Introduction
Good afternoon and thank you for being here today.
First, thank you to Stuart Nash New Zealand First candidate for Napier, and Taine Randell New Zealand First candidate for Tukituki, for hosting us here in the Hawkes Bay today.
Stu and Taine are standing in Hawkes Bay electorates representing New Zealand First to bring hope for a different direction for the Bay.
Afterall, what have the current MPs don’t for this area over the past three years?
This election is going to be one like no other. There is a sea change happening around the world and it is happening here in New Zealand too – people are sick of the pendulum swing between Pepsi and Coke – they are voting for people who are not afraid to tell it like it is, for people who are offering hope for a change from the old party status quo of the past forty years that has failed to focus on ordinary hardworking kiwi battlers.
Stu and Taine have a real chance here in the Bay to turn things around, but we need you to give us the tools to get the job done.
New Zealand First in Hawkes Bay
The government is investing in a racecourse transformation in the Hawkes Bay to help free up prime land for homes in Hastings. The project represents just over $77 million in the region, with a $20 million loan from the RIF and $57 million in co-funding from Hawkes Bay Racing, and NZ Thoroughbred Racing.
This will enable the development of homes where they are needed, create jobs for locals, and retain a valuable racing industry asset which has contributed to the local economy for over 150 years.
We are going to relocate the racecourse and the new venue will be a state of the art hub for racing, equestrian sport, and community events.
Its modern racetrack will accommodate double the race meetings held previously.
The project will create more than 400 fulltime construction jobs during its construction phase, and once completed, the racecourse will sustain around 270 jobs across the local racing industry.
It’s not just about bricks and mortar, it’s a boost to the Hawkes Bay economy.
An Election Like No Other
The election is a little over four months away, and we will start to see the other parties reverting to type, as they always do at election time, with no direction, plan, or policy that will give New Zealand the real change that we need to lead us out of the political swamp we find ourselves in.
There is a difference in this election that we haven’t seen in a long time. Kiwis are looking at what parties are offering as their values and principles in these uncertain times.
There will be the inevitable policies and promises made, and they are important, but kiwis are looking to a party that stands with them in their core values – that will change the current pathway we are on as a country.
Labour
In the last few weeks, the Labour Party did something they haven’t done for the last the three years – they decided to announce some grand election policies, if you can call them policies, and the only thing that was ‘grand’ about them was how shallow they were.
They have announced three policies of “free stuff”.
They want to give “free” public transport above $20, “free” doctor visits, and now “free” pre-natal scans.
It took a bonfire of useless old policy, then two and half years, a lame excuse to wait for the budget, and all Labour could come up with was more “free” stuff.
Here’s a newsflash for the Labour Party: “Free” actually means taxpayers pay for it – because whether Labour understands it or not, money doesn’t grow on trees. And guess what. People who get the free stuff are the same taxpayers and workers who are going to pay for it.
The fact is Labour Party no longer represents the workers.
The spiritual home of the Labour Party is the West Coast – the site of the miners’ strike in 1908 which gave rise to the party that once represented workers of New Zealand – the gold miners, the coal miners, the labourers, the foresters, the fishers, the hard working blue-collar battlers of our country.
They represented those workers in the very industries which have now become the anathema of who and what the Labour Party represents today. Today Labour hates those industries.
The problem for Labour is they are now just the party of the ‘Professional Managerial Class’.
Look at their front bench, or their party list, and they can’t put half a Cabinet together.
What’s worse, is those Labour MPs who somehow have made their way to the front bench have no real-life experience, no business experience, and no work experience.
Here is something about the Labour Party that voters will never forget.
The last three years of the Labour government oversaw a deteriorating economy, deteriorating education and health systems, worsening law and order on our streets, ramraids everywhere, massively increased debt, record immigration, crumbling infrastructure, a cost-of-living crisis, and a hugely divided society.
It shows just how far the Labour Party has descended away from its origins, and just how clearly they have abandoned the very people and industries who formed their party over a hundred and ten years ago.
Their focus now is on issues such as race and drumming up social justice rhetoric that only serves to divide our country and ignores the vast majority of New Zealanders who just want a functioning health system, a top-class education for their kids, first world wages, and an affordable home.
They are now a party of lanyard wearing socialists who walk around in comfortable shoes.
For all those old school, egalitarian, common sense Labour voters out there who feel abandoned, you’ve only got one place to come, there is only one real party for the hard working, blue collar conservative kiwis, and you’re looking at it.
Why? Because New Zealand First has a working-class background.
Greens
As for the Greens – they are nuttier than squirrel scat and have the political IQ of mung beans.
They have proven themselves to be the most hypocritical, shallow, vacuous bunch of Marxists.
They have gone through more MPs than they have protests.
The biggest problem that the Greens have is their name. They are not a Green Party anymore. They are no comparison to Rod Donald or Jannette Fitzsimons – who, despite all of their flaws, stood up, had a purpose, and had principles.
They have mostly forgotten the environment, they are more worried about pronouns and protests.
The Greens neither care nor understand the reality of our economic and social future as a country.
They decided to foolishly wade into economics last week.
They sent out a press release and confused $500 million, with $500 billion. Even the newest intern would know how ridiculous that number is, yet they put it out without hesitation.
Then they decided in their wisdom to put out their own budget. Then had to recall it and issue a correction because their calculations were out by $400 million. Then, not long after that, they had to recall that as well, and issue another correction because they found out they were actually out by $800 million.
But here is arrogance for you. They then virtue signalled “Well, at least we are transparent about our mistakes”.
They are economic morons. The Greens trying to come up with economic policy is like a bunch of kids trying to start a fire with gasoline and a blowtorch because they saw it work in a movie once.
The truth is they care more about wokeness, unicorns, and a geopolitical war happening on the other side of the world that they know nothing about. Just look at how few questions they ask about climate or the environment.
The Green Party of just twenty years ago has morphed from an environmentally focussed party, with at least some values to back that up, to a Red-Party, valueless, rudderless, who think that anyone that disagrees with them is evil and should be shouted down.
The Māori Party
The Māori Party has to be a massive disappointed for Maoridom.
They are a bunch of radical racists who wear cowboy hats and half the South Island’s pounamu around their necks.
They think representing Māori means doing a haka in parliament and turning up twice a month.
What have they done for Māori in the past three years? Zero.
They are currently polling at 1.5%. They claim that 17% of New Zealand population are Māori, so that means that not even ten percent of Māori even vote for them. Who do they represent exactly?
But get this, now they are actively telling Māori on the Māori roll to not party vote for them, but to party vote Labour or Greens.
They keep up this pretence of the Māori roll, Māori seats, and Māori vote as being essential to the representation of Māori as some sort of principled position, yet they are wanting now to use Māori voters as a pawn to flippantly undermine democracy.
It just highlights what a disgrace they are to democracy and to Maoridom.
They will be lucky to win one seat this election if any at all. But we still see all these moronic mainstream media polls still counting the Māori Party as having six seats.
They don’t even have six seats now. A third of their MPs have had enough and left the party already.
The point of this, is that no matter how much we point out how utterly disastrous the Greens and Māori Party would be for our country, the Labour Party would happily work with the mung beans and cowboy hats to get into power.
Think about that for a second.
And just quietly, for the umpteenth time. New Zealand First will not be going with Labour. So the media can stop asking me “gripper” questions.
You know what a “gripper” is don’t you? It’s a wanker that won’t let go.
New Zealand First
Reflecting back, at this time before the last election, no one gave our party any chance of getting back to parliament. Today, we are here, and the question for the media is no longer – if we will get back, its ‘how many seats will we get?’
Well, we’ve got news for everyone, and this time it’s all good. We will turn these current media polls into confetti.
We have been working hard over the past two and a half years to build our machine for this campaign.
We are on a pathway to a major shift in the political landscape.
We have the team. We have the candidates. We have the party, and we have the growing support of kiwis.
This year have been packing the halls around the country with ordinary hardworking kiwi battlers who see the only party talking common sense.
They all see what makes New Zealand First different from every other party.
We are the only socially conservative party.
We are the only nationalist party. That’s nationalist with a capital “N”.
We are the only patriotic party – a word that is now so often criticised. We stand proud to be patriots of New Zealand.
What’s most important, is that we are the only party that can counter-balance the present spectrum of extremists in parliament.
New Zealand First is not just running in another election this year, we intend to turn this election on its head.
Bold policies
New Zealand First started travelling around the country, packing the halls, and talking to the people earlier this year, because we knew this was going to be a long campaign.
We have already announced a number of election policies that we believe are needed to affect real change in the direction of the country and for the prosperity of kiwis.
We have announced policies to break up the power companies, split the supermarket duopoly, re-establish a competitive state owned bank, return mining royalties created in the regions back to the regions, we announced our KiwiSaver policy of making it compulsory with automatic sign-up at birth $1000 kickstart.
By the way this was a full month before National decided to steal our KiwiSaver policy and claim it as their own.
We have bold policies. But bold policies are needed to create a fair playing field in the power, food, and banking systems so we can make real change to kiwis lives, drive down the cost of living, give kiwis a fair go, and take back control of our country.
Paris Accord
A few weeks ago the Prime Minister said that National will be doing its best to honour the Paris obligations. If that’s true, up to $22 billion of our hard-earned taxpayers’ money is going offshore.
It’s just common sense that instead of draining our money offshore, into foreign economies, we invest it looking after our own environment.
And New Zealand First is the only party that believes that.
We need to look at the illogical state of what the Paris Accord actually means. 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?
Here is what a lot of people don’t know. China built more than 50 large coal powered power plants just last year – that’s one a week. And what did the Labour Party do? Ban coal. Close down Marsden Point. What are the Greens doing? Screaming blue-murder that the world is going to end because New Zealand isn’t cutting our emissions enough. These MPs are taking us for suckers.
Just two weeks ago, the former longest serving Labour Party PM in the UK, Tony Blair, made a similar statement to New Zealand First’s about what the world needs to do on the Paris Accord. The world is catching on and we are going to get left behind in crippling debt and a swamp of regulations on our productive sector if we remain signed up to the Paris Agreement.
We need to stop this nonsense.
New Zealand First is saying we need to get out of the Paris Accord altogether – and we will campaign on this issue in this election.
India Free Trade Agreement
New Zealand First is against the Indian Free Trade Agreement, for good reason. It is not the ‘great deal’ that has been portrayed by political parties and the media.
Here are four of the reasons why we are against this deal and the disastrous impact it will have on our country.
1. The FTA that you have been told about, has unprecedented immigration settings including uncapped student numbers with working rights and 5000 visa holders entering New Zealand able to bring in families with them – which increases that number to 20,000+ at any one time. This is in addition to other uncapped immigration work visa pathways within the agreement.
The Indian Government has described the FTA as providing mobility opportunities for Indian professionals, students and has noted that the temporary employment opportunities offered to Indian citizens are unprecedented. They have said our offer to India on temporary employment visas is more generous than we’ve made to any other FTA partner. We are simply asking: Why have we been more generous on migration with India than in any other FTA? Why has migration been made one of centrepieces of what is meant to be a free trade deal, not a free migration deal?
2. The UN co-governance framework UNDRIP, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People, is in the agreement. This is the provision that created He Puapua and co-governance being embedded in our country. And special rights based on race.
3. The Paris Agreement is in the FTA – with possibly up to $22 billion being sent overseas.
4. New Zealand must promote $33 billion of investment into India over just the next 15 years, otherwise India may claw back the agreement. Billions of our dollars into a foreign country when we are desperate for investment here in New Zealand.
National, Act, and Labour have agreed to this Indian FTA for short term headline gains with basic and substantial long-term flaws and losses.
They are even now just realising New Zealand First was right about the immigration numbers and they are now trying to change the default immigration rules – but why just for India? Why not now put immigration restrictions in across all FTA partners and immigration.
Only New Zealand First is fighting against this FTA.
UNDRIP Clause
Who put the Paris Accord in the FTA? Because India certainly didn’t ask for it.
Who demanded the clause stating the recognition of UNDRIP was put in the FTA? India wouldn’t have because they don’t even recognise the concept of “indigenous people” in their country.
This is the same UNDRIP that started the He Puapua report, remember that? And the He Puapua report was the start of the co-governance cancer that has since pervaded our country.
That clause is directly contrary to the coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First, which specifically disowns any UNDRIP adherence or recognition. So why is it in the FTA with India? And more importantly, why have the two other government parties, National and Act, signed up to it?
When the Act Party leader was asked how he could support such a provision, he said he did not know about it, and further when he raised it with the Minister for Trade, was assured that it did not exist.
And yet, Gary Judd KC, who has written work for the Act Party, has called this clause a “Constitutional Trojan Horse – advancing change through political stealth.”
So, there you have it, you have the UNDRIP provision in the FTA, which India did not ask for, and two of the three political party leaders claiming no knowledge of it.
So to recap, you have a government that is signed up to not support UNDRIP, and yet one party goes to India and writes support for UNDRIP into a trade deal, and then returns to New Zealand and shrugs off all legitimate inquiry saying “there is nothing to see here”.
The Indian Free Trade Deal is a bad deal for our country.
The Unbalanced FTA
The Indian FTA lacks balance, or any sense of equal proportion of sharing benefit between two nations.
Why do we say that? Here are some examples.
We remove tariffs on Indian goods on day one. India keeps exclusions, phase outs, quotas, and price thresholds into the distant future.
So we give India a clean concession, and we get back a mixed package.
There is no progress for our dairy products at all.
Apples, kiwifruit, honey, albumins are quota limited – wine remains subject to high residual tariffs. What does that mean, if not huge commercial constraints against success.
Apples, kiwifruit and honey access is linked to “economic cooperation action plans”. What does that mean? It means market access can become dependent on ‘government to government’ delivery, not business or export performance.
SPS and sustainable development are not subject to normal disputes settlement.
It means, New Zealand exporters have no strong remedies if they come up against regulatory barriers.
Are you now seeing why New Zealand First has been against this deal since we were belatedly given the fine details?
Ladies and gentlemen, we stand for export led domestic economic recovery. How will we do that whilst we are providing $33 billion to India over the next 15 years.
What is even more crazy, is that under this deal New Zealand can export apples to India for two months in a year – the two months that this country doesn’t even produce apples. So which horticulture expert thought this was a great idea?
But here is their best expectation, in cold hard facts – this deal of which the Prime Minister has made so much, alongside obsequious business leaders, is expected to lift our GDP by the staggering amount of 0.1%, or a tenth of one percent – by 2050.
Covert Immigration Changes
We now know that officials aware of work on changing immigration settings have warned that bringing in stricter requirements specifically targeting India and not other FTA partners could adversely affect the bilateral relationship with India.
This is evidence that New Zealand First was right about this FTA being an open door for a flood of immigrants.
The question is why are they planning on making these changes that just affect Indian migrants as part of the FTA, and does India know that is happening after they signed the deal?
If National wants to create tighter restrictions on Indian FTA immigrants, then they should be applied to all other of our FTA partners as well.
There are serious questions that need to be answered.
Conclusion
Ladies and Gentlemen, kiwis are amazingly resilient and, though we are affected by the past, we are more concerned with the future and the possibility it holds.
New Zealand was once the greatest country on earth and it can be again – that’s worth fighting for.
Times are tough. But we are fighting for you. And we will never give up.
New Zealand First has been on a mission.
To fight for the ordinary hardworking kiwis who just want a country they 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.
We have won many battles, but we are yet to win the war.
But, if you give us the tools, we will finish the job.
It hasn’t been easy, but the things in life worth doing are never easy.
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.
To protect and to save this great country New Zealand.
