New Zealand Fist leader Winston Peters is calling for New Zealand to return to managing its currency – as he says our major trading partners do.

Winston Peters.

In a speech made in Tauranga on Saturday afternoon, Winston Peters says New Zealand First will be calling for cross party talks aimed at establishing a common economic policy to boost exports after the 2011 election.

'As a country we depend on selling our produce, our services, our manufactured goods and commodities in overseas markets," says Winston.
'We do this because we make good products at reasonable prices. Our quality is good, and our quality controls ensure our exports equal or surpass those competing products.

'But something is happening to stop our sales and our manufacturing and processing industries reach their potential, and that is the price of the New Zealand dollar.

'It was deeply disturbing this week to hear both the Prime Minister and the Reserve Bank Governor say they were powerless to intervene in the crisis caused by the extremely high dollar.”

Both China and the USA are managing their economies to take advantage of trading conditions, says Winston.

It would be simple for New Zealand to simply peg its currency to a weighted average of its trading partners.

'We are not talking about some radical regime that is politically engineered,” says Winston. 'We simply work out a range of values based on continuously updated data.”

Floating the New Zealand dollar and throwing open the doors to untaxed international currency gambling is of benefit only to currency speculators and commodity traders, says Winston.

'Most of the transactions have nothing to do with trade or payments for goods and services. It is a form of gambling, with currency traders and speculators betting on currency values going up and going down.

'For them it is a win-win situation, with massive bonuses paid out to people who just stare at a computer screen each day, and never produce anything of value during their existence.”

He says another serious downside to New Zealand's overvalued currency is that it becomes cheaper to import goods instead of making them in New Zealand.

'Workers are laid off because the goods they used to manufacture – with good quality and price - are now being imported cheaply from China," says Winston.

'It is difficult for ordinary people in New Zealand to understand why even basic food products – like tinned peaches – are now manufactured in China and imported here. Take a good hard look the next time you are in a supermarket.

'We had one of the best processing industries available right here but it was closed, sold down the river by the clever people who are exporting our jobs and importing other countries social problems.

'The days of half baked theories and right wing ideologies have to pass because they simply do not work. We are very much the poorer for the nonsense that has passed as policy for the past two and a half decades.”