Rt Hon Winston Peters
West Auckland Public Meeting,
Trusts Arena, Henderson
2pm 17 May 2026

Introduction

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for taking time out of your busy lives to come out this afternoon, here in West Auckland – the home of traditional hard working kiwi battlers.

Before we begin, we would like to welcome and confirm today Hon Alfred Ngaro former Member of Parliament and government Minister, will be standing for New Zealand First in the Glendene Electorate, and we would also like to welcome current sitting New Zealand First MP Dr David Wilson who will be representing the party here in the Henderson electorate.

We are here today already, early in election year, naming candidates and releasing policies right across the country for an election that will be like no other.

New Zealand’s Future

We began our campaign this year with our State of the Nation address in Tauranga, with over one thousand in attendance, and we have already been campaigning around the country packing halls on the West Coast, and Shane Jones has been packing the halls over the last couple of weeks up North in Dargaville and Kerikeri.

People have been keen to hear what New Zealand First has to say, and they all want to know why we are growing as a movement across all age groups and across all aspects of society.

New Zealand First understands with clarity, that the world has changed dramatically over just the last few short years.

The world is more uncertain now than at anytime in the last eighty years. And the influence of global uncertainty around the economy, security, or politics, has never had this much effect on our country as it does right here, right now, today, in our lifetimes.

New Zealand First understands that, and is why we know that this will be a long campaign through to November this year. Kiwis need to know how their next government will deliver the policies and people that are needed to change that uncertainty into certainty, and delivery of what matters most to hard working kiwis that just want to a get a fair go, and help build a future for their children.

Above all else, New Zealanders are wanting their government to provide, stability, experience, and a plan that will give the many millions of kiwis hope and belief that, as a country, we will not only survive, but thrive – like we once did when we were number one in the world.

We have reason to believe that we can be a world leader again. New Zealand First has the plan, we have the policies, and we have the people. We just need you to give us the tools and we will finish the job.

When we saw the mess beginning in 2021, we resolved that we had a mission to get back into parliament, we always knew that it was going to be a two-election campaign.

We knew that when we made it back to parliament in 2023, the campaign would not be over until we dramatically increased our vote in this, the 2026 election.

Our focus has been ensuring that this election will be our best ever result – otherwise the efforts over the past five years would be for little.

We set out in the 2023 election to do one thing – ensure the left were kept out. And we did that. Now, it is about ensuring we get the mandate from the people of New Zealand to take this country to where it needs to be.

We returned to government and have fought to right the ship. But as you know we have had limited numbers, only you can change that.

It is of utmost importance, now more than ever, that we deliver the change in how our country is run – in the national interest, for New Zealand, and for New Zealanders.

And after over forty years of failed left and right wing experimentation, only New Zealand First, with your help, can do that.

Nationalist, Conservative, Patriotic

New Zealand First is the only patriotic party that puts New Zealand and New Zealanders first.

New Zealand First is the only Nationalist party, in a sea of globalist confusion, and we are Nationalist with a capital N.

We are the only party that is looking to the future, protecting our country and our people, and putting our interests first. The other parties are globalists who see our country as a number on a spreadsheet to be analysed in the global political, economic, and cultural market.

It’s breathtaking how many overseas decision they would impose on New Zealand without any consultation with you the New Zealand people.

We believe that decisions about our country’s future should be made by the people of New Zealand, not by some globalist unelected bureaucrats in the UN, WEF, or WHO. Other parties might cower to those influences but we do not.

We have fought those battles from day one in this government, and we will continue to do so.

Over the past decade or more, New Zealand has seen our country swing to the far woke left, being influenced by the woke communist, cultural Marxists who would sooner see our country go broke for the sake of political correctness and ideology, than stand up for what were once proud traditional kiwi values.

Those out of touch, bureaucratic, left elitists would all rather live in crap than let the world see them use a shovel.

Their cultural Marxism has spread like a cancer throughout our society, in our political system, education system, our schools, government departments, and has been let to seep into our everyday world.

Ordinary kiwis have had enough. And we stand with you. We are fighting those battles for you so you can get on with your lives and build a country which you are proud of.

New Zealand First is the only socially conservative party standing up for kiwi principles – and we are proud of it.

We have won many battles over the past two and a half years, but the war is yet to be won. We are in this for the long haul to make this country great again – like it once was when we were known as the best democracy in the world.

Cost of Living, Assets, Super

Times are tough out there, there is no doubt about that. We understand with great clarity, the struggle for ordinary hard-working kiwis just trying to get by.

Power bills are through the roof, food prices at supermarkets are at some of the highest levels, and cost of living is the number one issue for many voters.

And what we see from other parties is the beginning of what their default answer is when times get tough – sell our assets, open immigration, and attack superannuation.

They all see our assets that our forebears built over the centuries, as a balance sheet item that can be hocked off to satisfy the Reserve Bank – and to hell with the security those assets bring our country and our future generations.

They haven’t even got the honesty to recognise that their ancestors were far better economic managers than them – and that’s why we have state assets.

If we sell our state assets to foreign owned corporations the security of our country and our future generations will be over.

Those other parties have said in recent days that they are looking at selling Kiwibank – our only state-owned bank, that they are looking at options to sell Air New Zealand – our only state-owned carrier, and now they are again looking at attacking superannuation.

Chris Hipkins has said that Labour is willing to means test superannuation that would affect hundreds of thousands of kiwi seniors - just like Labour did in the 1980s, and National did in the 1990’s.

‘Means testing’ is another way of saying the government will be able to refuse to give you your retirement super income if they decide you don’t deserve it.

Our Kiwi Super is not a benefit, it is a long-standing Kiwi entitlement. Kiwis who are 65 or above have worked 30,40, sometimes 50 years paying taxes and building this country.

We have an obligation as a government to look after our seniors in their retirement and protect their super.

We demanded in our coalition agreement that super won’t be touched - this will never change while New Zealand First has a say.

New Zealand First has been the only party that has consistently protected super for our seniors. The other parties have for decades now seen NZ super as an expense that can be cut or means tested to paper over long term economic incompetence.

This is just a predictable broken record we hear every election cycle from political parties.

The cheap headline that super is unaffordable is simply nonsense. Super currently sits at around 5% of New Zealand’s GDP, which is far below the OECD average of other pension schemes. It is growth in our economy that needs addressing, not taking safe retirement off our seniors.

NZ Super is an entitlement for seniors who have worked to build this country through decades of paying taxes, sometimes through periods of being taxed at the highest levels in the world.

In todays Sunday Star Times, there are two articles on New Zealand Superannuation by Tom Pullar-Strecker, and Andrea Vance, and a further article by Liam Dann in the Herald on Sunday, titled “A political football that ignores economic reality”.

Stunning isn’t it, that in all three articles, they make out that there is an affordability problem even though the cost against GDP is around 5%, but here’s the rub, the Cullen Fund that is over two decades old, and now over $86 billion, which was designed to smooth out the predicted time of high costs of our national super, is not even mentioned.

How could these people claiming to be experts have missed that, or is it that they are so biased that they can’t bring themselves to do the work they needed to for a balanced article.

Its clear as daylight, those other parties intend to misuse that fund, cash it up, and attempt to balance their own budgets.

Let us tell you right here, right now. No government with New Zealand First will be selling our assets. No government with New Zealand First will touch our seniors’ superannuation – no means testing, no eligibility age increase, no indexing.

Immigration

For a number of years New Zealand First has been warning New Zealanders about loose immigration. In the same way that it is happening in the UK, Europe, US, and more recently in Australia.

New Zealand First since day one has been warning about unfettered immigration being used as a crutch for the economy and failing workforce planning for our own people.

In 2017 when we became part of the government Immigration was dramatically cut back. In 2021, when we were no longer part of the government, the governments feet came totally off the brakes, and Labour governing with the Greens began approving 213,000 residencies in just 18 months.

Following post Covid in 2022, the immigration department loosely approved nearly every application for residency in New Zealand.

And when Labour was unleashing these hundreds of thousands of new immigrants on New Zealand, the National Party and the Act Party said absolutely nothing.

As it says in the good book – “By their deeds you will know them”.

When New Zealand First was raising the roof on this matter, those two other parties wouldn’t raise a finger. And yet just six months out from the next election, all of a sudden, both those parties are saying they are concerned.

Mr Luxon made his speech as National Party Leader and I am responding as New Zealand First Leader, for those people in the mainstream media who can’t understand the difference.

We need immigration to New Zealand. It has been an essential part of our history. But this should be smart controlled immigration policy – bringing in immigrants who we need, not who need us.

It will always bring the inevitable naval gazing by the other parties who would rather fill gaps in our economy and workforce with migrants, than train and maintain kiwis, and protect the “kiwi dream”.

The fact is half of all New Zealand Citizens who have moved to Australia were not born in New Zealand. Many have used access to NZ as a stepping stone to Australia, often leaving their parents here for us to look after.

The immigration policy that allows this to happen is just plain crazy.

Chris Hipkins made a speech the other day where he said “the kiwi dream should not be reserved for the few, it should be delivered for everybody who calls New Zealand home.”

He just called New Zealanders “the few” and that “everybody” who wants it should be delivered what we have built.

The ‘kiwi dream’ belongs to kiwis who have worked hard for our country, invested time, sweat, pride, and belongs to the generations who share in our country’s history. It is not for just anybody around the world who decides to come to our great country for five minutes and claim what we have built just for their convenience.

Politicians like Hipkins perversely say “diversity is a strength” to shut you down, but it is not, unity is a strength, not diversity.

The choice is in your hands, not in the hands of retail globalists like Hipkins.

India Free Trade Agreement

The Indian Free Trade agreement has put into neon lights the way immigration has been used as a bargaining chip for our country’s future.

The National, Act, and Labour Parties have signed up to this deal knowing this is a Free Migration Deal, not a Free Trade Deal.

Under this deal, not only will there be five thousand work visas issued at any one time, but under current law those visa holders can bring in their families – that five thousand now turns into twenty or twenty-five thousand.

All the other political parties deny that. So how can it be that the Prime Minister Modi, Trade Minster Goyal, India’s Foreign Office, and its Communication Ministry, all have the opposite view to all those other New Zealand political parties?

Then there are the uncapped students that will be allowed to enter our country to study. These uncapped number of students, under this agreement, have a guaranteed right to work twenty hours a week up to twenty-five hours, in addition to a right to work for three years post-graduation.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s not export education. Our economy is paying for their education.

If you are all sitting there and thinking about whose jobs those visa holders and students will be taking in this time of high unemployment, your question is right – and the most important one that National, Act, and Labour all need to answer.

Last week in the House Labour was asking questions about the number of unemployed youth – and yet they support this FTA that will guarantee an increase in an uncapped number of foreign students taking your kids jobs.

How can any of them reconcile that? And how can the mainstream media reconcile that?

No free trade deal in the history of New Zealand has included immigration as a condition. Never. Why has National, Act, and Labour allowed this to occur?

What is worse, there are a number of other clauses in the agreement that have no place being there.

There is a clause in the signed agreement that confirms New Zealand’s affirmation of UNDRIP – the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous People. This is the UN agreement that created He Puapua and the prominence of co-governance in New Zealand.

New Zealand First demanded in our coalition agreement that we do not recognise UNDRIP as having any legal standing – so why has National and Act, as part of the government, signed up to this?

By the way, you would have seen reported in the last few days that work is underway right now to remove the references to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi in legislation. New Zealand First were the ones who demanded that be included in the coalition agreement.

The fact is there are no such thing as ‘Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’ and those references have pervaded our laws to the detriment of progress and commons sense.

We have many accomplishments in this term of government in the area of ridding our country of separatist co-governance, we have won many battles, they have not been easy and we continue to fight them.

Back to the FTA, there is also a clause in the signed agreement that confirms New Zealand adherence to the Paris Climate Accord.

Last year in our State of the Nation speech held in Christchurch, we said that we need to re-evaluate our Paris commitments.

In trying to honour our Paris commitments, $22 billion plus, of our hard-earned taxpayers’ money will be siphoned offshore in a total self-defeating economic and climatic shambles.

It’s just common sense that instead of draining our money offshore, into foreign economies, we invest it in looking after our own environment.

Let’s look at the facts. Around sixty percent of the worlds CO2 emissions come from four countries – China, United States, Russia, and India. New Zealand’s emissions amount to only around 0.17%.

Why are we making a rod for our own backs, punishing our farmers and our taxpayers and our economy, when China or the US could sneeze and produce more CO2 overnight than we do in a year?

How is that solving the “global climate problems”?

We need to stop this idealistic flight of futility – so why have National, Act and Labour all signed up to this free trade agreement with this clause in it?

Where has the common sense gone from those who purport to want to lead this country?

One last thing to mention on this FTA, is the fact that National, Act and Labour, are not only agreed to $22 billion being syphoned from our economy to satisfy the Paris Accord, but they are all signing up to New Zealand being forced to promote a further $33 billion of investment into India over just 15 years. Not into New Zealand. Into India. And if we don’t satisfy that part of the bargain to India’s satisfaction, India has a ‘clawback’ clause where they will start to withdraw all the things that we think we have gained out of this deal.

That’s a total of $55 billion going overseas and not being invested in New Zealand. Are we mad?

When we are desperate in this country for investment, where we have a $200 billion infrastructure deficit, we are now going to spend the next 15 years promoting those billions of dollars of investment into a foreign country.

Are you now seeing why New Zealand First has been against this deal since day one?

It is a frustratingly simple explanation as to why these other parties either know what they are doing or simply don’t care – New Zealand First is the only Nationalist party that is willing to go to the wire to protect New Zealand and New Zealander’s future.

Free Speech

Something occurred last week that should concern all New Zealanders.

It was reported that police visited Renee-Rose Schwenke about a so-called 'offensive' social media post. Not threatening, not inciting violence, just that it allegedly offended someone.

This is '1984 thought-police' level overreach. It should seriously frighten every New Zealander who believes in freedom of speech.

This is not about whether this particular post was offensive or not. There will always be personal responsibility and consequences for people voicing their opinions that are viewed by some as tasteless or gormless or offensive - but those consequences should not be by way of a police visit.

No one has the right to not be offended, nor do they have the right to be protected from having hurt feelings. In fact it is precisely the right to be able to offend which is the foundation of freedom of speech in our country.

This has happened overseas with more regularity where social media posts, opinions, views, expressions, and even jokes are now deemed offensive by some authoritarian power and have been met with threats from police, arrests, or even convictions in court.

We never thought we would see this happen here and it has a chilling effect on where we are going as a country.

As Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr said, freedom of speech also comes with responsibility of speech - you cannot falsely yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre without there rightly being a consequence. We already have laws around 'responsibility of speech' ranging from defamation to incitement of violence, and that is important - but people's freedom to have their own free opinion is something which should be aggressively defended.

We don't all have to agree with each other's opinions, but we should all fight for each other's right to have them. This is the essential foundation of our free democracy.

If we start to accept this kind of overreach by police to curtail individual freedom of speech, our democracy will fall into the type of totalitarian oblivion that will destroy our country.

New Zealand First will always fight for kiwi’s right to freedom of speech.

2026 Campaign Policy Announcements

Today we are announcing two campaign policies.

The first is just plain common sense.

The KiwiSaver Generation

New Zealand First is going to make KiwiSaver enrolment compulsory at birth and there will be an automatic immediate Crown contribution of $1000 for New Zealand citizens only.

This is a once-per-lifetime investment that compounds for decades.

This will be the start of the nest egg for something that we will call the “KiwiSaver Generation”.

Universal birth enrolment will ensure every child begins their financial life as a KiwiSaver member, with a meaningful balance already growing on their behalf.

This new policy will work in conjunction with our existing campaign policy of compulsory KiwiSaver enrolment for the wider workforce and increasing employee and employer contributions to 8% initially and eventually to 10%.

If the direction of travel is a New Zealand where participation is the default rather than the exception, birth enrolment is the logical starting point.

Establishing membership from day one, normalising savings as a lifelong habit, and ensuring no New Zealander enters adulthood without a savings foundation already in place. This policy removes the enrolment gap entirely for the next generation.

Buying Back BNZ

We have a second campaign policy announcement today.

New Zealand will be buying back the BNZ bank.

Four Australian owned banks control around 85 percent of the system. They lend our deposits back to us at margins that are materially higher than those earned by their parent groups in Australia. Billions of dollars of profits a year that flow across the Tasman.

New Zealand First will be proposing a buy-back of the Bank of New Zealand from National Australia Bank.

It will be merged with Kiwibank to form the “National Bank of New Zealand (NBNZ)” – a fully Crown owned, commercially run, systemically significant domestic bank with the scale to genuinely compete with ANZ, ASB and Westpac. After all, when National sold BNZ to NAB in November 1992, it then had six of every ten New Zealand banking customers.

This is a buy-back to put a New Zealand owned competitor on the field at the scale required to change the behaviour of the foreign-owned banks.

This will create real competitive pressure on the Australian owned banks – a domestically owned strategic lender capable of supporting agriculture, infrastructure, and Small to Medium Enterprises growth on long-horizon terms.

Kiwibank, the only domestically owned bank of any scale, currently holds just under 8 percent of the mortgage market.

The ‘Commerce Commission 2024 Personal Banking’ market study, showed a structurally uncompetitive market in which the major banks face no sustained pressure to compete on price, no realistic threat of new entry at scale, and no domestic ownership accountability.

Kiwibank was created in 2002 precisely to provide a domestic challenger. But after two decades it remains a marginal player.

Successive governments have starved it of the capital it would need to be a genuine system-shaping competitor.

The “National Bank of New Zealand” would not be a government department. It would be a fully commercial bank with a Crown shareholder, but run on new management structure which we will outline in upcoming campaign announcements.

The “National Bank of New Zealand” would exist to keep the major Australian banks honest and to keep New Zealand banking profits in New Zealand.

The buy-back of the BNZ would not be funded from the operating budget.

A blended funding stack would include:

· A New Zealand Sovereign Banking Bond issuance, marketed to domestic retail and KiwiSaver investors as a direct economic-sovereignty instrument.

· Long-dated Crown debt at current sovereign rates. BNZ currently generates more than $1.5 billion in annual cash earnings – comfortably servicing the debt and returning a surplus to the Crown.

· A limited tranche of the NZ Future Fund and ACC investment, structured as a commercial equity at arm’s length and a market rate of return.

· Retention of Kiwibank’s existing capital base.

The buy-back is self-financing in expectation. The fiscal impact is a one-off balance-sheet expansion, not an ongoing cost.

This is not nationalisation – this is taking back our country.

Crown-owned commercial banks operating at scale are not radical. They are normal in serious economies – Singapore, Norway, Germany, Canada, France, all have large-scale state-owned banks that have serious stakes in the market.

New Zealand is the outlier – and we are going to change that.

New Zealand built BNZ. Labour and National sold it. Now we are going to buy it back.

Every dollar of profit it makes will stay in this country, working for New Zealanders.

That is what economic sovereignty looks like. That is what real conservatism looks like. That is what real Nationalism looks like.

And that’s what ‘added-value’ looks like for our country.

New Zealand First has been working hard over the past two and a half years to ensure we have the polices and the plan ready to lead this country in the right direction.

We have already announced policies on reforming the energy sector, breaking up the supermarket duopolies, we have announced today that we will create real competition in our foreign owned banking system, and we will look after our kids’ financial futures by creating a KiwiSaver Generation.

We are travelling around New Zealand, packing halls, listening to kiwis, and delivering on strong, bold policies that directly affect them.

There will be many more to come during this campaign.

Conclusion

New Zealand First has been on a mission.

To fight for the ordinary hardworking kiwis who just want a country we are proud of.

A country that provides opportunity for you and your families.

A country that gives you hope for a better future.

We must not lose sight of how far we have come on this long road to recovery.

It hasn’t been easy, but the things in life worth doing are never easy.

We must always choose the harder, right path…over the easy, wrong path.

It is what will build the character of our country. It is what will build a country we are all proud of.

We must never forget that challenge.

We must never give up what our forebears fought and died for.

We must never stop believing in ourselves or our mission.

We must never stop believing in New Zealand.

That is our vision and our mission.

We are asking you – to give us the tools, so we can finish the job.

To protect and to save this great country New Zealand.

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