Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
28 FEBRUARY 2017

Taking the Axe to Regional Towns an Excuse for Policy Failure

A group of Right-wing, neo-liberal researchers wants to kill off New Zealand regional towns by selective engineering, says New Zealand First.

“The Maxim Institute, peddlers of failed economic policy, has run a ruler over the country and decided 44 out of 67 territorial authorities could be on the cusp of decline and suggests “communities” should make a decision to “exit” or not,” says New Zealand First Leader and Northland MP Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“What they forget is that governments have failed in the fundamentals of economic policy to ensure the wealth creators - regional exporters - have their fair share of wealth returned to them.

“That’s why New Zealand’s inflated dollar, admitted by most economic economists, continues on unaddressed. Even the IMF has pointed this out.

“But when you are on the big city consumption tap governments refuse to act.

“Despite the regions creating much of the wealth of this country the high dollar and failure of infrastructural investment means they are losing ground.

“It is regional NZ that tourists flock to, yet the government fails to return the bulk of its GST receipts to those areas and pays lip service to tourism infrastructural needs.

“These regional NZ doomsayers are parked up in the big cities, and simply have no plan for the regions, or that matter New Zealand.

“They want smart growth – whatever that phrase is supposed to mean.

“Then perhaps they should explain why they defend a stupid, unfocused immigration policy that is bringing in tens of thousands of older people.

“They say, ‘regional development policy is an easy way for politicians to spend a lot of money for mostly political gain’.

“So, road building in the regions is for votes, and motorways around Auckland is for exactly what?

“Clearly these overflown influence peddlers are aligned to the National Party as they were once to Rogernomics and Ruthanomics.

“Their real test as to whether they have any economic credibility is their abysmal failure to admit that 2 per cent of our economic growth is purely driven by immigration whilst they ignore all its attendant costs.

“It’s that sort of thinking that got us into this mess, which is why they cannot be trusted to get us out of it.

“Southland is 3% of the population producing about 18% of exports, but you don’t see BMWs, Audis and Mercedes cramming the streets of Invercargill,” says Mr Peters.

ENDS

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