Peters’ greatest hits

Lloyd Burr at Newshub rounded up 23 of Peters’ most quotable attacks on the Nats and their failed government:

1. “I’m telling you why NZ First is packing the halls around this country – cos they’ve had a guts full of you. They’ve had enough! They want a change! And they are going to get one, and no amount of character assassination is going to stop us on this great purpose” – July 26, 2017.

2. “This Prime Minister is complicit in a cover-up, why does he not resign?” – questioning Bill English over Todd Barclay Scandal, June 21, 2017.

3. “That sort of insult really requires an apology, particularly from some illiterate woodwork teacher.” – talking about Gerry Brownlee, March 1, 2012.

4. “There is nothing national about the National Party. It is a globalist party. What a bunch of clowns in a diplomatic china shop. It is one disaster after another” – February 7, 2017.

5. “I will make this prediction right now: Bill English will never, ever deliver a surplus. He will never, ever deliver an honest surplus. He is running out of words. His tenure of claiming competence in an ocean of failure will soon come to an end” – responding to Bill English’s Budget, May 21, 2015.

6. “What we had today was a wilful, wanton, weak, wobbly, woeful Minister with a wilful, wanton, weak, wobbly and woeful Budget, and National is going to lose the next election, big time.” – talking about Steven Joyce, May 25, 2017.

7. “This is typical of every Bill English Budget – it is just spin. It is a package of suggestions designed to create the illusion that some serious thinking went into the Budget” – Budget speech, May 26, 2016.

8. “The National Party is cracking behind the scenes. The real character and sordid nature of the modern National Party [is] cronyism, sleaze, corruption, all sorts of secret funding” – May 6, 2014.

9. “National is a Government of non-achievers with a woeful record of failure” – January 28, 2014.

10. “They are just trying to hang on for 3 more years so that Gerry does not have to do any work and so that some of them do not have to go back to their tawdry, hopeless, former lives, where they never had a real job in the first place.” – Budget speech, May 25, 2017.

11. “Why do you not do the world a favour and resign?” – to Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse, August 8, 2017.

12. “He is running out of credibility. He ran out of credibility a long time ago. Bluster will not cut it any longer. Bluster and bumpf will not cut it, Mr Brownlee. What we want here is substance. What we want here is analysis” – responding to Gerry Brownlee, Oct 21, 2014.

13. “In this National Budget cronies get cake; Kiwis get crumbs. This is an exclusive, members-only Budget of the ‘National club’. There is little for the ordinary people,” – Budget speech May 15, 2014.

14. “National is a Government for the people, the people of China, India, anywhere but New Zealand” – January 28, 2014.

15. “National has forgotten what it stands for. That party used to be called the National Party, with a capital “N”; now it is the “International Party”: the puppets of every other society and every other people but ours” – Budget speech, May 25, 2017.

16. “Get off your backside and do something, for the first time. Do not sit there on your highly overpaid income, on your highly over-enhanced life, charisma-free as you are, and claim that you are doing something. “Rubbish” is the right word. It is rubbish. Will you fix it, Minister, rather than taking that essentially arrogant view so smugly portrayed by the National Party today?” – referring to Police Minister Michael Woodhouse, May 21, 2015.

17. “The new National Party – no principles, power at any price, power for power’s sake. But when it comes to the substance of the quality of the democracy those members live in, they do not give a damn” – October 21, 2014.

18. “The person shouting out here is a man called Gerry Brownlee. If you are down in Christchurch, you will know who he is, because down there they call him “Mr Useless”, “Mr Do Nothing”, “Mr Slow as You Go”and National made him a foreign Minister. The most amazing thing about that is he does not even know where Canada is” – May 25, 2017.

19. “National turned up last night down there, and it chose a new candidate. Guess who they chose? A 32-year-old banker. That is just what the people of Otago-Southland need – a banker. A banker. They would not know one end of the cow from the other. They would not know one end of the bull from the other, either.” – talking about Hamish Walker, National’s replacement for Todd Barclay in Clutha-Southland, August 17, 2017.

20. “When I write a book, it will be a best seller. If you are kind to me, I will leave out the part about you, which will double its publication” – responding to Bill English on October 16, 2013.

21. “National has failed to get the country’s finances in order, and all the boring, tedious, worn-out, over-used platitudes and excuses will no longer wash” – responding to Bill English’s Budget, May 21, 2015.

22. “Melissa Lee, is No. 34 – hello Pyongyang. No more National Party now. Then you have got Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. Is there another corner dairy available? He will be on his way. There is no way he can last; not with a Budget like that. Then you have got Jian Yang. I hope there is a Chinese restaurant in Dominion Road still not taken up yet” – May 24, 2012.

23. “The National Party members should be ashamed of themselves. Just because they get about $200,000 a year and most of them have got four homes somewhere around the country, some have got 10, they do not want to change anything, because they are on the pig’s back, and everybody else is getting what is under the pig’s tail” – May 21, 2015.

Solid work by Burr – that’s what happens when political reporters get bored. 22 doesn’t do Peters any favours does it.

Add these to the collection of issues that Peters will have to disown if he goes wrong and picks Right, ‘Trying to con the public’: What Winston Peters really thinks of National.