Speech: Peters - Tauranga Public Meeting
new-zealand-first-party
Sun May 22 2011 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Speech: Peters - Tauranga Public Meeting
Sunday, 22 May 2011, 2:32 pm
Speech: New Zealand First Party
EMBARGOED AGAINST DELIVERY
Rt. Hon Winston Peters
Leader NZ First
Address to: Tauranga Public Meeting
Tauranga Baptist Church
Corner Cameron Road & 13th Avenue Tauranga
Date: Sunday 22nd May 2011
Time: 2pm
“Voices from the past and signs of the future”
“Wishing, hoping, thinking and praying”
There was an uncanny feeling when we listened to the Budget debate this week.
We could hear voices from the past – and they were giving us some signs of the future.
The voices we heard were those of the two biggest wreckers this country has ever known.
Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.
We heard about making savings and we heard about the need to sell taxpayer owned assets to save New Zealand from itself.
Once more we were taken into the tunnel of pain and once more a rosy picture was painted of all the gain when we had finished suffering the pain.
We were told we had to start selling four power companies and our national airline.
There is obviously more to come.
After all why would they stop with just these assets?
Mr Key says that these assets are being sold to invest in new assets, like schools and roads. And there is the deceitful rub. The five assets he mentioned pay a dividend to Government now. The replacement assets will not. Unless there is a new charge regime that you’re not being told about.
And after Bill English and John Key had explained how they were going to do the devil's work, we heard a chorus of Opposition speakers all singing the same chorus.
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The chorus was a warning about selling public assets.
And as you probably realised, the words had been written by New Zealand First years ago.
There is no copyright on good ideas – we accept that.
There is no doubt that the plan by this National government to sell our power stations is short sighted and stupid.
Just imagine it. It's like a home owner in a cold climate deciding to sell the fireplace and the wood he burns in it.
Energy is our lifeblood. It drives everything from a personal computer to a cowshed.
So the smart guys who lead the National Party decide to sell the companies that generate this electricity.
It would be hard to find a dumber idea – even from a group of people who specialise in dumb ideas.
And don’t think for one moment that the power stations won’t end up in foreign hands.
Mr Key is involving himself in an elaborate exercise in deception. He argues that this asset sale plan will give Kiwi Mums and Dads a chance to invest in New Zealand. But Kiwi Mums and Dads, every one of them, is already an investor in these assets. They already own them. So his plan is to take from every New Zealand Mum and Dad investor and to sell it to a privileged few of this number.
What you heard from him were weasel words of deceit.
There is absolutely no restriction on foreign ownership.
The “Mums and Dads” who invest in these will be Chinese or Australian “Mums and Dads”.
Kiwis won’t have enough money. Or they will have left for Australia.
Even Treasury – that well known organisation that gets most of its forecasts wrong got it right when it said, and I quote: 'significant participation by foreign investors will be essential to achieve the governments overall objectives" .
Of course no details were given.
That will come out in the fine print after the election.
Moving on to the next giant blunder by the wonder boys – and you don’t have to look far!
Just when New Zealanders have started to grasp the need for savings and when there was significant political agreement not to meddle with KiwiSaver, along comes the National Party and meddles with New Zealand savings for the second time in three years.
Historically New Zealand has a bad track record of savings.
The Cullen Fund and KiwiSaver were a step in the right direction.
1.7 million Kiwis joined up for KiwiSaver.
Why would a government break a contract with these people?
And if it does it twice over the Cullen Fund and KiwiSaver it will break social contracts time and time again.
The Cullen Fund and KiwiSaver money invested in New Zealand serves a two-fold purpose.
It is both savings and investment.
It is easy for the government to talk about the country not being in a position to meet its obligations to KiwiSavers.
This is the same government that put almost two billion dollars into a failed finance company in South Canterbury.
This is the same government that could afford to give $2.2 billion dollars in income tax cuts to top earners while those on the minimum wage got an extra 25 cents an hour, and higher GST on their food and every other cost.
This is the same government prepared to throw another billion dollars at an insurance company that collected premiums for many years – but can’t pay out the people of Canterbury.
In short – this government is prepared to throw buckets of money at failed private enterprise and rich people but the strugglers in society trying to feed their families get zilch.
Let me give you a case in point.
The boss of Westpac bank in New Zealand gets $5.6 million a year.
National gave him a tax cut of more than $5000 a week – more than $260,000 a year.
Staggering isn't it?
Yet if you are a battler at the bottom you got an extra 25 cents an hour and your food prices have gone through the roof.
Your power bills are up – petrol prices are up – wherever you turn there is another price rise.
This unhappy state of affairs is the National Party’s version of capitalism and the prime minister and his deputy Bill English are firm believers in it. I saw the National Party’s version of capitalism and it works like this. Screw up in business and if you’re friends of the National Party, you get bailed out. This version of capitalism of course does not extend to you.
In fact Mr English is such a firm believer in this form of private enterprise that he gets paid by the taxpayers to live in his own privately owned house.
That's right. Bill English is New Zealand's highest paid housing beneficiary. He was claiming $42,000 a year to live in his own home.
Just when some nosey journalists started to dig further into his housing arrangements, they were dragged off.
The whole issue suddenly went away. Funny that.
The Prime Minister has been painting a picture of a wonderful future for everybody.
As long as the National Party is re elected – and as long as nobody kicks up too much fuss about our assets being sold – give or take a few power stations and dairy farms - everything is going to be beautiful.
And factoring in to forward calculations, as yet unrealised asset sales, would if a company did that result in charges of fraud. Which begs the question, why is New Zealand Treasury indulging in this unethical deceit? A company director who did this would be in prison. And all the decade old talk of transparency and openness is in this budget reduced to lies.
It is the biggest con job and it is to be hoped that New Zealanders see through it.
However, you have to give credit where credit is due.
The Australian firm Crosby Textor is obviously worth the millions of dollars it gets paid by the National Party and the New Zealand taxpayers.
Its public relations strategy is nearly perfect.
And it's so simple – just put on a smiley face – learn some soothing clichés – and do nothing except look after your mates and sell the taxpayer's assets – and some dairy farms and parts of the foreshore and seabed.
The Budget is loaded with optimistic and speculative forecasts.
All of these forecasts need to line up to stand the Budget up.
Just one miscalculation sends New Zealand tumbling further into the red.
And Treasury has been wrong in just about every forecast it has made in recent years.
It is worse than the Metservice.
If Treasury told you it was going to be a nice fine day – you should grab an overcoat and snowshoes!
And the same applies to their Budget forecasts.
• The budget’s projected deficits for next three years are based on hope not reality.
• The government’s borrowing forecasts for the next three years are based on wishful thinking and a clear skies fantasy.
• The Government’s GDP growth forecasts are pie in the sky
• The forecasts that employment will increase by 170,000 by 2015 is dream time
Look, it’s always better to be optimistic than pessimistic but optimism should be based on reliable information and this budget is not.
New Zealand suffers from a severe balance of payments problem.
It means that the money we earn overseas is less than the amount we spend overseas.
It's like a household earning fifty thousand a year but spending sixty thousand.
If the government sells our profitable power stations, and Air New Zealand, it actually makes the situation worse – not better.
If you look back to the 80s and early 90s politicians sold a large number of the country's strategic assets to overseas investors.
As columnist Bryan Gaynor said: “These politicians failed to realise they were establishing a domestic wealth destruction culture as wealth is mainly created through ownership rather than disposal.
Telecom was sold to overseas interests for $4.25 billion in1990.
Since then has made distributions to shareholders, in the form of dividends and capital repayments, of $14.6 billion.
The Bank of New Zealand was sold to National Australia Bank (NAB) for $1.5 billion in 1992.
Since then BNZ has distributed $5.2 billion in dividends to its Australian parent.
It is now worth an estimated $7.2 billion based on its 2010 net earnings of $602 million and a price/earnings ratio of 12.
Thus NAB paid $1.5 billion for BNZ and the latter has delivered total shareholder value of $12.4 billion to its Australian owners since late 1992.
And these are just two examples.
The prospect of continued sales of our prime dairy land is equally frightening.
New Zealand is a major producer of cheap protein in a world where there is a food shortage.
Our prime land and our climate are extremely valuable.
We are being targeted by China where there is plenty of money for investment – thanks to a ruthless system of state capitalism and a workforce without any rights.
They can’t even complain.
The leaders of China and the leaders of their industry want to get their hands on New Zealand dairy farms, and our dairy factories.
They have even set up their own political party – the New Citizens party that contested the Botany by-election.
Surely even the dumbest politician can see a pattern here.
Alarm bells and warning lights should be flashing from one end of the country to the other.
The last government entered a Free Trade Agreement with China. We warned of its consequences if that agreement meant not increased sales to China, but increased ownership of our resources. In short a Free Trade Agreement should be about trade not cross ownership of resources, which seems precisely the path down which we are headed.
We could see the writing on the wall.
There is no future for New Zealand in that sort of agreement, save reduced incomes, and a declining share in the wealth of our own resources.
Last Thursday New Zealanders hoped to hear a plan to speed up our growth and raise household and corporate incomes. A vision to export our way back to a wealthy future with high earning domestic enterprises given a chance to thrive.
There was no such plan.
However, midst the gloom there is some good news.
That good news is New Zealand First is on the way back.
We have released a seven point plan for economic recovery.
We have released an outline of some of our social policies – like a free medical check each year for SuperGold cardholders, GP visits capped at ten dollars and a ten percent power discount.
Today we are giving notice that we believe it is time to look hard at putting our electricity supply and distribution networks back together.
We are a small country – with about the population of Sydney.
Why do we need separate state owned enterprises doing the same thing?
We believe it is time to admit that some of the changes made in the eighties and nineties have not worked.
It is better to fix up our mistakes than to continue blindly down the road of privatisation.
It simply does not work.
And on the subject of things that don’t work, I want to briefly talk about a retired banker and a man in a yellow coat.
In themselves they are not particularly interesting.
But what they are doing should be of concern to everyone.
It is hard to understand in a democracy like New Zealand how the former leader of the National Party can take over as leader of the Act Party without even being a member of it.
It sounds like some tin pot African takeover – meaning no offence to the Africans of course – they would have more sense.
Brash took over Act and dragged in John Banks as part of National's plan to save themselves.
The man in the yellow coat was such a disaster that an intelligent Labrador could have beaten him in the seat of Epsom.
But now Don Brash has been dragged out of the archives, dusted off and given an old script that will further divide New Zealand and privatise everything else.
Brash is already talking about savings from superannuation.
Like reducing the amount paid and lifting the age of entitlement.
Make no mistake – a Key/Brash government will reduce many New Zealanders to poverty.
Selling off the power stations and Air New Zealand is only the beginning.
This country was once known as God's Own.
The God who defends New Zealand in our national anthem is about to be asset stripped.
Last Thursday’s budget reminded me of an old Dusty Springfield song; “wishing, hoping, thinking and praying’. It’s a ditty for a song not a thesis for a budget.
In conclusion this country needs New Zealand First more than ever. We are prepared to stand against the forces who govern for the few at the expense of the many.
We have stopped them before and we are ready to stop them again.
Our name New Zealand First means that we put our country and our people first.
Give us your party vote in November. That way New Zealand will have a real future.
ENDS
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