Speech by Rt. Hon Winston Peters
Leader, NZ First 

Delivered at a public meeting at Cheval Room, Hawkes Bay Racecourse, Hastings at 1 pm on December 4, 2022.

There have been great labour governments in the past and Labour governments that have simply been hijacked and failed. And Labour has been hijacked since the 2020 election.

There is no doubt that Peter Frazer was a great New Zealand Prime Minister, even fair National Party members concede that. Likewise Helen Clark and Sir Michael Cullen ran a sound government.

Sadly David Lange the peerless orator came to power in 1984 and realised to his dismay that he had been hijacked by the unmandated “Rogernomics” economic revolution. And by December 1987 Lange said, ‘its time for a cuppa’. What he meant was - it’s time to stop this unparalleled neoliberal experiment.

Remember, Lange had come to power with a secret agenda foisted upon him, at the same time as Bob Hawke in Australia. Hawke opted for ‘incremental change’ and in the following 20 years Australia’s GDP grew in real terms, over 34% greater than New Zealand did. Purists never like facts – but these are the facts.

In a long conversation one evening in Tauranga, David Lange, who had been a former tutor, shared privately how he felt. It is still an enduring somewhat eerie memory because David Lange was a good person who set out to do the right thing and was simply hijacked by a clique in his own party.

Doing What is Right

A journalist has recently described comments about the parents of the sick baby refusing vaccinated blood as being ‘anti-vax’ and from a ‘vaccine denier’.

The issue is not about being ‘pro or anti-vax’ or even denying any of the science. This is about freedoms, truth, and people’s right to informed consent.

This court case should never happen and is a waste of taxpayers money. We have a health system now acting like they are the ‘podium of truth’. Supported by shallow arrogant journalists like Andrea Vance in today’s Sunday Star Times page 51. She has contempt for people’s fundamental rights.

All totalitarian dictatorships have one feature – the government is right and cannot be questioned. This is a sad example of just how dictatorial and self-righteous the government have allowed themselves to become.

You will recall how so many New Zealanders were mandated out of a job and careers.

Just like the couple before the court in Auckland who have the right, in this case, to question and to refuse – and it is a principle worth defending. They already have unvaccinated donors ready to give blood to accompany the heart operation their baby must have. How complicated is this really?

Someone who is pro-vaccine, vaccinated three times, is not a vaccine denier. But remember, it was the Prime Minister who told you that if you got vaccinated you would not get covid, or be a covid transmitter. These lazy critics repeated her words and haven’t got the honesty to tell you they have both been proven to be dramatically wrong.

One party has stood up for the people’s right to be informed and to make their own choices.

We reject utterly the way so many people were mandated out of work and incomes by the ‘podium of truth’. It is our position, that those who were mandated out of work due to their freedom of choice, should be offered their jobs back and compensated.

We have always regarded the right to disagree as one of the most fundamental rights in a democracy. And it is a right that we know is worth defending.

The Co-Government of the Labour Party

The present Labour Party is a co-governance organisation already. There are 15 members of the Labour Party with Maori in their background, nearly all of them having more non-Maori in their heritage than Maori.

They call themselves ‘The First Fifteen’ like the All Blacks or the Black Ferns. The rest in Labour are the second and third fifteen, and a collection of hangers-on. They are not a ‘broad church’, their previous proud claim, for disagreement and diversity. They have become ‘two-churches’, one ‘Labour Maori Church’, and the other the ‘Non-Maori Labour Church’ - including it would seem the Prime Minister.

Two days ago Willie Jackson said “The thing that frustrates me most about race relations in this country is the speed with which the loudest and angriest voices always seem to end up dominating the debate with nonsense.”

Willie was looking in the mirror when he made that confession.

To excuse himself he recalled that it was the National Party with the Act Party in tow, that signed up to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was the present Labour’ Party’s excuse to secretly request a “white-paper written as a response to that declaration, He Puapua, which has been sold by opportunistic politicians as ‘Maorification by stealth’.”

A white-paper would have to be ordered by Cabinet, as taxpayers money was being used, let alone the policy discussion by Cabinet to request it. There was no white-paper because it was ordered by Minister Mahuta in 2019 in secret, without telling the New Zealand First coalition partner and the Deputy Prime Minister.

But Willie says that “He Puapua is a discussion paper on how to live up to those UN obligations.” Again, Willie says “that Maori must work together with our Treaty partner.” He says, “I’m not for separatism” and that any questioning of their motives “is a disgraceful dog-whistling tactic that seeks only to sow division rather than progress.”

Willie blames National, “so few seem to understand what National signed us up to” (in 2010). He accused the Helen Clark led government of having “shamefully voted against it in 2007”.

Willie’s grasp of both history and politics is not good. It was New Zealand First and the then Foreign Minister that stopped the then Labour Government from signing up to that UN Declaration – it was totally contradictory to the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed decades earlier, and the Convention of the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, New Zealand signed in 1972.

Willie’s comments two days ago is evidence that Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government, in under two years, is a complete circus.

But here is the alarming part, he says “I’m thinking about putting the charter on hold because of so much mis-information and to (sic) many New Zealanders have been tricked into thinking it is a Maori coup, and Co governance (sic) will be at the forefront of constitutional arrangements in this country.”

When the He Puapua report became public after the last election the Prime Minister

• First, denied knowledge of it,
• Second, said it wasn’t government policy,
• Third, used the above two as justification of not telling the Deputy Prime Minster and New Zealand First.

For any of that to be true, then Minister Mahuta had to not have told her. The consequences of that is that Minister Mahuta should have been sacked upon the PM learning of the report.

Minister Mahuta has not been sacked which means the Prime Minister knew about it all along.

Minister Jackson, publicly thinking out loud of putting the charter on hold, means either that he has not told the Prime Minister of this, or she has told him to do that. So who is in charge here?

The answer can be found in:

Not ‘Three Waters’, but ‘Six Waters’

The ‘Three Waters’ legislation went to a select committee, with over 88,000 written submissions, nearly all opposed. Minister Mahuta doubled down after the submissions had closed, and the committee report back to parliament, by adding coastal and geothermal water to the other three waters - drinking, waste, and storm water. That is ‘Five Waters’.

And then, in urgency, came the 60% entrenchment amendment to prevent a simple majority of parliament in future changing the legislation.

The Prime Minister, with the Leader of the House Chris Hipkins by her side, declared on state television that neither she nor Hipkins were aware of this.

Ministers such as Kiritapu Allan, and the Finance Minister, pleaded ignorance of what was going on. Later Robertson would say that if co-governance of these waters hadn’t happened the reforms would “end up in the courts immediately.”

Now, two pieces of critical evidence bring to mind that famous saying “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we set out to deceive.”

Greens MP Eugenie Sage went public last week and said she had worked on the entrenchment SOP directly with Minister Mahuta.

Sage’s honesty is backed up by the fact that her SOP to entrench the law at 60% gained the vote of all the Labour and Green MPs. Did all of those MPs not know what they were doing either?

Ladies and gentlemen, do you smell a rat here?

The main-stream media all missed, ignored, or conveniently overlooked what was staring them in the face.

If Sage is telling the truth then Minister Mahuta should again be sacked. But she hasn’t been. Which leads to just four possibilities:

• The Prime Minister is not telling the truth,
• The Prime Minister is incompetent,
• The Labour Party is run by the Labour Maori Caucus, or
• All of the above.

And so its not ‘Five Waters’ its now “Six Waters” – drinking, waste, storm, thermal, coastal – and six – they are pissing down our backs and telling us its raining.

The entrenchment SOP was dropped last night by the government.

The State of our State Media

In every dictatorship the media is the pawn of the dictator, there is no fourth estate, no freedom of media expression, and no right to question - exactly what has happened in New Zealand since the last election.

The vehicle for Labour to do that was the “Public Interest Journalism Fund” which exploited a financially troubled media with taxpayer funding - providing they signed up to the government’s narrative.

If you’re a journalist, with a husband or wife, a family and a mortgage, facing potential economic hardship, and a loss of income, it is quite possible that you will grasp at any financial straw no matter how professionally corrupting it is.

That is why we have been having wall to wall meetings around New Zealand and this is the first time one of them has turned up, not to cover this meeting, but likely to question me on why, despite the media boycott, we are rising in the polls.

The Plethora of Excesses and Excuses

The ‘Team of Five-Million’ who were urged to ‘be kind’ have now become divided, disunited, and deeply troubled. That sadly was inevitable the moment the team, or rather a majority of them realised, that they were being taken on an unconstitutional, revisionist, ride of political deception.

For countries to be great, shared common values must prevail. Like, one flag, one law for all, one person one vote, with every vote being equal.

The last two years have seen the promotion of policies the total opposite of the unity we need to go forward together as one people, despite diverse backgrounds.

Look around the world at the great economies and their people share that aspiration. All of the disastrous economies, reflect the opposite.

New Zealand is facing a recession much worse than we’ve been told. In nearly every area you look there is some form of crisis. In housing availability and affordability, in education, in mental health, in public health services, in crime and general lawlessness, and in the cost of living.

Labour blames all of this on international circumstances, covid, or previous governments, and never on their own unparalleled incompetence. Look at Labour Ministers. And ask yourself which minister is doing their job properly?

• The Prime Minister has gone from looking in control to not knowing what is going on.
• The Minister of Finance has been spending a billion more dollars every week.
• Law and order is a mess with no one knowing who the Minister of Police even is.
• The Minister for Broadcasting trapses from one expensive disaster to the next.
• The Minister of Health seems not to know a ‘haemorrhoid from an asteroid’ (to quote a disgruntled herald reader yesterday), constantly denying there is no health services crisis.
• The hundred thousand houses promise, after five years, has just past one thousand.
• The immigration department is a mess.
• The Minister for Education seems not to remember that compulsory school attendance came into law in 1877. Or that if a student is not at school, or getting any formal tuition, its quite possible that they are not learning. Yet we have truancy levels way in excess of 50% in many schools – a total waste of taxpayers’ money and an even sadder loss of potential human capital.
• The Minister for Maori Development comes from the home of the great Sir Apirana Ngata, who focused his work on uplifting Maori land development and businesses, education, housing, health, and the acquisition of tools Maori needed to face the future. Instead, Willie Jackson focusses on cultural virtue signalling, revising Maori history, constitutional re-writes, re-engineering his version of democracy, blaming ‘the white man’ for everything – despite having it in his DNA, let alone his name, and trying to beat the racist Maori Party to the abyss of separatism and apartheid.

What of the victims?

All political choices have consequences. Remember the great Benthamite principle - in short, it is to bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

To see society as a big family - and which parent would not dream of enhancing all of their children’s lives and not just some. New Zealand is an island nation, with origins that lie in sea-going discovery. If we are to get things right in the future, we have to make sure everyone is in our boat.

The fact is, political demands are being made today by a Maori political elite, a self-chosen few, claiming to speak for all Maori. Many of these Maori elite would not have any idea what poverty smells like, looks like, feels like, or tastes like. They have been the beneficiaries of the decision making of earlier politicians.

Politicians many of whom never made it to university but were successful graduates from the university of life. They had been in World Wars and great economic depressions, and were driven to take the New Zealand people to better economic and social futures.

Their four great goals were safe affordable housing, a health system accessible to everyone, to educate the young to be equipped to face their adulthood, and first world wages. Those politicians were a standout success, and caused international political scientists and economists to look to the ends of the Pacific with utter amazement as to how this small country could be doing so well.

For Iceland, Finland, Norway now, read New Zealand back then. When we were in the first three in the world, with the greatest egalitarian society in the world, and when registered unemployed totalled only 29 names.

New Zealand was working in practice, and since then, we have been suffering from those ‘experts’ who want to know how it works in theory.

In the immediate future a serious recession is certain. There will be sadly many victims. It will affect far more New Zealanders than some commentators think. And its already happening. The Reserve Bank Governor is required to attack inflation and bring it back within the zero to three percent policy targets agreement. Oddly, he gets to keep his job, if he can, despite how many people lose their jobs while he’s trying to.

We are all being told to tighten our belts, or, spend less. The Minister of Finance hasn’t exactly agreed with that knowing that he has the 2023 budget, plus prior measures like the fuel tax relief, or the 1 April potential increase of support payments, to lull New Zealanders into the mistaken belief that Labour are competent economic managers. Afterall, if your policy is to rob Peter to pay Paul you can always count on the support of Paul.

However, the tide has run out.

Hundreds of thousands of older people face growing economic uncertainty with fixed incomes and rising costs. Families despite both parents working face rising mortgage costs with insufficient income, some paying well in excess of 60% of their income on mortgages, rate rises, insurance increases, and worsening family expenses.

However, sadly at the bottom of the heap will be Maori and Pacifica - people whose basic needs have not been prioritised by the political party that claims to represent them. And in the case of Maori, an inevitable victim from Labour’s diversion from its original principles, they will suffer in addition the stigma of being the cause of demands for separatist, apartheid, policies, about which they knew nothing, and on which they were never consulted.

The truth is that too many Maori in the Labour and Maori Party have spent their lives on the back of the taxpayer. Their businesses have been paid for by the taxpayer, not faced the competition of the free market and the nation’s commerce, but by providing alternative services, taxpayer paid, “to Maori, for Maori, by Maori.”

All the while, having argued for alternative delivery mechanisms nearly every social measurement has been tanking. And whilst its tanking, their solution is to keep on spending more and more without any rigorous assessment as to whether it is working or even could work.

At its very essence was Labour, Green, and Maori Party views on helping young Maori is the preposterous suggestion that a child cruelly dealt with by its whanau, or family, should nevertheless be returned to that family, because in their understanding of ‘Te Ao Maori’, that’s the only family they can be trusted with. And how many Maori never had the guts to say ‘this is humbug’ - let alone non-Maori who kept silent and went along with it.

The recent tragic case of Malachi Subecz is a case in point. All the commentators, Maori and non-Maori, NGOs and government departments, all ringing their hands in condolence and sympathy. All as guilty as the other for their woke acceptance of race-based demands for local race-based solutions.

The Maori Women’s Welfare League and the Maori Wardens, pan-Maori bodies, with real experience in the field, all swept aside for localised responses without any realistic scrutiny to properly handle so many cases.

Not so long ago, a New Zealand Prime Minister asked the Chief of Defence, “How many Maori are in the Army?”, Major General Poananga answered, “Prime Minister, we only have soldiers in the Army.”

And so it should be. We are all New Zealanders first. Not hyphenated New Zealanders. And some of us with Maori and European ancestry are not going to spend our years agonising over which part of our person apologises to the other part for past wrongs. Or claim that everything that colonists brought was bad, or that everything Maori was inherently good.

We prefer instead to take the best from our collective pasts going forward. With that in mind, we prospect a great future for all New Zealanders.

We know that the essential element of our future success is unity not division, cooperation not separatism, one flag not two, one government not two, one legal system not two, one health system not two, one education system not two, one judicial system not two, one criminal system not two, one people – not two, or two hundred and twenty-two like some claim we are now.

Who is Responsible?

Labour is not totally responsible for the disastrous co-governance path down which we are going. National and Act formed a coalition with the Maori Party in 2008 when they didn’t even need their numbers to govern. Then they signed the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights in 2010. Then repealed the Foreshore and Seabed legislation in favour of their Marine and Coastal Areas mess – which has now seen over 500 cases before the courts with Iwi claiming the coastal areas all around New Zealand. National along with Act introduced the Waikato River co-governance arrangements, and the unelected Maori representation on the Auckland Super-City.

Please don’t forget who started this racist separatist mess.

Only one political party, despite significant Maori membership, has never gone down the pathway of separate governance, co-governance, or legislated apartheid. Our principles on these matters are in our name – New Zealand First. And that means ALL New Zealanders First. Not some historically revisionist claptrap where constitutionally, legally, and electorally, some New Zealanders are ‘more equal than others.’

On this we have never wavered. Not like some ‘Johnny come lately’ – the opportunist and echo imitation, without any authenticity, now saying despite their record “me too”.

We treat all New Zealanders equal, under one flag and one law for all.

We reject totally the inverse racists whose policies are saying to Maori “you can’t make it to the top, in anything or at any time, without our help.”

For our country to have sunk so far and so quickly in the international battle for equality, those who seek to implement unelected, unmandated change, had to first try and rewrite:

• That the Treaty of Waitangi was a partnership – it was not,
• That Maori never ceded sovereignty in 1840 – their chiefs did,
• That the Treaty was about a universal franchise for Maori – it didn’t exist,
• That the UN Declaration on Human Rights could be overcome by the 2007 UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
• And now argue that Maori cannot gain equality without parallel separate institutions, along side government institutions for everyone else who is not Maori,
• And putting every government initiative, policy, and department under a Te Ao Maori (Maori world view) lens for prior approval.

They say this ‘Maori world view’ in 2022 being the same ‘Maori world view’ as it was in 1840. How much of an intellectual charade this is. The 1840 Maori world view was shaped by the only world they knew - a totally Maori world. These modern revisionist Maori have a ‘Maori world view’ shaped by their European education and whatever phyco-babble sociologists have been able to concoct from their flawed learnings over the years.

To claim they are the same in 2022, is historically and culturally preposterous. They have no idea how ridiculous they would sound if the chiefs of 1840 were in reincarnated form listening to them today. These elite Maori are not authentic - but ridiculous, illogical, and downright dangerous.

To borrow from Shakespeare their mantra is to “cry havoc and let loose the dogs of separatism.”

Corrupting the Fourth Estate

But worst of all, for Labour and their cultural fellow travellers to get this far they had to subordinate the independent media, corrupt their financial independence, and remove their watchdog role.

They set out to use the mainstream media as the main tool of their indoctrination, and they’ve come a long way to achieving just that. If you don’t believe that, then please explain the deafening silence from the mainstream media on all of these separatist developments.

How many recent settlers, who thought they were immigrating to a safe country, are now horrified to see the same political conditions from which they were lucky to escape, now rampant in their new country of choice.

Labour is spending over $370 million including over $42 million on consultants, to merge Radio New Zealand and TVNZ. In addition, Labour is going to spend over $200 million every year, or eventually, six billion, to prop up this media leviathan whether it has any market relativity or efficacy or not. This at a time of impending recession and financial crisis.

New Zealand First at the last election was the victim of systemic lies and dishonesty. In two major court actions we have defeated the Serious Fraud Office’s false claims - and those political parties that lied to you, knowing that the only way they could beat New Zealand First was by foul means, dirt, and underhand tactics.

As you know, not from the mainstream media reports of course, these were major victories, where truth prevailed over political evil. We are never going to forget this, and we hope you don’t either, because next time it could be you who are the victims.

Conclusion

The only people standing in the government’s way now are in this hall and all-around New Zealand. For this government to succeed they have to take away your power in a democracy. And via the mainstream media delude you into thinking that their plans are in your interests.

Politics is a fascinating calling. There is no profession where so much damage can be done with so much speed to harm the lives of people. Conversely, there is no profession where so much good can be done with so much speed to improve the lives of people.

That’s why we are on this ‘listening tour’, sharing events about which you have heard little, and deliberately been kept from you.

You are the masters here, not politicians, and we are asking you to, right here, right now, set things right.

To say right here, right now, that you’ve had enough, that you’re not taking any more of it, and that you will do something about it.

Only nine countries have a democratic tradition going back to 1854, New Zealand is one of them. We are proud of that, not that its perfect, but that we strive to learn from our mistakes, to nevertheless go on trying to improve the way we are governed.

You have two votes. One for your electorate MP, and one vote for your Party of choice. And we are asking you to give your Party Vote to New Zealand First.

The next election will come swiftly, and we are asking you to hear the politicians out, but in doing so, judge them not by what they say or promise, but by their actions.

We are asking for your Party Vote. We are asking you to take out some serious insurance at the next election. We are asking you to look at what is critical for governments to succeed and help you.

Nothing is more critical than experience, common sense, and certainty.

You haven’t got that in government now. You most certainly cannot afford to not have it in a government after the next election.

Experience, common sense, and certainty, Party Vote New Zealand First.

Together we can win. Together we will win.

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