Q+A: NZ First leader Winston Peters
Q+A: NZ First leader Winston Peters interviewed by
Corin Dann
NZ First won’t be
constrained by the same spending limits as other parties –
Winston Peters
NZ First leader Winston Peters told TVNZ 1’s Q+A programme that his party wouldn’t be constrained by the same spending limits set by National, Labour or the Green Party.
CORIN
So you won’t stick to their spending limits.
Would you run deficits in order to carry out your
policies?
WINSTON
Can you tell me why you’re asking me, a party
that’s going to come in far higher in this election with
support than you’ve ever conceived, that I should be
constrained by some other party’s misguided spending
limits? Whilst the National Party is promising you tax cuts.
Excuse me, get a grip on this.
Winston Peters also told Corin Dann he would introduce a Gold Card for around ‘100,000 people with various levels of disability.’
‘We can do a lot for them by identifying their specific needs like travel and being independent, and we could seriously help them to be greater contributors to our society and less dependent on our society, and that’s what we intend to do. We’re going to have a Gold Card for them and ensure they get some of the benefits of not giving up on life, but doing the best they can.’
Please find the full transcript attached and you can watch the interview here.
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Q + A
Episode
19
WINSTON
PETERS
Interviewed by Corin
Dann
CORIN Winston Peters has
been on a two-week regional tour, finishing with the New
Zealand First AGM and convention in Manukau this weekend. Mr
Peters joins us from there. Good morning to you, Mr
Peters.
WINSTON Good
morning.
CORIN I
wonder, is your goal this campaign to change the government
or reform or break the neo-liberal hold, you say, that this
country is
under?
WINSTON We’ve
had a 33-year experiment, which after three years, you
remember, was being sold as ‘You’ve had three years of
pain, and now you’re going to have three years of gain.’
And we’ve waited 30 years for it. There is no gain for the
mass majority of New Zealanders, and my party is very clear
that we want economics that works for the mass majority of
New Zealanders, not just the elite and foreign economies and
foreign
ownership.
CORIN You
talked in an interview with Richard Harman this week about
your fondness for Robert Muldoon. Is that what you’re
proposing – a return to pre-1984, much bigger government,
much more intervention in the
economy?
WINSTON Richard
got it 100% wrong. I said no such thing. I was just
explaining the kind of propaganda and scam that accompanied
the neo-liberal experiment of 14 July 1984, from which after
33 years, we have slid right down the OECD; massive
ownership of New Zealand’s assets are offshore; 95% of our
banking is foreign-owned; eight of our top forest companies
foreign-owned. I was telling– I was saying and talking
about the propaganda as to how they got to begin this
experiment, because they said the country was
broke.
CORIN All
right, well, let’s look at some of the
things–
WINSTON Where
we are now – half-a-trillion-dollar debt economy
now.
CORIN Sure.
Let’s look at some of the things you have been proposing
on your tour. A lot of, I guess, buybacks of assets.
You’ve talked in Southland about a potential buyback of
the Bluff Aluminium Smelter. What else? Why stop there? What
would you
look–?
WINSTON I
didn’t say buyback. I didn’t say buyback. I didn’t say
buyback. I said there, Rio Tinto
is–
CORIN Well,
you said you would look at financing, rebuying
it.
WINSTON No.
Now, look, you’ve got to actually listen to what I’m
saying, rather than just coming to your conclusions. What I
said there was Rio Tinto threatened to walk off if they
didn’t get a massive subsidy from New Zealand taxpayer.
And my response to that is, ‘But you’ve got to clean
this place up before you go, so you’d be better to exit
the darn place and give it over to New Zealand management
and workers, and we’ll do the rest. We’re giving you a
massive concession in power, and we’ve done if for
decades. We’re giving you billions of dollars of help, so
don’t threaten us.’ That’s what a leader would do
that’s concerned about New Zealand’s
economy.
CORIN Okay,
fine, but are you proposing an economic policy where we buy
back assets, where we intervene, where we run industries,
where we provide subsidies, because your speeches this week
to the region, in various regions, make it clear that you
are.
WINSTON Look,
with the greatest respect, we had to buy back after
privatisation in this experiment Air New Zealand. We had to
buy back New Zealand Railways when Faye Richwhite and
Wisconsin Central Railroad got it in a bargain, took the
shares to $9.34, then busted the whole outfit, and the
taxpayer had to buy that back, and we’ve suffered from a
lack of rail ever since. We’re not going to get caught
here with the far- and neo-right liberals in this country
trying to excuse their hopeless performance, whilst the
tremendous capacity of New Zealanders to own through the
Cullen Fund, through KiwiSaver, our resources is what we
should be
doing.
CORIN You
said this week that you’d subsidise dairy farms, possibly
for up to seven
years.
WINSTON Well,
if we want to clean up our environment – and bear in mind
we have to for international and domestic reasons as well
– if we want to get rid of all the pollution, then we
cannot expect, surely, farmers, particularly in dairying –
many on the bones of their you-know-what – to do the job.
And we also know that urban pollution is far, far worse than
agrarian or rural pollution in this country. Far, far worse.
So as a country, unlike the rest, including the Greens,
we’re going to clean up this country, like Norway has
done, and like the UK set out to do; not paying $1.4 billion
to foreign economies, no. Using that money, our businesses,
our manufacturers, our farmers, our workers, our unemployed
to clean our country up, and I’ll help farmers to do it,
because it’s in our long-term
interest.
CORIN Yeah,
you’ve talked about a 10 to 15% cut in the currency, which
you’d bring about by managing our exchange rate, which
would then, of course, benefit farmers, and you say that
farmers should then pay their workers more. How will you
make them pay workers
more?
WINSTON Well,
it’s very clear. We are not going to allow, in the
long-term, people to be brought in, because we failed to
train and employ our own young people on farms. I’m off a
farm in an era when Mum, Dad and the kids in corporate
farming New Zealand could outperform an owner and four
adults in the UK and Europe. We are still relying on our
people, and I believe in
them.
CORIN Sure.
We know about your farming history, Mr Peters. Could you
give us an answer about whether you will require farmers to
pay their workers more? I mean, will you regulate? I’m
trying to get a sense from you how far you will go in terms
of your intervention in the economy if you had your
way.
WINSTON Well,
look, I am not going to be misdescribed by you on this
matter. I’ve said to the farming community, ‘I’m going
to give you the kind of tax break and the offshore tax break
when it comes to exports that enables you to be a far more
profitable industry. In return, I want you to employ New
Zealanders, and I’ll help you train them.’ We are seeing
Telford, our leading agricultural university in the South
Island– or institution, secondary– post– past
secondary institution being run to the ground under a
National party. This is a disgrace. And we are going to
correct that, but no one can tell me that the young people
of New Zealand from a farming background aren’t up to it
if they are given the right help and the right
assistance.
CORIN On
the matter of the currency, if you did try and manage the
currency, would you also implement capital controls to stop
any capital leaving New Zealand, which could be one
consequence?
WINSTON I
never mentioned that at all, never mentioned capital
controls – not even in my thinking. But let me say this
– if the IMF says that our currency is seriously
overvalued, if this small country north of the penguins, of
4.7 million is the seventh- or eighth-most traded currency
in the whole wide world, do you think they’re sitting in
front of those screens in New York and Wall Street doing it
for our benefit? We’re going to stop this mass
misinformation, and more importantly, this abuse of our
currency in other people’s interests, rather than
ours.
CORIN Sure.
Mr Peters, I’m sure
many–
WINSTON We’ve
got the courage to do so. You cannot tell me– Excuse me.
Excuse me, you can’t show me one economy in the world that
has a reserve bank operating with total disregard for the
political and economic, manufacturing, employment and GDP
concepts as ours
is.
CORIN I’m not
arguing you, Mr Peters. I’m not arguing the merits of your
policy.
WINSTON This
is ridiculous, and now more people realise
it.
CORIN I’m
sure there are many people who would agree with you and
would like to
see–
WINSTON Well,
sounds like you were, but never
mind.
CORIN …a
lower currency. What I’m trying to find out is are you
aware of the possible consequences of that, which according
to some economists I have spoken to is that you might risk
capital leaving the country, at which point you would need
capital
controls.
WINSTON Well,
with great respect to those economists, you’ve had 33
years to see how your experiment doesn’t work. And I think
that Lee Kuan Yew, that one man, and the minister of
finance, for example, in Taiwan, knows more about economics
than all of you put together. And Lee Kuan Yew in
particular. This is someone I’ve talked to a number of
times, who’s someone whose economic prescription on the
question of currency I understand. And I prefer him and the
marvels that he has performed in Singapore, with a country
the size of Lake Taupo and no resources at
all–
CORIN Yes,
with a completely different economic backdrop to New
Zealand, Mr
Peters.
WINSTON …compared
to these Harvard-schooled
economists.
CORIN They’re
not reliant on short-term capital like New Zealand. They
don’t have $160 billion in private debt like New Zealand.
It’s completely
different.
WINSTON You’re
talking balderdash. You know why you’re talking that
rubbish? Lee Kuan Yew set out to force savings upon his
people, and look at the benefits. I tried that 20 years
ago.
CORIN They’re
savings rich – that’s the point – whereas we are not
WINSTON I went to
the New Zealand people and said, ‘I’ll give you…’
Can I finish off what I’m trying to say, cos this is not
about you, Corin, or for that matter, about TVNZ – a
taxpayer-owned operation – in this campaign. You want to
know about my policy? Let me say this, I am for compulsory
savings. I offered an 8% tax break – put it all into
savings in your own name and change this country around.
Now, people like you and others boohooed the idea and voted
me down, but you didn’t vote away the problem, and I still
seek to have my country independent of its appalling
dependence on foreign money, which is the result of the
doctrine that people like you ascribe to for the last 33
years.
CORIN You’ve
announced a number of policies over the last wee while. One
of them was your education policy – $4.6 billion. Although
you argue, it’s only an extra half a billion on top of
what’s already being spent. But if we also look at GST
back to the regions – 1.5 billion, 3 billion for taking
GST off fruit and vegetables. It’s a pretty expensive
shopping list. Can you do it without going above those $1.8
billion caps that the government– this current government
has put in place, and which Labour and the Greens are buying
into?
WINSTON Well,
they can buy into it, because that’s the phenomenon in
this campaign. You got Labour and the Greens and the
National party all going along with this neo-liberal
experiment of 1984. I don’t – never did back then and
still don’t – and I think there’s nothing so, you
know, as antiseptic as the statement ‘I told you so’,
but I kind of well did way back when I labelled it in the
late 1980s as The Erebus Economy. And here we go again.
You’re talking about me being profligate. Well, quite the
converse. They are talking about surpluses. We’re talking
about, for example, on GST on international tourism in New
Zealand alone was last year $1.5 billion, and they virtually
gave nothing back to the regions where that money was earned
by the provincial economies. And the provincial economies in
the regions of this country have had a total gutsful being
forgotten.
CORIN I’m
not trying to argue the merits of this policy or otherwise.
I just want to know – would you stick to the current
spending limits set by not just National but Labour and the
Greens? Would you stick to
those?
WINSTON No.
CORIN So
how
much–?
WINSTON I’m
not subscribing to their brand of economics.
Pardon?
CORIN And
what about the debt
limit?
WINSTON What
New Zealand First– What New Zealand First intends to do.
Listen. You need to understand why we are different. We
intend to take public spending towards productivity and
exports and real growth, not consumption and negative growth
once you take out mass population increases of 2% per year.
They claim to have a 3% growth rate. Take out your 2%
population growth, and you’ve got what? 1% and down at the
bottom of the OECD. We’re going to stop this bulldust
winning a campaign, and in the next nine weeks, we want New
Zealanders to know what the actual truth is, rather than
this propaganda and spin of which Goebbels would have been
proud.
CORIN So you
won’t stick to their spending limits. Would you run
deficits in order to carry out your
policies?
WINSTON Can
you tell me why you’re asking me, a party that’s going
to come in far higher in this election with support than
you’ve ever conceived, that I should be constrained by
some other party’s misguided spending limits? Whilst the
National Party is promising you tax cuts. Excuse me, get a
grip on this. This is a fight between three different
movements – National, New Zealand First and Labour-Greens
combination. This is a fight– It’s the battle for New
Zealand, and we intend to win
it.
CORIN Would you
hike taxes? Because on your website, you do talk about
making sure that New Zealand’s economic potential, greater
proportion of the tax burden with taken away from those on
lower incomes. There is some suggestion that is a tax hike.
Is there any prospect of higher income New Zealanders maybe
taking a bit more of the
share?
WINSTON (CHUCKLES)
Now, which part of those words sounds like a tax hike? All
I’ve ever promised is to export us to new market discovery
exporters and to everybody who can change the outcome of
this country so that we are an export-wealthy nation like we
once used to be; not like now, where imports cost more than
our exports are making, and so we’re permanently going
into debt. If you can tell me why that is not a sound policy
to change the export performance by incentivisation, then
you are out of touch with what other smart countries
including China is doing, for example Taiwan has been doing,
for example Singapore has been doing with enormous success,
and indeed Norway has been
doing.
CORIN Mr
Peters, I heard on your campaign trail you talking about a
new Gold Card of sorts for disabilities. What’s that
about?
WINSTON Well,
we’ve got about 100,000 people with various levels of
disability, and some of them are serious, and yet what’s
been magnificent about it is a number of them, and a huge
number of them, who have tried to stay in our society, be
contributors, to work hard and do the best they can. They
take an enormous amount of pride in it, and it’s a really
humbling experience to think that all this is going on with
the help of their siblings and mothers and fathers and
friends, and yet the state is not paying attention. And I
thought, really, we can do a lot for them by identifying
their specific needs like travel and being independent, and
we could seriously help them to be greater contributors to
our society and less dependent upon our society, and
that’s what we intend to do. We’re going to have a Gold
Card for them and ensure they get some of the benefits of
not giving up on life, but doing the best they can. Look,
when I was very young, I saw a man with no movement of his
legs, and yet he was the biggest maker of gates in a place
called Mangatawhiri, south of here. And all the farming
community bought his gates. He never, ever was on ACC. He
never, ever was on welfare. He was a man who was, by his
courage and grit, independent. I admire that, and I admire
all those people. If I can help them, I’ll do the best I
can.
CORIN Mr
Peters, just finally, during the Todd Barclay affair, you
called for Bill English to resign. Do you stand by
that?
WINSTON You
know something – the trouble with New Zealand politics and
the trouble with TVNZ is you think there’s one law for the
National Party and a different law for everyone else. Mr
English knew about a crime. He used and facilitated misuse
of public funds to cover it up. Then he sought to ensure
that the person that received the money remained silent in
what I call an illegal contract, because you can’t enter a
legal contract to hide a crime. And there he sits now as
though the same law’s for
him.
CORIN So
how can you work with him potentially as a prime minister or
deputy prime
minister?
WINSTON No.
The real question is – how can you support him and vote
for him? That’s the real issue for everybody that’s
watching this
programme.
CORIN Who
cares what I vote, Mr Peters. How can you work with
him?
WINSTON
That’s not the National Party I once knew. Beg
your
pardon?
CORIN It’s
not about me. I’m asking you – how can you work with him
if it’s somebody you think should
resign?
WINSTON Well,
I’ve made it very clear that there is not one law for the
National Party and a different law for anyone else. Mr
Barclay, for example, hasn’t turned up, and the $92,000
will be going into his account whether he turns up or
not.
CORIN I’ll
take that as a
no.
WINSTON Which
other party would have an MP like
that?
CORIN Mr
Peters, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.
Enjoy the rest of your conference. Thank
you.
WINSTON But
you won’t mind, Corin, before you go, Corin can I give you
some advice for the next nine weeks? Just report what I say
rather than what you think I said and you and I are going to
get along just
fine.
CORIN Tell
me, Mr Peters, that reminds me of a question I was going to
ask you. What is fake news? Because I see this is something
you’re talking
about.
WINSTON Well,
fake news is what I see frequently on the 6 o’clock news
at night, and I intend to make sure that it does not prevail
in this
campaign.
CORIN All
right. We’ll leave it there. Thank you very
much.