The following is based on a great speech by Leeann, a manawhenua of Tāmaki Makaurau and a leader of the Palestine Solidarity Network in Auckland at the weekly pro-Palestine protests in Auckland on April 4, 2026
Mike Treen GPJA Editor

Leeann Wahanui-Peters speaking to the massive September 13, 2025, protest

By Leeann Wahanui-Peters

E hoa ma(friends) and comrades and our sovereign Iranian whānau, nau mai haere mai.
We gather today to talk about a choice. A choice between the security of our whānau AND the lies and profits of war mongers and their masters in Wall St, the City of London and the shadow bankers of Black Rock & Co. A choice between a home, a warm home and weapons. A choice between a future of justice, peace and prosperity for all and a past of war and exploitation for the few. For decades, we have been told that the world is dangerous and that the only way to be safe is to spend more on the military. This is a lie!. The greatest threat to the safety of a child in Aotearoa is not a missile from a distant land. It is the coldness of a house their parents can’t afford to heat or living in a car. It is the hunger in their stomach because their school lunch has been cut. It is the despair of a future with no jobs and no hope. And yet, this coalition regime, chooses to be fiscally irresponsible and choose military assets over what in the best interests of our people.

Let’s look at the facts. On the 7th of April 2025, this government proudly unveiled a $12 billion Defence Capability Plan. $9 billion of that was “new” money. Money that did not exist for housing, for healthcare, for education. They promised to lift military spending to over 2% of our GDP, a level not seen since the early 1990s. Why? Because the Oranga Pedo, Five Eyes, Senior Military figures here told them too. Basically, to prepare for a conflict the sellers of those weapons are actively stoking. Just months later, in December, this coalition regime found another $15 million to send to a NATO-led initiative to supply weapons to Ukraine. They wrapped it in the language of solidarity. And solidarity is important. But where is the solidarity for our own people? Where is the solidarity with the Palestinian and Iranian, Lebanese, Yemen, Iraqi people, whose children are being bombed with weapons from nations we call allies? Bombed with biblical cruelty, children’s schools, children’s hospitals.

Our government refuses to even recognise a Palestinian state but finds millions to fund war in Europe. Now, this is not an accident. It is a political philosophy. While they spend billions on weapons, they: Cut free school lunches to the point of being inedible.- Slashed funding for public health, leaving hospitals short of nurses.

• Gave landlords a $2.9 billion tax break while introducing no-cause evictions for renters together with the tobacco industry.
• Dismantled PAY equity claims of women workers
• Cut funding for disabled New Zealanders and their carers.
• Weaponised the state against the most vulnerable—our children, our disabled, our workers, our Māori and Pasifika whānau—while handing billions to the military-industrial complex. This is the definition of immorality. But this immorality doesn’t stop at the defence budget. It runs right through their economic policy—or rather, their refusal to have one that serves working people.

Let’s talk about the basics: kai/food. Aotearoa New Zealand is marketed to the world as a food basket. We produce enough dairy to feed millions. Yet our own families are being priced out of the supermarket aisle. Fonterra, our supposedly farmer-owned co-operative, charges exorbitant prices for butter and milk right here at home. Meanwhile, the supermarket duopoly—Foodstuffs and Woolworths—locks in those high prices and then adds to their own fat margins.

The result? Working families are paying some of the highest food prices in the OECD. Inflation, we’re told, is easing. But for the working poor, the single mum, the kaumātua on a fixed income, the price of a block of butter or a bottle of milk is expensive. Inflation doesn’t affect the wealthy. It doesn’t affect the corporates who are reporting record profits. But it devastates the rest of us.

Now here’s the kicker: it’s going to get worse. The same economists warning us about military overspending, like Dr. Bryce Edwards, are also warning about fertiliser shortages and energy insecurity. Farmers rely on imported fertiliser. With global supply chains under strain and sanctions disrupting trade due to this illegal war of aggression, the cost of production will spike. Fonterra will pass that straight through to the farmgate price and the supermarkets will pass it straight through to our dinner tables.

But it’s not just what they’re “not” doing. It’s what they “are” actively promoting. Because while they cut welfare for our people, build less affordable homes, try to move on our homeless from our streets, they are busy subsidising and promoting New Zealand companies that are directly profiting from wars and genocide. Take Rocket Lab a US asset. Take Rakon. These are NZ based companies building rockets to launch US satellites, payloads and whose components end up in guided weapons systems, in drones, in the very munitions being used to bomb Gaza.

And what did our government do? Did it launch an investigation? Did it condemn the use of Kiwi-made components in war crimes? No! Instead, it celebrated these companies as success stories. It gave them tax breaks. It built a road in Mahia. It promoted them to overseas investors. It looks the other way while their technology may have helped power the bombs falling on refugee camps, on hospitals, on schools. PSNA did not look the other way, last July it filed a referral to the ICC against Luxon, Peters, Seymour, Collins & CEOs Peter Beck and Sinan Alturg. SHAME!

This is the same government that tells us it stands for human rights. But when it comes to Palestine, its actions scream complicity. And it’s not just Palestine. The same components, the same expertise are feeding into the US-Israel criminal military machine in Iran. SHAME!

So, let’s be clear: every dollar of public money that flows to these companies—through subsidies, through procurement, through the government’s own defence spending—is a dollar that could have gone to a warm home for a homeless family. It is a dollar that could have paid a nurse’s wage. It is a dollar that could have restored the school lunch programme or funded a mental health crisis team.That dollar becomes the fuel for a global war machine that profits the few while destroying the lives of the many. The economists are sounding the alarm. Dr. Bryce Edwards warns us that this government is presiding over a “managed decline.” He points to the energy crisis, the housing crisis, the rising unemployment.

As we know this coalition regime went hard to tie us to fossil fuels like the US. Today, the illegal Israel/US war fuel crisis has exacerbated our cost-of-living crisis in Aotearoa. The blame lies with Israel and the USA?

It is time for a new direction. It is time for a truly independent foreign policy. A foreign policy that gets Aotearoa out of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance. A foreign policy that strengthens our relationships with China, our number one trading partner and with the nations of the Global South who are forging a new, more just world order. A foreign policy that aligns with the United Nations Charter, not with the whims of a declining empire. A foreign policy not aligned to a weaponised financial system, a weaponised oil petro-dollar system and market manipulation by the Epstein Fury regime.

Let us be clear-eyed. The world is changing. A new financial and political order is emerging. A hope for a fairer multi-nodal world without wars. We have a choice. We can be dragged into the conflicts of the old world of reliance on fossil fuels, being slaves to the one percent predatory class or we can pivot to the promise of a new one. A world where our resources are used to build peace, prosperity and dignity for every single person in this beautiful country. A world where we don’t drain our resources and we leave this place better than we found it—not in ashes. The fight for Palestine, for freedom, for justice and the fight for a better Aotearoa are one and the same. It is the fight against the Imperial war machine that profits from our suffering no matter where we are. West Asia & its people should determine their own affairs, not foreign invaders. The Orange pedo has incentivised its allies to diplomatically negotiate with Iran. Demand our coalition regime lift the damn sanctions against Iran to get our cargo released in the strait and kick out the US and Israel ambassadors to get us to the top of the list.

Our election is on Saturday 7th of November. The choice before us is stark. We can continue down this path of managed decline, of welfare cuts and warfare spending. Or we can choose a different future. We must do more than vote them out. Demand a foreign policy that is truly independent and values our own people. Demand an economy that is based on welfare, not warfare. And we must demand accountability for those who profit from death and those in government who remain silent during a genocide and an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation. We must hold accountable supermarket chains, Fonterra, electricity gentailers (Contact Energy, Genesis Energy, Mercury Energy and Meridian Energy) price gouging our families. Demand the govt grow some balls and get the rich to pay their fair share of taxes too. And let us build the Aotearoa we know is possible—one of investment in welfare, of better public service, of justice, freedom and liberation for all. Aio ki te Aorangi (peace to the universe!)