Rt. Hon Winston Peters
Leader NZ First

Date: 17 August 2011

“What of the real culprits”

Extracts from a speech by Rt Hon Winston Peters to GreyPower Upper Hutt 2.00 pm 17 August 2011.

“This week the government took a major step towards cementing a two tier society in place in New Zealand.

The two tiers of our society are of course the rich and the poor or as more commonly phrased, the haves and the have-nots.

This government is made up of rich people.

It governs for rich people, its policies benefit rich people and it regards the rest of the people, who are struggling to live and feed their families, as a “problem.”

The first of the poor on the government’s hit list are 15-19 year old teenagers who are going to be forcibly trained to work in jobs that do not exist. New Zealand First has always been for education and training, the problem is that unemployment is rife among this group with nearly thirty percent without jobs.

Their dole is going to be stopped and paid to parents or by some other means to ensure they do not waste it on booze and cigarettes. Both these products are illegal for under eighteens to buy now.

So that means if you are 17 years old and not in training you have to ask your mother – or some other person – for several dollars if you want to splash out on something reckless like a Big Mac or, heaven forbid go to a movie.
Again, New Zealand First is all for training and education. For years we have led the field in policies to give young people an allowance while they are training. NZ First is all for teaching young people that liberty is not licence. That the twin of freedom is responsibility.

But we are nervous about a system that defeats itself before it is even started because it is unbelievably stupid to try to train people for jobs that are simply not there.

Do we really need to train Australia’s work force?

We have already sent hundreds of thousands of skilled New Zealanders across the Tasman and this new scheme appears as though it has no other logical outcome.

It is all a big public relations hoax of course - something that has been designed by the government’s public spin doctoring department to appease certain groups in election year. My challenge to Mr Key is this – when you said in May that you would create 170,000 jobs in four years – what did you base that promise on?

New Zealand First suggested a better form of youth training several weeks ago and we gave a real incentive for employers.

Our idea is to set up crash education courses to ensure teenagers can read and write and then establish as many trade training schemes as possible.

We even have a scheme to help employers. If they give one of these youngsters an apprenticeship, we will pay them the dole the young person receives as an initial subsidy.

Such a scheme would pay for itself as the youngster starts earning a weekly wage and starts paying taxes.

It’s what you call a win-win situation.

But going back to the idea of handing out food vouchers and the like, it smacks of the sort of Victorian charity that our ancestors left the Old World to escape.

And don’t think for one moment that the government will only target the young.

For many weeks there has been a barrage of propaganda aimed at senior citizens.

Teams of highly paid bleaters are bleating about the cost of superannuation.

They want the age of entitlement lifted and the amount reduced.

Who is going to suddenly employ thousands of 65 or 66 year olds?

Where are the jobs?

It’s just another part of the softening up process on the way to poverty.

The government is edging towards the concept that being poor is somehow immoral.

Next minute they will be referring to the ungrateful poor.

John Key is already on record as saying people should be able to live on 300 dollars a week if they budget properly.

We are sure that people in this audience could put him straight on that one.

Only a truly rich person would tell a truly poor person to be thrifty.

It’s like Oscar Wilde said…”telling the poor to be thrifty is like telling a starving man not to eat too much!”

What many people don’t realize is that the pressing financial problems of our age are all man made. And we can tell you which men made them.

The leaders of irresponsible capitalism – the bankers, the financiers, the futures traders, the currency speculators and the teams of monetary middlemen created this crisis.

It was not caused by anyone in this room. Ordinary people are not guilty.

Yet the pillars of the world of finance have brought the system crashing to its knees because of their insatiable greed and their willingness to do anything to make a fast buck.

Their losses were so great in the Western world that entire governments face bankruptcy baling these people out.

Governments did not believe they could let these firms collapse. So they are pumping money into the system to prop them up.

If they stop, it’s been estimated that unemployment in America alone will soar to thirty percent.

It would cause a depression that would make the Great Depression of the 20th century look like a mild recession.

But as already mentioned, the people who bear the brunt of this financial folly are not those who caused it.

Ordinary people lose their jobs, get behind in the mortgage, can’t look after the kids – the human cost goes spiraling down.

And at the bottom of the heap all you get told by the smiley face at the top of the heap – is you better budget more carefully.

We want to remind ordinary people there is something you can do about your plight.

You can go and vote.
You can tick a box called New Zealand First and it might be just the best tick you’ve ever ticked in your life.

We will not stand by and watch ordinary people being trampled on.

We identify with the battlers and the strugglers because that’s how we started out in this world.

Help is on the way at the end of November.

Let me give you this assurance. If we win – you win.

I’ll repeat it – we win – you win. It’s what they call a win/win situation.

And remember, it can only happen if you party vote New Zealand First in November.”

ENDS

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