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Speech: Peters- Bureaucratic attack on the nation’s backbone

“Bureaucratic attack on the nation’s backbone”
“Selling out to race-based preference”

Thanks you for the chance to speak here tonight in Heartland New Zealand.
And special thanks to Councillor Stuart Husband for this invitation and for organising this meeting in Morrinsville.
New Zealand First is campaigning in the provinces because they represent the real wealth of New Zealand.

Trade matters

I have recently returned from Europe after working on post-Brexit trade relationships with the Minister of Trade.

In three days’ time, the UK Supreme Court will hear a legal challenge to Article 50, or Brexit. Without a hint of irony that date is also the 75th anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbour, December 7, 1941.

So what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said of that event, “a date which will live in infamy,” may well apply if the UK Supreme Court thinks it can challenge the will of the British people expressed in a referendum based on primary legislation.

The remain camp, or “remoaners”, may claim a pyrrhic victory when a decision is handed down in January, but a Bill has been drafted to trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017. Brexit is happening and New Zealand had not made any preparation for it.

The government, like so many experts, had no idea that Brexit was going to happen.

So let’s dispel a myth propagated by some of our opponents, and their media and blogging acolytes, that New Zealand First is anti-trade. We are not.

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But in New Zealand First’s view, for trade to be truly free it must be fair, and yet of all our “free trade” deals in the year to March 2016, saw us import $5 billion more than we exported.

These deals may “work” but not for our exporters who are our real wealth creators.

Look at the TPPA, that you would be forgiven for believing was to be the second coming, but in reality, sold the New Zealand dairy industry right down the Waikato.

It’s staggering that your farm leaders praised the Korean deal which only secured 1,957 tonnes at zero tariff with the rest copping tariffs of 176%!!

This is a country that has been for decades allowed full access into New Zealand. A country which our soldiers helped save in the Korean War and which our taxpayers helped restore when in 1997, along with a small number of countries, we underwrote their currency in the Asian currency crisis of that year.

These last two acts alone justified the Korean government treating New Zealand fairly. So why didn’t they? And why did our trade negotiators sell this country so short?

I know something about this deal because, as Foreign Minister, I met their then President Roh on the question of a free trade deal. He asked me “what’s in it for us?”

Given that Korea already had free access to New Zealand that was a very frank question. I reminded the president of those two events, the Korean War, and the Korean currency crisis. And put it to him bluntly “that’s what’s in it for you” and my country has already paid the price for your country to treat us fairly.

He promised me instantly that he would put out a press statement within 24 hours that Korea would back a free trade agreement with New Zealand. He did. So, the question is, why didn’t we get one?

It is no secret New Zealand First supports a NZ-Russia Free Trade Agreement given Russia was the world’s number two dairy import market and is the number two beef import market.

Yet, after years of openly bagging Russia, Mr Key now says after the US rejecting the TPPA, that there is a chance of China or Russia being brought on board.

Only nine months ago in Parliament, after I challenged him to restart the NZ–Russia Free Trade Agreement, Mr Key replied: “… they have got no money to buy anything through the front door or the back door …”

Even last November, his own Primary Industries Minister, Nathan Guy, said a Free Trade Agreement with Russia “does not make sense” - they say 24 hours is a long time in politics, but this really does “take the gateau”.

After predicting Brexit months before it happened and President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, one hopes you can see that New Zealand First has a somewhat keener insight than the so-called experts whose opinions pass for informed comment.

We predicted what would happen months before it did.
They predicted what happened yesterday.

That‘s why New Zealand First in February this year was prioritising a deal with the United Kingdom and that the will would be there to reciprocate. The UK is looking east and west and President-elect Trump seems keen to do a deal as well.

Prioritising one with the UK may in fact be our best way into a real trade deal with the United States. A deal based on our strengths rather than you, our primary industries, being treated as sacrificial negotiating pawns.

Britain is seeing a post-Brexit boom so why is Beef+Lamb New Zealand closing its offices in Britain? Why can’t they see that the easiest way to make more money is to sell more to our existing customers?

Beef+Lamb has learned nothing from Fonterra.

Fonterra quit the UK in 2009, after signing a licensing agreement for its hugely iconic Anchor Brand with Europe’s Arla. With Brexit and a UK dairy market worth over 8 billion pounds, that 2009 decision and the recent one of Beef+Lamb, ranks right up there with Decca Records rejecting The Beatles because “guitar bands are on the way out”.

Another reason we raise trade is why we are here tonight.

What’s the point of trade agreements, no matter how good they are, if you cannot farm for generations to come?

Getting Wellington out of Wellington

It is also increasingly difficult when doe-eyed environmental graduates who think manual labour is the president of Mexico, make it impossible for our farmers to farm.

Worse, much of the impetus is coming out of the Wellington bureaucracy by people who look down their glasses at what you do.

New Zealand First intends to tip over the trough by reducing and relocating key parts of the Wellington bureaucracy. Is the Ministry for Primary Industries better in Wellington, or spread around the regions, including here in the Waikato?
And whilst we are at it, why is Fonterra’s head office located in that dairying heartland of CBD Auckland.

Water quality: perspectives needed

The North Canterbury earthquake put into sharp relief the debates about phosphates, nitrogen and visual clarity, given hundreds of thousands of tonnes of earth and rocks moved by the quakes.

This is not an excuse to do nothing but it puts into some perspective a recent water discussion between Massey’s Dr Mike Joy and former Waikato Professor, Jacqueline Rowarth.

It is always amazing how academic freedom seems to go only one way.

When Professor Rowarth pointed out that the River Thames has 12 times the nitrogen of the Waikato and that the Waikato is one of the cleanest large rivers in the OECD, those who defend Dr Joy’s “academic freedom”, suddenly demanded she be sacked from her new role at the Environmental Protection Agency.

These people are intolerant and dictatorial. Some of them claim 60% of our waterways are “unsafe” but where is their statistical health check?

The most unsafe thing about recreational water use is getting hypothermia in winter if you take “fully swimmable” literally.

Campylobacter is used as the fresh water “canary in the mine”, but it’s also the baddie when it comes to food infections. In 2014, food-related infections of campylobacter saw 6552 notifications, with poultry, far and away, the main source.

Compare that to the obsession and column inches devoted to “dirty dairying” supposedly turning our rivers into fetid bacterial soups.

Were there thousands more campylobacter infections related to swimming? In fact, there were just 114 notifications of campylobacter related to recreational water use and the rate of infection from recreational water use is in decline.

Having just been in Europe, the Tiber in Rome resembles a recycling conveyor belt, the Seine in Paris you wouldn’t want to touch, let alone swim, and if the Thames is a clean river, maybe, just maybe, some people need to do a little more research.

We often hear much about cattle producing 14 times the effluent of people. Like “dirty dairying” this is designed for effect. Yes a dairy cow may produce 14 times the effluent of humans, but then again, humans live 14 times longer than dairy cows.

A high performing dairy cow needs 150 litres of water every day but the average Kiwi will use almost twice that. What we have lost is perspective because urban perceptions, repeated by some in the media, are not facts.

Waikato Regional Council’s Plan Change 1 – “Farmergeddon”

So let’s deal with late breaking news only some of you will know about.

Yesterday, Saturday, December 3, the Waikato Regional Council withdrew Hauraki Iwi’s “area of interest” from Plan Change 1. This is because Hauraki Iwi raised concerns regarding consultation with them during the Plan Change 1 project.

The Hauraki tribal rohe covers a land area of up to 750,000 hectares, which now has a free pass for nutrients, water quality and farming. If you are White, Brown or Maori from the wrong Iwi, no such privilege exists for you.

This makes a mockery of one law for all. It is one law for some Iwi and another for the rest of us.

So despite investing millions of dollars in effluent systems and planting hundreds of thousands of native trees, you’re not within cooee of meeting the Waikato Regional Council’s Plan Change 1. No wonder given the Hauraki Iwi decision.

Since our formation 23 years ago New Zealand First has always believed that sound environmental policy equals sound economics.

No one can deny the ambition for clean rivers. Those who wilfully pollute need to be drummed out of your industry.

But why is the ambition of returning the Waikato River back to what it was before humans arrived here not grounded in reality? And reality and common sense is what is needed here. We are here, to deal with it.

Alarmingly, it was a report paid for by you, the Waikato farmers, which blew the lid off the Waikato Regional Council’s lack of sanity in its own policy.

What they propose is a farming nuclear bomb and the fallout takes out large swathes of dairy, drystock and horticulture equally. The worst affected farmers are sheep and beef – people and families already struggling with low returns and an inflated dollar which the government does nothing about.

Some of the costs are outrageous with one modest drystock farm facing costs of over $785,000 in order to comply. This Plan Change 1 is Farmergeddon.

There are 12 farms on the market within 3.8 kilometres from this hall here.
John Key told the Federated Farmers headquarters that no farmer would be forced off their farm, despite that being the effect of the Waikato Regional Council’s Plan Change 1.
Before farmers believe that speak to the Pike River families.
We know dangerous levels of water contamination are falling, while dodgy food is 57 times more likely to make you sick than taking a dip. Farming is doing its job but it can do much more, and we will work with you, not against you.
Scandinavia is evidence of sustainable farming. These are practical people light years ahead of us on environmentalism.

The problem is nitrogen but that is where science research comes into play.

The effect of Plan Change 1 will drop land values, some by as much as two-thirds, crippling farming families and their communities. As Dr Doug Edmeades wrote in the Waikato Times: “Goodbye Tokoroa, Te Awamutu and Cambridge.”

The cost to be imposed on farmers here is upwards of $600m and there are no guarantees this collective Farmergeddon will work. None. And as such, New Zealand First questions it

And the Waikato needs to understand that Plan Change 1 stems from the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2014 and who it was that created it. Well, it was the National Government - the very people you have loyally voted for.

Given technology, there is no excuse for models because New Zealand based companies have developed sensors that can record nutrient levels in real time.

And where on earth was a robust Section 32 analysis on Plan Change 1? This shows us that National’s Resource Management Amendment Act 2013 is a complete flop.

Plan Change 1 was designed, approved and notified without robust analysis. That was until the Waikato Feds had to pay for a report the council should have done itself.

It is, truly, bum about face.

In Waikato’s Plan Change 1 there is another agenda and that is the browntable dominated “Healthy Rivers Wai Ora Committee”.

A Māori Party demand is bad news for farming and New Zealand – all New Zealanders regardless of race

While Waikato Federated Farmers and other provinces focus on farmer-outcomes, what on earth is your National Office doing?

Following the sell-out by Minister Nick Smith to the Maori Party, Federated Farmers Head Office said “it was pleased to see the Government getting on with the job of reforming resource management legislation”. Its spokesman, Chris Allen, even congratulated Dr Nick Smith’s “stickability” on this issue.

So the Feds Head Office welcomes parallel race-based control of planning and consent by separate and unelected decision makers who get that role based on the colour of their skin.

Here is what the Māori Party were given by National and fully endorsed by Federated Farmers’ Wellington beltway bureaucrats.

Māori have secured kaitiakitanga in the new Bill through Mana Whakahono ā Rohe Agreements. These go beyond anything outside of a Treaty Settlement and ensures both Iwi and councils will work together throughout the planning process.

The Freshwater Iwi Leaders’ Group has collaborated closely with the Māori Party and commended it for giving effect to kaitiaki in their respective rohe.

And here is their shopping list: all Crown-owned river and lakebeds and the water column; title in freshwater consistent with Waitangi Tribunal rulings and a $1 billion fund into an Iwi-approved entity to address capacity and capability.

Are you concerned? Well you ought to be! As this small group of elitist Maori are making these demands the needs of 95% of Maoridom have been sidelined in the political process. The mass majority of Maori have no idea what has been claimed in their name. And of one thing you can be sure, none of the benefits of this elitist, complex construction of rights will ever get to them.

Conversely, we spelt out our views to the RMA reform select committee in a detailed submission. New Zealand First wants to make the RMA colourblind and put the ‘K’ back in front of ‘iwi.’

Not one National Party MP was prepared to ask me one question when that submission was presented to them.

They were told to stay silent. And they did.

National has already started to transform Iwi into unelected consenting authorities. It’s as though our planning laws are designed for two groups, communities and then Maori, as though Maori are not part of the community.

If you ever want an example of inverse racism, there it is.

Unelected Iwi representatives will control and charge for processes as flimsy as tissue paper just because they can. Especially the rort of cultural impact assessments.

Iwi Participation Agreements undermine the Rule of Law and democracy because unelected tribal representatives will be able to veto the decision-making of elected councillors.

Already, we are seeing councils putting unelected Iwi onto regulatory committees and remunerating them at the same level as elected councillors.

Water is a God-given gift but the government opened up a racial can of worms when it privatised the power assets and put a dollar figure on the value of water, just as New Zealand First warned.

And don’t forget that the Māori Party wants to secure proprietary rights to control access to, and the use of, local waterways as per the Waitangi Tribunal decision.

If that is what the Maori Party can achieve with two MP’s, and 1.3% of the vote, imagine what more is in the political pipeline? On this matter National is betraying you and you need to know it - this is your, and our, economic life they are deciding upon.

Plan Change 1: more negatives

Waikato’s Plan Change 1 provides huge incentives for Iwi to hold back developing Maori special status land so that they can hoard nutrient allocation rights.

This means they can either ‘”trade” surplus nutrient allocations or use these surplus allocations to jump onto land devalued as farmers cut back or quit.

The RMA reforms of Messrs Key, Smith and English and backed by Federated Farmers Head Office, all support ‘koha for consents.’ By gifting control of water to Iwi, it means if you are the wrong kind of Maori or non-Maori, you end up paying.

Of course we need to improve water quality but that also takes money, time and technology. Just how will losing 10,000 jobs and up to $600m from the Waikato economy each year help to clean up our rivers?

This is this National government’s Easter Island moment but instead of stone monoliths, we are immolating our economy for a clean-green advertising jingo and predator proof fences made of cheap Chinese steel.

And let’s remind ourselves this is not just dairying but involves all animal husbandry, all vegetables and all fruit production too.

It is nuts that any slope over 15 degrees will be banned from cropping or grazing with minus 25 degrees the limit for sheep without “mitigation”. With the full blessing of Messrs Key, Smith and Guy, the Waikato Regional Council is demanding that you slash nitrogen to the 75th percentile without a guide as to how, or, other sources of nitrogen.

In 2008, the scientists at Scion found that gorse lost just as much Nitrogen to water as a dairy farm. With an estimated 900,000 hectares of gorse in New Zealand thousands of tonnes of nitrogen is entering our waterways.

What about Koi Carp? That invasive pest fish has densities of up to a tonne per hectare in the Waikato River. Put another way, Koi Carp in the river is equivalent to up to two dairy cows per hectare on-land.

Who cops the blame for this and runoff from our towns and cities? You do.

So what will New Zealand First do?

New Zealand First’s approach is to help farmers so that we have the right type of farms on the right types of soils. The old MAF used to provide a free service like this before it was privatised and we intend to restore on-farm advisory services.

There is also research, particularly nitrogen, and to quote the actor Matt Damon from the recent movie Mars, we are going to “have to science the **** out of this”.

That will take money farming generates so shutting you down makes no sense.

We will assemble experts from around the world to look at the National Policy Statement on Freshwater. We will further introduce 24/7 real time monitoring of water quality so the data cannot be disputed.

We will also implement tax-breaks for planting, fencing, and vital environmental works - all backed up by a comprehensive farm forestry package.

Some of the biggest challenges to effective planning under the RMA come from poor practice and a need to reform the RMA. There is lack of Quality Assurance that needs to be written into the RMA itself. Exhibit A being Plan Change 1 itself.

The entire RMA hearing process also needs review because it tends to support a plan as notified. Hearing Commissioners, even independent ones, will make tweaks but seldom suggest substantial rewrites. This is because they are employed by councils and being a trouble-maker is unlikely to get you your next job.

We also want to put private property rights back into the RMA. It was in the original 1989 Resource Management Bill but National’s Simon Upton, a Waikato MP, removed it!

Wrapping up

The National Party today is not the National Party of old and we suspect in your heart of hearts you know that. It is urban dominated and looks down at rural New Zealand like a trusty old pair of boots.

You may be scuffed and weather beaten but you are dependable. When you need to get something done outdoors you are the first choice, but when it comes to going into town with the smart set, you get chucked back into the barn.

National has had your vote for decades and that’s bred complacency.

National takes your votes so much for granted, it is now catapulting people into farming electorates who cannot tell a Holstein-Friesian cow from an East-Friesian sheep.

Just look at Northland.

Since being elected, Northland College, neglected for decades so badly that it was literally mouldering away, is now undergoing a multi-million upgrade.

As for Police, we highlighted the appalling clearance rates and suddenly more Police resources were found for Northland.

Then there are the roads. National are falling all over themselves to promise roads and two-lane bridges but we are yet to see a single new two-lane bridge or one metre of new tarsealed road. Their promises tumble like rain.

If Northland was held by a National MP would anything happen? Not likely.

Northland gave National a shock and we have secured more focus in one and a half years than National ever delivered in decades.

This is why you need to break old habits and give your Party Vote to New Zealand First, and when we stand exceptional farming candidates, your electorate vote as well.

With respect, you need to stop being a doormat or that trusty old pair of boots for National to use and forget. We welcome the views of all wealth creators in New Zealand and that is why we hear your concerns.

Although many commentators don’t get it, there is a democratic revolt happening in New Zealand and part of its growth will happen right here in the Waikato.

Put what is being told to you tonight before any of your local National MPs and see whether they have any credible response to it.

In closing, if you want to save your industries and your communities, then you have much less than a year to do so.


ENDS

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