Peters backs ‘made in NZ’ recovery
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters wants to bring more manufacturing back to New Zealand as the country rebuilds its economy.
Peters delivered a strong rebuke to decades of New Zealand trade policy, warning of the ‘‘pitfalls of globalism’’.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB yesterday, Peters said that ‘‘it makes sense to take the New Zealand option,’’ meaning manufacturing products domestically, if it could be made for within 15 per cent of the international price.
Peters took aim at global trade and globalisation in his first speech to Parliament after it resumed following the level four lockdown.
‘‘The pitfalls of globalism have been laid out dramatically before us.’’
He said jobs in the recovery should be filled by New Zealanders. ‘‘If the job can be filled by a New Zealander, then that job should be filled by a New Zealander trained, skilled, and paid properly to do it’’.
He also said the benefits of foreign investment should be balanced against the pitfalls of foreign ownership.
‘‘We need to put up the shutters to more offshore ownership of this country’s economy and go back to owning as much of it as we possibly can,’’ Peters said. ‘‘If there is to be an overseas investment, which is a good thing, it must be in terms of the New Zealand economy’s needs, the New Zealand people’s interests, and building resilience by means of our - not foreign- ownership.’’
Peters has long been a critic of unfettered globalisation and the turn towards free market economic policies in the 1980s.
He told Parliament that New Zealand has always been a trading and exporting nation.
‘‘We’re going to go back, dare I say it, to make New Zealand the great country it has been in the past, not because we have some nostalgic dream, but because in past times our country got it right,’’ Peters said.