EMBARGOED AGAINST DELIVERY

Extracts from a speech by Rt Hon Winston Peters to a meeting at 247 Edmonton Road Te Atatu 10.00 am 18 August 2011

“What Lessons For The Young When You Ignore The Crooks?”

“The election year gimmicks are starting to pour out of the Beehive.

One of the cruelest was the big hoax launched by the prime minister at the weekend. The government is mounting a punitive campaign against unemployed teenagers who have committed the crime of being unemployed.

New Zealand First supports any sensible measure to train young people and get them into work.

We agree with the truth in the old saying that the devil finds work for idle hands. But let’s look at the bigger picture.

The community organisations that are supposed to help with the Government's youth welfare changes say their funding is being cut and they cannot meet the new demands without more money.

It’s been reported that several agencies that provide job training to teenagers said funding cuts had already been confirmed and others were in the pipeline.

They were confused about with the Government announcement and worried about the uncertainty over future money.

There was also universal concern about a lack of jobs available for young people.

Let’s face it.

Jobs are vanishing in this country faster than the fans leaving the Don Brash/Rodney Hide fan club.

Every day we hear of another firm cutting back or closing down.

Since the government announced in the Budget it would be creating 171,000 jobs over the next four years, at least 3,000 jobs have disappeared.

We don’t know where the extra jobs are coming from – unless John Key is building another two or three thousand cycle tracks in locations yet to be announced.

Perhaps he’s going to buy 171,000 bicycles to go with all these new jobs. These young people could get fit biking to work!

Or – they might have a better chance selling the bikes and putting the money towards a plane fare to Australia because there is a better chance of landing a job there.

About half a million Kiwis are already there.

You don’t hear much coming out of the Beehive these days about New Zealand achieving parity with Australia.

That line of propaganda has gone quiet as we slowly sink further in the mire.

You see this is a government with few ideas, little regard for humanity and an obsession with filling the coffers of the very rich.

The poor have their place at the bottom of the heap in New Zealand and this government will do everything in its power to keep them there.

The equation is simple. You cannot have some very rich people without having a lot of very poor people.

That’s the way the latest form of capitalism works.

Just look at the United States of America.

America and many of its western allies are donkey deep in debt. It’s going to impact on all of us.

Guess who caused this debt?

It wasn’t the government and it wasn’t ordinary Americans trying to get on with their lives.

It was caused by the bankers, the financiers, the speculators, the futures traders, the currency speculators, the sub-prime mortgage packagers.

The guilty ones wore suits to work and regarded themselves as the pillars of society and the protectors of capitalism.

They were the biggest shysters ever inflicted on a suffering public.

We have had a few of them here.

A good example was here this week in Telecom’s campaign purportedly in support of the All Blacks where they advocated sporting fans to engage in abstinence.

What an irony!

Here’s Telecom asking New Zealanders not to do what they have been doing to New Zealanders for the past 21 years.

The sooner these monopolists are regulated the better.

They’ve ripped off New Zealand businesses and consumers for years while governments turned a blind eye.

Look at the collapsed finance companies in New Zealand.

Ask yourself how many of these shysters are behind bars.

Ask yourself how many of them are living in flash houses with plenty of money in family trusts while thousands of old people kiss their savings goodbye.

New Zealand First believes in the principles of a fair society with equal opportunity for all.

Most of the governments in our history books went along with this.

How is it that we, in a land of plenty, tolerate a social system that allows children to go to school hungry. What have we come to?

Perhaps we can understand this happening in dysfunctional families but it is accurately reported that many thousands of children are in this plight.

They are caught in a poverty trap that starts with unemployment.

Unemployment is the most corrosive acid eating away at the fabric of our society.

Nothing is more important than finding useful employment for families.

It is demeaning for the family breadwinner to stand in a dole queue.

And we would point out to this government that unemployment is not a crime – the crime belongs to the politicians who bury their heads in the sand and just look after their mates.

We regularly go to South Auckland. We go there to find out what is happening and what the people are thinking.

WE don’t go there for photo opportunities like some other politicians.

What we have found is that the people are thinking about jobs.

We in New Zealand First are taking their views on board.

We know that the top priority of the next government will be to provide jobs and to try to create what they call a level playing field.

The ideas are coming. We’ve put some forward and we are always ready and willing to listen.

Our society is worth saving – even when the National party and its clingons do their best to wreck it.

Let me give you this assurance for the election. If we win – you will win.

But this can only happen if you give a tick. And that tick must surely go to New Zealand First.

We win – you win.”

ENDS

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