Rt Hon Winston Peters
Leader of New Zealand First
March 23rd 2025
State of the Nation 2025  
James Hay Theatre
Christchurch

Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, thank you for being here today. 

We know your lives are busy and you are working harder and longer than you ever have, and there are many calls on your time, so thank you for the chance to speak with you today in the city of Christchurch.

Thank you also to the New Zealand First members who have organised this meeting today – by the way - we are the lowest funded party in parliament but we always punch above our weight and we always deliver.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you arrived here today, right on queue there were hundreds of protesters outside to try and intimidate and influence you.  These people protesting could have, of course, done the hard yards themselves and organised their own meeting, to put their point of view on a range of issues. But no, their objectives don’t include freedom of speech or democracy. They seek to impose their absolute minority view on the mass majority of fellow New Zealanders.

Can we say on the issue of Gaza, not one of them protesting outside have ever spoken to the Palestinian authority, or the neighbouring Egyptian government, or the biggest Islamic country in the world, Indonesia, or dare we say the president of Turkey.  All of these international authorities, and many more, we have personally spoken to so they understand, with great clarity, what New Zealand’s position is. 

Those so-called protesters outside wouldn’t know what geo-politics or diplomacy looks like – yet they have the arrogance to try and lecture you, and disrupt you, like they have a clue what they are talking about.

So those no hopers have come here today, with the one certain intention, to grab the main stream media headlines, and try to destroy a process that we, as one of only eight other countries, have practiced unbroken since 1854 – it’s called democracy.

They don’t care about democracy. They don’t care that in our democracy we are lawfully allowed to meet here today undisturbed. They are just left-wing fascists who preach freedom of speech, but try their best to deny it to those who they disagree with. That’s what they are doing here today.

More to the point, what is unfortunately likely going to happen at some stage in this speech today, is a few of them will try to disrupt this lawful meeting, which you all have come to, with their unlawful ways, just to try and get on the six o’clock news. That’s how communist, fascist, and anti-democratic losers work.

That’s their idea of a hard day’s work.

Well, we have news for them and it’s all bad – or as Elvis Presley once sang – “looking for trouble you’ve come to the right place” – we are going to defend our democracy and we will throw all of those fascists out.

In this hall today there are men and women of all ages, of all races, religions, and creeds. This is a meeting of New Zealanders.  People who are living here legally, whether their New Zealand background goes back a thousand years or who arrived yesterday – all with the same fundamental protections under the law.

So, ladies and gentlemen, you have assembled here today packing this hall, let’s see if those anti-democratic Marxist whingers prove us right, with their arrogance and distain for democracy and equal distain for your rights – just remember, when they attack, they are not attacking me, they are attacking you.

It’s The Economy

As President Bill Clinton once said “it’s the economy stupid”.  So lets reflect on our economy and what we inherited as we came into government after October 2023.

In September of that year, one month before the election, Chris Hipkins was the Prime Minister and Grant Roberston was the Minister of Finance.  The following is what they reported on the New Zealand Economy - to you the New Zealand people.

Their September 2023 pre-election economic and fiscal update (commonly referred to as the PREFU) claimed this:

That the economy shows no recession, a growing economy, more jobs, and wages ahead of inflation.

They said, and we quote “the PREFU released today shows New Zealand’s economy is turning the corner”.

They said that the economy was to grow by 2.6% on average over the forecast period.  They claimed further that fiscal rules had been met. That there was a return to surplus.

And then this most extraordinary of all boasts - “our economic plan to support New Zealanders dealing with the cost of living while investing in a stronger, more resilient and inclusive economy, is working”.

Ladies and gentlemen, that claim from Hipkins and Robertson made about the economy back then, was an outright litany of lies.

Within six months of that litany of lies, our country was suffering from the deepest and longest economic downturn and recessionary retraction for over three decades.

There were fewer jobs, none of the previous government’s claims of abiding by its fiscal rules were true, and as we all know we were experiencing a worsening cost of living crisis.

But one of the biggest questions you need to ask is ‘where was the main stream media reporting on this?’

Ladies and gentlemen, guiding a country is like piloting a massive ocean liner - it takes a long time to turn both around.

That means that six months after the last election, nearly every economic outcome was the responsibility of the previous government.  That’s a fact.  Because the new current government had no time for its policies to even bed-in or change either the numbers or outcomes.

In short, almost all of the slump – and the pain - is directly the result of the work of Hipkins and Robertson. They cannot deny that.

So how can you believe a word from the Labour leader when everything that he said, when he was in charge as the Prime Minister, has been proven to be drastically wrong, and at total variance with the financial facts.

It is a running comical commentary of how lacking Labour is of leadership.  That the very person whose actions were so unforgiveable, and the economic and social damage so widespread, now expects you all to believe, that if given the chance, you could trust him to do something different. 

It is staggering that this is the same person, who when he became Prime Minister, had a “Bonfire of The Inanities”.  He wanted to burn nearly everything that he and Roberston did.  In short, he incinerated many of the polices that he was a critical part in forming.

And then, he went and admitted, and we quote, “Some of the commitments that we made and I’ve mentioned some of them, things like Kiwi Build, Auckland Light Rail and so on, we hadn’t worked through the exact details of how that would be and therefore we weren’t able to deliver on the commitments that we’ve made”. 

We are not making this stuff up. Those are his words, not ours. 

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the personification of the old saying “you can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do, but what you’ve already done”.

And worse still, just a few weeks ago, he barefaced told the media that in 2023 he ruled us out, when he knows - and the media knows – including the lightweight who was interviewing him - that a year before he uttered those words we publicly ruled Labour out - primarily because of their disastrous running of the economy and the barefaced lies they told us all.

However, like we said earlier, running an economy is like running a big ocean liner.  Turning it around to a safer course takes time – but turn it around we have – and the last fiscal update out this week proves it.

Incidentally, we are the only political party to give our State Of The Nation speech with the benefit of having the latest financial information that came out this week. That is the reason why this meeting is being held today, not last week, or last month, but today.

The figures out this week, show our economy is now growing at 0.7% for the last quarter, which is just under 3% for the year, which shows that this coalition government is taking our country out of recession.

Ladies and gentlemen, we know that its tough out there. We know that the cost of living has taken a toll over the past few years. That Labour’s cost of living rises have been cemented in. And that means we have much more work to do.  However, this week’s latest financial update means there is real hope on the horizon. That said, we also know that we must progress with far greater speed, and we can only do that with sound economic and social policies.

Workers

There have been many comments from the Labour Party and their fellow travellers over the past year that the ‘government’s coalition agreements are ‘racist, anti-Māori, anti-woke, anti-Fluro, and anti-everything else under the sun. It shows not only how myopic and out of touch their thinking is, but it puts in neon lights just how siloed the left is in their obsessive echo-chamber.

Labour, Greens, and the Māori Party, now rely on ideological soundbites as a basis of their policy making - which when given even a cursory glance are totally bereft of any facts.

They have become the ‘parties of moral outrage’ – obsessed with accusations, ‘gotcha politics’, woke ideology, and opposing anything that happens to offend anyone that gets offended.

There is nothing that the government is implementing that should come as a surprise to Hipkins. Everything we are doing was not only campaigned on, it was in our respective election manifestos and in our coalition agreements dated a year and a half ago. Perhaps he is just surprised that a government is actually delivering on its promises.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s just remember one thing.  The spiritual home of the Labour Party is the West Coast – the site of the miners’ strike in 1908 which started the Labour Party in 1916 – the Party that used to represent the workers of New Zealand – the gold miners, the coal miners, the labourers, the foresters, the fishermen, the hard working blue-collar battlers of our country. The catch cry used to be ‘a fair day’s pay, for a fairs day’s work’. They represented those workers in the very industries which have now become the anathema of who and what the Labour Party represents today. That’s a fact.

If a political party today frothed at the mouth every chance they got about the coalition government being ‘racist, anti-Māori, colonisers, white supremacists, exterminators of Māori, anti-woke this anti-woke that’ - you could place so many members of the Labour, Green, or Māori Party caucus at that lectern and you wouldn’t know who was who, or which was which.

Who do Labour now represent? It seems they don’t even know themselves.

The Labour Party has decided their entire re-election strategy will be acting like a recently divorced partner – standing back and asking, “don’t you miss me yet?” Their lack of self-awareness is astounding.

The fact is, the last three years of the Labour government oversaw a deteriorating economy, deteriorating education and health systems, worsening law and order on our streets, massively increased debt, record immigration, crumbling infrastructure, a cost-of-living crisis, and a hugely divided society. That is not opinion - that is fact.

The woke agenda of the left has crept in like a cancer that has spread so deep into their divisive thinking it has become their sole focus. And sadly it is a malady, a malaise, that has overcome most of the main stream media.

The key aspect of Hipkins’ recent speeches is what he, and the Labour Party, doesn’t say.

It has been clear for some time that the Labour Party had a forlorn choice – attempt to move to the centre to hopelessly try to regain their votes, or push further towards the woke, cultural, globalist, and Marxist left. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which path they have chosen.

But that ‘siloed-left’ is now occupied by the Māori Party and the Greens - with the exact same messaging, the exact same ideology, the exact same rhetoric.

Hipkins’ speeches show just how far the Labour Party has descended away from its roots, and just how unambiguously they have abandoned and forgotten the very people and industries who founded their party over a hundred years ago.

The Labour Party’s focus is now on issues such as race, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), wokeness, and drumming up racial rhetoric that all only serves to divide our country and ignores the vast majority of New Zealanders who just want a functioning health system, a top class education for their kids, first world wages, and an affordable home. That’s what all New Zealanders want – Māori and non-Māori, religious and non-religious, inside or inside out.

Delivering those four things has always been the focus of New Zealand First. In this coalition government there is a record number of Māori in Cabinet, and where parliament has the largest representation of Māori.

To call our government ‘anti-Māori and racist’ and now focus on woke globalist, Marxist, economic, cultural, and social engineering policies – as they do now - shows just how shallow and impotent the once great Labour Party of Savage, Fraser, and Kirk has become.

We face now, across the House, parties that subscribe to an ‘Anthem of Hate’, a ‘Rissole of Racism’, and ‘Collection of Communist’ type economics that even China and Russia have long ago abandoned.

The Labour Party has already left middle New Zealand a long time ago – its evident just how shallow and impotent they have become.

The few remaining more conservative Labour MPs must wake up at night in cold sweats thinking about how much Labour is now fighting for the space on the woke far-left, instead of fighting for the workers, fighting for middle New Zealand.

Their focus now is on issues such as race, culture-wars, rainbow-wars, and Marxist ideals, and ignorantly joining both the Greens and Māori Party on the race to the bottom.

Ladies and gentlemen, our point to you is this. 

Labour no longer represents the workers.  They have totally forgotten what a worker even is or what a worker stands for.  How many Labour leaders or front bench Labour members have ever had a real job? How many have ever run their own business? Almost none.  And they want to represent you, the workers?

How many of them are career unionists? How many of them have graduated from student unions and then started working in the Labour Party taxpayer funded offices? Most of them. How would they know what a hard day’s work means?

The vast majority of left-wing shill unions these days are there to fund and prop up the left-wing policies of whomever they can fund the most.  Where does Labour get most of their funding from?  Hundreds of thousands of dollars for policy. Does the mainstream media ever ask that question?

That’s who the New Zealand Labour Party is today.

Positioning New Zealand in a Rapidly Changing World

Ladies and gentlemen, the last two months have seen a dramatic change in the international landscape.  If many had been paying attention, then none of this would have come as a surprise. A massive change is taking place and how New Zealand acts towards those changes is critical.

This is not a time for New Zealand to opine on what we think of these changes, but rather hold our council, allow the dust to settle, and to build on strategic partnerships both economic and political.

This is not a time to waste on what we would like to see happen, but rather urgently prepare for what is happening.

It is not a time for university coffee-bar discussions - but reality and wise action.

Huge challenges confront us which we can either ignore or seize new opportunities, and take a small country, to the forefront of international economic and social performance.

We have done it before, and with the right policies and leadership, we can do it again.

We must be above all guided by caution and focus on positioning ourselves strategically for the long term, and not react to every political concern on the barometer.

We have many assets to use on the pathway forward.  We are one of the worlds oldest democracies, we believe in the ‘rule of law’ over ‘might is right’.  We must aggressively sell our country as an attractive investment destination and provide logical answers to the single most obvious question international investors will ask, which is, ‘but why New Zealand?’.

We have a sound resource base, but we must develop those resources to the maximum as other successful small countries have done and are doing.

We most certainly cannot pull the New Zealand rug up over ourselves in the futile belief that somehow virtue signalling will assist our economic and social recovery.

Look around this theatre today, ninety six percent of the building you will see comes from a process of “extraction”.  That means using the mineral wealth we have, the natural flora we are blessed with in forestry and water.  And in developing the same, provide hundreds of thousands of new jobs, added value at home, and massive export growth to old and new markets.  And ensure that the “Team New Zealand” is the first beneficiary.

That is why New Zealand First started the Provincial Growth Fund, now the Regional Infrastructure Fund, to ensure that we have an environment of development and renewal and not delay, decay, and descent to the bottom.

Today there are echoes of our most famous former Prime Minster Seddon’s words “New Zealand is God’s own country, but the devils mess”.

Seddon was right all those years ago, and then he set out to do something positive about it. And we, in 2025, must do the same.

We must set out to repeat our county’s former great successes. The world may be changing, but the principles on which our success will be based have not.

We have always been an “export dependant country”, so we must maximise our exports in every area that it is possible.  And to do that, as Seddon did after 1893, and Labour and National both did in the halcyon years of 1935 to 1970, we can do the same today.  We have to arrest the last four decades of drift, where ideology overtook common sense and pragmatism.

And so we will be fast-tracking to change, and we haven’t got a day to waste.

Ladies and gentlemen, reflect on the Covid years and how important the provincial economies were in navigating our way through it.  For a few years the anti-primary production brigade went silent, and at no time, then or since, have they ever expressed a thank you to our provincial economies. 

Their polices would close down large sections of our economy to satisfy their globalist view of the world. But New Zealand First is a true nationalist party – setting our to replicate the success of other small countries with fewer resources but with astonishing records of success - as we once had.

And we may not always get it right, but one thing we will promise you, is that we will never stop trying.

But to get to where we want to go, we first have to deal with the plethora of malignant polices enshrouding our nation and stopping progress.

War on Woke, Long Live Commonsense

One of the most concerning and insidious cancers in our society today is the underlying creep of woke social engineering.

This seeping of the leftist group-think and condoned by too many on the right, has been mostly hidden from society in the way it has implanted itself in New Zealand.

Recently New Zealand First announced a policy that, apparently was terribly shocking – we announced that we wanted all public service hiring to be based on merit, skill, and competence – not based on targets for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideology.

Think about how far our country has been taken down the left wing rabbit hole, when we have media and opposition politicians alike clutching and their pearls in horror that we want a meritocracy brought back to our public service.

The reaction from some quarters was apoplectic.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need common sense brought back to our country.

We cannot underestimate the nature and importance of the war on woke.

It is not only the DEI in our public sector, but also in our education system.

New Zealand First set out in the election to get rid of the ‘Relationship, and Sexual Education’ guidelines in our schools – we have done that.

We campaigned on ensuring the pathway of separatism and cultural Marxism was stopped with the likes of He Puapua and co-governance – we are doing that.

We campaigned on ensuring we have fairness in women’s sports – that men cannot compete against women and girls – we have done that.

But there is still so much more we need to do and the continue to fight for – including fighting against the use of Puberty Blockers for children.

We may have won some battles, but the war is yet to be won.

New Zealand First has introduced Members Bills that include fighting against woke banks, fighting to ensure men can not walk into women’s and girls bathrooms, to get rid of DEI in our public sector, and we have many more.

We will continue to be the voice of common sense and at the forefront of the war on woke on behalf of you and every other New Zealander.

Our message to the bureaucracy pursuing unmandated unelected policies is a simple one. Do you want to be part of the solution or do you want to remain part of the problem?

If their choice is the latter – to be part of the problem – then our response is “get out of the way”.

Paris 2016

In October 2016 the National Party signed up to the Paris Accord setting targets that some of the world’s largest economies have no intention of honouring.

That means that no matter what we do, our sacrifice will make no difference.  Worse still, in trying to honour our commitments, $22 Billion plus, of our hard earned taxpayers money will be siphoned off shore in a total self-defeating economic and climatic shambles.

Its just common sense that instead of draining our money offshore, into foreign economies, we invest it in looking after our own environment. 

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s look at the facts.  Just under sixty percent of the worlds CO2 emissions come from four countries – China, United States, Russia, and India.  New Zealand’s emissions amount to only around 0.17%.

Why are we making a rod for our own backs, punishing our farmers and our taxpayers and our economy, when China or the US could sneeze and produce more CO2 overnight than we do in a year?

How is that solving the “global climate problems”?

And when did we last see a protest against those four major economies from the so called ‘climate change’ activists?

That’s why we were the first to call for a revaluation of our Paris commitments months ago.  We need to stop this idealistic flight of futility.

Restoring Democracy to Local Government

The last Labour government took away the local voice when it came to deciding if locals wanted fluoride in their water supply.

For decades our local ratepayers had the choice through referendum – that was taken away under Labour.

The Whangarei District Council is now being forced to fluoridate their local water supply, at a cost of up to $5 million, which is a despotic Soviet-era disgrace.

This is not a matter of being pro-fluoride or anti-fluoride. It is a matter of what New Zealanders see and value as democracy in our country.

Individual democratically elected Councillors are not only being threatened with huge fines, they are now threatened with imprisonment – all for disagreeing with a foolish law change and forcing Wellington-based bureaucrats to act.

All the Council is fighting for is to have a referendum on the matter so locals can have a voice.

The fluoridation law change removing referendum had its first reading in 2016 - we were the only Party in parliament to vote against the changes.

New Zealand First said then, and now, that these decisions should be made by the locals through an open and transparent debate followed by a referendum.

It is chilling that we have got to a point in New Zealand where elected politicians are being threatened with imprisonment just for doing their jobs, standing up for democracy, and asking for a vote.

New Zealand First backs the Whangarei Council and every other local council that wishes to fight for getting a referendum back and giving the voice back to the local people on this matter.

And only fascists would think that local democracy was a ‘rabbit hole’.

Conclusion

Ever since the formation of New Zealand First, under First Past the Post and before the arrival of MMP, we have stood for the sovereignty of New Zealand citizens in our own country.

We have sought to establish an economy that is designed to serve New Zealanders and not others.

We have battled to build and retain wealth that is our own. 

We have stood uniquely in modern times for Economic Nationalism. 

We have stood to ensure that when we generate wealth, and industrial incomes, and improving the value of our land, and the gains of our hard work, that its stays in our country and not first benefit some foreign economy.

We have stood to ensure that these benefits remain in New Zealand and help the kiwi players in the economic arena, and not the spectators on the international sidelines.

We didn’t welcome our self-government to find so much of it captured by foreign governments and foreign money.

We have always argued for offshore investment to be on our terms.

Just like Singapore did, or Taiwan did, or as Ireland has done, or as Croatia today is doing.

This is a battle we ask you again to join and to ensure that alongside your friends, relations, and neighbours, we have a real chance of winning.

In the months ahead, and leading into the next election, we are asking you all to take action, to stop being spectators and become real political players in the arena of future change.

As Clinton said “it’s the economy stupid”.

And New Zealand First is saying “it’s our country stupid”.

That means we together are going to take back control, take back our country, and Make New Zealand First Again.

So if you are for, plain speaking over vowel sandwiches, say yes.

If you are for actions not words, say yes.

If you are for performance over promises, say yes.

If you are for common sense over blind ideology, say yes.

The recent polls in New Zealand are as usual confusing. But one thing even these confused pollsters can’t deny, is that New Zealand First has come back and is now on the rise.

Ladies and gentlemen, to quote the famous group Starship ‘nothing is going to stop us now’.

So, please when you leave this meeting, spread the word to all who you meet.

In all our present difficulties, there is real hope.

Don’t give up.  Make a commitment, right here, right now, that together we are going to win.

Thank you, good afternoon, safe travels.

God bless you all. And God bless New Zealand.

© Scoop Media