“Ending the Waitangi Make-Work Industry”
Introduction
It’s great to be back in Tauranga, a city I came to in a snap
election in 1984 and stayed for a quarter of a century.
That quarter century was a time of enormous progress from a
sleepy maritime hideaway to the fastest growing city in New
Zealand.
Back then there were metal roads over the Kaimai, and metal
roads north of Katikati and no bridge across the harbour.
Over 25 years that dramatically changed to two toll free
bridges, new roads to fill half the alphabet, and Tauranga had a
real voice in parliament.
So it’s great to be back.
I don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that things are
not as they used to be. And the bustling metropolis is no more.
It’s 42 days till the next election, and only 30 days until early
voting.
Those of you who have followed the campaign so far have
noticed the obsession of the other parties with either spending
or taxation.
None of them are addressing the real issue.
How to double the size of our economy by 2050 and ensure our
children and grandchildren have a great future ahead.
New Zealand First does have a strategy to do just that, with the
only credible policy to build a future fund to pay for it.
Today I can announce that we are helping Sun Air maintain its
services to the Bay of Plenty, and we are going to build a new
wharf at Matakana Island.
All part of our Regional Infrastructure Plan which is exclusively
New Zealand First policy because we back the provinces.
And part of that plan also is the reduction of taxation of small
and medium businesses. If your businesses turnover is $30
28% down to 20%.
It will enable you to do more, employ more, sell more, market
more and trade more.
New Zealand First is a nationalist party, all the rest are
globalists. So in future we are going to do our utmost to add
value to our products before we sell them overseas and
increase the wealth and employment of New Zealanders.
We are going to deal to the cost of living crisis by breaking up
the power gentailers so power prices come down and remove
the monopoly privileges that supermarkets are using against
both the suppliers and customers.
And we are not going to let the Aussie banks go on making
more money in the small market of New Zealand than they are
in real terms in the bigger market of Australia.
In short we are going to get our own Bank of New Zealand back
which was providing real competition to Australia before Labour
then National sold it off to the Aussies.
Labour (1987) sold the first third, and then National (1992) sold
the second thirds of the BNZ, which at the time of sale had 6
out of 10 New Zealand banking customers.
The neoliberal apologists of both Labour and National have got
a disgusting record of looking after New Zealand assets.
And the sooner you ensure they are no longer in control of the
economy the better.
Make New Zealand Healthy
No one can deny that we have a crisis in our health system.
Daily news reports tell us about states of emergency being
declared in our hospital, with our amazing nurses and doctors
being stressed to the max and having to go to work even when
they are sick.
We need more nurses right now because we have too many
sick people.
Our problems extend way beyond acute care, and we should
be very concerned.
● The reality is shocking. In a nation of just over 5 million
people we have one million suffering from one or more
chronic illnesses.
● Three hundred and fifty thousand have diabetes and we
are told that there’s another one hundred thousand waiting
to be diagnosed.
● One hundred and ninety thousand are living with heart
disease and ten thousand are dying from this annually.
● Eighty-three thousand have dementia and this number is
expected to rise to one hundred and seventy thousand by
2050. 500 more people develop dementia every week.
● Sixty-nine thousand Kiwis are taking medication for ADHD
up from forty-nine thousand just two years ago.
And here’s an absolute shocker. In supposedly ‘clean green
100% Pure New Zealand’ we have the second highest
incidence of cancer in the world.
Currently we are spending thirty-three billion dollars on what is
referred to as healthcare.
Ladies and gentlemen that’s thirty-three thousand million
dollars and if by spending that huge sum of money our goal is
to have a healthier nation, we are not even close.
That is why New Zealand First has a plan to Make New
Zealand Healthy, a bold plan to help all Kiwis live longer
healthier lives and reduce the financial pressure on the
economy.
● Put prevention back at the heart of healthcare.
Prevention is the ultimate cure. It’s a lot easier to prevent
than treat. If your house doesn’t catch on fire, you don’t
need the fire engine.
Prevention is already part of the health systems job, but
too often it remains a population slogan rather than
something that changes what happens for the individual
patient.
New Zealand’s own research shows that 59% of health
spending is spent on treating chronic diseases like diabetes
be prevented – only 1.75% is spent on preventing them in the
first place.
That’s not a health system. That is an ambulance at the bottom
of the cliff, and New Zealanders are paying for the ambulance.
We want prevention reflected in planning, funding, and the
consultation room. That means helping people reduce
avoidable risk before chronic disease becomes an expensive,
disabling illness.
It is not about dictating lifestyle choices; it is about making
reasonable preventive care a normal part of healthcare.
Future policy must contain the following features.
● Have a strong focus on metabolic health the key driver of
chronic illness
● Ensure that informed consent is a core part of quality
healthcare
● Recognise that consumer choice is what leads to healthier
decisions
● Promote nutrition from primary school to medical school
● Require a full independent review of our dietary guidelines
● Reduce the administrative burden and restore
professional autonomy in General Practice
Ladies and gentlemen, everybody is talking about the cost of
living or taxation but this is the most important policy in this
election – for nothing is as important as health. Health crosses
all boundaries, it is not a left versus right issue.
It is as important to our Maori and Pacific people as it is to our
Asian and Caucasian people and regardless of what church
they worship at. As Confucius is reported to have said “a
healthy man has a thousand dreams, a sick man just one”.
New Zealand First is talking about sound health policy as the
way forward to end the epidemic of chronic illness that is
affecting the lives and livelihoods of 20 percent of our
population.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you want to be talking about health
after November the 7th please vote for it on November 7th.
Citizenship
New Zealands immigration system must serve New Zealand
and New Zealanders.
For too long, governments have relied on immigration to drive
headline economic growth and cheap labour.
The result has been greater pressure on housing, infrastructure
and public services, increased competition for entry-level jobs,
and declining public confidence that immigration is being
managed in the national interest.
Population growth must not outpace our ability to build the
country.
New Zealand First will substantially reduce non-essential
immigration and restore the principle that immigration is a
privilege, not a right.
New Zealand is more than an economy. It is a nation with its
own history, institutions and way of life.
New Zealand needs to start viewing our citizenship as most
other countries around the world do – as a privilege that comes
with special and unique rights and identity.
This does not take away from the ability for migrants looking to
move here, contribute, and help build our country from showing
total commitment and patriotism for New Zealand by becoming
a citizen.
We in New Zealand First believe our citizenship is a privilege,
not a right, and not just part of some bureaucratic machinery.
Waitangi Tribunal/Crown Maori Relations/Ministry of Maori
Development
In 1975 the second Labour Government introduced the Treaty
of Waitangi Tribunal to hear claims from 1975 and thereafter.
The irony is that this happened at the same time as there was a
huge Maori land march led by Whina Cooper, against the then
Labour Government that was taking huge tracks of coastal land
off Maori for “public utility purposes”.
And at the same time in 1975, the then Labour government
changed the definition of Maori for Maori electoral role
purposes.
From being half Maori or more, to being able to recite a Maori
ancestor.
That last change has led to a dramatic miscalculation of how
many Maori there are in this country. With the greatest dilution
of entitlement to call yourself a Maori being as high as being 1
part in 512.
That is why today you hear so called experts and sociologists
and Maori radicals claiming that Maori are 18 or 20 percent of
the population.
And if we are doing a human analysis of needs by race, how on
earth can we expect any accuracy? When the very basis of
calculation is a total misnomer.
of the population or even 12 percent of the population. So why
this pretense goes on is hard to understand unless the primary
purpose of the pretense is the deceit.
Those of you who recall the American Civil Rights Movement
will remember what the objective of that movement was.
It was to enable black people to bust down the barriers to
access the best white institutions. For only that access would
give them equality.
In time they ended up with a President who came from their
community. His name was Obama.
Contrast that with New Zealand, where a number of Maori
radicals and their white fellow travellers have concocted an
anthem of hate. And demand separate institutions, separate
government, and a racial oversight of all decision making.
These radicals make these demands in the name of the mass
majority of Maori. Although the mass majority of Maori haven’t
asked for it.
And the proceeds of their demands thus far have seen them in
privileged highly paid jobs with a mass cost consumed by their
bureaucracy and nothing trickles down to their people.
That’s the reason why the Waipareira trust has picked up
hundreds of millions. Whilst their peoples housing, education,
and health needs gather dust on the table of Maori aspirations.
That way the Maori elite get rich and the Maori grievance
industry grows larger.
New Zealand First understands implicitly the situation.
And we are utterly against it.
We know that Maori New Zealanders want safe affordable
housing, quick affordable access to health services, easy
access to the conveyor belt of education for their young, and
first world wages.
Come to think of it, that is what everyone in New Zealand
wants.
Once you strip out the self appointed elitists.
As a consequence if you look at the amount of money spent on
Maori radio, Maori TV, and Maori health, every Maori could be
in their own house now and be much healthier.
At the pinnacle of this unjustified demand on the taxpayer is the
Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal.
Which has gone from a justifiable establishment to settle past
grievances to so often today a make work scheme for
imaginary grievances and now sees the foreshore and seabed
of this country as the subject of hundreds of claims ironically
with Maori against Maori for the same maritime territory.
And of late claims before the tribunal to contest the right of a
mandated parliament to pass laws.
That is a direct semi judicial threat against the very essence of
our democracy.
It all began in 1986, when a judicial finding loosely likened the
Treaty of Waitangi to a partnership.
That judicial opinion is utterly false then and of the thousands of
employers in New Zealand at the time, one said so, and he’s
talking to you now.
I said when I heard that judgement “if no one in the British
Empire, including the home countries, was in partnership with
Queen Victoria on the 5th of February 1840, how come Maori
were the day after.
No judicial authority or academic expert has been able to
answer that question ever since.
It is pretentious nonsense to argue otherwise.
And quickly shading from that misconception is the total deceit
being marketed by “Treaty of Waitangi revisionists” that the
Maori never ceded sovereignty.
This last claim is utterly false and it’s made so that general
claims against the population justifies remedial payments to the
claimants.
The Treaty of Waitangi tribunal has become a make work
organisation. Now hearing any and all claims that in a former
time would’ve been dismissed on application as being
inappropriate.
That’s why New Zealand First today is announcing its plan to
end the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry and get back to
all being equal citizens with equal rights in our country.
New Zealand First will table legislation within the first 100 days
after the next election to immediately abolish the Waitangi
Tribunal, and replace it with the Treaty of Waitangi Completion
Commission.
Which will have the purpose of finalising all claims pre 2008,
after which time its work will be finished.
The Treaty of Waitangi industry jobs will be replaced by real
work. The days of the tribunal acting as an authority above
parliament will be over.
We will put an end to activists using the Tribunal and taxpayers
money as a platform to interfere with the direction and
legislation of parliament.
Maori land reform and administrative improvements in the
Maori Land Court will be a major priority for New Zealand First.
Under New Zealand First, the Ministry of Maori Development
will be directed to drive practical outcomes that accelerate
development. The Ministry will ensure that Maori owned land,
marine farming, forestry and other resources continue to
enhance regional productivity, employment and community
resilience.
We will ensure that all relevant policy issues pertaining to the
implementation of existing Treaty of Waitangi settlements are
addressed by a strengthened Ministry of Maori Development.
Contemporary claims, modern policy differences, and post-
settlement leadership will be the responsibility of the Ministry of
Maori Development.
Crown Maori relations work will return to being the
responsibility of the Ministry of Maori Development.
As written into the law in 1991 when that department was
established.
Conclusion
Ladies and Gentlemen, governments matter.
If you look at Asia, the most successful economy used to be
Burma. The government changed; and it’s now called Myanmar
and it’s a cot case.
If you look at South America Venezuela used to be the leading
economy; the government changed and now it’s a cot case.
And that is New Zealands future if you are not ultra careful in
this election.
If you believe that first a racist and second a communist
collection of MPs can be welded onto Labour and make a
successful government then you’re dreaming.
Chris Hipkins must wake up in beads of sweat at the prospect
of what partners he’s got to work with when the election is over.
The Greens have sworn marxists in their parliamentary ranks.
and the Opportunity party, which is the media’s choice, has a
tax policy that would make Stalin blush and would bankrupt
nearly every retired couple.
This is an impossible combination going forward.
Working in the current coalition has not been easy largely
because too many have never been in government before.
Having said that, the comparison of working with the other side
is unimaginable.
Ladies and Gentlemen, New Zealand First stands for one
country, called New Zealand, one flag, one standard of
citizenship, one law for all, and one democracy where
everybody is equal.
We have a vision of hope and growth for our country and to do
that we need you.
If you give us the tools we will get the job done.
Party Vote New Zealand First.
And let’s put New Zealanders first.
