Speech: Peters - Rose -Tinted Glasses v Reality
Speech Rt Hon Winston Peters in Rotorua; Rose
-Tinted Glasses v Reality, the Developing Fuji Nz
Fraud
to
Rt Hon
Winston Peters
New Zealand First
Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
24 JUNE
2017
NZ First Rotorua Electorate
Meeting,
Public meeting, June 24,
2pm.
Hangi and Concert
Room,
Copthorne Hotel, Fenton
St,
Rotorua.
ROSE -TINTED GLASSES V
REALITY
THE
DEVELOPING FUJI NZ FRAUD
Our political masters are growing frenetic to
convince that all is going fantastically well – all you
have to do is hang on a bit longer and you will get your
rewards.
You’ve been told this spin for over three decades.
You hear it here in Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty.
The population is up; business is booming; life’s great.
But hang on – let’s consider a few facts.
Unemployment in Bay of Plenty
Statistics New Zealand figures for the March 2017 quarter show nationally the unemployment rate is just below 5 per cent and that Bay of Plenty unemployment rose by 2.9 per cent to 7.6 per cent.
This region’s unemployment is now the second highest rate in the country behind Northland and the highest it has been since December 2013.
Rotorua's unemployment rate, based on Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment figures, is 6.4 per cent.
A few weeks ago your local paper the Daily Post reported a woman moving to Rotorua last year after living in a tent for six months in Hawke's Bay.
The mother of two couldn’t get a job after nine months of looking even though she had more than four years' experience in the retail industry.
Another woman returned to her home town late last year
after living in Perth for seven years. She started looking
for work in the sales industry about four months ago, but
was yet to get a job when the story was published.
These
are what every day New Zealanders are experiencing.
Yes, life is good for some but it’s not trickling down.
It’s blocked.
If you are down the scale – in the middle and below, then it’s a different ballgame entirely.
But let’s look beyond the spin.
1. Over 130,000 New Zealanders are officially without a job, when one hour’s work a week represents a job.
2. The government’s boast of GDP growth of 3% is bogus - the bulk of that is from a 2% annual population growth – and deduct that and you get 1 per cent.
3. New Zealand’s productivity is low – well below better performing OECD countries and way behind Australia.
4. The economy is fundamentally unbalanced. National has done nothing to address the chronic balance of payments deficit which is $7 billion.
5. New Zealand remains massively indebted to the rest of world – with a net international liability of $156 billion.
6. The relentless flogging off of New Zealand assets goes on. According to the Overseas Investment Office 466,000 hectares of land was sold to offshore buyers in 2016 - five times more than the previous year.
7. More than 90,000 New Zealanders aged from 15 to 24 are not in employment, education or training (NEET).
Let’s turn to tax cuts.
The government’s made a lot of noise about their so-called surplus in this year’s budget, which was nothing more than exercise in creating accounting.
A surplus from under-funding -
everywhere
Any government can create a surplus
if for years it under spends on nearly every sector.
We could recite a very long list that includes children
in overcrowded schools being taught in corridors and sick
people waiting years for the specialist medical treatment
they urgently need.
Hospitals around the country are
struggling to cope with an influx of patients – with DHBs
in serious deficit everywhere.
In Whangarei, a Northland
man recently waited all day, every day, for six days, to
have a broken ankle attended to.
Almost on a weekly basis
doctors and health professionals are warning of health
services on the edge of collapse.
These conditions are a
direct result of government conjuring up their bogus surplus
irrespective of the cost inflicted on society and the
environment.
There are many other issues and areas where the funding deficit is doing serious damage, for example;
· Poverty
· Mental health services
· Conservation
· Housing
· Roads
· Bridges
· Trains
· Infrastructure
To say nothing of stopping contributions into the NZ Super Fund to assist with the future costs of retirement.
If the government was paying into the NZ Super Fund there would, on that payment alone, be no surplus – and how come commentators can’t get that simple fact?
HONEST GOVERNMENT
Record net
immigration is now at net over 73,000 per year as of last
Wednesday.
And government can get growth by mass
immigration.
Question: Why stop at net over 73,000
immigrants a year.
Why not net 173,000 a year.
Or further yet why not 273,000?
Think of it – then
the government could boast that NZ has the highest economic
growth rate in the world.
All three scenarios are
ridiculous.
But this government will not come clean – and adjust its numbers to growth per capita, that is, GDP growth per person.
If they did, and it’s flat
lining, you’d all know the truth.
HOUSING
AFFORDABILITY
Until immigration is drastically reduced any claims that politicians are serious about the housing crisis is just hot air – babble to conceal their real agenda.
And reduce it not from
73,000 to what Labour wants - 40,000 to 50,000 -
but to
10,000, the net number New Zealand First wants.
Auckland housing is now a full blown calamity.
Brian Rudman, said this in the NZ Herald, (May 17, 2017).
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said denials of a housing crisis were now simply lies.
Our Prime Minister Bill English says we don’t have a housing crisis.
The facts tell a different story:
Auckland needs 14,000 new houses per annum just to cope
with annual population growth. They are barely building half
that.
Already, there’s an estimated 40,000 shortfall in
Auckland housing that has grown under National.
Tens of thousands of young Aucklanders will end up being renters for life.
And among them some of your children and grandchildren will be, unless something is done about it and now.
We’ll be releasing our housing policy for
this election very shortly.
It is realistic, based on the
needs of New Zealanders now and into the near future.
It will be accompanied by a construction programme and financing land and house provisions to make these policies stack up.
Unlike the rest, we are going to build houses for people not the “market”.
FOREIGN OWNERSHIP
We will turn the Overseas Investment Office from a toothless poodle into an effective watchdog with real teeth.
SAVINGS
Four
Australian-owned banks dominate our banking sector.
These banks remit billions of profits, dividends and other payments each year creating an enormous drain on our economy and the balance of payments.
But where is our government on this? As usual, AWOL - missing in action.
They are totally happy with 95% of the NZ banking system being owned overseas. It fits perfectly with their “sell-sell” agenda.
Given that NZ is already in net debt to the rest of the world to the tune of $156 billion it is long since time for action on this front.
New Zealand First will start by putting every central and local government account with KiwiBank.
We pay the money so our bank, not a foreign one, will clip the ticket.
CONSERVATION
Funding must match the task it faces.
Conservation must be for conservation’s sake not just for tourism’s sake.
New Zealand has among the highest proportion of threatened or endangered species – we are talking well over 2000 species on that list.
Endangered species in New Zealand are being sacrificed just so National can cook the books a bit longer.
CLIMATE
CHANGE
The government’s track record on taking steps to reduce carbon emissions can be summed up in one word.
Disgraceful!
As the rest of the world moves forward and begins to tackle the great challenge of our time what has been happening in NZ?
NZ is going backwards.
Wellington is scrapping its trolley buses – a sustainable, low carbon form of public transport and replacing them with diesel buses spewing noxious emissions into the city’s streets.
KiwiRail is scrapping its electric locomotives on the North Island Main Trunk Line and replacing them with diesels.
These are staggeringly retrograde steps but they typify this government’s total failure in the area of climate change.
TODD BARCLAY
We found
out this week Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay lied to the
public about making secret recordings of a staff member but
admitted in private to Bill English that he did.
Then to
get him out of his own mess hush money was paid out from the
prime minister’s fund.
Prime Minister Bill English knew
Mr Barclay had lied but he was involved in the cover-up with
the pay-out and then he forgot all about it until he
miraculously remembered after persistent questioning.
The
PM needs to explain how national is using taxpayers’ money
as a slush fund. Who set it up? Where’s the paperwork? How
big is it? How big was the hush money settlement?
This
was a secret contract to pay off a long term staffer where a
crime was central to the settlement making the secret
contract illegal, unenforceable and no longer protected by
secrecy.
Mr English should welcome a Privilege Committee
hearing – if he and the National Party have nothing to
hide.
How can Todd Barclay hang on to his seat? There’s
not a law for National and a law for everyone
else.
Recently another National MP Alfred Ngaro said to
people getting taxpayer funding, you bag us on the campaign
trail and watch out, there won’t be money on the
table.
One of those he attacked was the Salvation
Army.
And beware the media - he accused John Campbell of
making up stories of the homeless, as though people holed up
in cars had been stage managed.
That is political
arrogance.
There are numerous examples.
Health
Minister Coleman calling critics of his mental health policy
a bunch of Lefties.
Conservation Minister Barry bad
mouthing critics of DOC underfunding.
Bill English saying
there is no Auckland housing crisis when everyone not a
signed up member of National says there is.
And then
Nicky Wagner proved her mind was not on her job – tweeting
she’d rather be out on Auckland Harbour than at a meeting
on Disabilities of which she is Minister.
“Third term
it is” has well and truly taken hold.
PIKE
RIVER
A contractor
drilling holes at Pike River was gagged by his
contract.
He was instructed to report to Solid Energy if
anyone, particularly the media, approached him for
information.
That’s how the disaster of 29 men dying is
being handled.
KAIKOURA
My team went
to Kaikoura because of complaints of slow progress on the
roads.
The NZTA then had the gall to call up the
helicopter firm and ask them who hired the aircraft.
What
business is it of theirs?
They are a government appointed
body but where is their independence?
ST
JOHN
We emailed St John to ask about new crewing
proposals from government funding.
They wanted to know
what the information was for, and copied their email reply
to the Health Ministry.
This is just like the social
housing providers. They were told if they had any media
approach they must refer it back to the
Ministry.
That’s a government starting to behave like
the Mafia.
SHANE RETI
In the
Northland by-election two years ago Whangarei MP Shane Reti
phoned a resident and told her to stop complaining about a
dusty road or any funds would dry up. Unfortunately for him
she legally recorded the threat.
PAULA
BENNETT
When two solo mums complained about cuts
to training incentives Minister Paula Bennett ignored
privacy laws by revealing how much those two received in
welfare payments and generated a public
backlash.
That’s vindictiveness at its worst.
Paula
Bennett got her BA through such an allowance. She gets into
political power and she scraps the
allowance.
JOHN KEY
When the Human
Right Commission criticised John Key increasing spy powers,
he put the frighteners on them - he threatened to cut their
funding.
DAVID SEYMOUR
Then there’s
Act Party’s David Seymour, the MP in Parliament who got in
on the coat tails of National.
He’s a bully too, a
small one.
Mr Seymour not only visited a school to deter
a manager from complaining in writing about policy, he went
to his house.
He told him not to put his complaints in
writing. The ACT Party is meant to the party of business but
politically there is no demand for their political product
and no market share so why is the media stoking up this
twit?
COMMUNITY LAW
In 2014 the
Community Law Centre suspected its government funding was
withdrawn because it spoke out about legal reform.
This
followed other community groups saying they were being
muzzled by fears that speaking out against government
policies would result in losing funding.
All these
stand-over tactics belong to another world, not New
Zealand.
This is the party that has made a thousand cuts
to community organisations – Women’s Refuge, Barnados,
Presbyterian Support, Relationship Aotearoa, and a $13m cut
to Adult Community Education in 2009, to name a
few.
The growing Fuji scandal
While
all these shenanigans have been going on in Parliament one
of the most serious frauds in New Zealand history has stayed
under the radar.
As FujiFilms, the principals of
FujiXerox New Zealand, have been lawyering up to take on a
$500m fraud in New Zealand many commentators have just
failed to grasp how serious this is.
The scandal is so
serious that we say a full public inquiry should have been
ordered a long time ago to pour some light on huge systemic
business failure in this country.
It’s clear that
Steven Joyce, Simon Bridges and this government are happy to
deal with crooks.
Japan’s FujiFilms has appointed
Meredith Connell, one of the government’s own criminal
litigators to act in its interests. This shows the National
Ministers and a number of useless butt-protecting officials
to be the numbties they are.
CONCLUSION
NZ First does have a
comprehensive set of policies to grow the economy in a way
that will deliver decent jobs for Kiwis
And that is what NZ First will campaign on all the way to September 23.
NZ First will give New Zealanders a real choice
in the 2017 election.
We need to follow a new
path.
And with your support, we will.
Thank you.
Ends