Winston Peters Speech: Learning To Say “No”

10am, Tuesday March 22, Victoria University.

As you will have noticed there's an election later this year and a general election means more politics!

That's even more politics than now.

After all politics is involved in all facets of your life.

In a room this size there are almost as many political opinions as people.

There are politics in families. You should have been at the meal table when I was growing up. We had a big family and there were a lot of different opinions.

To keep some sort of control over the eleven of us our parents had to practice what is now called “tough love”.

One of the principles of tough love is learning to say NO when faced with temptation.

So this speech to you today is called “Learning To Say No” and we will address this principle so you avoid the temptation of saying yes when no is the right answer.

As you are probably aware the government has a number of obsessions.

It's obsessed with New Zealand First – and we are not even in parliament – although we are most certainly working on it.

An obsession is defined as an unwelcome and persistent idea, thought, image or emotion that a person cannot help thinking even though it creates significant distress or anxiety.

And the government is getting very anxious.

If you remember when the Prime Minister announced the election date he said he would not go with New Zealand First or Winston Peters.

He did not say he would not go with Labour, the Greens, Act, or the Maori Party.

New Zealand First was the only party singled out.

And wny? It is because we have learned to say NO.

This is what we have learned to say NO to:

State Asset Sales

We learned through the experieces of the mid 80's to mid 90's that a country in a parlous economic position must never sell the state assets created by generations of taxpayers.

It is the most basic and commonsense principle of economic governance.

Dismiss out of hand what the neo liberals preach on campus.

When it comes to economic commonsense they are neanderthals.

If you own a market garden and you get into financial difficulty do you sell your tractor or rotary hoe?

Or your vegetable stall at the gate? Or worse, some of your land?

Of course you don’t!

What happens when next you need a sustainable income?

You end up with nothing, no income and no job, and probably nowhere to live as well.

The government is planning to sell some state assets after the election.

It's talking about selling shares in some state owned enterprises like power stations.

There are other assets with “for sale” signs but just think for a moment about how dumb it is for any country to sell off its only renewable sources of energy.

Make no mistake.

If our power stations are part of a public share float they will soon end up owned overseas.

Even treasury has warned the government of that.

Owned probably by China because China is one of the few countries that are in the black.

Why are they in the black?

Because they are a one party state with a planned economy, a strictly controlled workforce and a forest of factories handed over by industrial leaders in the West.

They've gone to China because manufacturing is cheaper when the workers get paid a few dollars and a bowl of rice a day.

So why would we hand over our energy generating resources?

Between 1984 and 1996 Labour and National governments privatised or sold off huge chunks of state owned assets.

A major analysis of privatisation in both New Zealand and Australia revealed that these moves ........”:have significantly increased share market capitalisation and have impacted on market liquidity.

In general, anyone investing in privatised companies' portfolios could have received higher returns than investing in an aggregate market portfolio.”

This means that buying privatised companies formerly taxpayer owned is a better deal than buying private companies.

It's because they are usually sold by governments to their mates for a song.

And that is what so often happened in the 80’s and 90’s

If you want to look at the source of this analysis send an email to info@winstonpeters.com and we will send you the URL.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1640653&show=abstract

It would also be an interesting exercise for you to go back through the accounts of Telecom sold by Labour in 1990.

The Labour government of the time said (and this will interest you) that the money from the sale of Telecom would be spent on items such as education.

To that we say a resounding “Yeah Right”!

The foreign owners of Telecom have creamed it for more than twenty years.

Look at their annual profits over the past 20 years and the return on the original investment.

Telecom's problem at the time was investment in new technology.

Instead of the government investing in that technology it sold Telecom.

Our major communications system went offshore. Now how smart was that?

And of course Telecom has got rid of as many New Zealand jobs as it could.

It's called outsourcing and if you contact Telecom it's very likely you'll be talking direct to someone called George in the Philippines.

So NO to asset sales.

Sales Of Farmland

We must also say NO to sales of New Zealand farmland to foreign owners.

History is littered with tales of landless misery.

People who do not own their own land quickly become peasants.

There is a worldwide shortage of food.

New Zealand is an economical producer of high quality food.

So why on earth are we even considering the sale of more land to overseas interests.

Interests in China have already purchased a dairy processing plant here and are seeking others.

Under the Free Trade Agreement with China – which New Zealand First opposed – China can use its own workers in the companies it sets up here.

Is that a great idea?

Can you imagine the owners wanting to pay their workers the award rates and conditions given to New Zealand workers?

Of course not.

And that brings me to another issue we should say no to.

Race Based Politics

We are a small country.

Like many others we went through a process of colonisation by the British.

They beat the French to it. (Thank God most of us would say!)

Although our history has incidents that reflect badly on the colonisers, they British were saintly compared to other European nations, like the Spanish in South America.

In the main the people of British descent and Maori learned to get along with each other.

They were a bit like a couple in a difficult relationship but they tried to make it work.

As a nation, we have always tried hard to avoid discrimination on racial grounds.

Therefore we watched the emergence of the Maori Party with some regret, especially as it was based on the false premise of ownership of the foreshore and seabed out to the 200 mile limit.

Maori historically did not regard themselves as “owners” of the foreshore and seabed.

To them it was a source of food – not property.

The Crown is the real owner of this and it holds it in trust for all New Zealanders.

The real danger of race-based politics is that it leads to separatism.

If you look back a few weeks at the Botany by-election the New Citizen party received the third highest vote.

This was a political party set up in, a well known NZ city, Beijing, to contest a seat in a democracy.

Just imagine how far you would get setting up a political party in China!

So first we had the Maori Party, next the Chinese Party in disguise. And what after that?

The Indian Party? The Turkish Party? The Dutch Party? The Korean Party?

This is a very slippery slope to nowhere.

The last thing we need is a bunch of warring factions fighting for our resources.

Just look at the Balkans and the Middle East.

The changing face of our society and what is at stake.

In a very insightful recent article, March 18, in the Dom Post, Chris Trotter pointed out the results of recent political changes over thirty years in the United States

He wrote that since 1980 the elites in America, that is the wealthiest Americans, share of pre tax household income leapt from 9% to a staggering 20%.

Today, the top 1% of American households commands the same share of pre tax income, 20%, as 1929, the first year of the great depression

How they came to do that is a separate study in itself but the result was to collapse very quickly social equity in that country.

Cloaking their policies in the respectability of their national flag, the American elite set out on a campaign of deregulation, privatization and union busting, attacks on the independence of universities and then a takeover of the news media.

Hitherto unacceptable policies were sold as necessity using the TINA principle – there is no alternative.

They’ve even gone as far as to characterise “global warning as a socialist plot to redistribute wealth”.

The hypocrisy of that approach of course is easily discernable in that this phenomenon is now to be dealt with through an ETS – The Emission Trading Scheme, where the world’s response, as in NZ, is to be handled by a market trading scheme.

Have a guess as to who is clipping the ticket here.

You’ve guessed it - the elites.

In NZ the recent degree of inequity is not much different.

Remember Mr. Key recently introduced tax cuts that he said were fiscally neutral – which means no more money was to be collected, and yet everyone was to be better off.

Now if a Cabinet Minister gets $300 extra a week and the head of Westpac, over $5000 extra a week then someone has to pay.

The statement was an oxymoron and yet regrettably how seldom has it been challenged.

These tax cuts were accompanied by a tax increase of GST to 15%

The rich got more and the rest got less.

We were once in terms per capita, or per person income, the wealthiest nation of any size in the world.

Today, we’re about 30th and falling and it happened in just over 30 years.

That’s what’s at stake.

To end I would like to quote a senior citizen.

That great Republican philosopher, Montgomery Burns – the loathed owner of Springfield's atomic power plant and employer of Homer Simpson.

He said and I quote “This anonymous clan of slack jawed troglodytes has cost me the election and yet if I were to have them killed I would be the one to go to jail.

That's democracy for you!”

Good luck with your studies this year and best wishes for the future!

This country is certainly going to need you.

ENDS

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