MOBILISE THE ELDERLY
Winston’s plan for Covid recovery
Ask Winston Peters a question, and he throws it right back at you.
Even the simple queries – how do you think it’s going – are fraught with hidden meanings in Peters’ eternally suspicious mind.
‘‘How’s what going?’’ he fires back.
The campaign?
‘‘The campaign? It’s seriously under the radar and it’s going great,’’ he declares.
He’s been at his desk grabbing a hurried lunch when his adviser lets him know I’m there.
This will be the reality of Peters’ life over the coming weeks; eating on the run, cold halls, street-corner gatherings and small-town motels.
The NZ First leader still campaigns the old-fashioned way, travelling from town to town by bus, and keeping up a punishing schedule of stops along the way.
Yesterday, the first day of the campaign, he was due to board the NZ First bus for a meeting in Pukekohe, then it was off to Hamilton for another meeting, before ending the day in New Plymouth.
It’s a schedule few of his younger opponents could maintain for the six-week duration of the campaign; at 75, Peters would be forgiven for wanting a quieter life.
But it’s the opposite in fact, he says. He ‘‘hated’’ life in lockdown and the enforced slowdown, all those Zoom meetings waiting for people to get a connection.
Why all the talk of retirement anyway, when around the world 75 is the age when many politicians are only just hitting their straps?
‘‘This ageism has to stop.’’ Apart from anything else, says Peters, there’s too much at stake this election.
‘‘The job I’m doing is public service. I’ve always believed there’s no profession I know that can do so much damage to people, or one that can do so much good to people at the same time. And it can be done with enormous speed.
‘‘Every election is said to be the most important election but this one is because of the circumstances.
‘‘What’s at stake is a Government that makes the wrong decisions and slides into decline because we’ll never turn it around fast. The level of debt is so high.’’
Peters has been an instantly recognisable constant in New Zealand politics for decades. When he stands to speak in Parliament, the public galleries collectively lean in as visitors try to catch a glimpse of him. He’s even famous enough to send a ripple of excitement through a group of bored schoolchildren.
But the polls – and history – suggest he and NZ First are dog tucker at this election, teetering around 2 per cent support.
Peters’ gamble in backing Labour in 2017 has been almost too successful; it’s not out of the question that Labour will get enough votes to govern alone after the election.
That renders redundant NZ First’s most potent message, that Peters is a necessary counterweight to the more extreme leftwingers in Labour’s camp.
But he has been written off too many times before to throw in the towel yet. Trump-like, he is confident of an underbelly of support that the traditional pollsters can’t reach.
He points to meetings like the recent one at Tiwai Point, where ‘‘hundreds’’ turned out. Unlike the US president, with his inflated crowd numbers, Peters has got proof: he insists one of his staff digs out a photograph and, true to his claim, it shows a hall overflowing with angry Southlanders.
But Peters’ ability to draw a crowd has never been in doubt anyway.
‘‘I know what our polling is now; we’re teetering on five and already past it before we even get that bus going on Saturday.’’
But Peters can also pull out his secret weapon; the grey vote, Winston’s army, which owes him loyalty as a scrapper for the universal pension.
It’s thanks to Peters that the issue has largely been taken off the table as a political football. National and Labour have both been burned by their attempts to tinker with it; it’s what’s given Peters oxygen for so many years.
And now, more than ever, is when older New Zealanders need that certainty, Peters says.
Despite the spectre of a mountain of debt for generations to come as the price of keeping the economy afloat through Covid, he sees no need to make cuts – but his opponents may not see things that way, he warns.
‘‘The reality is the most likely thing to happen if we’re not there is for people to resile from their commitments and start on the old and young, as they always have.’’
This election may be where the grey army is asked to return the favour, however; with employers screaming out for the borders to open to allow in skilled labour, Peters is asking retirees to step up instead.
They have the skills and years of experience to mentor and train younger New Zealanders to fill those gaps, Peters says.
He believes many of them are ready and willing to do it for free if the Government just asks them.
‘‘We’re going to have to enlist the voluntary support, with a minimum of remuneration, of thousands or even tens of thousands of older people. And I can see them all waiting, an army ready to go, because we’ve asked them to – ready to re-engage back in the workforce in critical jobs that have previously been filled from people from overseas.
‘‘There are retired truck drivers sitting there; if I said ‘can you give us six months?’, of course they’d be ready to start tomorrow. They’re all there and nobody’s asking them.
‘‘My response to people talking about baby boomers… is you don’t realise the resource you’ve got. And more importantly, if the job starts at 9am, they’ll be there at quarter to nine.’’
They could help by teaching young people to drive heavy vehicles, or specialist vehicles on the farm, for instance.
‘‘I know old people who were driving those things when they were 10. I was. Driving tractors, baling hay, and doing all that when I was 10.’’
‘‘If I said ‘can you give us six months?’, of course they’d be ready to start tomorrow. They’re all there and nobody’s asking them.’’ Winston Peters