish to say that the age of this country’s population means we have got to put up the retirement age. Do you know what the cost is net of GDP for retirement in New Zealand at the moment—for national superannuation? It is 3.7 percent. Is that unaffordable? No it is not. All the countries abroad that are facing the so-called similar problem are facing 8 9 or 10 percent. Ours is 3.7 percent and it is a myth to say we cannot afford it. But what we cannot afford is an incompetent Government that cannot create enough wealth. That is what our problem is. It is not what we are spending on our elderly people or young people or sick people; it is that the Government simply cannot create because of its incompetent policies the wealth that once used to be our legacy and made us No. 1 in the world. National is a shadow of the party that it once was. But it is no surprise because if you go overseas if you choose two different people one being Mr Key and one back here called Don Brash what will be the result? What will be the result? Well one was a total disaster and this one will be a disaster very shortly. 
The last thing I want to say is this. If this country continues going down the road of a constitutional review based on a constitution where the cornerstone will be the Treaty of Waitangi despite all the warnings by famous Maori like Apirana Ngata and others—if this country goes down that road—then two things will have happened. The National Party and the ACT Party will have totally betrayed the constituency out there whom they promised never to do that to and the second thing is that this country will have no future if we are going to go down this separatist path and not understand the basic things that every New Zealander needs whatever they be whatever their background their history or their ethnic make-up. It is first of all decent housing a decent education programme for their young a decent health system should they get sick and the last of all a decent job with the best of First World wages. Those four things are what Maori want and in fact they are what everybody wants.