EMBARGOED AGAINST DELIVERY

Rt. Hon Winston Peters
Leader NZ First

Address: Public

Date: October 7 2011

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: Spencer on Byron
Takapuna

‘An Election where Values Matter’
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It’s a pleasure to be here supporting Andrew Williams, the last Mayor for the North Shore and former Belgium Trade Consul. He has the background and experience to be a seriously valuable member of Parliament. He’s up against someone from TVNZ’s Flower Show, and a peripatetic candidate for the ‘Let’s have some grass; this stuff is far out man’ Party.

By all reports the debate for the conclusion of Parliament this week was a circus. With just over seven weeks to go to the election the seriousness on New Zealand’s economic and social plight appears to have been side lined whilst, to use the RWC term, the protagonists started to ‘put the boot in’. Like all sports this event was hyped up the previous day when a person in the public gallery observing the debate tried to leap in to the political maelstrom himself. Whether that was support, opposition, or a commentary on the farce of these proceedings, we have not been told but the Prime Minister accused the Labour Party of organizing this attempted instant, abseil from the gallery rails. An indignant Labour Party met this outrage with a string of expletives questioning the Prime Minister’s genealogy.

However, close as we are to an election the euphoria of the Rugby World Cup seems to have dulled the political psyche in to thinking our performances on the field are matched by those off it. Which in itself is absurd. Whatever the outcome of the Rugby World Cup, New Zealand is right up there with the best. In contrast, if this was an Economic World Cup we would have long ago packed our bags and winged our way home with the minnows.

But the continuation of our economic plight need not be. We were once world leaders in economic and social policy and practice, a shining light for the rest of humanity and the level of our success was so great it confounded international commentators many of whom came to New Zealand to try and understand what was happening here with a people ten thousand miles removed from their markets, with an often difficult topography, a small population the size of Manchester, and yet delivering every modern service of a population the size of the UK. As Fred Dagg intoned back then, ‘we don’t know how lucky we are’.

That was then, this is now, and to use lines from that marvelous Scottish Anthem of the RWC, ‘But we can rise now, and be the Nation again’. You see New Zealand is despite unfortunate political failure still a great country. It has resources that Singaporeans and Taiwanese would die for. It has huge potential human capital reserves. It has the border security of being surrounded by water, and thousands of kilometers from any other country, a population with a sense of curiosity and acquisitiveness which if shaped with vision offers the prospect of political fulfillment.

For what is the serious business of politics, if it is not to improve and enhance the happiness of people. We were not set on this earth to live to work. Heaven knows New Zealanders are working the second longest hours in the OECD, only exceeded by Japan. We were set on this earth to work to live. To work and receive recompense to pay for an individual or a family to have a decent life. That includes being able to afford time for family and friends for human kind is a social species.

Which comes to the crux of the 2011 election. There’s little point in articulating policy after policy if there is no idea, dream, hope or vision of where it is all meant to take us. Endless debate will not spawn hope, futile argument does not prospect dreams becoming reality. But a vision and a plan can do that.

Here on a Friday night before the RWC quarter finals, and whilst not all are leather ball fanatics there are lessons for us to learn from this World Cup. Two standout examples already have been provided by small Pacific Nations. Samoa’s epic game against South Africa and Tonga’s stunning defeat of France served to remind us all what’s achievable when sound strategies are combined with commitment. Politics is after all a serious team game, in our case with just over four million players. Teams don’t win if half the players reject the game plan. And that goes for a nation. Which means we need at the end of this election a nationwide accord on values that matter for future success. There are of course a number of values that are critical for a country and for a nation’s success. If ignored, or neglected, a sense of pervasive despair can beset a nation.

Here is an example of New Zealand values again being ignored, outlined in just two media articles. The first is from the Sunday Star Times, October 2, heading ‘Aussie bankers target SOE sale’. It said’ Hopeful Australian bankers still angling for a gig in New Zealand Government’s privatisation process are packing for Wellington after the Treasury last week tapped a short list of contenders for the role of independent advisor to the $7 billion asset sell-off’.

Now two things will strike you depending on whether your penchant is comedy or farce.
First:
Between Labour and National they sold off over $17 billion of New Zealand assets. That begs the question: why do we need Ned Kelly’s descendants to advise us on a matter in which we are world experts, not at getting the best price, not at providing sound economic reasons for doing so, but because we’ve done it so often since 1984 we surely know something about it.
Second
We all know Treasury is often the department of stupid ideas. But who seriously believes that these Aussie Bankers would be independent, neutral and impartial in their advice to the Government?. This idea is so stupid it makes Hone Harawira sound like a genius.

And again another example from the media of values being ignored, Dom Post 4 October reporting on two major global credit rating agencies down grading New Zealand’s debt and currency ratings. The Dom Post reported ‘Mr Key thinks it’s OK because China has been growing strongly’. That in itself was flippant. He then said it was nothing to worry about. Finance Minister English, in a Ministerial funk, said the Credit Agencies ‘weren’t running New Zealand’. (Have we got news for him) But then he conceded there would be an impact with mortgage and interest rates going up and budget expenditure further squeezed. Given that the May budget was a work of fiction, or the new buzz word ‘hopeum’, this latest fall out is more bad news for all of us.

The Prime Minister and the Finance Minister’s response reminds one of the reaction of Samoan supporters after the Samoa v South Africa RWC game. A number of them wanted to hongi the President of the RWC by moving their head forward to his nose at a speed of 30 kilometers an hour. And like the Samoans who wanted to advice the Welsh referee, John Key and Bill English seriously thought of sending the rating agencies, Standard and Poors and Fitch, a tweet reading:
‘kiss me honey, honey kiss me’
And we all know where.

Who owns our assets is going to be a real issue in this election and Mr English unwittingly has dropped National in it. He said yesterday that stronger economic growth might make New Zealand’s current account deficit worse as company profits go overseas. In a stunning display of own goal, common sense versus ideological bias he said that the extent of foreign ownership of New Zealand companies means ’that when profits rise that has a negative impact on the deficit’ …..that ….’rising profits will contribute to a negative investment position as foreign owned firms take their profits overseas’.

That is why NZ First and its leadership has resolutely argued for New Zealand assets to be owned in New Zealand because it makes plain economic sense.

National wants to go on selling those assets to overseas interests even though the founders of that party, and the leaders of it when it was a great party, must be proverbially turning in their graves.

We have seven weeks to go to the triennial World Cup of politics - Election Day 2011. Much is at stake but New Zealand needs NZ First more than ever. On so many policies that we have articulated for years, the day of reckoning has come. New Zealand asset ownership, savings, exports, a stable currency, employment and opportunity and above all investment in our youth, on whose success we all depend, combined with one law for all – on these issues we have the record and we’ve never stopped proposing them.

So the message is in our name, New Zealand First, the promise is in our slogan, We Win, You Win.

We win, You Win, New Zealand Wins. Now let’s have a Mexican wave for that.

ENDS

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