Winston Peters’ State Of The Nation – ‘Make New Zealand First Again’

Rt Hon Winston
Peters
Leader of New Zealand First
March 23rd
2025
State of the Nation 2025  
James Hay
Theatre
Christchurch

Ladies and
gentlemen,

First of all, thank you for being here
today. 

We know your lives are busy and you are
working harder and longer than you ever have, and there are
many calls on your time, so thank you for the chance to
speak with you today in the city of
Christchurch.

Thank you also to the New Zealand First
members who have organised this meeting today – by the way
– we are the lowest funded party in parliament but we always
punch above our weight and we always deliver.

Ladies
and gentlemen, as you arrived here today, right on queue
there were hundreds of protesters outside to try and
intimidate and influence you.  These people protesting
could have, of course, done the hard yards themselves and
organised their own meeting, to put their point of view on a
range of issues. But no, their objectives don’t include
freedom of speech or democracy. They seek to impose their
absolute minority view on the mass majority of fellow New
Zealanders.

Can we say on the issue of Gaza, not one
of them protesting outside have ever spoken to the
Palestinian authority, or the neighbouring Egyptian
government, or the biggest Islamic country in the world,
Indonesia, or dare we say the president of Turkey.  All
of these international authorities, and many more, we have
personally spoken to so they understand, with great clarity,
what New Zealand’s position is. 

Those
so-called protesters outside wouldn’t know what
geo-politics or diplomacy looks like – yet they have the
arrogance to try and lecture you, and disrupt you, like they
have a clue what they are talking about.

So those no
hopers have come here today, with the one certain intention,
to grab the main stream media headlines, and try to destroy
a process that we, as one of only eight other countries,
have practiced unbroken since 1854 – it’s called
democracy.

They don’t care about democracy. They
don’t care that in our democracy we are lawfully allowed
to meet here today undisturbed. They are just left-wing
fascists who preach freedom of speech, but try their best to
deny it to those who they disagree with. That’s what they
are doing here today.

More to the point, what is
unfortunately likely going to happen at some stage in this
speech today, is a few of them will try to disrupt this
lawful meeting, which you all have come to, with their
unlawful ways, just to try and get on the six o’clock
news. That’s how communist, fascist, and anti-democratic
losers work.

That’s their idea of a hard day’s
work.

Well, we have news for them and it’s all bad
– or as Elvis Presley once sang – “looking for trouble
you’ve come to the right place” – we are going to
defend our democracy and we will throw all of those fascists
out.

In this hall today there are men and women of all
ages, of all races, religions, and creeds. This is a meeting
of New Zealanders.  People who are living here legally,
whether their New Zealand background goes back a thousand
years or who arrived yesterday – all with the same
fundamental protections under the law.

So, ladies and
gentlemen, you have assembled here today packing this hall,
let’s see if those anti-democratic Marxist whingers prove
us right, with their arrogance and distain for democracy and
equal distain for your rights – just remember, when they
attack, they are not attacking me, they are attacking
you.

It’s The Economy

As
President Bill Clinton once said “it’s the economy
stupid”.  So lets reflect on our economy and what we
inherited as we came into government after October
2023.

In September of that year, one month before the
election, Chris Hipkins was the Prime Minister and Grant
Roberston was the Minister of Finance.  The following
is what they reported on the New Zealand Economy – to you
the New Zealand people.

Their September 2023
pre-election economic and fiscal update (commonly referred
to as the PREFU) claimed this:

That the economy shows
no recession, a growing economy, more jobs, and wages ahead
of inflation.

They said, and we quote “the PREFU
released today shows New Zealand’s economy is turning the
corner”.

They said that the economy was to grow by
2.6% on average over the forecast period.  They claimed
further that fiscal rules had been met. That there was a
return to surplus.

And then this most extraordinary of
all boasts – “our economic plan to support New Zealanders
dealing with the cost of living while investing in a
stronger, more resilient and inclusive economy, is
working”.

Ladies and gentlemen, that claim from
Hipkins and Robertson made about the economy back then, was
an outright litany of lies.

Within six months of that
litany of lies, our country was suffering from the deepest
and longest economic downturn and recessionary retraction
for over three decades.

There were fewer jobs, none of
the previous government’s claims of abiding by its fiscal
rules were true, and as we all know we were experiencing a
worsening cost of living crisis.

But one of the
biggest questions you need to ask is ‘where was the main
stream media reporting on this?’

Ladies and
gentlemen, guiding a country is like piloting a massive
ocean liner – it takes a long time to turn both
around.

That means that six months after the last
election, nearly every economic outcome was the
responsibility of the previous government.  That’s a
fact.  Because the new current government had no time
for its policies to even bed-in or change either the numbers
or outcomes.

In short, almost all of the slump – and
the pain – is directly the result of the work of Hipkins and
Robertson. They cannot deny that.

So how can you
believe a word from the Labour leader when everything that
he said, when he was in charge as the Prime Minister, has
been proven to be drastically wrong, and at total variance
with the financial facts.

It is a running comical
commentary of how lacking Labour is of leadership. 
That the very person whose actions were so unforgiveable,
and the economic and social damage so widespread, now
expects you all to believe, that if given the chance, you
could trust him to do something different. 

It is
staggering that this is the same person, who when he became
Prime Minister, had a “Bonfire of The Inanities”. 
He wanted to burn nearly everything that he and Roberston
did.  In short, he incinerated many of the polices that
he was a critical part in forming.

And then, he went
and admitted, and we quote, “Some of the commitments that
we made and I’ve mentioned some of them, things like Kiwi
Build, Auckland Light Rail and so on, we hadn’t worked
through the exact details of how that would be and therefore
we weren’t able to deliver on the commitments that we’ve
made”. 

We are not making this stuff up. Those
are his words, not ours. 

Ladies and gentlemen,
that’s the personification of the old saying “you
can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do, but
what you’ve already done”.

And worse still, just a
few weeks ago, he barefaced told the media that in 2023 he
ruled us out, when he knows – and the media knows –
including the lightweight who was interviewing him – that a
year before he uttered those words we publicly ruled Labour
out – primarily because of their disastrous running of the
economy and the barefaced lies they told us
all.

However, like we said earlier, running an economy
is like running a big ocean liner.  Turning it around
to a safer course takes time – but turn it around we have
– and the last fiscal update out this week proves
it.

Incidentally, we are the only political party to
give our State Of The Nation speech with the benefit of
having the latest financial information that came out this
week. That is the reason why this meeting is being held
today, not last week, or last month, but today.

The
figures out this week, show our economy is now growing at
0.7% for the last quarter, which is just under 3% for the
year, which shows that this coalition government is taking
our country out of recession.

Ladies and gentlemen, we
know that its tough out there. We know that the cost of
living has taken a toll over the past few years. That
Labour’s cost of living rises have been cemented in. And
that means we have much more work to do.  However, this
week’s latest financial update means there is real hope on
the horizon. That said, we also know that we must progress
with far greater speed, and we can only do that with sound
economic and social
policies.

Workers

There have
been many comments from the Labour Party and their fellow
travellers over the past year that the ‘government’s
coalition agreements are ‘racist, anti-Māori, anti-woke,
anti-Fluro, and anti-everything else under the sun. It shows
not only how myopic and out of touch their thinking is, but
it puts in neon lights just how siloed the left is in their
obsessive echo-chamber.

Labour, Greens, and the
Māori Party, now rely on ideological soundbites as a basis
of their policy making – which when given even a cursory
glance are totally bereft of any facts.

They have
become the ‘parties of moral outrage’ – obsessed with
accusations, ‘gotcha politics’, woke ideology, and
opposing anything that happens to offend anyone that gets
offended.

There is nothing that the government is
implementing that should come as a surprise to Hipkins.
Everything we are doing was not only campaigned on, it was
in our respective election manifestos and in our coalition
agreements dated a year and a half ago. Perhaps he is just
surprised that a government is actually delivering on its
promises.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s just remember
one thing.  The spiritual home of the Labour Party is
the West Coast – the site of the miners’ strike in 1908
which started the Labour Party in 1916 – the Party that
used to represent the workers of New Zealand – the gold
miners, the coal miners, the labourers, the foresters, the
fishermen, the hard working blue-collar battlers of our
country. The catch cry used to be ‘a fair day’s pay, for
a fairs day’s work’. They represented those workers in
the very industries which have now become the anathema of
who and what the Labour Party represents today. That’s a
fact.

If a political party today frothed at the mouth
every chance they got about the coalition government being
‘racist, anti-Māori, colonisers, white supremacists,
exterminators of Māori, anti-woke this anti-woke that’ –
you could place so many members of the Labour, Green, or
Māori Party caucus at that lectern and you wouldn’t know
who was who, or which was which.

Who do Labour now
represent? It seems they don’t even know
themselves.

The Labour Party has decided their entire
re-election strategy will be acting like a recently divorced
partner – standing back and asking, “don’t you miss me
yet?” Their lack of self-awareness is
astounding.

The fact is, the last three years of the
Labour government oversaw a deteriorating economy,
deteriorating education and health systems, worsening law
and order on our streets, massively increased debt, record
immigration, crumbling infrastructure, a cost-of-living
crisis, and a hugely divided society. That is not opinion –
that is fact.

The woke agenda of the left has crept
in like a cancer that has spread so deep into their divisive
thinking it has become their sole focus. And sadly it is a
malady, a malaise, that has overcome most of the main stream
media.

The key aspect of Hipkins’ recent speeches
is what he, and the Labour Party, doesn’t say.

It
has been clear for some time that the Labour Party had a
forlorn choice – attempt to move to the centre to
hopelessly try to regain their votes, or push further
towards the woke, cultural, globalist, and Marxist left. It
doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which path
they have chosen.

But that ‘siloed-left’ is now
occupied by the Māori Party and the Greens – with the exact
same messaging, the exact same ideology, the exact same
rhetoric.

Hipkins’ speeches show just how far the
Labour Party has descended away from its roots, and just how
unambiguously they have abandoned and forgotten the very
people and industries who founded their party over a hundred
years ago.

The Labour Party’s focus is now on
issues such as race, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion),
wokeness, and drumming up racial rhetoric that all only
serves to divide our country and ignores the vast majority
of New Zealanders who just want a functioning health system,
a top class education for their kids, first world wages, and
an affordable home. That’s what all New Zealanders want
– Māori and non-Māori, religious and non-religious,
inside or inside out.

Delivering those four things
has always been the focus of New Zealand First. In this
coalition government there is a record number of Māori in
Cabinet, and where parliament has the largest representation
of Māori.

To call our government ‘anti-Māori and
racist’ and now focus on woke globalist, Marxist,
economic, cultural, and social engineering policies – as
they do now – shows just how shallow and impotent the once
great Labour Party of Savage, Fraser, and Kirk has
become.

We face now, across the House, parties that
subscribe to an ‘Anthem of Hate’, a ‘Rissole of
Racism’, and ‘Collection of Communist’ type economics
that even China and Russia have long ago
abandoned.

The Labour Party has already left middle
New Zealand a long time ago – its evident just how shallow
and impotent they have become.

The few remaining more
conservative Labour MPs must wake up at night in cold sweats
thinking about how much Labour is now fighting for the space
on the woke far-left, instead of fighting for the workers,
fighting for middle New Zealand.

Their focus now is on
issues such as race, culture-wars, rainbow-wars, and Marxist
ideals, and ignorantly joining both the Greens and Māori
Party on the race to the bottom.

Ladies and gentlemen,
our point to you is this. 

Labour no longer
represents the workers.  They have totally forgotten
what a worker even is or what a worker stands for.  How
many Labour leaders or front bench Labour members have ever
had a real job? How many have ever run their own business?
Almost none.  And they want to represent you, the
workers?

How many of them are career unionists? How
many of them have graduated from student unions and then
started working in the Labour Party taxpayer funded offices?
Most of them. How would they know what a hard day’s work
means?

The vast majority of left-wing shill unions
these days are there to fund and prop up the left-wing
policies of whomever they can fund the most.  Where
does Labour get most of their funding from?  Hundreds
of thousands of dollars for policy. Does the mainstream
media ever ask that question?

That’s who the New
Zealand Labour Party is today.

Positioning New
Zealand in a Rapidly Changing World

Ladies
and gentlemen, the last two months have seen a dramatic
change in the international landscape.  If many had
been paying attention, then none of this would have come as
a surprise. A massive change is taking place and how New
Zealand acts towards those changes is critical.

This
is not a time for New Zealand to opine on what we think of
these changes, but rather hold our council, allow the dust
to settle, and to build on strategic partnerships both
economic and political.

This is not a time to waste on
what we would like to see happen, but rather urgently
prepare for what is happening.

It is not a time for
university coffee-bar discussions – but reality and wise
action.

Huge challenges confront us which we can
either ignore or seize new opportunities, and take a small
country, to the forefront of international economic and
social performance.

We have done it before, and with
the right policies and leadership, we can do it
again.

We must be above all guided by caution and
focus on positioning ourselves strategically for the long
term, and not react to every political concern on the
barometer.

We have many assets to use on the pathway
forward.  We are one of the worlds oldest democracies,
we believe in the ‘rule of law’ over ‘might is
right’.  We must aggressively sell our country as an
attractive investment destination and provide logical
answers to the single most obvious question international
investors will ask, which is, ‘but why New
Zealand?’.

We have a sound resource base, but we
must develop those resources to the maximum as other
successful small countries have done and are doing.

We
most certainly cannot pull the New Zealand rug up over
ourselves in the futile belief that somehow virtue
signalling will assist our economic and social
recovery.

Look around this theatre today, ninety six
percent of the building you will see comes from a process of
“extraction”.  That means using the mineral wealth
we have, the natural flora we are blessed with in forestry
and water.  And in developing the same, provide
hundreds of thousands of new jobs, added value at home, and
massive export growth to old and new markets.  And
ensure that the “Team New Zealand” is the first
beneficiary.

That is why New Zealand First started the
Provincial Growth Fund, now the Regional Infrastructure
Fund, to ensure that we have an environment of development
and renewal and not delay, decay, and descent to the
bottom.

Today there are echoes of our most famous
former Prime Minster Seddon’s words “New Zealand is
God’s own country, but the devils mess”.

Seddon
was right all those years ago, and then he set out to do
something positive about it. And we, in 2025, must do the
same.

We must set out to repeat our county’s former
great successes. The world may be changing, but the
principles on which our success will be based have
not.

We have always been an “export dependant
country”, so we must maximise our exports in every area
that it is possible.  And to do that, as Seddon did
after 1893, and Labour and National both did in the halcyon
years of 1935 to 1970, we can do the same today.  We
have to arrest the last four decades of drift, where
ideology overtook common sense and pragmatism.

And so
we will be fast-tracking to change, and we haven’t got a
day to waste.

Ladies and gentlemen, reflect on the
Covid years and how important the provincial economies were
in navigating our way through it.  For a few years the
anti-primary production brigade went silent, and at no time,
then or since, have they ever expressed a thank you to our
provincial economies. 

Their polices would close
down large sections of our economy to satisfy their
globalist view of the world. But New Zealand First is a true
nationalist party – setting our to replicate the success
of other small countries with fewer resources but with
astonishing records of success – as we once had.

And
we may not always get it right, but one thing we will
promise you, is that we will never stop trying.

But to
get to where we want to go, we first have to deal with the
plethora of malignant polices enshrouding our nation and
stopping progress.

War on Woke, Long Live
Commonsense

One of the most concerning and
insidious cancers in our society today is the underlying
creep of woke social engineering.

This seeping of the
leftist group-think and condoned by too many on the right,
has been mostly hidden from society in the way it has
implanted itself in New Zealand.

Recently New Zealand
First announced a policy that, apparently was terribly
shocking – we announced that we wanted all public service
hiring to be based on merit, skill, and competence – not
based on targets for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
ideology.

Think about how far our country has been
taken down the left wing rabbit hole, when we have media and
opposition politicians alike clutching and their pearls in
horror that we want a meritocracy brought back to our public
service.

The reaction from some quarters was
apoplectic.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need common sense
brought back to our country.

We cannot underestimate
the nature and importance of the war on woke.

It is
not only the DEI in our public sector, but also in our
education system.

New Zealand First set out in the
election to get rid of the ‘Relationship, and Sexual
Education’ guidelines in our schools – we have done
that.

We campaigned on ensuring the pathway of
separatism and cultural Marxism was stopped with the likes
of He Puapua and co-governance – we are doing
that.

We campaigned on ensuring we have fairness in
women’s sports – that men cannot compete against women
and girls – we have done that.

But there is still so
much more we need to do and the continue to fight for –
including fighting against the use of Puberty Blockers for
children.

We may have won some battles, but the war is
yet to be won.

New Zealand First has introduced
Members Bills that include fighting against woke banks,
fighting to ensure men can not walk into women’s and girls
bathrooms, to get rid of DEI in our public sector, and we
have many more.

We will continue to be the voice of
common sense and at the forefront of the war on woke on
behalf of you and every other New Zealander.

Our
message to the bureaucracy pursuing unmandated unelected
policies is a simple one. Do you want to be part of the
solution or do you want to remain part of the
problem?

If their choice is the latter – to be part
of the problem – then our response is “get out of the
way”.

Paris 2016

In October
2016 the National Party signed up to the Paris Accord
setting targets that some of the world’s largest economies
have no intention of honouring.

That means that no
matter what we do, our sacrifice will make no
difference.  Worse still, in trying to honour our
commitments, $22 Billion plus, of our hard earned taxpayers
money will be siphoned off shore in a total self-defeating
economic and climatic shambles.

Its just common sense
that instead of draining our money offshore, into foreign
economies, we invest it in looking after our own
environment. 

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s look
at the facts.  Just under 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”?

And
when did we last see a protest against those four major
economies from the so called ‘climate change’
activists?

That’s why we were the first to call for
a revaluation of our Paris commitments months ago.  We
need to stop this idealistic flight of
futility.

Restoring Democracy to Local
Government

The last Labour government took
away the local voice when it came to deciding if locals
wanted fluoride in their water supply.

For decades our
local ratepayers had the choice through referendum – that
was taken away under Labour.

The Whangarei District
Council is now being forced to fluoridate their local water
supply, at a cost of up to $5 million, which is a despotic
Soviet-era disgrace.

This is not a matter of being
pro-fluoride or anti-fluoride. It is a matter of what New
Zealanders see and value as democracy in our
country.

Individual democratically elected Councillors
are not only being threatened with huge fines, they are now
threatened with imprisonment – all for disagreeing with a
foolish law change and forcing Wellington-based bureaucrats
to act.

All the Council is fighting for is to have a
referendum on the matter so locals can have a
voice.

The fluoridation law change removing referendum
had its first reading in 2016 – we were the only Party in
parliament to vote against the changes.

New Zealand
First said then, and now, that these decisions should be
made by the locals through an open and transparent debate
followed by a referendum.

It is chilling that we have
got to a point in New Zealand where elected politicians are
being threatened with imprisonment just for doing their
jobs, standing up for democracy, and asking for a
vote.

New Zealand First backs the Whangarei Council
and every other local council that wishes to fight for
getting a referendum back and giving the voice back to the
local people on this matter.

And only fascists would
think that local democracy was a ‘rabbit
hole’.

Conclusion

Ever since
the formation of New Zealand First, under First Past the
Post and before the arrival of MMP, we have stood for the
sovereignty of New Zealand citizens in our own
country.

We have sought to establish an economy that
is designed to serve New Zealanders and not others.

We
have battled to build and retain wealth that is our
own. 

We have stood uniquely in modern times for
Economic Nationalism. 

We have stood to ensure
that when we generate wealth, and industrial incomes, and
improving the value of our land, and the gains of our hard
work, that its stays in our country and not first benefit
some foreign economy.

We have stood to ensure that
these benefits remain in New Zealand and help the kiwi
players in the economic arena, and not the spectators on the
international sidelines.

We didn’t welcome our
self-government to find so much of it captured by foreign
governments and foreign money.

We have always argued
for offshore investment to be on our terms.

Just like
Singapore did, or Taiwan did, or as Ireland has done, or as
Croatia today is doing.

This is a battle we ask you
again to join and to ensure that alongside your friends,
relations, and neighbours, we have a real chance of
winning.

In the months ahead, and leading into the
next election, we are asking you all to take action, to stop
being spectators and become real political players in the
arena of future change.

As Clinton said “it’s the
economy stupid”.

And New Zealand First is saying
“it’s our country stupid”.

That means we
together are going to take back control, take back our
country, and Make New Zealand First Again.

So if you
are for, plain speaking over vowel sandwiches, say
yes.

If you are for actions not words, say
yes.

If you are for performance over promises, say
yes.

If you are for common sense over blind ideology,
say yes.

The recent polls in New Zealand are as usual
confusing. But one thing even these confused pollsters
can’t deny, is that New Zealand First has come back and is
now on the rise.

Ladies and gentlemen, to quote the
famous group Starship ‘nothing is going to stop us
now’.

So, please when you leave this meeting, spread
the word to all who you meet.

In all our present
difficulties, there is real hope.

Don’t give
up.  Make a commitment, right here, right now, that
together we are going to win.

Thank you, good
afternoon, safe travels.

God bless you all. And God
bless New
Zealand.

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