September 9, 2026 • 8 mins
The NZ First leader and former Deputy PM comments on two big issues facing farming: the Paris Accord and the pricing of agricultural emissions. He also denies that his proposed nationalisation of BNZ is a “hair-brained” policy and reflects on 9/11, 25 years on.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Always 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 farmer vote. 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
(00:22):
all those?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, the rural community's split because the very party they've
been supporting all these years were the ones... They went
off to Paris, both the National Party and ACT was
there at the time, and signed up to an agreement
which had these features. It's going to require us to
pay an enormous amount of money offshore 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
(00:46):
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 Parliament is in such a conundrum at this
point in time when they should not be.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Well, 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 in some of the more niche European markets.
They don't want a bar of it. They're looking for
an excuse to go elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, look, I'm just sick and tired of hearing, in
many cases, inexperience and lack of detail. They said the
same thing about the Indian 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 dairying for a start. But the
reality is that scaremongering is what they chiefly use as
a means of getting past their own incapacity to do
(01:42):
the job that they should be doing. Look, 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 plain as daylight, and many other countries are starting
to understand that. And the longest-serving Labour Prime Minister of
the UK, Tony Blair, came out recently and said exactly
(02:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
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 U-turn from the days of He Waka Ekanawa.
And I think David Parker will be rolling in his
political grave at the thought of all this.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
All right, so Labour came out and said that. So
what did they mean by that? Because If they're going
to stand up 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 are they
going to handle the situation where up to $ 22 billion
will be required to leave our economy to appraise ourselves
(02:58):
or get past our failures and go to some other economy?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, but the Prime Minister said on this show yesterday,
not a cent will go offshore.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Oh, excuse me. I mean, look, where does it speak?
I've got a 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've entered into. No, I'm sorry. That is not the case.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
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 Pack and Soviet, as they're calling it, supermarket,
It 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 harebrained policies that will never have
(03:46):
a chance of getting across the line?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, obviously, you were born yesterday. I was, and I
was born decades ago when we went out of the
country under two former great parties, Labour when they were
great and National when they were great, and started our
own bank called the BNZ to take on foreign competition,
to drive down unfair costs. It's exactly what's going on now.
So we started the BNZ. And when the Labour Party
(04:10):
sold one third of it, the National Party sold the
second two thirds off in October 1992. Six out of
10 banking clients in New Zealand belong to the BNZ.
That's the kind of treachery and traitorous behavior these politicians
are guilty of. And you're saying it's some extraordinary idea
to get back our own bank. Now, the second thing is,
the guy Stubbs from Simplicity recently, six years ago, said
(04:32):
this as well. We should be merging Kiwi Bank with BNZ.
And he put out the whole statement the way New
Zealand First did. And did anybody shout communism then? Did
anybody shout nationalisation then?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
No.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
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 of Banks in Australia earn far
more in a smaller market per capita than they do
in the biggest market of Australia? And the answer is
we're being ripped off and people like you and the
National Party are letting that happen.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Oh, it's all my fault. Hey, public meetings. Chippy got
100 or 100.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Well, it is your fault if you give a claim
to that sort of nonsense.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I'm duly scolded. Public meetings. Chippy got 100 or 150,
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.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well, that's not a meeting. I mean, this guy wants
to be the next prime minister. This guy's the next
prime minister. Oh, he's standing up after the COVID disgrace
has been on me. But that's why it's only getting
up to 100 or so long to these 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 this campaign.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
How many do you get at your meetings?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, we get hundreds and hundreds of people. We pack
the halls. I mean, our team knows there should never
be a spare seat at 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 scores of meetings around
the country. We've got a huge meeting coming up this Sunday,
(06:06):
for example, as well.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Does anyone under 60 turn up?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
See, that's a kind of snide remark.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
No, it's just social commentary. Hey, I look at your meetings, Winston,
and it's a sea of grey.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Oh, look, at our convention, we had 30 tables of
young people's. That's how many people turn up who are
young on our site. The whole sea change is happening. But,
of course, you keep on wanting to repeat the same
old dismissive comments. Well, let me tell you this. I've
got news for you, some sceptical people, and it's all bad.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Can I just finish on 9-11? It'll be our time Saturday.
Trump is telling terrible porkies 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?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
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 the news
was all about, and then Ron called up to say, look,
it's got these sort of details and features about it.
It looks like a terrorist attack, and sure enough, it was.
It was so unbelievable, isn't it? could actually happen. And
that's a long, long time ago, but I can recall
(07:24):
what I was... It's early in the morning we found
this out. Shocking, actually, when I think about it.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
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?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Of that nature, yeah. There's been other dramatic things as well,
you know, very sad cases where we've overlooked the fact
of it all, but In terms of Western society, yeah,
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 have these features. There'll be costs
(08:02):
for terrorism detection, which will be massively passed on to
everybody that's traveling, everybody that's moving in every sense of
transport internationally. And it has had a huge cost with
no productivity as a result. We don't really understand how
damaging it's been.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yes, airports have never been the same since. Osama bin
Laden has a lot to answer for. Winston Peters, thanks
for some of your time today on The Country as
we count down less than two months to go to
the election.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Thank you very much. And don't forget to tell your
farming community to hang on to health science way.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
See you later.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Bye bye.
Always 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 farmer vote. 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
(00:22):
all those?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, the rural community's split because the very party they've
been supporting all these years were the ones... They went
off to Paris, both the National Party and ACT was
there at the time, and signed up to an agreement
which had these features. It's going to require us to
pay an enormous amount of money offshore 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
(00:46):
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 Parliament is in such a conundrum at this
point in time when they should not be.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Well, 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 in some of the more niche European markets.
They don't want a bar of it. They're looking for
an excuse to go elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, look, I'm just sick and tired of hearing, in
many cases, inexperience and lack of detail. They said the
same thing about the Indian 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 dairying for a start. But the
reality is that scaremongering is what they chiefly use as
a means of getting past their own incapacity to do
(01:42):
the job that they should be doing. Look, 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 plain as daylight, and many other countries are starting
to understand that. And the longest-serving Labour Prime Minister of
the UK, Tony Blair, came out recently and said exactly
(02:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
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 U-turn from the days of He Waka Ekanawa.
And I think David Parker will be rolling in his
political grave at the thought of all this.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
All right, so Labour came out and said that. So
what did they mean by that? Because If they're going
to stand up 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 are they
going to handle the situation where up to $ 22 billion
will be required to leave our economy to appraise ourselves
(02:58):
or get past our failures and go to some other economy?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, but the Prime Minister said on this show yesterday,
not a cent will go offshore.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Oh, excuse me. I mean, look, where does it speak?
I've got a 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've entered into. No, I'm sorry. That is not the case.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
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 Pack and Soviet, as they're calling it, supermarket,
It 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 harebrained policies that will never have
(03:46):
a chance of getting across the line?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, obviously, you were born yesterday. I was, and I
was born decades ago when we went out of the
country under two former great parties, Labour when they were
great and National when they were great, and started our
own bank called the BNZ to take on foreign competition,
to drive down unfair costs. It's exactly what's going on now.
So we started the BNZ. And when the Labour Party
(04:10):
sold one third of it, the National Party sold the
second two thirds off in October 1992. Six out of
10 banking clients in New Zealand belong to the BNZ.
That's the kind of treachery and traitorous behavior these politicians
are guilty of. And you're saying it's some extraordinary idea
to get back our own bank. Now, the second thing is,
the guy Stubbs from Simplicity recently, six years ago, said
(04:32):
this as well. We should be merging Kiwi Bank with BNZ.
And he put out the whole statement the way New
Zealand First did. And did anybody shout communism then? Did
anybody shout nationalisation then?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
No.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
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 of Banks in Australia earn far
more in a smaller market per capita than they do
in the biggest market of Australia? And the answer is
we're being ripped off and people like you and the
National Party are letting that happen.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Oh, it's all my fault. Hey, public meetings. Chippy got
100 or 100.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Well, it is your fault if you give a claim
to that sort of nonsense.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I'm duly scolded. Public meetings. Chippy got 100 or 150,
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.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well, that's not a meeting. I mean, this guy wants
to be the next prime minister. This guy's the next
prime minister. Oh, he's standing up after the COVID disgrace
has been on me. But that's why it's only getting
up to 100 or so long to these 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 this campaign.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
How many do you get at your meetings?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Well, we get hundreds and hundreds of people. We pack
the halls. I mean, our team knows there should never
be a spare seat at 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 scores of meetings around
the country. We've got a huge meeting coming up this Sunday,
(06:06):
for example, as well.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Does anyone under 60 turn up?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
See, that's a kind of snide remark.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
No, it's just social commentary. Hey, I look at your meetings, Winston,
and it's a sea of grey.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Oh, look, at our convention, we had 30 tables of
young people's. That's how many people turn up who are
young on our site. The whole sea change is happening. But,
of course, you keep on wanting to repeat the same
old dismissive comments. Well, let me tell you this. I've
got news for you, some sceptical people, and it's all bad.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Can I just finish on 9-11? It'll be our time Saturday.
Trump is telling terrible porkies 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?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
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 the news
was all about, and then Ron called up to say, look,
it's got these sort of details and features about it.
It looks like a terrorist attack, and sure enough, it was.
It was so unbelievable, isn't it? could actually happen. And
that's a long, long time ago, but I can recall
(07:24):
what I was... It's early in the morning we found
this out. Shocking, actually, when I think about it.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
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?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Of that nature, yeah. There's been other dramatic things as well,
you know, very sad cases where we've overlooked the fact
of it all, but In terms of Western society, yeah,
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 have these features. There'll be costs
(08:02):
for terrorism detection, which will be massively passed on to
everybody that's traveling, everybody that's moving in every sense of
transport internationally. And it has had a huge cost with
no productivity as a result. We don't really understand how
damaging it's been.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yes, airports have never been the same since. Osama bin
Laden has a lot to answer for. Winston Peters, thanks
for some of your time today on The Country as
we count down less than two months to go to
the election.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Thank you very much. And don't forget to tell your
farming community to hang on to health science way.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
See you later.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Bye bye.
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