The Country 10/09/26: Winston Peters talks to Jamie Mackay

0:00Always enjoy chewing the fat with this man, New Zealand First Leader, former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters. Winston, less than two months out from the election, let's have a look at the farm of oak. There's a couple of key issues out there. The rural community's pretty split over Paris, I put it to you, but pretty much united over the pricing of agricultural emissions. Where do you sit on all those? Well, the rural community's split because they're very happy that they're supporting all these years with the ones that went off the Paris, both the National Party and Act was there at the time, and signed up to an agreement which had these features. There's going to be a cost to pay a more or less amount of money off shore if we didn't meet certain targets. And that figures up to $22 billion, and that's colossal when you think about it. And the second thing is there was a provider or proviso in the agreement that food production would be exempt, excepting back here, the politicians had not argued for that. And that's why the farmers in such a conundrum at this point in time, when they should not be.

1:01Well, what do you say, and the likes of Todd McClay, the Prime Minister, any number of people will tell you that if we were to pull out of the Paris Accord slash agreement, that we would end up cutting our own throat and some of the more niche European markets, they don't want a bar of it, they're looking for an excuse to go elsewhere. Well, look on the second side of here, in many cases, inexperience in lack of detail. They said the same thing about the union free trade deal, and they'll never be able to prove it to the farmers because they've left out completely when it comes to that deal, when it comes to daring for start. But the reality is, skirmones, what they're cheaply used as a means of getting passed their own in capacity to do the job that they should be doing. If 60% of the emissions is coming from China, India, Russia, United States, what good can we do in this circumstance? It's all there playing as daylight in many other countries, I thought I'm not saying that, and the longest serving Labour Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair, came out recently and said,

2:03exactly what Winston Peters has been saying. That's a fact. Some people are coming to grips with the facts, others are sticking to where they got themselves because of their political naivety. So you want us out of Paris, are you pretty much united with your coalition partners over pricing ag emissions? Interesting to see Labour came out and said this week that they wouldn't be pricing agricultural emissions. That is a big policy you turn from the days of Hewaka, Echinoa, and I think David Parker will be rolling in his political grave at the thought of all this. All right, okay. So, Labour came out and said that to what did they mean by that? Because if they could understand it for the Paris Agreement, which they are, and so does national, and after all, Prime Minister Luxembourg said it was a bottom line, then how they gone to handle the situation, where up to 22 billion will be required to leave our economy, to appraise ourselves or get past our failures and go to some other. Yeah, but the Prime Minister said on this show yesterday not a cent will go off, sure.

3:05Oh, excuse me. I mean, look, I've got legal training. I'm not going to stand back and listen to information, which is not based on the facts of the legislation and the statutory requirements that we have entered into. No, I'm sorry. That is not the case. Can I just ask you a question? And this is one that came in from a listener. Why does a state bank, and I know you want to nationalise the BNZ, make sense, yet Chloe's packing Soviet as they're calling it supermarket, doesn't make sense. Why do minor parties, and you'll hate me calling you a minor party, but why do minor parties throw out here-brained policies that will never have a chance of getting across the line? Well, obviously, you were born yesterday. I was nice born decades ago. When we went out of the country under two former great parties, Labour went there were greater national, when they were at a rate, and started their own bank called the BNZ to take on foreign competition, to drive down unfair costs, executive what's going on now. So we started the BNZ,

4:09and when the Labour Party sold one through the National Party sold the second two thirds off in October 1992, six out of ten banking clients in New Zealand belong to the BNZ. That's the kind of treacherous behaviour these politicians are guilty of, and you're saying it's something extraordinary idea to get back our own bank. Now the second thing is, the guy stubs from Simplicity recently six years ago said this as well. We should be merging Keri Bank with the BNZ, and he put out the whole staple in the way he's here first in, and did anybody shout communism then? Did anybody shout nationalisation then? No, look, stop this nonsense. You should remember when we used to have competitive bank rates, and we're being screwed now. How come Ned Kelly Bank's in Australia, who in far more in a smaller market, but they're doing the biggest market of Australia? The answer is we've been ripped off, and people like you in the National Party are letting that happen. Oh, it's all my fault. Hey, public meetings, Chippy got a hundred or a hundred, it is your fault if you give a claim to that sort of nonsense. I'm Julie Scolted. Public meetings,

5:12Chippy got a hundred or a hundred and fifty depend on who you believe, and a cat last night at his sort of first public meeting, you wouldn't get out of bed for that many people, Winston Peters. Well, that's not a meeting. I mean, this guy's meant it wants to be the next five minutes there. This guy's an ex-primeist. How he's standing up after the COVID disgrace and being on me, but that's why I don't get out of a hundred or so long to his meetings because nobody's interested anymore, and the mainstream media can do it. They like to prop them up, but it's not going to work in a scam pane. How many do you get at your meetings? Well, we get to hundreds and hundreds of people, we pack the halls. I mean, our team knows there should never be a spare seat in any meeting that we do because people are out there interested, our job is to make sure, unlike the rest of them, we've been out there on the road since March holding these meetings. We've held between myself and Shane Jones schools meetings around the country. We've got a huge meeting coming up this Sunday, for example, as well. Does anyone under 60 turn up? You bet the kind of night when I get up there. No, it's just social commentary. Hey, I look at

6:19your meetings, Winston, and it's a sea of grey. Look, we had our convention. We had 30 tables of young people. Don't tell many people turn up for a younger on our side. It's each changes happening, but of course, you keep on on repeat the same little dismissive comments. Well, let me tell you this. I got news for all you, so to skeptical people and it's all bad. Can I just finish on 9.11? It'll be our time Saturday. Trump is telling terrible porquies about that, but I just want to reflect with you because you've been about for a long time. Where were you? What were you doing when the world changed forever? I was, again, early in the morning. I can recall, I think Ron Mark called me up to say, look, this has happened because we were wondering what it was all about and then one called up to say, look, it's got these sort of details, the features about it. It looks like a terrorist attack and sure enough it was. It was so unbelievable. It could actually happen. And that's a long,

7:23long time ago that I can recall what I was really on the morning we found this out. Shocking, actually, when I think about it. It's probably the biggest event Winston, post-World War II. And I know that you were born just before the end of World War II. Would it be the single biggest event in our lifetimes? Of that nature, there's been other dramatic things as well. It's very sad cases where we've never looked at the fact of it all, but in terms of Western society, it was a pretty dramatic event. I wouldn't say the biggest one, but what was very clear, the moment you heard the news was this world will not be the same again because it'll be happy features. There will be costs for terrorism detection, which will be massively passed on to everybody that's traveling, everybody that's moving in the sense of transport internationally. And it has had a huge cost. There was no productivity as a result. We don't really understand how damaging it's been. Yes, airports have never been the same since. So, Samo Bin Laden has a lot to answer for.

8:27Winston Peters, thanks for some of your time today on the country's. We count down. There's been two months to go to the election. Thank you very much and don't forget to tell you a farming community to hang on to health zones away. See you later. Bye-bye.