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  Note: All transcripts are copyright to Front Page Ltd but may be used PROVIDED attribution is made to TVONE and Agenda28 SEPTEMBER 2008AGENDAPresented by RAWDON CHRISTIERAWDON Over the past few weeks acres of newspaper and hours of TV and Radio time have been spent analysing Winston Peters and his censure by parliament over his failure to declare a donation from Own Glen, but Mr Peters soldiers on, a controversial and in many ways unique figure in New Zealand politics. He first stood for National in 1975, he was elected in 1978 and was quickly picked as a future National Prime Minister. However since 1993 when he formed New Zealand First he has placed himself on the fringes of New Zealand politics, but what does he really stand for, is there more to Winston than a love affair with conflict and controversy. He's with Guyon Espiner. GUYON ESPINER Winston Peters, what is this election campaign about? WINSTON PETERS, Leader – New Zealand First It's about whether we are going to in very troubled economic times internationally defend and protect and save New Zealand people's way of life and ensure that we have an economic plan that will work and that we deliver the kind of social equity and fairness that we were famous for for a hundred years. GUYON You spend a lot of time and a lot of energy on policies for older New Zealanders, what about the future, what have you got to offer for young New Zealanders? WINSTON Well we're the party that brought in free medicine for under six year olds and we want to make it free for under 12 year olds, because that's where your human investment and capital is. We're the people that believe in a proper education system and sound education policies and in a universal student allowance. We were the first party to bring that in as a manifesto commitment, it is still our commitment because you have to look after the vulnerable, the young and the old in any decent civilised society and that’s what makes this party different to the rest, we're the true centre of New Zealand politics. GUYON They sound like big ticket big spending items, have you costed those and can we afford those? WINSTON Well universal student allowance will cost probably seven – 78 million give or take the numbers up or down who do apply to become student in any given year over and above what there is now. Yes we have costed them, as a former Treasurer I know we can afford them, but if you regard education expenditure as purely expenditure not investment then you can see why we will head to the third world quickly with that kind of thinking. GUYON When we spoke on this show last time you confirmed that your position in terms of coalition stances was to negotiate first with the largest party after the election, is that still your position? WINSTON That’s always been our position but after the election and not before it in some sort of conspiracy against the public's wish which they must first express on election night. GUYON John Key has ruled you out though, the National Party has ruled out working with you, so is a vote for New Zealand First essentially then a vote for Helen Clark as Prime Minister? WINSTON Well I suppose if I was to be consistent and he ruled me out before I even got to have a hearing at the Privileges Committee, and I know he did trade in shares whilst he was asking questions on Transrail and if the test is to look a man in the eye and trust him I doubt if I can do that now given his own criteria. GUYON So you still think that the door would be open would you still – if National is the largest party would you go and begin negotiations…? WINSTON Oh look I'm not going to waste this campaign, the next six weeks, talking about what we might do, I intend with my colleagues to run a hard hitting simple plain speaking campaign about the critical issues that New Zealanders need to focus on, in short that we need a sound economic strategy, we need changes there because only they will shore up the standard of living that New Zealanders expect and the aspirations which they hope to become a reality, can only be afforded on the back of that. We do have a social conscience, my party in the main is a conservative party with a sense of political and economic responsibility, that’s what makes us unique. GUYON This week parliament voted to censure you over the Owen Glen affair, the Maori Party supported that censure motion, you accused them of turning on one of their own and of selling you out, did you expect that they would support you because you're Maori? WINSTON No, because they said so, because they told everybody on the Maori radio stations and on the marae and even talking to you people that they were backing Winston they believed this to be a case of gross personality attack and character assassination, and then they did a flip flop on the basis of their future negotiations with National on election night. Now if that’s the kind of help they were offering me, this is help I can do without, and I didn’t mind that because I've see that sort of behaviour in the past. But let me ask you this question. Is Nick Smith in front of the Privileges Committee? GUYON I don’t want to talk about Nick Smith. WINSTON If it embarrasses you … GUYON I'm actually asking the questions here Mr Peters, if you want to be a journalist then you can halve your salary go to polytech learn shorthand and actually swap sides with me… WINSTON Very good try but I'm gonna ask you this question one more time because you’ve had your go for three months, you judged me guilty before I even got to the Privileges Committee you said so … GUYON We're not talking about Nick Smith… WINSTON Why wasn’t Nick Smith in front of the Privileges Committee? GUYON I'm not talking about Nick Smith I want to go back to that question that I put to you about the Maori Party and their support, do you think that their failure to support you will hurt them with Maori voters? WINSTON Well two things, the Maori people do not like the kind of personality attack which I've sustained over the last three months and longer. The Maori people know what a fair go is and so do hundreds and hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders, they can see a stitch up when they see it, and when the leader of the party is asking shortly before the decision what does censure mean it shows you how much thought's gone into from the Maori Party's point of view. If they didn’t know what that meant what on earth were they doing in the committee all that time. GUYON There's been some speculation that you're gonna go quite strongly for Maori voters this time. WINSTON Well who made that speculation? GUYON Well a number of people have talked about this… WINSTON Well I wish you guys wouldn’t …. GUYON Well let's take it beyond speculation. WINSTON I wish you guys wouldn’t speculate, leave the politics to us, you make sure you report the news, not make it, just report it – be a good idea in this campaign wouldn’t it? GUYON Okay are you gonna go strongly after the Maori vote this election? WINSTON We'll go strongly after the vote right across the country in this election and particularly in the areas where we believe we are strong, but we're not ruling any vote out, there are people who are millionaires who will vote for New Zealand First in this campaign. GUYON You’ve done well though with Maori voters in the past, I think last election you were second in the party vote for Maori voters, why would Maori vote for you this election? WINSTON Because of my track record. Look at the things that I've done with my party and my team over the years. For central North Island tribes is a great settlement that I give Cullen enormous credit for but we worked hard behind the scenes to get a unitary collective settlement rather than have 25 years of legal rows. Ask Ngati Porou who fixed up their Foreshore and Seabed provisions whilst ensuring we got a deal that New Zealanders European and Maori could agree to across the country. Look at the Maori Wardens being funded for the first time, the Maori Women's Welfare League, who gave Hikurangi back, who supported the Ngai Tahu deal where our votes were critical. We've got a long proud record of performance but not on radicalism, on things that are substantial and that matter. In contrast what has the Maori Party done in the last three years that you can name? GUYON Let's look at some of that record I mean 1975 you stood for Northern Maori, 20 years after that your party won all the Maori seats, but now you think that the Maori seats should be abolished why is that? WINSTON Look I've always believed in a single franchise and don’t forget this, the answer lies in the Royal Commission on Electoral Law. They said if you're bringing in a system of false representation, over time it can be proven that only one franchise, one electoral system is needed, but it needs time. I believe that has been demonstrated by the number of Maori in parliament now who are four times the number, five times the number that used to be with just the four Maori seats. GUYON Okay you were the Minister of Maori Affairs, you were the Treasurer, you were the Foreign Minister, sacked twice, stood down once … WINSTON Oh not sacked twice the reality is I wasn’t prepared to compromise my economic principles in 1991, I saw Ruth Richardson with her Rogernomics type regime send this country into recession and I said so and I never stopped saying so, and in time Bolger within a year and a half believed I was right cos he sacked her didn’t he, as Finance Minister in 1993, and then it comes to the 1996/97 and Shipley rolls Bolger behind everybody's back on the basis of stopping a long term savings regime, you remember that very well, I do, and then she thought she would front me on strategic assets which she wanted to sell and I wouldn’t have a bar of it. She didn’t sack me, I wasn’t prepared to compromise and I'm not prepared to compromise now on things which had we have saved would mean New Zealand would be a far more wealthy country. We ended up buying them back, Railways, Air New Zealand and I tell you want we'll end up buying back our power structure as well because it's gone through the roof. If have opposed those things and proudly so and I've been prepared to walk for principle, I event walked out of parliament one day and resigned and stood in a bi-election, and you have the effrontery you people to accuse me of the baubles of office. Look at my record versus yours or anybody else's. GUYON Why are you still taking the ministerial pay when you're not doing the job? WINSTON Because I stood down because of the vile allegation made by Rodney Hide, supported by the cacophony of the media about the Serious Fraud Office, and the allegation was that I was involved. it's not true my party … GUYON So why have you stood down? WINSTON Because that’s the kind of imagery and environment that you’ve painted around it, so I stood down, but I know… GUYON Why haven’t you surrendered your pay if you surrendered your job? WINSTON Excuse me, you know full well what happens in the circumstance, and you're not gonna get away with that nonsense with me. I've put out hundreds of thousands of dollars of my personal money over the years for causes that are worthy and I don’t think a thing of it, but to have the press gallery who's never spent a fraction of my money that I have spent is an outrage. Let me tell you right now, I stood down because I knew the Serious Fraud Officer charge was a jack up, here we are months on and what have they got, nothing, so they sneak around behind the Privileges Committee and give them information which the committee refused in the end to take. GUYON Isn't your problem going to be in terms of whether you're going to be a Minister again no matter who wins… WINSTON Guyon I haven’t got a problem, alright, I don’t mind, look at the things I've done. GUYON When the next government is being formed presumably the Serious Fraud Office investigation will still be ongoing … WINSTON Oh no it won't. GUYON … and you're not gonna have any …. WINSTON Ah no sorry they're not gonna sit out there with a sneaky back stabbing type approach they have taken highly political and motivated by the media and get away with it. No one is powerless in my business and I intend to take them on legally if I have to because what I'm seeing is a total jack up by certain politicians and certain business people where they have synchronised these attacks, four in a row, day in day out, making all sorts of allegations about things that I'm totally innocent to explain and they thought they might triumph. Well let me tell you no one's powerless in my business and I've got the preparation, the guts, the desire, to go on and beat them. GUYON Just before I leave it to Rawdon and the panel – do you want to be a Minister again? WINSTON Look I've never queued up to be anything. When I was in the National Party I never stood for one office even though at one time I rated five times in the Prime Minister's rating inside that caucus, I never stood for anything in that context and you people paint a record which is not supported by one fact whatsoever. I don’t mind that because I know what you guys are into, just selling newspapers and scandal. I'm into long term substantial policy and changing people's lives and expanding their happiness which after all is the only serious business of politics. GUYON Hopefully we can hear more about that happiness a bit later on, back to you Rawdon. RAWDON Thanks Guyon, now it's the turn of myself and the panel, I just want to start off Mr Peters asking, you just said you're not prepared to compromise, now many would respect a stance against compromise but surely politics moves forward as a result of compromise to an extent. WINSTON No it moves dramatically backwards if you make the wrong compromise and I saw compromises made in the early 80s and the early 90s which have set this country back massively. Bringing in policies which don’t work, which are diametrically opposed to an export dependent economy destroys the welfare, the health, the education of a people. That’s what the Reserve Bank Act's about, it is designed for paper shufflers and a kind of economy like the United States has got where 8% of its GDP is exported. We export 38% and you’ve seen fluctuations massively in the dollar destroying the significant parts of the agricultural sector and you stand by with a voodoo economic ideological view that somehow this is good because we've bought it in back in the 80s. it's not good it's a disaster and even people like Weldon from the Stock Exchange are saying it needs to be changed, Burle says it needs to be changed, I've said for years it needs to be changed because it doesn’t fit New Zealand's economic long term outcome as an export dependant nation and thus our social lives, our education, our health, our capacity to give decent wages is all thereby destroyed. RAWDON Let's talk about this sound economic strategy which you're referring to, which party of the two major parties, Labour and National can provide that in your eyes comparatively. WINSTON Because Labour has learnt its lessons it provides a better strategy but I don’t think it's gone nearly far enough to incentivise and I don’t mind using those words, the export creative wealth that New Zealand could produce. We simply are not supporting the people who should be gods in our economy because they bring home money in their millions to the family in New Zealand upon which we sustain our lives. NEVIL GIBSON – National Business Review Winston your view of the economy over the last five or six years would be different from most people's where they’ve seen rising prosperity and so on based on free trade and that sort of thing and you want to change that back with incentives, or how do you sort of see what's gone wrong? WINSTON Change it back, I can tell you of 75 different mechanisms in Australia to help exporters, I can show the same in Scandinavia, the same in Singapore, the same in Ireland. Those countries have, particularly the last lot not Australia, have a tremendous per capita export record, five six seven times ours. What's gone wrong here is that we've had these free marketeers with this neo liberal sort of voodoo economics as George Bush Snr described it which doesn’t work. NEVIL He wasn’t actually talking about that … WINSTON He was actually talking about that sort of thing rather than practical economics. NEVIL Yeah but I can't reconcile that with these countries Ireland in particular got low taxes …. WINSTON Which party advocates low export tax, only one party New Zealand First. NEVIL That’s moving money from one group of people to another and they're not the biggest job providers. WINSTON Well with the greatest of respect it's not moving money from one group to the other. NEVIL It is if you give tax incentives… WINSTON Well let me finish my answer. That’s the kind of nonsense we've heard in this country for 20 years with respect and your paper magnifies it every darn week. It's not working – don’t you get it? NEVIL It does work. WINSTON Average Irishman $62,000 a year man woman and child exports, what's ours? Under 10. NEVIL Well they’ve got a harder recession there than… WINSTON No no no, you’ve got all the explanations in the world, but let me just tell you something here, if you don’t set your base and your foundation for wealth right, as an export dependent nation you're never gonna succeed. You say it's shifting money from one group to the other, look if that group doesn’t go offshore and bring in the export wealth that we need then we just slide to the third world. NEVIL But what sort of exports are you talking about, we've had the biggest dairy and commodity boom which has created huge prosperity for the farming community. WINSTON And meanwhile they’ve lost about 125 to 135 thousand a year because the dollar went up by 37% in 27 months, true or false? Kiwifruit lost 200 million this year because of that, true or false? BEVAN RAPSON – Metro Magazine You’ve been very consistent with your pro export ideas through your career, you’ve been in government a couple of times, somehow that hasn’t seemed to have been given any kind of priority, I mean in terms of the things that you’ve been able to win in coalition agreements, that hasn’t been up the top, so I mean it makes a good message in an election campaign, but when are you ever gonna be able to deliver on it, given the attitude of the main parties? WINSTON Mr Rapson it's also the truth. First thing I did as the Treasurer of this country in 1996 was to change the Policy Targets Agreement on the Reserve Bank Governor then Don Brash. He promptly set out to ignore it, I changed that from zero to 2 to zero to 3, he ignored that as well going back inside the old band, well the whole time whilst for 22 months he was in the zero to 2 band, isn't it classic. NEVIL Winston what's happened though ……more inflation into the economy…. WINSTON Excuse me Mr Rapson asked me a question can I answer it, but I'm not talking about this campaign. Now the second thing I did it's now 2005, first thing we did was negotiate with Labour in a confidence and supply agreement an export year for New Zealand 2007. So here we launched this most marvellous objective called Export Year 2007 which is our work and the dollar's rising 37% over 24 months, how can you win when you’ve got the kind of ideology that is subscribed to by the kind of thinking I've seen on this panel today? BEVAN Well it's the kind of ideology that’s subscribed to by both Labour and National in terms of not being able – you know Export Year as you say it just becomes pointless when the macro economic things are moving the way they are and it wasn’t gonna get buy in from either of the main parties to doing anything about that are you. WINSTON Well no, if I had enough support then I would certainly get a change in the Reserve Bank Act. Look we've even got because of New Zealand First a full review of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Reserve Bank Act. Now I know out there to Jo Bloggs that sounds like pretty turgid and boring, but every day 24 hours a day there lives are affected by interest rates, by mortgage rates, these are the highest in the western world and they're outrageous. I'm trying to do something about it, but it's difficult unless you get enough support. BEVAN I do want to come back to one thing from your conversation with Guyon, you made the point that you can't trust John Key because of what's come through about Transrail, that’s right. WINSTON His criteria. NEVIL So how could you trust him to form a coalition with him? WINSTON I've just given the irony of his criteria, in my case I never enriched myself, I'm telling you I didn’t know about it, and more importantly, I'm just on the same footing as Nick Smith, he didn’t know it was in his trust account and he's not in front of the Privileges Committee, I didn’t lay a complaint against him because I know it's a nonsense. That’s the hypocrisy of what's going on now, same boat as me, I'm being judged by a rule made now to be plied back three years later, but my real point is Mr Key was out there trading and asking questions of the type you gentlemen know that in the British Parliament got those members fired, money for questions is what the allegation was, putting up money for some …. RAWDON We're just going on thin ice a little bit here… WINSTON Consistency is rather important here, how about we have the same criteria Mr Key as you have sought to apply to me? RAWDON Okay I'm going to wrap it up there, thank you very much indeed for coming Winston Peters, just want to make sure we keep everything above board legally. You’ve had your last word. WINSTON No no I was promised when I came in here today I get the last word but I won't. Changing the rules again? RAWDON No no you go ahead, I'll change the rules to accommodate you. WINSTON No the last word after they’ve gone is what we were promised. RAWDON After they’ve gone okay. WINSTON Duncan promised me exactly that. RAWDON Duncan? Okay. Assuming the panellists aren’t here can you hang around we're going to go to a break and we'll negotiate. |
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