"No More Cinderella City"
Good afternoon and thank you for being part of something special here in Whangarei today.
We say special because you are all here at an event which has become a rarity in New Zealand - a public political meeting, not in a telephone booth, but a packed hall.
Down through centuries politicians have been holding public meetings to conduct a discourse with their people and learn what their population thinks. New Zealand in the last decade has become the exception. Or should we say has been allowed by the mainstream media to become the exception.
Because what you're at today is becoming scarce. In short, other political parties have such a disconnect with the public they no longer hold political public meetings anymore.
The other parties claim to have major announcements and then go to some other organisations "tied event" and announce policy as though they are talking to the public when no such thing is going on.
Or if you're the Greens, you go down to the beach, find the nearest starfish, and the media will put you on tv that night talking about the environment. Or five of them will jump in kayaks and go for a river paddle and from that experience pronounce on the quality of the water on the six o'clock news.
Or if you're TPM you don't bother about meetings, or attending parliament, or showing up for select committees, you just rack up the highest travel bill of all MPs and if anyone asks any questions you scream "racism".
So congratulations for coming out this afternoon, to talk about the Cinderella City.
But before that, we are pleased to announce the former Mayor of Whangarei Vince Cocurullo as the New Zealand First candidate for Whangarei. We would also like to announce current sitting New Zealand First MP Jenny Marcroft as the candidate once again for the neighbouring electorate, Kaipara ki Mahurangi.
We mention the Cinderella City, Whangarei, because for fifty years, far too little has happened here.
Whangarei used to be a bustling city. At the time when the Deputy Prime Minister was Jack Marshall, an old boy of Whangarei Highschool, and central government made serious investments in the North.
Back then we printed our own money, and the Government Mint was just north of Onerahi, there was the New Zealand fertiliser works, the New Zealand glass works, the Portland cement works, a freezing works, and in the 1960s we began the construction of the Marsden Point Refinery.
But what has happened in the intervening half century?
Marsden Point
Ladies and gentlemen, we are all accountable, both politician and voter, so the question is how is it that Labour's Energy Minister Meagan Woods shut down your major industry, after this city voted in a Labour MP in 2020. Hands up who can remember that MPs name?
Well Portland is still there, but the Marsden Point Refinery, behind your backs and without any consultation, was shut down by its offshore ownership with the agreement of the Labour Government and your then Labour MP.
New Zealand First said at the time, "this closure was economic treason, that if our fuel supply lines are blocked offshore, this country will simply close down. And that means critical frontline services such as police, ambulance, fire service, aviation, and others, will simply not have the critical resource to do their job."
The Minister of Energy Meagan Wood simply misinformed New Zealanders. We said in 2023, that in a fuel supply line crisis offshore, Marsden Point Refinery could still operate to provide the critical fuel for essential services in this country, from energy resources already in this country. We warned back then, and now the blocking of the Hormuz Strait has unfortunately proven us right.
Before the 2020 election Shane Jones and I met with the CEO of the Marsden Point refinery, asking her what their long-term plans were. She was evasive in the extreme. We have a record of the meeting, and it's now clear that closure was always their intention; if they could get a compliant government to go along with them - and that's exactly what's happened.
As soon as New Zealand First was no longer in government, Labour and Megan Woods, decided not to follow through on the idea of talks to try to save the Marsden Point oil refinery by underwriting the refinery for a period of up to 10 years.
Energy Minister Megan Woods said in a Cabinet paper released at the time that there was "not a strong case to support the refinery's operations on fuel security grounds".
This was the same Labour Party who is currently asking the government everyday about fuel security in our country due to the Hormuz Strait crisis. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
No government believing in the economic interests of New Zealand, should ever have allowed this to happen.
We have already gone a long way to reestablish parts of Marsden Point with fuel storage and options to develop it into a biofuel refinery - but look at the state that this country is in now given Labour sold us down the "zero carbon" drain.
Remember New Zealand only had three large industries, New Zealand Steel, Tiwai Point Aluminium, and the Marsden Point Refinery. Under Labour operating by themselves, one of these three was gone, and whilst we are at it, what did the other political parties do about it? The answer is "doughnuts".
Northport
As you all know Northport is the only port in this country with the depth of water to handle future shipping size and the land area for its cargo. The Port of Auckland should have been moved to Northport years ago in recognition of that fact.
Due to increased imports, cargo from the Ports of Auckland has organically spilled to Marsden Point and Northport has sometimes received over 1,000 containers a month, and higher volume being possible.
The rail corridor to Northport has already been designated and a geo tech study already completed, because New Zealand First is insisting that a rail line be built connecting the port with the main rail line.
A tendering process for that to happen is well underway.
New Zealand First's record is one of action. Which party when the Hundertwasser build ran out of money, stepped up and found the resources? Which party stepped up and found the money for the Wairau Māori Art Gallery, and $62 million to start fund an international hotel right here in Whangarei? We found the money, but your then council under Mayor Mai, refused to proceed.
That's our record, for we have never believed that you can build a reputation on what you are going to do, but what you have already done.
Whangarei in New Zealand First's view is a gateway to Northland and its many attractions, should be "no more a Cinderella City". Whangarei needs to come alive again.
To that end, we have an exciting New Zealand First Party campaign policy announcement to make here today.
Marsden Point Special Economic Zone
We are going to establish a Special Economic Zone at Marsden Point.
Special Economic Zones are part of a wider strategic plan: producing more goods and services for export while fortifying our national security.
In countries that have SEZs the policy mix varies, but include a combination of tax breaks, wage subsidies, reduced regulation, and investment in physical, transport or communications infrastructure.
Our Special Economic Zone at Marsden Point would include the former refinery and Northport. The Zone would be focussed on energy generation/distribution and maritime activities, including the new DryDock, servicing ship repairs from New Zealand and around the world.
The principal benefit this economic zone would provide is relief from planning regulations and the RMA.
No longer will industries in the zone have to deal with local/regional councils, DOC and a myriad of other bureaucratic agencies for their activities.
Instead, planning rules, RMA consents and the like would be determined quickly by a government panel. This expert panel would make decisions based on whether the changes will grow the economy and achieve the aims of the zone.
Other relief options we are considering are changes to the Overseas Investment Act to make it easier for quality foreign investment in the zone to occur while at the same time protecting our national interest and ownership.
Afterall, who wants another Darwin, where that port in Australia is owned by foreign interests?
Additionally, tax incentives will be considered. These options will range from rates rebates (Crown would pay the local councils for services provided to Zone businesses), foregoing various levies, investment incentives, right up to reduced company taxes for specific investments
The SEZ at Marsden Point is not just about legislation. It is also about a new complex arising from government policy and investment. Alongside the SEZ we have the Drydock, the Northland Expressway and the Marsden Point rail link, going North to Oteria, and South to Auckland.
Law and Order
Ladies and gentlemen, the other parties are shouting 'law and order' but what's their record? They have in the past:
- Frozen police budgets,
- Closed countless police stations, many in the North, and
- Cut frontline police numbers,
- Pursed 'catch and release' policies for criminals.
Only one Party, New Zealand First, has a serious record over the last three decades of investing in our police. We achieved a massive increase in frontline police numbers, not once but three times when we have been in government. We are dramatically delivering on our coalition commitment to increase frontline police by five hundred men and women. We are well on our way to doing that.
And so, on law and order one party has a record on which you can base your trust, and the others have failed promises which people will trust at their peril.
We are talking about law and order, because frankly there has got to be security in Northland's towns and villages, in order for Whangarei and the North to succeed.
Cost of Living
Thirty Four years ago the National Party sold the biggest bank in New Zealand at the time, the BNZ, to the NAB.
In their neoliberal view New Zealand should not own its own bank. That was a disastrous decision, and we have been paying Ned Kelly Aussie banks for it ever since. Their profits are higher in our much smaller economy than they are in the larger economy in Australia. We are plainly being ripped off, and New Zealand politicians are trying to defend that.
Last week we said that New Zealand First would buy the BNZ back.
It is about economic sovereignty.
It has seen the expected frothing from the ill-informed commentators expecting kiwis to just 'accept the status quo' or 'this is as good as it gets'.
The status quo isn't working for struggling ordinary kiwis.
How can we as a country sit back and accept a banking system taking billions of dollars from hard working kiwis every year and siphoning it off to another country - all based on a failed neoliberal experiment started four decades ago which promised a "fair playing field" and much lower costs. They delivered neither.
Multiple reports from the Commerce Commission highlight this.
The proposal to buy-back BNZ will keep the added-value banking profits and capital in New Zealand, the large state-owned bank will have the capital and structure to service more kiwi customers, it would also then have the capability to hold all of the central and local government accounts, which ensures New Zealand money stays in the New Zealand economy. It would create real competition in the New Zealand banking system to drive bank costs down for kiwis.
Thank heavens that yesterday in the NZ Herald in the Business Page (this one) gave a fair report of the buy-back prospects.
They didn't report the nonsense screaming that this is somehow unaffordable, which begs the question as to why there was no such commentary when Kiwibank was proposing to buy BNZ just six years ago. You didn't know that because it was never controversial until New Zealand First said it.
New Zealand First proposes to break up the power companies, bust the supermarket duopoly, and ownership of a large-scale sovereign bank is not about hostile nationalisation - it's about nationalism, and changing of the status quo, and refusing to accept that this is as good as it gets.
They are 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, force the cost of living down, give kiwis a fair go, and take back control of our country and our future.
Singapore thinks so, Norway thinks so, they have sovereign banks, and so should we.
These are the types of bold polices that will truly tackle the cost-of-living issue that everyday ordinary kiwis are facing.
India Free Trade Agreement
The Indian Free Trade agreement has put into neon lights the way immigration has been used as a bargaining chip for our country's future.
The National, Act, and Labour Parties have signed up to this deal knowing this is more of a Free Migration Deal, not a Free Trade Deal.
Under this deal, not only will there be five thousand work visas issued at any one time, but under current law those visa holders can bring in their families - that five thousand now turns into twenty or twenty-five thousand.
All the other political parties deny that. So how can it be that Prime Minister Modi, Trade Minster Goyal, India's Foreign Office, and its Communication Ministry, all have the opposite view to all those other New Zealand political parties?
Then there are the uncapped students that will be allowed to enter our country to study. These uncapped number of students, under this agreement, have a guaranteed right to work twenty hours a week, up to twenty-five hours, in addition to a right to work for three years post-graduation.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's not export education - where their economy pays for education here. Our New Zealand economy is now paying for their education.
If you are all sitting there and thinking about whose jobs those visa holders and students will be taking in this time of high unemployment, your right - and National, Act, and Labour all need to answer that concern.
Last week in parliament Labour was asking questions about the number of unemployed youth - and yet they support this FTA that will guarantee an increase in an uncapped number of foreign students taking your kids jobs.
How can any of them and the mainstream media reconcile that?
No free trade deal in the history of New Zealand has included immigration as a condition. Never. So why has National, Act, and Labour allowed this to occur?
What is worse, there are a number of other clauses in the agreement that have no place being there either.
There is a clause in the signed agreement that confirms New Zealand's affirmation of UNDRIP - the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. This is the UN agreement that created He Puapua and the prominence of co-governance in New Zealand.
New Zealand First demanded in our coalition agreement that we do not recognise UNDRIP as having any legal standing - so why has National and Act, as part of the government, signed up to this?
There is also a clause in the signed agreement that confirms New Zealand adherence to the Paris Climate Accord.
Last year in our State of the Nation speech held in Christchurch, we said that we need to re-evaluate our Paris commitments.
In trying to honour our Paris commitments, $22 billion plus, of our hard-earned taxpayers' money will be siphoned offshore in a total self-defeating economic and climatic shambles.
It's just common sense that instead of draining our money offshore, into foreign economies, we invest it in looking after our own environment.
Let's look at the facts. 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?
How is that solving the "global climate problems"?
We need to stop this idealistic flight of futility - so why have National, Act and Labour all signed up to this free trade agreement with this clause in it?
Where has the common sense gone from those who purport to want to lead this country?
One last thing to mention on this FTA, is the fact that National, Act and Labour, are not only agreed to $22 billion being syphoned from our economy to satisfy the Paris Accord, but they are all signing up to New Zealand being forced to promote a further $33 billion of investment from New Zealand into India in the next 15 years. Not into New Zealand. Into India. And if we don't satisfy that part of the bargain to India's satisfaction, India has a 'clawback' clause where they will start to withdraw all the things that we think we have gained out of this deal.
That's a total of $55 billion going overseas and not being invested in New Zealand.
There is the famous multi-millennia old saying and is true today, "those the Gods will destroy they first make mad".
When we are desperate in this country for investment, where we have a $200 billion infrastructure deficit, we are now going to spend the next 15 years promoting those billions of dollars of investment into a foreign country.
Are you now seeing why New Zealand First has been against this deal since day one?
It is a frustratingly simple explanation as to why these other parties either don't know what they are doing or simply don't care - because they are globalists.
New Zealand First is the only Nationalist party that is willing to go to the wire to protect New Zealand and New Zealander's future.
We have an extraordinary circumstance that the India FTA has become an exercise in deception.
From the Ministry of Trades explanation to the Deputy Prime Minister, that the UNDRIP provision is not in the document, to other ministers attributing what is not in the agreement, as being in there. For example, as doctors being listed, when they simply are not.
These are senior ministers who either don't know what is in the agreement or have taken on face value what other ministers have said isn't in the agreement.
What on earth UNDRIP has anything to do with this agreement no one seems to know. But what is certain is that the Indian Government was not the one that asked for it.
So, we need to know what exactly the purpose of this insertion of UNDRIP into this agreement was, which both National and Act claim not to support.
As for the Paris Accord being included, why would India demand that, when they are one of the top four emitters causing sixty percent of the worlds CO2 emissions. This is inexplicable.
Behind the National, Act and Labour's free trade agreement, is clearly not trade but immigration.
New Zealand - A Temporary Bolthole
New Zealand for far too long, has been a country not as a final destination but a temporary bolthole, or a house for many opportunists seeking to use this country on the way to another one.
As a leaping off entry point to other countries. Particularly Australia.
So much so that last year the majority of New Zealand Citizens who have moved to Australia were not born in New Zealand.
If it's true, that the world doesn't owe New Zealand a living, then surely it is just plain commonsense that neither does New Zealand owe anybody outside of this country a living or a better future.
That should be a plain fact.
So instead of bringing in people who we need, we have a free trade deal which is going to bring people into this country who need us.
Yoga trainers, chefs, spiritual trainers.
Why don't these politicians tell you the truth? That all new arrivals need their share of infrastructure and housing, education, health, public roads etc.
All of those costs fall on the resident kiwi population, on you, ending in new levies, electricity charges, rate increases and tax increases.
That's where your money is going to be spent compulsory by future governments if you let them, when that same money should be going towards lifting the kiwi standard of living and building new wealth for kiwi futures.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your country, and don't let temporarily empowered politicians ruin your future.
Definition of a Woman
Something that is very important happened in the House this week.
The New Zealand First Member's Bill that would ensure the biological definition of a woman and man are defined in law, was debated in the House and will now be moving to select committee.
It is astounding that legislation like this is even needed - but that is how woke our country, and most of the western world has been heading.
This bill is not about being anti-anyone or anti-anything. This is about ensuring we as a country focus on the facts of biology and protect the term 'woman' in law.
New Zealand First is the only party that campaigned on keeping men out of women's sports, keeping men out of women's and girl's changing rooms, and we have received two petitions this term calling for protecting the term 'woman' in legislation.
We were told at the time that we were going down a 'rabbit hole' and 'on another planet'. But if you look at recent events, both internationally and in New Zealand, the pendulum is swinging back towards common sense and is proving us right. It is not by any coincidence now that the National Party is now supporting the very thing they said just three years ago was 'on another planet'. They can see how important this issue is to the majority of every party's voters out there - namely women.
Even now some government members in the House are clearly opposed to this bill - including of all people the Minister for Women. Who does she think she is the minister of exactly?
This Bill would ensure our country moves away from the woke ideology that has crept in over the last few years, undermining the protection, progression, and safety of women.
Our laws should reflect biological reality and provide legal certainty.
These definitions in law fight back against the cancerous social engineering we've seen being pushed in society by a woke minority.
The need for legislation like this shows how far the deluded political class has taken us as a society. But we are fighting back.
This bill is a win for common sense.
Conclusion
New Zealand First has been on a mission.
To fight for the ordinary hardworking kiwis who just want a country we 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.
It hasn't been easy, but the things in life worth doing are never easy.
We must always choose the harder, right path…over the easy, wrong path.
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.
We are asking you - to give us the tools, so we can finish the job.
To protect and to save this great country New Zealand.
