New Zealand First held its post-election conference at the weekend;
and as 3 News reports, some things never change:
Speaking to the party's annual convention in
Palmerston North today, Mr Peters praised voters who sent his party back
to parliament with eight MPs in last year's election, following three
years on the sidelines after a humiliating defeat in 2008 - a period in
which, he says, the Labour-led opposition let National "get away with
murder".
"The first thing we had to do was to put some steel
into the heart of the opposition, and the psychological impact of our
return cannot be underestimated," Mr Peters said.
He attacked the Government's asset sales plans and
sale of the Crafar family farms to a Chinese buyer, promising strict new
restrictions on foreign land ownership and changes to immigrants'
entitlements if his party joins the next Government.
"A young couple from China ... can bring in four
elderly parents who don't have to work here in the 10 years before they
turn 65, yet they will all receive full New Zealand super," Mr Peters
said.
It's interesting though the words that 3News deleted;
watch the video on the One News website, and see and hear what Peters actually said where 3News has added the dots (our emphasis added):
"A young couple from China - this is not an attack on any race but it's a fact - A young couple from China, where there is a limit on family
size, can bring in four elderly parents who don't have to work here
in the 10 years before they turn 65, yet they will all receive full
New Zealand super,"
We guess that we should cease to be surprised when Winston Peters chooses China for his example. After all, he's already attacked the sale of the former Crafar farms to a Chinese consortium, and pitching his comments at a hypothetical Chinese target is the kind of stuff that Winston's followers love and have come to expect. That it is blatant, obvious xenophobia simply underlines our distaste for Winston Peters.
Still; he's a superannuitant now himself; both drawing his NZ Super faithfully every fortnight whilst pocketing his Parliamentary salary, and being a strong advocate for the age of eligibility for superannuation to remain at 65.
Could Winston not do us all a favour and gracefully retire? On one hand, he's pitching NZ First's superannuation policy at New Zealanders being able to retire at 65 with government funded superannuation; he said this to the party faithful yesterday:
Peters told the conference crowd that any talk of superannuation
changes are just an attack on the elderly that are dressed up as
fiscal responsibility.
Winston Peters has chosen to work beyond the age of eligibility for superannuation, and that is his choice. But it makes a mockery of his claims that the super debate is "an attack on the elderly", of which he is one.
Surely the time has arrived for Winston Peters to annoint a successor, but hopefully that person will hold more reasonable views than Peters does. Certainly his dinner companion Shane Jones is more favourably disposed towards Asians than Winston; just as Bill Liu! Could Shane Jones be the future of NZ First, and might that change the spots of the party, if not its founder?
3 comments:
KS, why should Peters retire?
I would rather accept a bullet out of the business end of a gun than vote for Peters or his motley crew but, based on what I have seen on television he is still mentally agile and still wants to carry on.
I can see no reason for retirement.
A better case could be made to remove the franchise from those stupid enough to vote for NZF.
That way, of course, Peters can carry on as long as he wishes, NZ taxpayers simply won't have to pay for it.
@ Tinman,some of his efforts at question time suggest a rather sad slide to incompetence.
Much of his activity indicates a reliance on remembered mental output and little current reactive output.
At times barely comprehensible, even Speaker Smith requires repetition, three times on at least one occasion, before the message is revealed.
The behavior can be due to other reasons, diabeties, stroke, tia, among them but he does a passable impression of inebriation too often for me to agree he is "contributing".
Iv2 I have had an opinion along the lines of your thinking re Shane Jones as his undoubtable talents are never going to find acceptance in NZL and he could probably never bring himself to National so NZF could be a political Home for his philosophy.
thanks for caring about New Zealanders and not just the property sector:
“Among policy and analytical circles in New Zealand there is a pretty high degree of enthusiasm for high levels of immigration. Some of that stems from the insights of literature on increasing returns to scale. Whatever the general global story, the actual productivity track record here in the wake of very strong inward migration is poor. In an Australian context, the Productivity Commission – hardly a hot-bed of xenophobia or populism – concluded that any benefits from migration to Australia were captured by migrants and there were few or no discernible economic benefits to Australians. And that was in a country already rich and successful and with materially higher national saving and domestic investment rates than those in NZ.”
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/downloads/pdfs/mi-jarrett-comm.pdf
Government policies blamed for house prices
“Immigration and tax breaks for investment in residential property are being cited as the underlying causes of steep increases in the cost of housing over the past decade.
New Zealand now boasts one of the highest rates of home unaffordability in the world as a result of prices rising far faster than incomes, and the government’s Savings Working Group blames that squarely on the policies of successive governments.
Although “the favourable tax treatment of property investment” accounted for about 50% of house price increases between 2001 and 2007, the working group said, there was also strong evidence that rapid swings in immigration brought about price-rise “shocks”.
There was a sharp spike in immigration in 2001, 2002 and 2003 and, said working group committee member Dr Andrew Coleman, it appeared that property prices did not fall anywhere near as greatly when immigration fell again.
The report added that there was little evidence that immigration boosted local incomes. In fact, the need to build roads and schools meant that net migration contributed to the national deficit. ”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/4622459/Government-policies-blamed-for-house-prices
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