News

Critic: So the first thing I want to talk about is the fact that the youth vote is a sector that is untapped almost, because we have such little voter turnout. And I was wondering what sort of policies you would advocate for in order to increase the youth turnout and what you’d bring to the table for the youth of New Zealand.
Winston Peters: Well there’s no doubt we’ve got a lot of policies that are pitched up towards, uh, the interests of young people; their place in this country, their future, their education, their employment in the kind of country they want to live in. This is all based on where young people would want to be, wherever they want to live in NZ. So, the question that I think is not so much that, I think it is – why don’t students vote?

Exactly, what’s the biggest barrier?
And the answer to that question is they’re a bit hedonistic, they think that there’s nothing that’s engaged in sort of what you might call ‘older adults’ as society is of interest to them, that the transient things that they’re currently engaged in is a part of their current learning process, and there’s nothing new in that. That’s been the way for the last sixty years. Young people are not voting or will not take an interest, so that many parties have found you start university branches, and it’s been an extraordinary amount of work to try and keep them alive, and then you find that the, uh, how should I put it, the pass-through rate is just so high. I don’t think that NZ First is able, more than any other political party, to answer that question, and I suppose we’re working on the new technologies that are available, to get to them and see if we can get turnout that way.

Yeah, I mean, I know you’ve got a young NZ First faction, um, I don’t think they have a presence in Dunedin anymore.
But it will have.

Really? Is Curwen getting into that?
Well we’re going to all the universities and getting them underway.

Well that’s good. Yeah, I’m friends with Beau Murrah, who used to – is there any truth to the rumour that you once, uh, hosted a crate party in his flat?
How long ago was that?

I dunno, it’s just what I’ve heard.
Quite possibly.

Quite possibly?
Well it could be possible, depends what he says by crate party.

Fantastic. Um, so, in terms of issues that students are focused on, it very much has to do with money. Money now, money when we’ve finished our degrees, how much money we’re putting into our degrees, so what sort of policies are you for? Are you for a universal student allowance?
The first party ever to talk and promote a universal student allowance was NZ First.

Oh really?
Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but we were the first party to advocate that in this country.

When was that?
1996.

1996. Good stuff. I’m going look that up. What about fees? Are you-?
Well before we even formed New Zealand First, I was saying that the biggest one-off education equation in the education budget in this country was going to be defaulting student debt. That was what I said way back in the early nineties, and I’m sad to be proven true. Our policy on student debt is to have a range of parts of this country where a student can get serious discounting of their student debt, a range of occupations in this country where they can get serious discounting of student debt, or third, if they can arrange for earlier repayment, at a much faster rate than that they have been prescribed to do, then we will halve that debt.

Okay, so kind of re-introducing-
On the basis of that we think that so much debt is appearing as an asset on the budget, but it’s a bad debt and will never be paid. So if you can get that paid earlier, you will actually save money for the state, not lose it.

Cool. So I’m assuming you don’t support National’s tactic of Student Loan Amendment Bill (No. 3), which specifies that overseas repayments, if they’re not made can mean students can be criminalised?
That’s going to bring in, at maximum, fourteen million dollars. Right? You’ve got a multi, multi-billion dollar bad debt, and they’re going to get fourteen million out of it. Uh, it’s only a sort of quantity surveyor approach to politics who’d come up with that solution. I sat on the select committee and opposed the bill all the way, because it is ridiculous. You can do far better with high incentivisation and encouragement than that. But more importantly, the number one reason why there’s bad debt in this country is that we’re running a failed economy in terms of getting students jobs. So they can pay the debt off.

That is absolutely one of the biggest issues in that you have this mentality where you go to university and you know, you study, study, study, and you have all this debt, and then you’re left out to dry. What do you do after you graduate? So-
Well for many of them, they become an investment that you’ve made for twenty years, in another economy. They go off-shore.

Yeah, the ‘Aussie exodus’.
Yeah, Australia and wider. UK, elsewhere.

So what sort of policies would you propose to ease the transition from student to ‘worker’, I suppose.
Well first of all, unlike many other parties, we believe NZ is capable of full employment. We know it’s capable of full employment because the large parts of our past history, we were the only country in the world with full employment. And we could do it again. But what we’ve done, in New Zealand, and it appears in our manifesto, and it also appears in our founding principles, we have used immigration as an excuse for failing to have trained, educated, skilled, and employed our own people first. Now, what you’ve got, you’ve got students coming in now, being offered by this government, on the pretext of export education, that they can work for NZ as well. Where’s the export quality of that education straight away? Our economy is paying for their education, not some other economy. So if they can work here, some other economy is no longer paying for them to be educated here, ours is. Who’s losing out here? Well domestic students are going to be losing out. That’s the blunt consequence of it all. Now a lot of people have got pretty soft heard and the head to match. They will argue that I’m wrong here. But if I was, and I know because I was the Minister that went to China in 1997 to sign off student visas for Chinese. Chinese demanded of me that I promise they all be sent home after education. We sold it as export education. Good for New Zealand. But export education only works if some other economy pays for the education in our country. But it’s not going to do that, so we’re going to stop that. And the second thing we’re going to ensure, by the economic changes we’ve got, that we generate work in New Zealand. Our manufacturing base is falling apart. We’re down from 33 percent of the economy to now 30 percent of the economy. I don’t know how long you’ve lived in this city, but business after business has stopped here. Where’s the manufacturing base here now? You’ve got one freezing works left here.

What about, moving away from traditional manufacturing and into new technologies. I know the Greens have talked about 3D printing as a kind of industry we could invest in? What’s your thoughts on-
Do you know anything about business? Well, I do.

Oh. I see how it is.
I’ll tell you how it goes-

Ah-ha. You’re pulling that card on me.
No, I’m not pulling the card that way! I’m not saying on a personal level, but I’ll tell you how business goes. You’ve got a great idea, you’ve got a great plan, and the first thing you’ve got is debt. To make it work. And the only way you can ever pay the debt off is if you fire this business up and it goes. Now. Government can seriously help you do that, but with respect to the Greens, you can have these bright ideas like a light bulb going off in your head, but where is the business discipline around it? For, in the end, business is about profits. And bright ideas, if they do work, will make you some serious profits, as you know. Especially in some of the new technologies and what have you. But to dream it up as a solution to employment, when I know that if we were to change our dollar and control its level to be dramatically what it should be, that is, it’s probably 28 percent overvalued now. A 28 percent revaluing of our dollar will see significant employment in this country overnight. Because the exporter will have the money. And you’re on an export-dependent province. How’s the exporter doing? Well, he’s up against it, and the dollar’s heading towards 90 cents US. He’s more up against it every day. And more will collapse as a consequence. It’s not easy, but I have watched the Greens policy, but look I am a great admirer of the Scandinavians, and I spent some time there, and in fact I started an embassy there as the Minister for Foreign Affairs cause I knew they could teach us a whole lot. Their idea of the new economy, is exciting in the context of it’s sustainable, it’s innovative, and you know they’ve got some- Nokia started there, they’ve got great industries and great manufacturing. All of their manufacturing products are world first stuff. You can rely on them. Energy efficient. However, the Greens over there are practical. They’re not away with the fairies.

The thing about Scandinavia, though, is that they have extremely high taxes. And one of your fifteen principles, correct me if I’m wrong, is that you ultimately want to lower taxes for New Zealanders. So how do you reconcile that?
Uh, well I reconcile it by first of all, one in five dollars in NZ is in the Black Market. New Zealand tax evasion in this country is huge.

So you think that’s a-
That’s why I ran the wine box enquiry way back years ago. These people were ripping the country off not paying any tax at all. So we dealt to that, and I could see, if we deal to that and everybody was paying their fair taxes, we could afford to reduce taxes. But we have the most amazing debate when it comes to taxation. I’ll give you an example. They’re having a big debate in Togo about taxation. Know why?

Why?
The wage is so low that nobody can even exist. Let’s talk about it. Scandinavia, they might have 60 percent tax, but they’re taking home two and a half times more in their pocket every week. Which one would you rather be? The guy in Togo or in Scandinavia? I know what I’d rather be.

Not in a ‘Libertarian’s paradise’, then?
No, but see the thing is, we have this huge debate, and I think – hang on a minute, this is a theory that’s all been thoroughly blimin’ – Henry Ford once was in a conference about the carmakers, way back a long time ago in America, and he’s been criticised by all the carmakers for putting his wages up. And they’re saying that you’re deliberately, you know, ruining it all for the rest of us. He said, ‘but you don’t get it. I get more car production out of my wages than you get out of yours. I’m paying less than you for the car.’ So that’s what Scandinavia understands, right. I’m not saying that – it just happens to be an alternative to some of the right wing, neoliberal drivel I keep on hearing.

Yep. That we all keep on hearing.
Not from me!

Okay. Just to change track a little bit, now, your favourite question. I’m a voter. I like New Zealand First. I like Labour. I don’t like National. How can I trust that New Zealand First will truly represent my interests if you won’t disclose who you’re going to get into bed with after the election?
Alright. There’s five months to go. Have you heard all the policies yet?

Nope, some of them don’t exist.
Yeah but they might exist, they might be great or they might be terrible. So you surely want to know that before you make up your mind wouldn’t you? The second thing is, you could spend all your time talking to one party about the outcome and that party not even make it. So you’ve just wasted a whole lot of critical time in the campaign talking to them about something that might not eventuate.

What about sort of-
The third thing is, in a recent survey, now this is unusual, this actually shocked the political scientists, was, a significant majority of people in this country, including 35 percent of National voters, don’t like pre-election deals. They’re sordid and unsavoury. And I happen to agree with them. See? Three reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing.

Very nicely laid out. Like a true politician.
We’re the only one’s saying that for goodness sakes.

But you don’t wanna… allude to any sort of particular… was there any truth to the idea that you’re the MP going to the Internet Party?
There is no truth in that whatsoever.

Good, just thought I’d check.
A party like New Zealand First is not going to have German running it.

Touché.
I mean, a German with a criminal record!

The raid you spoke about quite a lot in Vote Chat. Um, another thing you said at Vote Chat was, uh, you said journalists are being starved of information, so-
No, they’re being starved of resources and funding to do their job properly.

Okay-
There are some seriously good journalists in this country, but most of them are being starved of resources, time to do their job properly, and that’s a great disappointment. I mean I’d hate to be a journalist in New Zealand, because when you’re onto something it takes time. Now the only way I can do that is stay up until 3 o’clock in the morning. I’m not going to be paid for it anymore. Whereas in the old days they’d be seriously out there, committed to it, in a sort of, what you might call a romantic, glamorous place, not highly paid, but you would seriously have to send off the action as a researcher and journalist. I think those days are sadly gone.

So um, I have time now, so could you tell me a secret?
What.

You know, something saucy for the voters out there?
Er, well, um, your voters don’t vote enough, so…

Maybe they would!
I’m going to drop this bombshell when there’s a huge audience!

There will be if you drop one!
There possibly will be! And they think ‘why on earth did he drop it down there?’

I’m sure a fair few people read the Critic …
Uh, for a surprise, I was talking to Denise the other day, and I said to her, you don’t know this do you, and I laid out what happened in 2005, when it came to coalition talks. And she said ‘I’ve never heard that before’ and I said ‘that’s because I’ve never told anybody but you.’ I was expecting it to be a bit of a scoop. What I said to her was, look, when Helen Clark called up after the election (National called up too), but when Helen called up, and I looked up all the numbers and whathaveyou (on election night you can see the numbers anyway). But I didn’t stop with that, I thought before I go back to her, I’ll go and see Peter Dunne and say ‘Peter, if you want to be part of this, are you in or are you out?’ And of course he was on the out then, but then he would be in. So now I go and see Helen Clark, not with one party, I got two parties. More powerful that I was before, wasn’t I? I seriously got their attention, I walked in and said ‘not just me, the United Party as well. I’m talking power with them.’ Now. Why would you compromise that brilliant chance to get everything that you want by telling people before what you’re going to do. See what I mean?

Democracy… transparency…
Ah now, you’ve given me the fourth reason I forgot. Democracy is what the people are about, and they’ll decide the election, and that’s why I’m waiting until they speak.

A binding referendum.
So you say it’s democracy; if I say I’m going to do this, right, so that what you’re saying to the photos ‘I don’t care what you do, it’s all over-rover. We’ve decided the government five months out.’ Now I’m sure you’re pretty upset with that.

Now, I have one last question. This, you have to answer. Rule number one. Um, shoot, shag, marry: Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark, Jeanette Fitzsimons.
Uh, this is a trick question.

Nope. Rule number one of shoot shag marry, you have to answer.
Um, there’s no way. Having avoided half your questions in this interview, that I can answer this one, mate.

This is the one I want the answer to. This is my scoop!
Um… no, I have to admit, I have to admit, there’s nothing that I could possibly answer on that question that’s going to add to my political credibility, my political longevity, or my sense of sanity when I go to bed at night!

Okay, we have a parliamentary alternative, where you can reject one – reject them completely, re-elect one, or realign one, so one who you think should go to another party.
Which member should go to another party?

Yup. Of Helen Clark, Jenny Shipley, Jeanette Fitzsimons.
No, Fitzsimons is in the right place, Shipley, well, she’s all over the place, and Helen Clark belonged to the right party. So the only one who could go to another party would be Shipley. The ACT Party.

Shipley to ACT?
Yup.

You heard it here first. Maybe a bit late, but um.
Before that story goes South completely. But mind you her turning up there would bring about that result.

Just like a certain Brash.
Yes. Well that’s unbelievable actually. Did you see his book?!

I saw the photos of him regarding his book, which were him with an open shirt.
Now that’s an old photograph, that’s a bit nasty for Don, they’ve dug that up from a long time ago.

Really?
That’s a 2005 photograph.

He was photoshopped in a number of ways.
It’s sad actually… You know his book, know why they called it Incredible Luck?

Why?
Because he’s got no talent.