Winston Peters

So that's the first thing that a minister of finance can't complain about.

And the second thing is,

You can't have a giant 14,000 rise in civil servants when you can't justify it in any way, shape or form.

It's a tragedy what happened under Labour, but they just did that.

And they never got greater efficiency, never got greater service to the public.

They don't agree with me.

They don't get the fact that we're a dependent nation

And ever since 1982 when we sent the first consignment of frozen wheat, we've been a country.

As a famous writer once said, and talked about the instability of a dependent economy.

They don't get the problem.

And I find you up against a brick wall.

I'm not trying to criticise them.

I just can't understand how they can't understand.

Because a guy like Lee Cornu would know a whole lot more, I think, than they do.

Well, no, the trouble is that, you know, there's an old saying that you shouldn't waste a crisis.

But in 2023, coming to that election and straight after, there was not appreciation in large chunks of the government of just how serious a crisis was.

Otherwise, they would have never been so forced to say, look, we can fix it.

The moment you say we can fix it, you mean diminish the crisis.

And here we are, and we will take three terms to turn around properly, and you say you're going to fix it tomorrow.

And that's sad, really.