Rt Hon Winston Peters

New Zealand First Leader

Member of Parliament for Northland

14 SEPTEMBER 2017

Dunedin Public meeting

Thursday 14 September, 2017,

1.15pm

Fullwood Room,

Dunedin Centre,

1 Harrop Street, Dunedin.

After the election the old parties will forget you – we won’t

Full inquiry into MP Yang called for

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since New Zealand First’s winter bus tour.

The two old parties have rolled into town and tried to buy you off.

Both have put their weight behind a new hospital for Dunedin.

National want to co-fund it with the private sector so private investors profit at the expense of patient care.

That doesn’t matter to National.

They expect a new hospital will be enough to get your votes.

So does Labour.

Just to sweeten things hitherto “Skinflint Bill” has found some money to redevelop a couple of schools here as well.

Both Labour and National remember Otago when a general election is coming up.

Then once the election is over, that’s it.

“We’re outta here,” they say and it’s over the Waitaki and up to Wellington and Auckland where they want to be.

And they forget about you all over again – until the next general election.

It will be no different this time.

After September 23 it will be back to the “same old”.

Dunedin hanging on

Dunedin is hanging on while jobs steadily go down the gurgler with the drift north flowing on.

This year you’ve had the Cadbury closure and 350 jobs gone; an axe is now hovering over jobs at Otago University.

Dunedin has received a raw deal from central government.

Look at the Hillside workshops – once one of the biggest employers in this city.

In June 2005, former Prime Minister Helen Clark visited the workshops and congratulated staff on helping solve Auckland's congestion problems.

She praised the work of more than 200 staff in refurbishing rail carriages for the Auckland Regional Transport Authorities to an ''unbelievable'' standard.

But in 2012 KiwiRail awarded an estimated $29 million manufacturing contract to a Chinese company to build the first 300 of 3000 container flat-deck wagons.

That was the killer blow.

The workshops shut down. Skilled jobs were lost jobs.

Workers left for Australia.

Now the government tells you we have to import skilled workers because we’re not training our own people here.

They say we’ve got to get skilled workers from countries like India and the Philippines to plug the gaps.

At the same time we have 139,000 unemployed and more than 90,000 young New Zealanders not in work, education or training.

It doesn’t make sense.

It’s all Auckland

And contrast the miserable treatment Dunedin receives from central government to Auckland.

Look at all the sweeteners and promises the old parties have made for Auckland in this election campaign.

There’s no end of it – roads, highways, housing developments, light rail.

National says they’ll give millions to keep teachers in Auckland and build new schools there.

Billions and billions of dollars in promises for Auckland.

Dunedin, meanwhile, has been treated like the regions - ignored, forgotten, neglected and taken for granted.

Policies to stimulate Otago’s economy

New Zealand First has not forgotten you or the regions.

We know if the wider region of Otago prospers, so too will Dunedin.

To stimulate Dunedin, we must stimulate the economy of Otago.

We will increase investment in our regions where much of our wealth is generated and in training our young people there.

This includes:

· Reforming the Reserve Bank Act to make our exporting more competitive
· A wage subsidy for small businesses that take on job seekers and provide work experience.
· Real incentives for small businesses to help disengaged youth become work ready and support mature job seekers back into work.
· Reducing business and exporter taxation rates.
· Immediate Tax deduction for professional expenses when starting a business.
· Streamlining business registration for those planning to start a business

We will return the GST paid by international tourists in Dunedin and Otago back here for infrastructure and roads, and to stimulate job training and opportunities.

We will return Royalties to the Regions and support businesses with a tax regime that enables them to grow and to pay better wages.

These are realistic policies.

Out of increased productivity and wealth for Dunedin and Otago we will then be able to fund those extravagant promises the old parties are talking about solving:

Housing, family poverty, decent healthcare.

Water

Water is a major issue in this election

Labour stole New Zealand First policy on royalties on export bottled water being paid back to the regions from where it came.

But their planned tax on primary producers will have major implications and we do not know how much it will be.

New Zealand First believes we must work to preserve the quality of our waterways, but it has to be balanced with the need for economic development.

Countries, like Norway, are world leading models on how it can be done so we can do it.

Norway does it and so can we.

We say that money from royalties can be used to help clean up our rivers and lakes as well as the $1.4 billion New Zealand is unwisely spending buying carbon credits from foreigners.

Students and Superannuitants

Looking after young and old is important for New Zealand First.

NZ Super’s actual net cost to taxpayers is around 3.8 per cent of GDP.

NZ Super as a percentage of GDP will stay the same even with an ageing population, if NZ doubles its GDP by 2050 and we improve our productivity.

The way to maintain NZ Super’s affordability is increasing the size of our economic cake not mass immigration.

Education is a major player in the Dunedin economy and we understand the stresses students face living on just $180 a week as their student loan grows.

New Zealand First will get rid of the student loan for Kiwi students staying and working here in NZ after they finish their studies.

HAS NZ BEEN EXPOSED TO UNDUE CHINA COMMUNIST INFLUENCE

National has been caught out.

And New Zealand has been left exposed to being a pawn of the Communists in China.

The influence of the Government of China is real within the New Zealand government.

This is not a spy thriller from the airport book shelves.

It is the reality of the state of the National government.

And it’s worrying for us and our allies.

New Zealand became vulnerable the moment National recruited list MP Jian Yang.

His decade of work with Chinese military intelligence has only now been opened up, but not yet laid bare.

He’s trying to quell the outrage by saying he has been transparent.

He hasn’t and his explanations just don’t wash.

For a start his CV has 10 years missing which is the time he spent with the Chinese intelligence and not as an English language teacher.

Who is Dr Yang?

He is a big time fundraiser for the National Party.

He’s a central factor in National’s close links to China.

And he compiled the nest egg of Chinese money for this election.

Which probably explains why polls show Chinese here overwhelmingly vote National.

It’s not that influence we are questioning but his influence on National and National’s policy.

Dr Yang’s hands are all over our contact with foreign policy decision making.

He sits on the influential Parliamentary Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade select committee.

This makes his background working with China’s military intelligence for a decade seriously significant.

We know he has used his government position to push China’s interests.

A report from China news agency, Xinhua, on March 28 proved Dr Yang and the National Party president Peter Goodfellow were “donkey deep” in an initiative to set up a high level Chinese business network – started up by Chinese milk company Yashili.

This occurred as New Zealand became the first developed Western country to sign up to cooperate on China’s Belt and Road economic drive.

This was raised by me in Parliament and recorded in Hansard on April 5th.

Which the PM dismissed.

There is further proof of Dr Yang’s work for China.

In Parliament on 26 July, recorded in Hansard, he delivered a speech that was a rave about China’s focus on 40 years of building infrastructure.

Read it and it looks like an advertisement for China, not New Zealand.

I commented in Parliament’s Hansard: “This was a message straight out of Beijing.

Dr Yang had just attended the NZ Chinese Building Industry Association annual conference.

He led the panel on China’s Belt and Road.

In six years in Parliament, Dr Yang has successfully embedded himself in the NZ government.

But who is he really representing?

National and Dr Yang cannot prove he has “come in from the cold”.

He has not.

The communist government’s takeover of NZ is succeeding, in bounds.

In five years flat they took over our milk infant formula industry.

They control it from production in NZ to the baby’s mouth in China.

They have the back door key to our dairy industry added value.

Silver Fern Farms, our biggest red meat exporter succumbed to Chinese take over, with the deal going through last year.

All over the country National and local government politicians have talked of Chinese interests funding infrastructure.

They are starting to dominate the lives of New Zealanders and clearly our economic direction.

The revelations about Dr Yang will be causing a stir among our international intelligence allies – the Five Eyes – the US, Canada, Australia and the UK.

And whereas Australia stopped Huawei access into Australia the government encouraged them in New Zealand.

Our allies have reason to be alarmed at national’s appalling naivety.

National must act now and a full inquiry is required.

There must be proof Dr Yang is not a risk.

Meanwhile, Dr Yang must step aside.

He can start by answering simple questions like:

How much contact has he had with the Chinese government representatives in NZ?

Is he still a member of the Chinese Communist Party?

How did he leave China, move to Australia and then NZ?

ENDS

Hansard 5th April 2017 Rt Hon Winston Peters: How can New Zealanders trust that his Government is not selling them out when Chinese media reports, such as in the China Daily, report that National MP Dr Yang and the president of the National Party himself, Peter Goodfellow, are donkey deep in a new high-level Chinese business network? Rt Hon BILL ENGLISH: I would think that our members of Parliament ought to spend some time with people who run businesses and create jobs and investment. That may be a strange, new, and threatening idea to that member, but even the jobs in his own electorate will depend, to some extent, on the success with which businesses can export to China and other markets. I suggest the member visit a few businesses, talk to some of the people who work in them, and find out how the workers would like it if the businesses closed down and they did not have jobs. Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why is the Prime Minister preaching to someone who lives in his electorate when he does not; and what degree of—[Interruption] No, he does not. He is not called "Double Dipton" for nothing! Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table a translation of the China Daily of 28 March this year about the donkey-deep nature of the National Party's involvement. Excerpt from Hansard – 26 July 2017 Dr JIAN YANG (National): I would like to focus on infrastructure. Last weekend I attended the New Zealand Chinese Building Industry Association's annual conference. I chaired a panel discussion regarding China's Belt and Road Initiative and the opportunities for New Zealand. "Belt" refers to the economic belt of the Silk Road and also "Road" refers to the 21st century maritime Silk Road. New Zealand is on the maritime Silk Road. That is how New Zealand is related to the Belt and Road Initiative. This initiative is closely related to infrastructure, because infrastructure has been fundamental to economic growth. We all understand that the Chinese have focused on the building of infrastructure in the past 40 years. They say that if you want to get wealthy, build roads first, and that is what they have been doing for the past 40 years. We all understand that infrastructure is particularly important to all economies, and similarly in New Zealand, so this Government is very proud to say that we are the infrastructure Government simply because we understand the importance of infrastructure and have invested heavily in infrastructure. I will give you an example: ultra-fast broadband. We have invested $2 billion in ultra-fast broadband. We understand our economy is global, and our e-commerce has been growing fast, globally and in New Zealand. Many international businesses depend on the internet, so we have been investing heavily in this particular object. Combined with the Rural Broadband Initiative, this ultra-fast broadband programme is the biggest ever infrastructure project taken in New Zealand. Now we have 1,132,000 households and businesses that have access to fibre, and 370,000 schools, businesses, households, and hospitals are now connected to fibre—to ultra-fast broadband. We are a global connectivity leader, so New Zealanders should be very proud of that. We also come to transport, because we know it has been a challenge. Of course there are reasons why we now have this particular transport challenge. We believe it is because our economy has been doing very well and has been very successful. We now have more jobs. People are economically active. They move around, and also people are staying in New Zealand and many people are moving back to New Zealand. So those are some reasons. But, nevertheless, we are facing a challenge. We are going to find solutions. We are investing billions of dollars in transport, including $436 million in Auckland's City Rail Link, at just stage one. So what is Labour's solution? Well, basically, it is that people should not come to New Zealand—stop them from coming to New Zealand, and maybe ask people to leave—because we need to slow down the economy so that we can have a breather. So that is Labour's solution, which is, basically, to slow down the economy and have people leave and not come to New Zealand. That is its solution. That is the difference between a united, hard-working, forward-looking Government and a lazy and also, of course, a lack-of-ideas Opposition. That is the difference. I emphasise that in this Budget, Budget 2017, we are investing another $4 billion in infrastructure, and this is the single-biggest investment of new capital in infrastructure in one single Budget for decades. What is more, we are going to have another $7 billion—another $7 billion—in the next 3 years. So, in total, we are going to have $32.5 billion invested in new infrastructure in the next 4 years. That is how much we are going to invest in infrastructure, and that is how much attention we are paying to transport and to other infrastructure. That is what this Government has been working hard on—that is, we are going to lay a solid infrastructure for all aspects including transport, our schools, and everything. So this is genuinely—genuinely—an infrastructure Government. Thank you. · Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): That was a message straight out of Beijing. In the Morrinsville RSA last night there was not a chair left as we launched our Waikato candidate, Stu Husband. The National Party members launched theirs of course and they got 25. So we are not giving any regard to "All Brylcreem and No Socks" who spoke here today. We have seen the last National Party polls—the most recent ones—and it is all bad news for them, for them and for a whole lot of parties here, but it is good news for one other party. Take a wild guess which party that is. We do not care about Epsom's three-quarters of a million dollars bludger and his cuckolded behaviour in this Parliament. The reality is, as the former American President Truman had on his sign, "The buck stops here", but not in the New Zealand Government today. Look, it reminds me of the American showman P T Barnum when he ran a travelling circus menagerie and a museum of freaks—and that is whom we have heard from today. The cling-ons propping up this National Government, the cuckolded vassal, the political puppet, and racial separatists—that was the biggest subject that at Morrinsville last night concerned a packed hall, mainly of National Party farmers—[Interruption] You can laugh now, but they were down in Invercargill when we were down there, they were in Motueka, and all over the country. We are not suckers. Take the Fuji Xerox scandal. For a year this Government over here said there was nothing in it, nothing to see. It was imploding around the world, a $500 million scandal, right under our face, and the Government is implicitly involved and has got school after school in these jack-up Ponzi schemes devised by their head of sales and now managing director, Gavin Pollard. Why, the Japanese came here last week and apologised to this country. The Japanese Government did, but not those people over there. They were caught out—said there was nothing there—and now we go to this Transpower utility sale. He gets up and makes out they know nothing about it. Could I just say this. In 2013 there was a referendum where 2:1 the New Zealand people were opposed to these power sales. But it does not stop these guys. Over $2 billion of assets, and quietly behind the people's backs they have got this scheme being talked up—a four-way option to sell this huge asset. It is a disgrace. Can you recall who UBS AG is? Well, it is the same Swiss investment banker, and I want to tell the journalists out there who do not seem to understand. It was involved, you will recall, in December 2003. It helped Transpower sell off the South Island transmission grid to an arm of—who and where—Wells Fargo United States. It was a complicated, smelly leaseback all the way through what country? The Cayman Islands. And it all went belly-up in 2009. That is how long the association is—a penny-bad privatisation with foreign investment bankers. National is doing one thing and saying another. Remember what they said? Bill English said, back in 2013: "There won't be any more asset sales, largely because everything that can be sold will have been by then." Steven Joyce says: "We are going to be transparent about asset sales." Transparent—that guy would not understand transparency if he fell over it. He showed it on the Fuji Xerox scandal. He is showing it over and over again, and on Novopay he is just a bungling incompetent. In the next few weeks in this campaign we are going to expose what Tony Ryall has been doing. He got put on the board, and in the space of 4 months has been made the chairman. They booted off a guy that Treasury wanted to have retained there. No, they chose their man—all to do what? It was to get ready to facilitate a sale. This former—this is Tony Ryall—BNZ bank teller who was so behind the sale of the biggest bank in this country, BNZ. When it was sold it had six out of 10 New Zealand clients, and today 95 percent of our banking is foreign-owned. And these guys do nothing about it. They are globalists, and I am telling you why New Zealand First is packing the halls around this country. It is because they have had a gutsful of you. They have had enough. They want a change and they are going to get one, and no amount of character assassination is going to stop us on this great purpose. ENDS

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