Peters Winston: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Peters Winston: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11864] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 It is all very well for Winston Peters to go on about it because he would be the only member of this Parliament excepting my colleagues who has a clean record on this issue. I am the only one. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Absolute nonsense. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: No we will not have that doctor from the academic circles of Auckland University come now and tell us his policy is different. That will not wash. We know what that party’s record is. If one looks at the  
Hansard 
 the parliamentary debates and the legislation it is all there. Today 73 percent of New Zealand wants a debate on this issue. Back in Orewa on 23 January this year Dr Brash said he wanted a debate giving the identical speech on the same platform that Jim Bolger made on 27 January 1990. 
Ron Mark 
: Orewa 2. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Orewa Mark 2. Dr Mapp says that it is ancient history. Oh I see. So the past is of no consequence particularly if it has an “h” word all over it! In Orewa Dr Brash said he had been asking questions about the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and could not get an answer. Well my challenge to the media is for them to do some work. They should show me his questions—show me one. 
Ron Mark 
: Not one. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Not one. But he made the claim anyway. Oh no! He reminds me of Chauncey Gardiner in that movie  
Being There. 
 For a while he was very popular. He became the President’s adviser by making statements like: “If you plant it Mr President and you water it it will grow.” For a while he got away with it until people realised that it was a whole lot of nothingness—like saying: “I’m going to fix up the treaty.” 
That is what I have demanded—so has my party and we do something about it in our party. We are for one franchise. There is the evidence. Where is that party’s evidence? Those members say they are for one franchise but where is the evidence that they mean to do anything about it? It is all talk. As John Wayne would say: “It’s one thing to walk out of a saloon and steal a man’s horse but it is a entirely something else to try to keep on it all the way out of town.” That is what will happen. They will not get away with it. 
Why does the National Party not attempt for the first time for a long time to put the country first? The mass majority of New Zealanders want a debate. In fact the National Party’s so-called voters in this last poll were split 50:50 in favour of a debate. The amusing thing was that the polls showed that just above half of the respondents—and barely that—supported Don Brash as the leader. Curious that. Could people be supporting Gerry Brownlee? I do not know. Could they be supporting Nick Smith? I do not know. But it is really quite alarming for National when it tries to reconcile that figure. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Irrelevance. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I will tell Dr Mapp what is relevant about it. How about we put the National Party’s record and my party’s record on the line? National members know what the consequence will be do they not? They will be exposed for things called hypocrisy and cant and they will not get away with it. I asked who passed the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. 
Darren Hughes 
: National did. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Of course it did. Do National members want to own up to it? No. Here they are hurling abuse at the Labour Party and that would be right were it not for the fact that they have—and had—the identical policy. When we asked today what National’s policy was now they did not have one. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Yes we have. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: No they have not. I heard Mr Brownlee say on 3ZB that the Waitangi Tribunal had no legal standing and I thought that was alarming. He does not even understand that— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: How big is the audience though if he is listening? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I was on the show. I thought it was alarming that the leadership of the National Party did not understand such a simple thing as that—it is not voluntary for the Government to follow the State-owned enterprise legislation on the Treaty of Waitangi and the tribunal—it is mandatory. If that is not a legal standing then what is? That is the kind of thing National is getting away with. 
My challenge to the New Zealand media is to stop pack-hunting and getting excited and to think long-term about how ridiculous it will look on election night 2005 when we say to them: “Sorry boys and girls we told you so—again.” and to get out of our face because we do not want to tell them what will happen tomorrow.