Winston Peters

And I think I put it down to political inexperience, really.

I've seen other governments realize how things are bad, and they have turned them around because the public has been on their side.

And the first thing we should have done was not have those tax cuts and other things we gave out because you need to tell the New Zealand people, look, I'm sorry, we're going to defer those because things are far worse than we thought.

Now, don't be surprised about that.

I can remember an election where the man called Cagle got up with his budget.

He said it was an $89 million surplus.

It was a $3.2 billion deficit.

And that's what we were facing.

And so we haven't got our story right because we'd prefer to tell a different story and not get the truth out there at the right time.

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How many job losses are you expecting there might be at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade?

Where are they going to make the cuts?

Is it going to be biosecurity?

Is it going to be customs at the border?

Is it going to be keeping people safe online?

We don't know.

This is all just very vague.

We're going to reshape it and repurpose it for the trades and a whole lot of industries where we do need it and we're going to get a far better payback for our money and we'll pay a far less money doing it.

I've seen horses ripped apart beyond being saved in wire mesh where they've been caught in panicking from fireworks.