Rt Hon Winston Peters

New Zealand First Leader

20 October 2013 

New Zealand First Convention 2013

Addington Raceway, Christchurch

Sunday 20 October 2013, 1.30pm

New Zealand First More Relevant Than Ever

Thank you for your welcome and for being here. 

Thank you for your work and for your sacrifice over the last year and for flying the New Zealand First flag all around our country.

We have just passed our twentieth anniversary – and we have watched a lot of others fall by the wayside.

We are strong because of what we believe in and what we do.

It’s in our name.  New Zealand First. 

We stand for our country, our resources and our people.

We want to express our gratitude and respect for the people of Christchurch.

We’re here to renew our commitment to urgently help rebuild the capital of this powerhouse province.

The heritage, spirit and courage in Christchurch’s fight back is an inspiration – and has given the rest of the country a lesson in community spirit and team work.

Sadly this commitment has not been matched with the same loyalty by some of your leaders.

We refer to those of both the political and commercial persuasion.

Where is the urgency from Wellington?

Where is the determination, the will to speedily rebuild the city and the lives of the people?

It is a gross dereliction of duty for a government to take such a hands-off approach.

Christchurch reconstruction should not be left to National Party hacks.

And it should not be left to market forces and the law of supply and demand.

Only a concerted approach led by a government that cared about every individual case will end the malaise. 

And for commercial interests let’s be blunt.

It is a total abrogation of responsibility for insurance companies to spend wasted months haggling over claims.

We warned from the outset that the insurance industry would rip off both the people of Christchurch and all premium payers nationwide.

Generations of insurance payments gone and now insurance companies have the audacity to restore profits by ratcheting up premiums everywhere. 

If there was ever a case to restore a genuinely state owned insurance company Christchurch has proved it.

We did have our own insurance company once - State Insurance – but it was sold so it could be a cash cow for the Insurance Australia Group by the fourth Labour Government.

It is obvious that we need to set up our own insurance company once again.

Because if there is one certainty in these uncertain times it is there will be another severe earthquake.

GOVERNMENT
In the world of politics the Beehive is also looking very shaky.

For this was never a government for all the people – it was always a government for some rich people, some big businesses and some overseas corporations.

It’s so bad a new social group has emerged who can only be described as waged slaves.

Many New Zealanders work all hours of the day and night for subsistence pay packets and middle earning taxpayers subsidise their wages through rent supplements and the Working for Families scheme.

This is a stark sign of our economic failure.

Five years ago National promised to match Kiwi wages with Australia’s wages.

Now the only Kiwi workers getting Australian wages are the hundreds of thousands who went there.

IMMIGRATION WARNING

Now let’s be blunt about the Australian dream.

Twenty years ago we warned about the dangers of uncontrolled immigration.

We warned that New Zealand was, for many, becoming a transit camp, bolt hole or back door entry into Australia.

Every other political party ignored the warning.

Now hundreds of thousands of Kiwis are treated as second class citizens in the lucky country.

Why?  Because we did not police our immigration and the flow on effects to Australia.

This is why Australia is so tough on Kiwis and it reeks of hypocrisy to hear some politicians now criticising the results.

Blame the political parties.  They know who they are.

They did it.

Not John Howard, Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott.

WHANAU ORA

Another example of failure is our race relations and our newest disaster is Whanau Ora. 

Whanau Ora is based on tribalism and tribalism is different to culture, tradition, language and social grouping.  It is tribalism vs. Maoriness.

It emphasises differences rather than nationhood.

If we want to see the worst excesses of tribalism, look at the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan.

These are serious conflicts causing thousands of casualties.

These conflicts are portrayed as bids for freedom and democracy but in reality it’s tribe against tribe, and tribes against the rest, fighting for the same resources.

Tribalism is not compatible with democracy.

With taxpayers money Whanau Ora is helping create a false historical vision about Maori at odds with reality.

Rather than being a scientific model for government services to Maori, Whanau Ora is based on gossip, anecdote and the prejudice of the Maori Party’s backers.

Their minister favours iwi groups, in the latest moves to let non-government organisations decide what should be funded.

Pan Maori organisations are being swept aside again in favour of tribalism.

Hundreds of millions of dollars will be transferred to iwi to hand out without any checks, scrutiny or auditing. 

And that is happening right now.  Whilst Maori want a decent house, an affordable health system, good education for their children, a first world job with first world wages - Whanau Ora offers corruption and a cargo cult.

It is humiliating and demeaning whilst overseas Maori foot it with the best of them.

Only one party has the courage to say that, but it’s true.  Ask any Maori at the bottom, the great majority, what they are getting out of it.

RETIREMENT AND SUPERANNUATION

New Zealand First is even more relevant today than when we set out on our journey to help steer New Zealand through dangerous waters and away from dangerous ideas.

This is why New Zealand still needs us.

We warned twenty years ago that New Zealand needed to save. 

We knew that we had to set up a fund to invest in our future.

When we put forward our superannuation and savings plan we were met by a storm of opposition.

Now the same opponents are screaming for a compulsory savings plan.  But as always they want to control it.

Today we have an announcement for them and a plan to stop the exploitation, for private interests, that is already happening to KiwiSaver.

KiwiSaver is a voluntary work based scheme to help you with your long term saving for retirement.

You get a thousand dollars kick start, regular employer contributions and a tax credit.

But KiwiSaver is managed by private sector companies called KiwiSaver providers.

KiwiSaver is NOT Government guaranteed and it’s at your own risk.

KiwiSaver is a pot of gold – for the providers – not the savers.

Here are the facts.

In the five short years that KiwiSaver has been operating the so-called providers have sucked off $325 million from the people paying into the scheme.

And there is worse to come.

We asked an independent source to forecast forward thirty years how much these companies will take from KiwiSaver contributors.

The result is staggering.

In the next thirty years, at present settings, these so called professionals will suck over twenty two billion dollars from the pockets of New Zealanders.

Who is KiwiSaver for?  Ordinary Kiwis - or providing an avalanche of fees and other charges for an army of fund managers?

Right now the only guarantee with KiwiSaver is that it will make the management of the various fund managers super rich.

Remember that however your funds actually perform, the funds managers fees are guaranteed – if they lose your money the ticket will still be clipped.

On our website you can see a graph which shows you what the cheerleaders of the private financial services industry are up to.

They plan legalised plunder on a massive scale.

Our plan is to put KiwiSaver on the same footing as the New Zealand Super Fund which has world class, government commissioned savings fund management.

We’ll call it the KiwiFund. 

Our plan is to change KiwiSaver so that it is a truly Government backed and managed retirement fund.  Because of the economies of scale and the elimination of hordes of ticket clipping fund managers costs will be greatly reduced.  People who pay in to KiwiSaver will get their full return.

Unlike KiwiSaver providers – our fund WOULD be government guaranteed and it will have a lot higher return for savers.

Remember, private providers in Wall Street destroyed the retirement plans of millions of Americans through their ticket clipping and risky investments.

We are going to invest more in New Zealand.

Kiwis are going to buy back their land and their assets.

And KiwiFund will give financial backing to the winners who keep coming up with brilliant ideas and products.

Fonterra will no longer just churn out milk powder and New Zealand won’t  just export unprocessed logs and whole fish and import the finished product from another economy.

How brainless is that – go into a supermarket and look at the frozen fish – our Tarakihi processed in China!

Today the economy resembles that of a colony with a separate city state called Auckland.

And the irony is the city state was created by this government.

It has pitted Auckland against the rest of the country.

It has poured hundreds of thousands more immigrants into Auckland, snarled the place up and describes this madness as economic recovery.

COALITION POSITION

Now to deal with the frenzy of questions on forming the next government.

We have this old fashioned perception of democracy and that is we wait until the votes are counted.

We are not signing up to any pre-election deals.

New Zealand First wants a coalition with the people.

That's what we did last time in 2011 and that's what we will be doing again.

We are not Klingons, Siamese twins, or political lapdogs.

We are your watchdogs - and our bite is worse than our bark.

It is outrageous that few politicians and even fewer commentators understand the era of proportional representation.

They want the land of two-party ‘winner takes all politics’.

This is turning people off which is bad for the democratic process.

So, next year we must all take responsibility for making sure people vote.

A non-vote is really a vote for National and its financial backers.

National’s version of democracy under the present leadership is dodgier than a group of bookies running a secondhand junk shop.

There is no inspired leadership.

There is no vision – just a hodge podge of dodgy deals.

A flick to Warner brothers

A backhander to Rio Tinto

A shonky sale of Mighty River Power

A pre-sale back hander to sell Meridian

A sleazy deal for a bigger gambling den for SkyCity – with a convention centre - and five storey brothel just across the road

A secret deal on the TPPA – run for the benefit of American multi-nationals.

Key operates like a political version of Milo Minderbender from the novel Catch 22.

Remember Minderbender was the living representation of ‘conscienceless capitalism’ without allegiance to any country, person or principle unless it paid him.

This is not our way.

New Zealanders have had enough of this.

THE FUTURE

New Zealand needs leaders of vision.

We need to know where we are going.

We do not need to make jumps to the left or lurches to the right.

We have the resources, the people, and the knowhow.

What is missing is the plan and the purpose.

That’s where New Zealand First is needed.

We have boldly created yet another simple plan to create jobs and wealth.

Whatever parties want to form a government in 2014 they will have to work with us to set up KiwiFund.

Let them show whose side they are on – the Kiwis who pay into KiwiSaver or the finance and insurance industry controlled from overseas.

They think they have got 22 billion in the bank and they are screaming for more through a dozen devious schemes.

Delegates, we have to learn from our mistakes.  We’ve made thirty years of them!!!

We cannot keep repeating them year in and year out, babbling nonsense about economic recovery when our economy is still ill and fragile.

We must stop the rot of becoming a nation of waged slaves waiting at the master’s table.

We have to go from here with renewed commitment and marshall our forces for the big push in 2014 so that we have the numbers to make a difference.

New Zealand needs us. New Zealand needs New Zealand First.

ENDS

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