Rt Honourable Winston Peters
Address to Kawerau & Districts Grey Power
Kawerau Concert Chambers
2pm, Friday 9th October 2009.

“Our Future”
What’s done is done.

Today let us to talk about some things that are important to the future of our country.

First, the rural sector.

It is a cliché, but also a truism, that agriculture is New Zealand’s economic lifeline.

Ironically over the years we have become more dependent than ever on agriculture to sustain our standard of living.

If anything were to seriously damage our key agricultural exports our position would be bleak.

The crazy level of the New Zealand dollar – so called Free Trade agreements – and the total lack of commitment to protecting and promoting manufacturing have all had an adverse impact.

What remains of our manufacturing base is struggling.

And the much touted Brownlee plan for our National Parks to look for minerals smacks of desperation.

That will not reverse our economic fortunes – in fact it could easily end up damaging our image as a pristine tourist destination.

Foreign mining companies would set up here – strip out the mineral wealth – and leave us to pay the clean up bills.

It is the hallmark of a Third World nation when nothing is safe.

No - we always come back to the agricultural sector – it’s our ace.

In an overpopulated world our high quality food will always have a market.

And that means we must hold on to our agricultural assets if we are to have any chance of a prosperous future.

New Zealand has already been comprehensively asset stripped.

As a result, $9 billion of net profits, dividends and other payments were paid to foreign investors in the year ended September 2009.

We are bleeding to death from foreign ownership - so we have good reasons to fear for the future of the rural sector as it looks to be the next plum ripe for the picking.

Smart investors overseas are already moving into NZ agriculture. And who can blame these canny people?

Foreigners can see the signs and trends; they understand that our agriculture has a great future so they are buying into farms and vineyards, and kiwifruit orchards.

This steady loss of prime agricultural assets is going on largely unnoticed.

In NZ First we are particularly alarmed about the manoeuvring surrounding Fonterra and the ideas being canvassed to re-order its financial structure.

Fonterra’s structure is not cast in stone but extreme caution is needed.

Excuse our scepticism but we have seen enough examples in recent years of the havoc that ill considered financial restructurings can wreak.

Already the money men, consultants and lawyers are hovering around Fonterra.

Oh happy day! .What a fees bonanza it would be to abandon the basic cooperative structure that has served the dairy industry – and New Zealand – so well.

Similarly the Kiwifruit industry – a great New Zealand success story, is being stalked by the jackals.

For NZ to lose the benefits of single desk Kiwifruit exports for this $1 billion industry would be a catastrophe.

It would leave Kiwifruit growers as vulnerable as apple and pear growers became following the loss of the Apple and Pear Board.

Agricultural producers at the end of the supply chain are highly exposed and vulnerable – therefore we should be competing with the rest of the world not undermining our own prices – and cutting our own throats.

But the financial wizards who have created so much mayhem and who are now casting covetous eyes on Fonterra see only cash cows.

They smell great opportunities to loot our agricultural sector – irrespective of the damage that will ultimately cause producers and New Zealand’s national interest as whole.

NZ First will be fighting the next election.

We have to!

Because the 2011 election will be the last chance to save our country.

An overstatement?

An exaggeration?

Not at all.

What we value - what we cherish – what we hold most dear is at risk.

New Zealand has been a product of two cultures European and Maori. We emerged from a fusion of two cultures to create – not a utopia – but a well ordered and successful democracy that was widely envied.

More recently other significant groups have added to our society.

Some say we are now a truly diverse and multi-cultural society.

But it is imperative that New Zealand starts to consider where we are headed demographically.

Because right now population is the elephant in the room.

Population is the critical issue that underlies all economic and social policy but which it seems must not be mentioned.

Well NZ First is not part of the conspiracy of silence.

On the contrary NZ First is the only party that puts population front and centre of its policy.

Labour and National have a total phobia on population – and that reaches the level of paranoia when it comes to immigration.

The Greens are no better – they presume to occupy the moral high ground on sustainability but studiously avoid the stark fact that the more people we have the more resources and energy usage that is required and the more pressure on the environment.

The ability of the other parties to develop all sorts of elaborate policy positions to skirt around the inconvenient truth that numbers of people matters is astonishing.

The business community – who basically set the agenda for immigration policy in New Zealand – are only interested in seeing more people arrive – as a source of cheap labour and as a source of sales. So there is no depth in their thinking.

And the NZ media show little interest in population issues.

But at 4.3 million we urgently need to think about the future population of New Zealand.

New Zealand has been built on a foundation of European institutions and values – and that of course allows great room for the role and contribution of Maori and other cultures.

But our parliamentary and democratic traditions and legal systems are largely European in origin.

That is our heritage – and it’s a good one. That is what makes New Zealand a desirable place to live and why people want to come to New Zealand.

Because we are a stable democracy where the rule of law applies and where there is opportunity for all to succeed and live a good life.

But these attributes of our society are not immutable –they are perishable.

At the rate we are allowing immigration into New Zealand the demographic character and make up of this country are being transformed in a completely unthinking way.

The brakes must go on!

The demographic character of New Zealand is in jeopardy.

We need to allow time to digest the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have come to New Zealand in the past two decades – from all countries.

We need to pause and take a breather from this tsunami of migrants.

Because at the rate we have been transforming the demographic base will soon be at a tipping point.

We will wake up one day and wonder where our New Zealand went.

The New Zealand you and I were born and brought up in.

The New Zealand that migrants actually came to this country for.

And at that tipping point a mass exodus could start to Australia – not just of young people – but all those people who want to live in a society where the basic institutions and values bequeathed by our forebears remain intact.

So what is behind our absurd immigration policy?

We know that the Immigration Service is possibly the most incompetent and dysfunctional government agency of all –( and that is saying something!).

But is the Immigration Service a disgrace or is the policy of successive governments a disgrace?

Immigration has been the subject of a scandal after scandal but the biggest scandal is the policy itself.
Officially 140,000 people are unemployed (and that figure significantly understates the real extent of those looking for work)

How can large scale immigration possibly be justified at a time of mass unemployment?

Australia’s response to the credit crisis was to cut back on immigration drastically.

Typically, we did nothing.

Even now we are allowing over 40,000 non-NZ citizens to enter New Zealand on a permanent basis annually.

The reality is that we do not need immigrants to work as taxi drivers.

We do not need to import people to work at the check out counters of supermarkets.

We should not have young Kiwis being crowded out of entry level jobs by migrants.

Is it any wonder so many of our young people are heading for Aussie?

They despair at what is happening!

At least they know they are going to a European institutions based country.

When it comes to immigration New Zealand is being taken for a sucker.

People are coming to New Zealand as migrants – but many use us as a transit camp.

These people stay just long enough to get permanent residency so they can bring their families over – often elderly parents – and then they move on to Aussie.

We are being left with the care of elderly parents – while Aussie gets the workers.

This sort of scam –and others like it - must end.

The slackness and complacency of our immigration policy is breathtaking – especially under a government that has a mantra about waste and inefficiency.

But as Mr Double Dipton himself, the Minister of Finance’s own conduct exemplifies, lecturing us on the need for frugality is a case of do as I say not do as I do.

For some bizarre reason the Government’s concern –if not obsession - with value for money does not extend to immigration matters.

Every person we allow into New Zealand as a permanent resident will sooner or later be a claim on the state pension system. And often they are claiming on our social welfare and health system within a very short time of arrival.

Thanks to a generous family reunification policy elderly people who have contributed little or nothing through our tax system will be eligible for a public pension.

This access to entitlement is never mentioned – it is part of the unacknowledged cost of immigration that is glossed over.

But the implications are important.

These people are feasting on your pension pie.

And they will be feasting on it for 10 – 20 or possibly 30 years.

The pension pie you and other Kiwis paid for.

We are simply not that rich that we afford that sort of largesse

What right has any New Zealand Government to treat pension entitlements in this irresponsible and cavalier way?

And of course the pension pie is coming under a lot of pressure anyway because of the retirement wave of the baby boom generation.

As a Kiwi, try going to some other country and tapping into their pension system – I wish you luck!

You will be told where to go in no uncertain terms .

So here is the bad news.

The pension pie is finite – and it is already under pressure.

Having a whole lot of freeloaders feasting on it is inexcusable and has to stop.

Right now we have an immigration policy driven by the interests of Big Business – who only want cheap products and more domestic consumers - and Labour and National are desperate to appease those interests.

When NZ First returns to Parliament we will press for a drastic tightening of immigration policy – including a change in entitlement so that people who come here and leave parents behind will be stripped of their permanent residency.

Our policy is that immigration should serve New Zealand’s interests.

Only NZ First will ensure that is does.

In 2011 you will get the opportunity to give New Zealand a rational immigration policy by putting us back in Parliament.

ENDS

© Scoop Media