Peters: NZ First A.G.M., Waikato Stadium
new-zealand-first-party
Mon Aug 31 2009 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Peters: NZ First A.G.M., Waikato Stadium
Monday, 31 August 2009, 9:45 am
Speech: New Zealand First Party
Rt Hon Winston Peters
At NZ First A.G.M.
Waikato Stadium, Hamilton
Sat 29th August 2009, 2.30pm
“Going Forward or Backwards?”
This is a crucial meeting in New Zealand First's history.
For the first time, we lost a fight. We've had to lick our wounds, keep away from the enemy and work out how to win next time.
It is inconceivable that we should give up. We are not a party of quitters.
The things we stand for are just as important today as the day New Zealand First was formed.
So, at a time like this it is important we look at what course of action we need to take to best serve our country.
To do this we must first look at the political context that New Zealand First finds itself in.
The reasons we had to be taken out in the 2008 election are now glaringly obvious.
We speak out on important issues and we do not fear confronting issues that make some people uneasy.
On a host of issues – like flying one flag, safeguarding the interests of seniors - immigration – the Treaty industry – privatisation, if New Zealand First is silenced the issue is silenced.
What's more we have a memory and we remember the damage caused by recent National governments.
They don’t want to hear the one party that could alert New Zealanders to polices that have failed in the past, but are now being regurgitated by born again ideologues in the Beehive.
Make no mistake, the spirits of rogernomics and ruthaniasia are alive and well.
You will remember that we also punched above our weight in parliament.
We were effective there because we put forward practical, non-ideological policies, and we held the other parties to account.
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Both National and Labour and their hangers-on are deeply ideologically driven parties, although they pretend otherwise and try to camouflage their real intentions.
National and Labour are hard wired to their core beliefs
They are like those tropical land crabs that must return to the sea to spawn.
They always take the same route even if a motorway has been built in their path.
With land crabs their behaviour is understandable and unavoidable – it's part of their evolutionary hard wiring.
But political parties should come to the issues facing New Zealand with open minds, not minds that are fixed on certain goals that have little to do with the interests of ordinary folk.
Most reasonable minded kiwis believe in a fair go and the National led government will be called to account in due time.
But what can be said at this early stage is that already some significant trends are emerging and it is possible to discern a worrying direction.
Because right now there is a lot more going backward rather than going forward in the search for answers to the issues facing New Zealand.
Notice how that old familiar agenda is creeping back**.**
The rhetoric of the right wing has returned.
We are being lectured to again and the talk is of: productivity! - growth! – choice!
On one level these words are platitudes like motherhood or community spirit.
After all - who could be against productivity?
But these vague, all purpose, words serve as code for something else – an agenda that has to be shrouded in euphemisms.
That agenda has to be expressed in code because it favours the interests of the few at the expense of the many.
Our message is - be alert!
Privatisation
In another echo of the past, we are being softened up for privatisation so there can be a full scale selloff after the next election.
Make no mistake. Not only will the remaining state assets be flogged off, but the reorganisation of Auckland will also mean that ratepayer-owned companies will go as well. And it won’t stop with Auckland.
Have we learned nothing?
It beggars belief that a cash cow like Auckland airport could be again for sale to foreigners.
Exactly how that is supposed to be in the national interest is never explained by the zealots of asset sales.
Yet that is what the government has in mind in relaxing the rules over foreign ownership.
The message – the invite “Come on in – take whatever is left of the prime assets of New Zealand!”
In other countries this would qualify as economic sabotage – and we say – be outraged!
Because selling our assets has always been part of our economic woes problem – not the solution.
Super City
The haste with which the Auckland Super City is being introduced should also set alarm bells ringing.
Again there is more than a hint of the old right wing arrogance about the speed with which this huge change is being foisted on our largest city.
This is not being pushed through by champions of democracy.
The vision is one where a small cabal – an oligarchy of the chosen ones - will run Auckland to serve special interests – certainly not the people.
The issue of Maori seats is a diversion to draw attention away from the undemocratic process and the plunder of ratepayer assets.
We say that Auckland's problems cannot be solved by creating what amounts to a “state within a state”.
It is divisive and will create yet another rift between citizens in the Auckland area and those south of the Bombay hills.
Foreshore and Seabed and the FLAG
Nothing could be more divisive than the foreshore and seabed issue.
National, in collaboration with the Maori Party, have reopened this festering sore.
Why? Which coastal tribe asked for this?
How can that possibly serve New Zealand’s interests? Or is this another diversionary tactic?
We are in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Yet the government has chosen to poke a stick into a hornets’ nest to appease the Maori Party.
History tells us that appeasement seldom pays.
Because every concession emboldens those who are pressing their demands.
For the Maori Party every concession won – at whatever cost to other New Zealanders including most Maori – is a platform to demand more.
We predict John Key will come to rue the day he entered into a pact with the Maori Party - a party whose leadership is made up of Professional Maoris not Maori Professionals.
The Foreshore and Seabed issue had already been resolved as coastal tribes like Ngati Porou had so clearly accepted.
And on this subject of appeasement - why is John Key doing it again with the issue of One Flag?
It is dangerous for the future of this nation to create another flag.
The idea of this “official Maori flag” is taking us further down the road to two nations.
New Zealand First strenuously opposes this insidious creeping, crawling dissolving of the bonds – the symbols –that unite us as a nation.
Thousands of New Zealanders have died under our flag – and many were Maori.
Yet the Maori Party under the aegis of the Prime Minister is running around the country organising over 20 hui to choose a Maori flag to be flown on an ever increasing list of national occasions.
Tell me – who voted at the last election to set up a separate system for Maori?
Tell me where is the mandate for the Maori Party to choose any national flag, let alone a Maori flag?
And why this talk of Maori prisons, and separate university entrance criteria?
The only area where these separatists are prepared to tolerate a “One Country” concept is their fervent embrace of other taxpayers' dollars.
They don't discriminate where the money comes from.
Unemployment
If there is one area that calls for real innovation, real creativity and real initiative it is employment.
The prospects are that unemployment is going to be high for a prolonged time.
This will have grave consequences – social as well as economic.
Look at the Telecom engineers' dispute.
You pay the imported boss seven million dollars a year while he sacks the engineers and makes them pay to set up in business as so-called independent contractors.
It's simply a device to slash wages and make the contractors pay for it along the way.
This is an appalling situation, created by an avaricious company run by people who appear to be direct descendants of 19th century US slave-owners and the cruel industrialists of Dickens' England.
The much hyped Jobs Summit was a stunt – pitiful really.
There is nothing wrong with a cycleway – but the idea that it is an effective job creation scheme is risible.
And so are their other employment plans as more and more business cheerleaders now openly admit.
In fact it is an insult to the growing tens of thousands now unemployed.
The worry is that the National Government is taking an almost fatalistic approach as it watches the tsunami of unemployment engulf the country.
On this critical issue what is the Maori Party response?
Well it is simple – dish out revenge to the Labour Party for settling the grievance on which the Maori Party was formed.
And ignore rapidly rising Maori unemployment for boutique issues that will not economically help one Maori.
Soon, many of their constituents will be choking on their hangi in disgust.
Political Opposition
And what is the loyal Opposition doing while all this is happening?
The job of the Opposition is to question policies and hold governments to account.
To make ministers uncomfortable about decisions that cut back health or education services.
To oppose decisions that protect the greedy and not the needy.
To besiege an Energy Minister who during our coldest winter blithely accepts price gouging of consumers.
To use any constitutional means to thwart the Australian banks that are systematically
fleecing New Zealanders with usurious interest rates and tax fiddles that have sucked
billions out of our economy.
And what about the financial institutions that have gone belly up, causing grave hardship for tens of thousands of mainly elderly New Zealanders?
What is happening to all the cowboys like the Blue Chip brigade?
Well almost nothing! Virtually zilch when compared with the number that went down.
And whilst we are at it, how did this government give an extended taxpayer guarantee to “financial institutions” without asking for a share in return?
How did these institutions end up as leading 21st century social welfare beneficiaries without one dollar’s value of taxpayer equity in return?
This will go on for years unless there is a political party with the courage to stop it.
Let me tell you here today that we are not going to quietly fade away into the background while most New Zealanders are sold down the river.
With New Zealand First temporarily out of the picture tens of thousands of people have no voice in parliament.
That includes everyone at this venue.
The voice that says “hold on, why we are doing this?” is not being heard.
But this is not the time for despair, nor doubt.
We are regathering and reorganising our army, ready for the big battle of 2011.
Over the next two years our task is to mobilise a political force to take back our country.
And this time there will be no mistakes, missed targets, or casualties from friendly fire.
We will head for the high ground – and we will take it!
“We’ll be needed then – more than ever”
ENDS
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