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Be Winston Peters has just recently wrapped up a State of the Nation speech and there were well, he covered a lot of ground, everything from having a crack at the protests as the economy, co governance and the war on woke and he had a good crack at labor in their record, as well as talking about Paris climate commitments. So I won't try and sum up the whole thing. Of course, the focuses were of course New Zealand's place
in the world as well. He called for re evaluations of our Paris climate commitments and focusing on our own country compared to what we're seeing internationally in New Zealand. First Leader Winston Peters is with me now, Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Do you love a good protest? What was what was that like?
Look? What matter was that we packed the place and some couldn't get in and then there were some protests outside. But before the expected that and we made sure that they weren't going to win in terms of a democratically lawful meeting.
Is there a part of you that, just as a politician, when you see those protests. It sort of gives you a bit of a launching pad, something to push back on to get cracking with your speech. So sort of is there a part of you that's sort of like, oh good, let's get into these guys no more.
You know what I mean? Oh, you're quite right. I mean I said, it's like Elvis the Stamos trouble. You've come to the right place.
What do you want people to take from your speech? You did? You went into It was a lengthy speech, covering a lot of ground. I noticed that the first thing was you really wanted to put labor in their places to maybe do you feel some frustration that they are doing so well on the polls despite, as you would say, being the author of our misfortunes.
Well, the reality is that getting away with a lie. For example, in the months before the Polly three election, they put out a forecast back by a treasury that was a litany of lies. And we've proven that, and it's taken all this time to turn the economy from recession into recovery. And that's why we are looking at a gross now of almost three percent as we're in the session. As a consequence of their policies which takes a long time to turn around, but turn around we have.
And so that's what I was trying to talk about, the positive things and the need to sw some really a reserved reaction to international circumstances, to read things right and ensure that whatever their outcome is and that New Zealand does extraordinary well at a time of great change but also great potential opportunity.
Do you feel frustrated that a lot of sort of thrown on the current government. Of course you have been in powerful a little bit now, but there's the reasons for the problems that you're facing are sort of ignored.
Yes, we do feel that way, but also we're not so concerned about the mainstream media in this context. We've out there and we're going to gang buses on social media. We have barely started yet. But these sorts of meetings where you've packed the place a wall to war, where they equity until after all at last year when they had their meeting there, that tells me that we're on the right track.
What about the Paris climate commitments, it does seem that there are some moves to step away from that, given the amount of money that we're going to have to pay. Where do you think we're going to go with Paris?
Well, I'm asking for reevaluation and logic. I've set out the four nations where they are most sexty percent of the problem. If that is a problem, and we're only point one seven percent of the situation, so what can we actually do? And what's at risk is a trend through of twenty two billion plus to foreign economies in an endeavor to solve this problem, which will be disasters for the even and will not help the problem at all.
We say, refocus this money on our own investments, our own economy and the defeating pollution and things like that. Backing is but the last thing we can afford to do is to have this glorified ideological position that's not working and at the same time being destroy so much for our provincial economy. A wake up court that I renewed after magnetic statement months ago.
Do you think that we get I think you alluded to this in your speech, that we get a bit distracted by a lot of things that are happening internationally. Of course, we have the Trump presidency and a lot of uncertainty that do you think that that confuses us as to how we just stick to our own netting and how we might forge our own way ahead.
Well, precisely what you just said is the sounds advice for our country, But of course there is that propensity to jump to conclusions rush often make comment which could damage us internationally, and that's not the way to go in these very difficult times.
I know that you won't be sharing much information with us until you've spoken with your cabinet colleagues about your meeting with Marco Rubio, But I guess what's your vibe on our relationship with the new administration.
Well, we've put a lot of work into it, months and months of work and conversations face to face to and they were very, very positive, and so we've got something to look forward to. If there are things that obviously we will await developments on, but as we now stand, things that are in a much better position than they were before we went to the United States.
Do we need moving on to issues like provincial growth and resource extraction? And you've talked about how we must fully develop our natural resources. Do we need to Are you talking about having particular ledge sort of change to make it easier for us to do that, or is it simply talking about the direction the government needs to continue to take.
No, precisely, We've got to have a better set of change. We've got to get out of the way of progress. I asked them to look around the room that we were in. Ninety six percent of it is extraction or mining and using our own natural flora, that's forests and waters. We have got to stop our potential recovery because of both work obstructive policies and interference in the economic future of our country, which so many people depend upon for
a better future. We just have got a look at countries that are going gang buses doing what we're advocating and making so much progress, whereas we have been dragging the chain, and in the end, not of our planning laws have become so out of date that they have to be utterly re examined.
Just one which might be seen as more controversial. You've talked about fluoridation and arguing about the rights of counsels to make these decisions. Whereas central government does make a lot of decisions for people, such as our smoking regulations and all sorts of public health decisions, why would that decision be best left with counsels.
Because for decades, in all my life, the local council had the right to have a decision made by their rate beayers on those matters. It's not about whether you're for or against FLY, it's whether you're against for democracy, and they, the Labor Party, just changed the law with an enormous punishment, including imprisonment for local government members who could want to have a democratic decision made by their own voters before they decided. It's pretty basic why that
should be such a horotic, horrific outcome. I don't know, what do.
You reckon our chances are of avoiding some sort of tariff when it comes to the States.
I'm not going to be, as I put it, I'm not going to be uncautious about this. But we've done our best and we'll go on doing our best to ensure that we come out of this on the right side. And of that I am confident.
Winston Peters, I really thank you for your time this afternoon.
Thanks so much for more from the Weekend Collective.
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