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:11845] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I want to know when we will hear from the “great debater”. 
Dail Jones 
: Who is that? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: The person who challenged the Government to go on the  
Holmes 
 show tonight but who I have just been told when challenged himself would not front tonight. I said to the “great debater” that I would see him on the  
Holmes 
 show tonight about his track record—him and me—and that we would go back over his history. I want to know when the “great debater” will debate. 
John Carter 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. These debates are about the Crown’s accounts etc. They are nothing to do with who can or cannot debate and the member should come back to the matter for debate. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I have just got going! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member needs to come back to the point. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I have just heard from the associate— 
Hon Member 
: The deputy. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
:—deputy is he? Deputy what?—who talked about the current aspiration to be in the top half of the OECD. He talked about the need for a 4 percent growth rate and then forgot to tell us that last Wednesday the National Party announced its brilliant economic policy comprised of one thing alone: to reduce company tax from 33c to 30c. Somehow it will all go right. 
He forgot to mention that this leader of theirs the “great debater”—who will not debate who will not front the Chamber who appears 1 day in 3 who goes around stirring up apathy in the coffee bars Rotary clubs and tired audiences of this country—was a big supporter back in 1997 of the Labour Party’s then Minister of Finance Roger Douglas. Dr Brash said at the time of the proposed Kaimai by-election—because in the end there was not one but he was mooted as a candidate—that he thought it would have been very difficult for him to get up with a straight face and denounce what the Government was doing. 
In short Dr Brash’s solution for this country is the same appalling medicine but only more. He will shortly come out and make a comparison as he endeavoured to do on the day of the leaders’ debate between Australia’s growth of 35 percent more in real terms than ours since 1984 whilst denying that he was one of the key architects and supporters of the economic experiments that saw this country become—as the respected publication  
The Economist 
 of London stated in 2001—the first country to head to the Third World from the First World. He and his colleagues are responsible for that. 
I thought we would have heard from the “great debater” today not from some new chap who is a more recent MP than he is. Dr Brash had TVNZ and the  
Holmes 
 show trying to construct an image that he wanted to debate anyone when I know for a fact now that that was never the case. So my question to the National Party is: why is it not here today debating this very important portfolio of all portfolios? It cannot even front and that is outrageous. 
Where may I ask are the journalists—who are out there now with all this hype—who seem to make it their inevitable mission that New Zealand First and myself in particular have to make them look ridiculous every election night? They go out there and smash all their forecasts demonstrating the old English saying that the malady of the ignorant is to be ignorant without knowing it. Why are they not here today or do they know that the “great debater” is not going to debate? Unbelievable! 
Rt Hon Helen Clark 
: We’re all waiting. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Of course we are all waiting. Where is the press gallery? Well it does not matter any more either apparently—we just go with those polls. Let me tell members about polls. It is one thing to say: “We agree with you.”; it is something entirely different to say: “We are going to vote for you.” As the months unfold and we hear more and more of this blistering economic theory that will turn this country upside down—that will see the privatisation of health and educational institutions; that will see whatever State assets we have sold; that will see us become international global and at the behest of any international investor with all barriers removed; that will have us hearing that when we are 65 it is too early for superannuation and that it will come at 68 then at 70; when we hear what they did last time when Shipley was leader—then we will see a different poll. 
In the next 18 months we will have the chance to elucidate that but here is the point today: where oh where is that wonderful “great debater”—the new messiah of the National Party? He apparently is the person who fills halls with inspiration and drives women—and hardened men too—to tears but where is he? Well if ever I saw a stuffed-shirt affair I saw it today.