Peters: Speech to open NZ First Kaitaia Office
new-zealand-first-party
Mon Apr 11 2016 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Peters: Speech to open NZ First Kaitaia Office
Monday, 11 April 2016, 11:05 am
Speech: New Zealand First Party
Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
8 APRIL 2016
Embargoed till delivery
New Zealand First Leader and MP for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters
Speech to open NZ First Kaitaia Office
90 Commerce Street, Kaitaia
5.45pm, Friday 8 April, 2016
NZ First’s blanket coverage of Northland complete
It is a great pleasure to be here in the Far North, in Kaitaia.
This is a town and area famously known for its history, beauty – and avocado – among other attractions.
I can also recall there was a famous footballer from this area many years ago – Peter Jones, one of the great legends of Northland and New Zealand rugby.
You have much to be proud of and New Zealand First is delighted we are now becoming part of your community by opening this office today.
We have made a firm commitment to work for the people of Kaitaia and Northland.
We believe your views count; we are interested in you and your futures.
We want to make Kaitaia and Northland a better place for your families and your children.
We want to amend that situation where Kaitaia was side-lined, pushed aside, forgotten, left to battle on the best way it could.
The Government has acted as though you don’t exist; that you don’t count.
Air New Zealand is the same.
This majority owned-government company decided in November 2014 that Kaitaia was surplus to requirements and they chopped all Kaitaia flights.
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As the Te Hiku Community Board chairman Lawrie Atkinson said at the time, the twice daily flights had reached record profits but by their actions Air New Zealand showed no consideration for the social and economic effects on the people of Te Hiku ward.
Unlike Air New Zealand and the government, New Zealand First cares about what is happening socially and economically in Kaitaia.
That is why New Zealand First contested the Northland by-election last year.
We campaigned because we understood you had been shunted aside.
“Send them a message” was our slogan.
And thank you very much – you sent them a message and no longer can the government take you for granted.
FORESTRY
Forestry is a major industry in this area and we are greatly concerned that the wealth of our forests is simply being exported to benefit foreign companies while local mills struggle to gain logs at competitive prices.
Sawmills here are competing with foreign owners and buyers who can buy 18 workers for the price of one New Zealand worker.
These foreign buyers don’t pay ACC or all the costs New Zealand businesses have to pay.
Currently around 40% of the timber exported goes out as logs.
That’s economic madness.
Increased log processing is the obvious route for the sector to take.
It is likely that there will always be a proportion of the timber harvested and exported as logs but right now there is a huge potential resource and source of added wealth and jobs that the government is ignoring.
Greater processing and greater added value has got to happen in our country, not in some other country.
We must also look closely at what other countries are doing to protect and to promote their forestry/wood products industry.
Countries such as Canada, for example, apply various mechanisms and stipulations to the export of logs to safeguard the interests of local processors and workers.
Why don’t we do that?
But instead of being proactive we have been taken to the cleaners by, for example, China and the China Free Trade Agreement.
The Chinese probably cannot believe how easy it is to cream the forestry wealth of this country.
When the FTA is re-negotiated later this year, the balance must move more in favour of New Zealand than China; at the moment it is all win-win for China; lose for New Zealand
Any forward thinking government with a concern for places like Kaitaia and Northland would have acted in New Zealand’s interests on forestry issues a long time ago but we are still waiting.
RAIL
Any half decent government would also have invested in rail.
But what is the government actually doing?
Because of a lack of investment in track maintenance and rail wagons the rail service north of Whangarei has been left to deteriorate and now the line has been mothballed.
Just when rail is urgently needed to help the economic development of Northland it has been let go; like Air New Zealand’s flights to Kaitaia.
Similarly, the failure to connect Northport by rail to the national network is economic lunacy.
The Auckland port has passed its use-by date. Northport is the only obvious alternative and yet central government won’t act.
Earlier this week 460 people attended a forum in Whangarei where the future of rail in the North was discussed.
People wanted to know how the government could fund $26 million for the flag referendum and the $1.6 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of South Canterbury Finance in 2010, but have no money for an important rail link.
But that’s the sort of mixed up government we have.
The prime minister would prefer to have a new flag but now he has gone quiet because he lost and the whole fiasco has cost the country $26 million – for nothing.
ROADS
To the list of air travel and rail you can add roads.
This is another area the government has neglected.
In the last six years rural roading support money has gone to Roads of National Significance.
The National government cut rural roads subsidies in 2009
Our rural roads are being left to fall apart and dust has become a major problem and health hazard because the government won’t provide the subsidy funding.
There was a headline in a Whangarei newspaper a short time back which said: “Work on new bridges.”
The headline suggested work on the much promised 10 two-lane bridges promised by National was underway.
But when you read the story it said the NZTA was “readying itself” for the building of four of the 10 bridges.
Readying itself: What does that mean?
Maybe they’re still thinking about it. Maybe that’s their idea of getting ready.
The government is strong on talk but slow on action.
You only have to look at the much hyped grand opus of Minister Steven Joyce’s, the Northland Regional Action Plan, which was announced in Kerikeri in February.
It is a document that looks impressive but has no substance.
When I asked Mr Joyce whether his document was backed up by monetary and fiscal policy changes in Wellington, his answer was no.
You will have a hard task finding anything in that document which provides real projects to get Northland people into jobs.
ROYALTIES FOR REGIONS
Unlike National, New Zealand First recognizes that towns like Kaitaia and provinces like Northland do matter.
To show they matter we have our Royalties for Regions scheme.
Under this policy we would ensure that no less than 25 per cent of royalties collected by the government from a region’s natural resources – forestry in this area is one example of that – would be returned to the region.
The royalties would go into a fund to be used to fix roads, improve water treatment plants and build health centres.
The money would be used to improve the economic and social life of places like Kaitaia.
The money would not disappear into some bank vault in Wellington never to be seen again.
CONCLUSION
Finally, I re-affirm New Zealand First’s commitment to Kaitaia.
We want you and your families to have better futures and we are working to that end.
New Zealand First has woken them up in Wellington on what matters to the people of Kaitaia and Northland and we will keep them awake.
Please feel free to tell us about your concerns over the future of New Zealand.
The office will be open for two days a week and we will be pleased to hear whatever matter you wish to raise, regardless of your politics.
Today is a big day for New Zealand First.
This completes the number of offices we have in Northland.
From today we now have five – in Warkworth, Whangarei, Kerikeri, Kaitaia and Dargaville – or as we refer to it – WWKKD.
It’s a network, like a radio or TV network, and it’s a tight-knit network that is working hard for the people of Northland.
New Zealand First is putting the resources into Northland to show we care; we are saying the neglect of Northland has to end.
The first part of New Zealand that people from other nations see is the beautiful province of Northland.
It is our intention to make sure that Northland is the first part of New Zealand that Parliament and Wellington sees as well.
Thank you very much for being here today.
ENDS
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