Q + A

2015 Episode 1

WINSTON PETERS

Interviewed by CORIN DANN

CORIN Mr Peters joins me now. Good morning to you.

WINSTON Good morning.

CORIN John Key, on this programme a short time ago, said you haven’t got a show – you can't win this.

WINSTON Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

CORIN Why does he think that, do you think?

WINSTON He doesn’t think that. That’s why the National Party is panicking, because if you knew how many people in the National Party in the north have contacted us, then he would know it as well.

CORIN Who?

WINSTON Well, I’m not going to tell you who. We don’t have—

CORIN What, senior people?

WINSTON Senior people, yes. People who are long-time members of the National Party, right in the organisation itself.

CORIN Why do you think they want you?

WINSTON Well, look at the economic facts of Northland, all right. You’ve got the lowest number— proportion of wage and salary earners in the whole country. You’ve got half the schools are decile one and two. You’ve got the family income averaging at $51,000, when the national average is $72,000.

CORIN National says they have an infrastructure plan; they’ve got things going there. What have you managed to achieve in your career for Northland?

WINSTON Well, a lot of things, actually, but I’m not going to negotiate that right now.

CORIN Can you name some of them?

WINSTON Yes, I can tell you a lot of them that we’ve done up north, but here’s the real point—

CORIN Well, what are they?

WINSTON Okay, well, the first transfer of land back to a church for Maori was done by me. When you look at free medicines in schools and free medicine when you’re talking about under 6s and now under 13s, whose policy is that and who put it in place? We did. If you talk about money for roads, we were the party that made sure that every dollar collected for road tax went into roads.

CORIN You did those things in government, right?

WINSTON But what are they doing now with that money? Well, they’re building roads of national significance to get to Mr Key’s holiday home, but it doesn’t get to the Northland electorate at all.

CORIN But you did those things when you were in government, right?

WINSTON One more thing – you’ve got to know the facts here. You see, this by-election is costing $1 million. That’s more money than they’ve spent on new roads in Northland in the last six years.

CORIN Okay, but you did those things while you were in government. You’re not in government. What will you be able to do for Northland?

WINSTON With the greatest respect, KiwiSaver, KiwiBank and all those things are in place because—

CORIN But in the next three years, I’m talking about.

WINSTON No, we were in opposition when that happened. The Labour Government asked us to help them, and we did. We’ve got a record of performance, not just promises.

CORIN But they aren’t specific things for Northland.

WINSTON Well, with the greatest respect, you’re just being, how should I put it?

CORIN Difficult.

WINSTON Purposely difficult now, because I wasn’t representing Northland.

CORIN But that’s my job, Mr Peters.

WINSTON But give me a chance to do that for Northland as I did that for Tauranga. Not one free bridge; two free bridges. More roads there than you get on the alphabet. Now, that’s what we did for Tauranga, and we can do it for Northland as well, because Northland has been a forgotten Cinderella-ised province. It needs a voice, and we’re being asked to put our hand up and put it all on the line for Northland, and I intend to do just that.

CORIN My point is that if it’s a National MP, they are in government. They have the potential to influence policy, whereas you are not.

WINSTON Well, that sounds like a marvellous statement until you ask what happened in the last 40 years of doing that? Zero action, zero performance. We have the worst economic circumstances in many cases in the country in what should be the jewel in this country. We are the closest to our trading markets. We have a magnificent port up there that’s not being used, railway lines running down. All the facilities and infrastructure of Northland have been a story of neglect.

CORIN The government’s big strategy – one of them is - deep-sea mining, utilising the resources up there. Hugely controversial. We saw big protests at Waitangi every year protesting deep-sea mining. Will you support mining?

WINSTON You know what our position is. Before we talk about extraction, I want to know what my country, and second, Northland, gets out of it. Because our policy is to first find out what my country gets and then ensure that 25% of the value of those royalties goes where—

CORIN But that’s—

WINSTON No, no, hang on. This is important policy, because if you're going to have extraction up North, it’s not going to be determined by Wellington. 25% should go to the development of Northland. That's what Australia does. And here in this country you’ve got Wellington deciding everything and when that’s not happening, everybody’s arguing about Auckland. What about Northland?

CORIN Okay, but that’s an economic argument. You’re saying that if you could get the right royalties, fine. But what about the environmentalism? Because that’s the big concern.

WINSTON Look, we’re not talking about extraction at the moment. We're talking about exploration.

CORIN But do you have a problem with the environmental risks of mining?

WINSTON Well, no, I don’t. I take the Scandinavian view – that you can do these things, if you get the environmental side right, you can do both. And they are more green in Scandinavia than ever over here. They know you can do both. But the first thing Scandinavia wants to know is, which I want to know and which Northlanders want to know is what is in it for us? Before we make all these other decisions.

CORIN Just finally, Mr Peters, before we go, do you think you can win?

WINSTON We believe we can. The fact is the people up there, I believe, want to send the government a message, which goes simply like this – start paying attention to us. I’ll promise you this – if they vote for me on the 28th March, there’ll not be a serious issue in this country decided in Wellington without they ask what Northland thinks. That’s what I intend to give them in terms of a powerful voice.

CORIN New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, thank you very much.

END

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