Speech: Peters - AGM Grey Power
new-zealand-first-party
Sun May 08 2011 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Speech: Peters - AGM Grey Power
Sunday, 8 May 2011, 8:06 pm
Speech: New Zealand First Party
EMBARGOED AGAINST DELIVERY
Rt. Hon Winston Peters
Leader NZ First
Address AGM Grey Power 2011
Hamilton
Novotel-Tainui Hotel 7 Alma Street Hamilton
Date: 8th May 2011
Time: 8pm
“A Vision and a Plan”
This evening is an opportunity to talk to you about vision.
Twenty twenty hindsight is a great place to start.
Once we had a self-sufficient, prosperous country, built on the vision of great leaders.
They believed New Zealand was God's own country.
They built roads, schools, airports, power generation systems. They set up banks and insurance companies, all backed by the resources of the people.
And they all understood that ours is an export dependent economy.
That was a New Zealand that you all remember before we entered the great economic experiment that you all know.
Repeating the mistakes of the past thirty years is disastrous so it is vital that we learn from those mistakes.
Twenty twenty foresight is what we need now.
A plan which will carry us forward as a cohesive nation towards the goal of a fair deal for everyone.
7 Steps to Prosperity
We call it our seven steps to prosperity.
New Zealand First will set out a genuinely different and specific vision for New Zealand in the 2011 election.
That vision will address the fundamental and long term issues that confront us.
We will offer a real alternative to the cost-cutting hysteria of National and the profligacy of Labour.
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Both of those approaches are now obsolete and irrelevant.
The world has changed.
Every thinking Kiwi knows that.
So we will present a plan that is practical, specific, affordable and will build our country and our shared future.
And in New Zealand First we have a big advantage.
We live in the real world – the actual New Zealand economy as it is - and not some mythical economy where ‘market forces’ and ‘level playing fields’ are assumed to prevail.
We have thought about what it will actually take to build a prosperous future.
So today we will outline seven steps – seven policy areas where we would take action.
Step 1: Savings
John Key’s government is full of humbug on savings. Their rhetoric is about how important saving is – the reality is that saving is a mug's game.
You are taxed on income; and then you are taxed on the interest your savings earn.
With inflation running at, at least 5%, where can ordinary people save with security and still get a reasonable rate of return?
The answer is nowhere!
And the government has revealed it will cut back on the Kiwi Saver scheme.
The message that this sends is that the government is not really serious about saving.
New Zealand First will introduce:
A bold set of tax incentives to encourage private savings - the first $10,000 of interest earned would become tax free.
We will introduce government guaranteed inflation proof bonds – eligible to New Zealand citizens resident in New Zealand only – and that will pay the inflation rate (measured by the CPI) plus 2.5%
Step 2: Saving our Land
There is a great asset we have left – our agricultural land.
Fertile – well watered land in the temperate zone – in a world increasingly short of food - is the new gold rush.
The rest of the world knows just how valuable our land is and is buying – and buying and buying.
We have lost vast tracts already.
The Chinese are not fools - they know full well how valuable our agriculture land is – and will be in the future.
But allowing this free-for-all grab of our dairy farms is insane.
This is economic madness that will impoverish New Zealanders in perpetuity.
New Zealand First will impose strict restrictions on foreign land ownership.
This is not xenophobic.
Our policy will impose only the same sort of restrictions that Kiwis face if they want to buy land in many other countries.
Only New Zealand citizens will be able to buy free hold land here and that land already owned offshore can only be sold back to a New Zealand citizen.
Step 3 Foreign Ownership
We will also create a new agency The NZ Ownership Agency– with an initial budget of $500m.
This agency will have a specific mandate to promote New Zealand ownership – and would develop a comprehensive long term plan to buy back strategic assets.
This agency would be able to counter the Sovereign Investment Funds now prowling the globe on behalf of countries such as Singapore, Dubai and China.
It is absolute folly for New Zealand to have a ratio of savings funds three to one offshore whist Australia has the reverse - three to one of its funds invested in Australia.
Step 4 Exports and Manufacturing
National and Labour have become resigned about New Zealand manufacturing dying.
They take the view that the demise of our manufacturing sector is inevitable – an unavoidable consequence of globalisation.
We don’t share that view – we say New Zealand manufacturing matters and their policies have been killing it.
We will have policies to actively support, encourage and where appropriate protect this sector.
There are too many jobs, skills and wealth creation at stake in manufacturing to allow the sector to wither and die.
For example, we will protect government sector contracts such as the building of railway wagons in our own rather than Chinese railway workshops.
Where we have the manufacturing capacity we must retain and nurture it.
NZ First recognises that New Zealand is an export dependent economy and we will introduce policies to reflect that fact.
These policies will include a change to our currency settings, tax breaks for certain exports, appropriate Research and Development and export expansion incentives.
The level playing field is a myth – that only New Zealand seems to subscribe to.
Step 5: Student Debt
Student debt has to be sorted out.
We will face up to it before it inflicts more damage on yet another generation of young New Zealanders.
The piling up of student debt into the billions has got to end.
NZ First will cut this Gordian Knot.
We will introduce a scheme where government will make a matching dollar for dollar payment on student debt.
So, if a student living in New Zealand has a student loan of say $30,000 – (a not unlikely sum) and paid back $15,000, government would match that sum to extinguish the debt.
A matching contribution scheme would effectively halve student debt and remove a big incentive for young Kiwis to go overseas.
It would provide a fair and practical way of ending the dispersal of a generation of young Kiwis who are effectively economic exiles because of student debt.
If they return and go into the workplace, their taxes will soon cover the government's contribution.
Step 6: Aussie Banks
A major cause of our balance of payments crisis is the massive profits that Aussie Banks take out of New Zealand every year – billions in fact.
Right in the middle of a so called credit crunch these banks kept on making record profits.
Whilst Australian politicians, as we speak, investigate these bank activities we in New Zealand do nothing.
Why do we let this happen?
They have had a dream run in New Zealand.
And recall that is was those same four Aussie banks who had to repay $2 billion to the IRD for tax avoidance in late 2009.
What great service do they provide for this privileged position?
As Kiwi Bank has shown we are perfectly capable of operating our own banks.
NZ First policy is to give all Government business, national and municipal, to a locally owned bank.
And we want the Aussie banks to start adding real value to their business in New Zealand.
For example, by increased lending to small and medium business and not just treating this country as a milch cow for low risk house mortgage lending.
Step 7: Infrastructure
The fuel gauge on the world’s dashboard is flashing – the warning is that oil supply is running low. The era of cheap and abundant oil is over.
Unlike the Government, NZ First recognises this reality.
If any one single reason can be said to explain New Zealand’s relatively poor economic performance it would have to be the poor quality of public investment.
All too often scarce capital has been squandered on prestige projects that serve some special interest or ideological itch rather than the collective good.
There can be no clearer example of this wasteful approach to public investments than the Government’s so called Roads of National Significance (RoNS) project. Despite the grandiose name this $12 billion plus project is actually all about building more motorways.
Why would anyone in their senses invest in transport infrastructure that increases, rather than decreases, New Zealand’s dependency on oil?
NZ First policy is to scrap the RoNS project.
In one stroke that would free up massive financial resources.
NZ First’s policy is to double the rate of investment in public transport.
If they are supported by a robust cost-benefit case we will back public transport infrastructure projects in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington.
In rural New Zealand, where public transport is more difficult to make viable, we want the New Zealand Transport Agency to examine ways to support communities in the era of higher oil costs.
All of the 7 steps I have mentioned to
night would have a significant beneficial impact on the New Zealand economy.
These policies will be developed further as the year progresses.
This I can assure you.
We are committed to fresh ideas for creating a better future for our country.
Meanwhile back to the sordid present.
Race Relations and the Real Enemy
We will not get a better future by allowing the ill informed to squabble about issues like race.
Therefore it was not surprising this week to see an egocentric dinosaur competing with a cracked record over who could make the most inflammatory racial statement.
You could see this coming through a thick fog wearing sunglasses.
Most Maori are not actually the enemy.
Nor are most other New Zealanders.
Most people accept the fact that Hone Harawira is a loose unit from the Far North where there are probably more loose units per hectare than anywhere else in New Zealand.
What they perhaps find harder to understand is that Don Brash is simply reciting a script written by the very rich and powerful interests behind the National and Act parties.
The Three Stooges
It's interesting to see how three past and present National Party leaders are operating at present.
They are acting like three stooges.
The definition of a stooge is an individual who allows him or herself to be used for another's profit or advantage.
The current leader John Key leads the public relations campaign.
He is the good stooge.
Don Brash pops up to create the smokescreen, playing the part of the bad stooge.
And behind the scenes Jenny Shipley is showing her loyalty to the country she once led by selling as much of it as she can to China. She is China's stooge.
Youth Employment
This government has passed draconian anti-worker laws in the name of creating jobs.
These laws include giving employers the right to sack people without reason and to lower the wages of young people – even if they are doing the same work as older people.
Government ministers claimed they were only passing these laws to help young people.
This was simply not true.
Figures out this week show that youth unemployment is getting worse.
Teenage unemployment has risen to a record 27.5 per cent, with a business group warning of a social time bomb.
The unemployment rate for people between 15 and 19 has never been higher since records started in the mid 1980s.
The unemployment rate for young males is thirty percent.
And we wonder why so many of them end up in trouble and in jail.
Remember the jobs summit when this government first came into power?
The employment situation is getting worse – and this is just another reason for the Brash smokescreen thrown across the country – to blur the vision of the people.
Hence a political dinosaur reappears on television fanning concern for unemployment and debt whilst never admitting that it was the very policies he subscribed to that got us to this parlous situation.
The Good News
There is some good news ahead and that is NZ First will continue looking after the most vulnerable in our society.
At your annual meeting last year we announced the extension of the SuperGold card into one free medical check a year and GP visits to be capped at ten dollars.
Tonight we are pleased to announce that the SuperGold Card is going into energy saving.
We will be giving a discount of ten percent on the electricity bills of SuperGold cardholders.
This scheme will be based on the average annual units used by married couples and singles and we would have it operating by winter 2012.
Details will be announced later but the scheme’s cost will be very modest after it has been set up.
Of course, we won’t be paying to heat swimming pools or to run the family factory from grandma's place but we believe that cold damp houses are a health risk to senior citizens.
The cost of electricity has gone up at least ten percent since last winter and we hear too many reports of older people unable to afford power bills or scared to turn a heater on.
We would like to do more – but at least we are moving in the right direction.
November 2011
This coming election will be a watershed.
Voters can choose to return to the failed policies 80s and 90s or grab the chance of a better, more prosperous future.
You have to look through the political fog, the racial smokescreens and the wildly fluctuating financial estimates pouring out of the Beehive.
New Zealand does not have a problem with public debt. Our public or state debt is manageable.
The private debt is a problem and that has been caused by the overseas owned banks going on a lending spree in order to make more profits. All the while cheered on by self interested groups in New Zealand.
The government does not carry the debts of these banks. It's carried by the people and businesses with big loans.
So when Mr Key and Mr English keep talking about the country's staggering debt problem and the costs of servicing it – take it with a grain of salt.
It's just an excuse for them to sell more of your state owned assets such as your power stations.
And ladies and gentlemen you can be certain of this. Soon they will be coming for you. They came at you with the surtax under Douglas. They came at you with an increase in that surtax under Richardson and attacked you again under Shipley.
Be afraid.
We suggest that you vote for a party with a plan, with policies and with a vision for the future.
You need NZ First back in Parliament.
We have a record of looking after senior citizens and remember we also have a record of looking after the young.
There is a very good reason why John Key and Don Brash took over the Act party.
They know that NZ First would govern for the many not just the preferred few.
They know NZ First would not allow any more state assets and farmland sold off.
Make no mistake – these assets will go offshore because that is where the money is.
What sort of a future would a Key/Brash government leave for your children and grandchildren, let alone you?
We all face a future of being the tenants and servants of foreign landlords and absentee owners.
We are well down that path now.
We need to draw back.
We urge you not to repeat the mistake of 2008.
We need your votes and you need us to look after your interests.
We put New Zealanders first.
It’s in our party name.
It is our Number One policy.
We have never let you down and we won’t let you down now.
ENDS
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