The Privileges Committee wasn’t a jury of my peers. For the most part it was just a bunch of politicians with partisan prejudices, who voted along party lines. Some members of the committee were decent enough to go in there with open minds and judge the information as they saw it, but the majority weren’t.

At the end of the day, what the committee did was set up new rules for themselves from here on and then backdated the rules to apply to me in 2005 - conventiently leaving out Nick Smith on the way. There was no fraud. I did not personally benefit from doing so. Not one cent.

But its time to move on from that debate.

Our enemies have tried to bring us down, but we’re still standing. And we’ll still be standing on November 8th. The only court we care about is the court of public opinion. We are happy for that court to judge us because we have faith in the people of New Zealand.

This election should be about delivering policies that will keep New Zealand among first world countries, with a strong education system, healthy citizens and opportunities for prosperity and happiness. The sort of New Zealand we grew up with, but are losing sight of. Economic policy is fundamental in delivering that sort of outcome and on TV One’s Agenda show on Sunday, I outlined NZ First’s track record on the economy. If you missed it, the transcript is available here: http://www.agendatv.co.nz/ 

Global economic fundamentals are very fragile at the moment. International money-men were left to run rampant through economies, pillaging and plundering as they went, without regard for the welfare of citizenry. The result is many economies are now teetering on the brink of major recession – including the world’s largest, the United States. New Zealand is not immune. It is at risk from events that happen on the global stage and has now been in recession for two consecutive quarters.

NZ First is advocating policies we believe would help reduce the risk from such situations. We want lower taxes for our workers, lower GST and more security for those saving and investing. We also want lower taxes for those firms exporting. New Zealand must export more. It is the main driver of our economic growth. For too long monetary policy has stifled our ability to export in good times and bad. That must also be changed.

We’ll be releasing our full economic policy shortly. Suffice to say, it is about creating wealth and prosperity for New Zealanders. It is about investing in our future. We are on a precipice – do we want to become just another component of a global machine, to be used and abused by money-men and foreign interests, or do we want to reclaim our economic destiny for ourselves? This is our New Zealand, not theirs!

As the election date approaches, I’m reminded of a quote from that great chronicler of social issues, Charles Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Economy, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.