Speech: Peters - Let’s Drop Second Best
Let’s Drop Second Best
Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you today in Kumeu.
First, I would like to introduce you to three women, who I am proud to announce will be standing in this election for New Zealand First in this region.
Tracey Martin
Many of you will
already know Tracey Martin MP.
Tracey has been a tireless
worker in her community and for her portfolios, for Women,
Communication and IT, and Broadcasting and Education.
She
has made an outstanding contribution as Education
Spokesperson.
Her costed and extensively consulted policy
to get rid of student loans for Kiwi graduates who stay and
work here is a platform policy for New Zealand First. Tracey
will be standing again in the Rodney electorate.
Anne Degia-Pala
We are also privileged to bring into our team, Anne Degia-Pala, a remarkable woman who is devoted to community development. She has the skills, the talent and most of all the enthusiasm and drive that every electorate needs. Anne will stand for the electorate of Kelston.
Helen Peterson
New Zealand First is
also welcoming on board Helen Peterson who will stand in
Helensville.
Helen has worked for 15 years in the
disability sector. She works as an advocate for vulnerable
adults, including older New Zealanders. She has experience
as an ACC negotiator and in small business, when she ran her
own tourism company.
She is a Justice of the Peace.
Kumeu
Kumeu is heartland West Auckland and
different from any other part of Auckland.
But you out
here are caught up in the out-of-control sprawl of
Auckland.
You face transportation problems:
Congestion
on the Northwestern Motorway seven days a week.
You are
spectators to Special Housing Areas and large developments
on prime agricultural land springing up.
More people
means more houses, which should go hand in hand with more
services.
But out here it doesn’t.
The obvious, such
as infrastructure, seems to have escaped most politicians’
minds - local and central.
Kumeu has been targeted for
massive growth - one thing would be certain, no-one has ever
asked you what you think of that.
A simpleton would
realise many of the new residents here will need to travel
to work, as locals do.
Commuter rail is the most obvious
answer.
The rail line is already here.
The station and
platform is here. The rail cars are sitting idle, ready to
be used. There’s land that could be bought for park and
ride, after a government foolishly sold off station
land.
The rail line is inexplicably under used.
Rail
use will get cars off the road. It will relieve you of the
agony of sitting in
Auckland’s gridlock.
Other
Aucklanders who love to come to Kumeu for fairs and events
should have another transport option.
You just need
leaders who will listen - who already know the value of
rail.
Cities around the world use rail efficiently.
We
need to get rid of politicians who can’t see past the end
of their nose when it comes to planning.
You have a right
to demand “Trains to Huapai/Kumeu’’ - it should be a
number one priority in this area.
New Zealand First is
the only party with a long record of seeing the wisdom of
rail - both for commuters and a national freight and
passenger network.
You face higher rates to cover the
soaring road sealing costs whilst this government has taken
money away from rural roads for the last eight
years.
Every day you pay for the government’s lack of
planning, lack of vision – and lack of concern for
ordinary New Zealanders.
This Country deserves better
This country deserves much better.
And it
can be better.
Our history used to be one of achievement,
we led the world once.
• New Zealand
First wants New Zealanders in decent jobs.
• New
Zealand First wants proper training to equip our young
people.
• Homes built for New Zealanders, not for
an international market.
• At least 1800 more
frontline police to fight crime.
• Infrastructure
investment at the same time as any population
expansion.
• First World products being used in
our buildings.
• Funding to rebuild our health
and hospital services.
• Real policies to
increase our productivity so stagnant under National.
•
Trade deals that work for us not just other
economies.
• Politicians and leaders who listen
to the people’s needs rather than lecture them.
•
A country where there is one law for everyone and not
different standards depending upon race, your politics, your
nationality or your level of wealth.
A divided New Zealand
After more than eight years of National we
have a country that has become deeply divided.
The mass
immigration crisis has added fuel to a chronic housing
crisis - neither of which the government will
recognise.
Auckland is more than 40,000 houses
short.
Last year only 7200 houses were completed in
city.
Hospitals throughout the country are at or near
crisis point with huge DHB deficits.
Roads, highways and
transportation have become acute problems.
Our waterways
have become seriously polluted and we allow foreign
corporates to bottle our water for next to nothing and sell
it for millions.
Many young New Zealanders are at a loose
end and without hope – more than 90,000 aged 15 to 24 are
without a job and not in training or education.
We have
around 139,000 unemployed.
And we bring in more than
73,000, many low-skilled workers, whilst leaving New
Zealanders to rot on the dole.
We have a Prime Minister
who is slithering and sliding trying to save his neck with
the Todd Barclay debacle after slithering and sliding over
Pike River.
Every New Zealander will be questioning Bill
English’s honesty and integrity.
And many National
voters have had a gutsful of what is going on.
A Country of Great Potential
New Zealand is still a
Country of Great Potential – but it is not being
realised.
We have fallen way short of what we could and
should have been.
We should be investing in research and
development; reviving our regions, stimulating local
economies, and exporting more than twice what we are doing
now, investing in skills and jobs, rebuilding our health
system.
We need to revive the vision we once had for the
country when we believed in ourselves, and backed ourselves,
and built a country the size of the UK, with every modern
facility, but with only the population of
Manchester.
After decades of economic experimentation, it
is not ordinary New Zealanders who have benefited – it is
the elite.
The ones who think they know what is best for
you and your families when in the end it’s all about
what’s best for them.
Foreign control
New
Zealanders used to be proud of being in control of our own
destiny.
Slowly, through globalism and its adherents in
the Beehive, the economic drivers of our national economy
are also being lost to foreign interests.
Bill English is
a globalist; so too was John Key, but why dwell on the
past.
If a billionaire like Peter Thiel wanted
citizenship.
No worries, National would fix it.
Dairy
is our second biggest export earner behind tourism.
You
would think we would have total control of this vitally
important industry.
We don’t.
Chinese companies
Evergrand, Synlait, Yashili, Yili/Oceania Dairy and the
Chinese controlled Mautaura Valley Milk have tied up Infant
Formula production here.
China own, operate and control
the supply chain from New Zealand to the baby’s mouth in
China.
Meat is our third highest earner.
Shanghai
Maling has the majority shareholding in our biggest red meat
company Silver Fern Farms, and are calling the shots.
A
Chinese company has a controlling interest in one of our
major agricultural supply businesses PGG
Wrightson.
Forestry is our next biggest export
earner.
Eight of the top 10 forest companies in New
Zealand are overseas controlled. They are clear felling our
forests and shipping out mountain loads of raw logs, whilst
New Zealand timber businesses are struggling to get a supply
of logs.
New Zealand is a rich country but we are letting
other strip our riches away – allowing others to profit
not ourselves.
Some of our best farmland is being sold
off to foreign interests.
Last year the Overseas
Investment Office rubber-stamped sales of thousands of
hectares of prime farmland to overseas buyers.
Four
Australian-owned banks dominate our banking sector - 95% of
the NZ banking system is owned overseas.
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?
Acting as New Zealand Number One Salesman of assets
and real estate.
Nowhere.
NZ a dumping ground
On the other side of the globalism ledger we have become
a dumping ground.
Cheap sub-standard steel is being
dumped here.
There has been a flood of cheap imported
plumbing products.
Unlike Australia, which has a compulsory system of assessing performance of products, known as Watermark, we have a voluntary system.
Estimates are that up to half New Zealand’s new homes have unregulated plumbing products installed.
Homes
built in the Christchurch Rebuild and those now getting
built in Auckland are going to start falling apart in 10
years’ time, maybe sooner.
In March last year Standards
NZ became incorporated with the Ministry of Business,
Innovation and Employment.
Standards NZ is as inept as
the Overseas Investment Office.
Graham Burke, president
of the Specialist Trade Contractors’ Federation says (NZ
Herald, June 28) problems have become acute.
“There is
a lack of leadership and transparency, weak structures and
lack of accountability.”
He says the public should know
standards have dropped and regulators like MBIE are not
enforcing the existing standards.
It’s a chaotic
free-for-all.
The cowboys are running amok.
A managing
director of an Auckland real estate firm said (NZ Herald,
June 23) a future disaster was emerging in buildings with
poor quality materials being used and substandard design and
construction.
Sub-standard plumbing, cladding, wiring,
roofing products and walls are commonplace.
Steel mesh is
of abominable quality.
How did this state of affairs
develop?
CTV tragedy
Did the National
government learn nothing from the Christchurch
earthquakes?
Do they not know that 115 people died in the
collapse of the CTV building in Christchurch.
Some of
them, perhaps all of them, could be alive today, if proper
standards were enforced.
The CTV building has been
described as “poorly, designed, poorly managed, poorly
built, partially reinforced subjected to unconsented changes
of use, with limited earthquake inspections.” (The Press,
June 3, 2017).
No accountability
Yet, like
Pike River – no-one has been held accountable.
How many
other potential death traps are being built in New Zealand
at this very moment?
Buildings are being constructed with
cheap rubbish dumped here from overseas.
The industry is
increasingly employing cheap overseas labour as they cut
corners and use unskilled workers to meet tight market
demands.
If something goes seriously wrong – we know
what will happen, we’ve seen the fall-out from the CTV
building and Pike River:
No-one is held
accountable.
The foul stench of cover-ups from Pike River
to the Todd Barclay debacle is in the air.
Conclusion
Ladies and gentlemen, we have 84 days
to go to the General Election.
Eight-four days for you to
decide whether you are going to put up with what you have
now, or aspire for something much better.
It is possible
with New Zealand First.
This year’s election provides
the opportunity.
It’s now or never for New
Zealand.
Everyone must contribute to serious economic and
social change, and it starts with your vote.
With your
help, together we can be certain of a great future.
ENDS