Peters Winston: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionPeters Winston: Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:47. Text is subject to correction.]Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): You see what happened there was that a rubber-stamp expert from the National Party got up made a challenge and when asked to yield would not do so. There is the member from Waitaki who has been in Parliament for 5 minutes and knows nothing about the legal circumstances behind this legislation the Kaipara District Council (Validation of Rates and Other Matters) Bill; knows nothing about the transactions that belie the truth in this matter; knows nothing about the people who put together the scheme; knows nothing about the engineers; and knows nothing about who jacked it all up. She needs to explain to the people of Kaipara—all the people—and of Dargaville the far north and Whangarei because if there is to be a unitary authority sooner or later this massive debt will visit them and they will not be able to cauterise it in the way that this new young backbench member sponsoring the bill Mike Sabin says. Those members do not know what they are talking about.Can I ask the member this—can I ask the member this. When the Bank of Scotland went down—Jacqui Dean: What are you going to do?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Listen. When the Bank of Scotland went down—I am going to ask this expert member from Timaru—what was the size of the encumbrance? She does not know. See? There she is. I asked her. She was on the Local Government and Environment Committee apparently. I asked her: when the Bank of Scotland went belly up what was its encumbrance? She does not know. She cannot explain it. I know what it is now. It is heading past $82 million. She cannot explain that. What for example was the rebate that the ANZ bank—Mike Sabin: Why doesn’t the member explain that if he cares so much about Northland he could have taken 1 minute to come and talk to me?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No Mr Sabin you had countless opportunities to explain to the country what the bill is all about. Mr Sabin had countless—Jacqui Dean: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The member who has got to his feet does not seem to understand that this bill is called the Kaipara District Council bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No that is not a point of order. That is a debating point.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Unfortunately for that naive member I have lived in Northland. My roots go back a thousand years not just a few decades. They go back athousand years and it is arrogance of the worst sort that up she jumps from Waitaki—she never even made the first European boat—and she challenges my background in the north.Mike Sabin: Why not give the sponsoring member 1 minute to talk about it if he goes back a thousand years?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Mr Sabin of course is so excited that he is not prepared to hear any debate at all. Mr Sabin is in charge of this bill. He knows that he has lumbered his people with an absolute lemon—a total lemon. Mr Sabin what do you know about business?Mike Sabin: Explain why that is.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Explain to me why the ANZ bank—Mike Sabin: Explain why it’s an absolute lemon.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No listen—just answer some questions. I have got the answers for you if you will but shut up and listen. If you want to learn something just keep quiet. Mr Sabin is hallucinating here and frothing up and lathering up because he knows how embarrassing this is up north.Let me ask you this. The ANZ bank heard from the receivers of the Bank of Scotland that it had this encumbrance and the receivers were prepared to sell it. Did the ANZ bank do any due diligence? The ANZ bank having got this encumbrance for a 40 percent discount still has the same debt but discounted by 40 percent. That is massive. You would think it would have done its due diligence would you not? And you would think also that the BNZ which helped share this debt also did its due diligence.Mike Sabin: Talk to the House about protected transactions.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I do not have to talk to turkeys like you to understand business. I am the man who disclosed the wine box. I am the man who exposed the BNZ. I am the man who exposed the BNZ the wine box—I know how business works. What is your record?Mike Sabin: How do protected transactions work?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: See? There he goes.Denis O’Rourke: He hasn’t got a record.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: He has got no record at all. Apart from getting the odd hoon in downtown Dargaville as a policeman he has got no record at all. I am talking about serious business transactions that are required to be explained to the people of Kaipara. You know here was an operation to be built for the good citizens of Mangawhai. You know I have never seen anything anywhere in the world like what the council put up to be paid for by the people of Mangawhai and Kaipara. This is a B-O-O-T which took only 6 years from start to finish.Hon Michael Woodhouse: A what?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It is a build—oh do you know what he said the smart man from Dunedin? The man is a new Minister and he does not know what a BOOT is. Well shortly next year he will get the boot and he will find out what its other ramifications are. BOOT is abuild-own-operate-transfer. Oh they built it but they never got to own it properly and they never got to operate it properly but what they did manage to do—[Interruption]—I say for the screaming lunatic from Kaipara was to transfer it to the ratepayers of Kaipara District Council.SeeI know when someone is nervous. I know when someone is nervous. Me thinks he doth protest too much. He doth protest too ignorantly. He doth protest far too ignorantly because if he was confident and relaxed about his colleagues’ views he would not get so hysterical. But today he is hearing some facts he did not know. Unlike him my job is not to organise a conspiracy against the ratepayers or the taxpayers. My job is to uncover it and we have and we will. I want to know why you are lumbering allthe citizens of the north—because if there is a unified council they will all wear it in time. You can forget the idea of a unified council because Whangarei is never going to wear the far north the mid-north and anything else and pay for it—not now. Let me tell you Mr Sabin what your job is. Your job is not to flash around town. Your job is not to flash around the north as a one-trick pony.Mike Sabin: One person I won’t listen to about how to do my job is that person there—Winston Peters.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not mind interjections. You know me; I can handle them. But I do think two speeches at the same time should not be allowed. Could you tell him—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No.Tim Macindoe: Point of order—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No the member will sit. I am listening very closely. It is a robust debate. There are some interjections across the floor. I am listening very carefully. As long as I can hear the member that is fine.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well that is by far the most important thing. I can tell you that only by our gracious providence is the rest of the country hearing what I have got to say because Mr Sabin has gone off his head today. He is so embarrassed to be walking in here and sponsoring a bill that when you look at it with close examination and having been properly briefed and seriously briefed as I have been by far better minds than his—Tim Macindoe: The member doesn’t know what’s in the bill.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —and far better brains than that man who used to teach at St Peter’s ever had. All he might know about is the seventh form; he knows nothing about business. That is why he lines up like the rubber-stamp merchants they all are—all these backbenchers—and whenever the Minister says something they say “Yes sir. Yes sir. Three bags full. Yes sir.”Maggie Barry: Oh and your lot don’t? “Jump how high Winston?”.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Here comes the No. 1 rubber-stamp merchant with the most uncultured voice I have ever heard. She will never be a Minister.Maggie Barry: “Yap yap!”Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No “Yap yap!” is your speciality.Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This rant has been nothing but abusive. It is totally irrelevant and I ask you to bring the member to relevance to the bill which I do not think he has read. He certainly does not understand it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I hear what the member is saying. I just ask that the member be very mindful about personal attacks on people. A member can take objection to what is being said so keep it seemly. It is a robust debate. I am listening very carefully to the content. We have got 2 minutes remaining.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: You are precisely right. You see the last member who got up and spoke spent all her time abusing a member of Parliament—namely me—and now she is getting a reply based on facts and substance and she cannot handle it and nor can her colleagues. [Interruption] Can you answer me this question. Why for 5 years were the accounts never tagged—why for 5 years were the accounts never tagged? Why do we need a full-scale inquiry about that? For goodness’ sake! You are a select committee. Get the auditors in and ask them: “How do you possibly explain yourselves? Because frankly if you can’t you wear part of this debt.”The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! I am not part of this debate.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well I—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No you brought me in.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Your experience Mr Assistant Speaker has been in business evaluations. You would never make this appalling mistake.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No don’t bring me into the debate—don’t bring me into the debate.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I do not want to bring you into it Mr Assistant Speaker but then again you came here with experience. They did not. They are naive in the extreme.Here is my point. The second question I want to ask the banks is: tell me just how long and thorough your due diligence process was. Because if it was not long and thorough why on earth am I passing legislation to save your financial skin?I am sick and tired of this going on. These banks rip people off. They make massive profits. The ANZ and BNZ have in times of 1 percent growth made 50 percent in annualised profits each a year and—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Don’t become a profit hater.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh of course you cannot mention the banks because that is where the money comes from for the National Party’s campaign. You see what I mean? Everything is conflicted.The last thing I want to say to Mr Sabin is that you owe the people of Kaipara more than this. You owe the people of Mangawhai more than this. You owe the people of Mangawhai a full-scale exposure of what happened here. I think—Mike Sabin: If the member had taken just—Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No no there is no use shouting out to me because I am going to get on the road to Dargaville I am going to go to Kaiwaka I am going to go to Mangawhai and I am going to go to every little town and tell them what their local member will not do for them. Then I will tell them what a great party will do—that is expose this sort of underhand financial dealing that ends up costing the good citizens of Kaipara a pretty packet—and no sewerage as well.