![Winston Peters [thejackalman.blogspot.com]](https://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/winston-peters-thejackalman-blogspot-com.jpg)
[thejackalman.blogspot.com]
### ODT Online Fri, 9 Aug 2013
Cuts in South ‘sick joke’, Peters says
By Dene Mackenzie
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters arrives in Dunedin today determined to talk to as many people as possible about the local and regional economy. When contacted in Wellington, Mr Peters said he was concerned about the lack of regional development throughout New Zealand, particularly in areas where significant infrastructure had been paid for long ago by the taxpayers.
“Much of this is unused. It is not being expanded to help regions grow. I’ve listened to this psycho-babble for 28 years. The last person to have a regional development plan was Jim Anderton.”
Mr Peters quoted cuts in the regions to state housing, hospital services, schools, government departments and social services. “The infrastructure is there in places like Oamaru, Dunedin, Timaru and the West Coast.” The spending of money in Christchurch and Auckland was a “vote-gathering exercise”, he said. It was a “sick joke” that so much of New Zealand’s exports came from Otago and Southland – along with other regions – but they were being neglected.
Read more
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
Don’t panic Winston. The DCC see what you see and that’s why they built a new sports stadium and bailed out the Otago Rugby Football Union – to ensure that professional rugby remains healthy and compensates for all those lost services and jobs !!!
A thought at ODT Online…
Deluded recipe
Submitted by ej kerr on Fri, 09/08/2013 – 4:17pm.
It’s usually male rugby-mad contributors who pretend Dunedin’s stadium is about real job creation, a boon to the city’s happy future – such a grand amenity it is for economic development, the golden goose. For gooses. I doubt DCC chief executive Paul Orders views it so tenderly, given his wrangles with council ledgers. Not all of them tidy cookbooks – ask PricewaterhouseCoopers who caught a mere but troubled glimpse of the gamey sauce.
### ODT Online Sat, 10 Aug 2013
Time to revolt, Peters says
By Eileen Goodwin
Southerners should draw on their Scottish heritage and ”start a political revolt” against an economic system that hurts the local economy, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters told an audience in Dunedin last night. ”When are you going to start the revolt?” he asked the more than 50 people who attended the speech, at Age Concern Otago. He blamed free market economics adhered to by ”dumb people in Wellington” for job cuts at numerous Government-owned entities in the South.
Regional New Zealand had been abandoned – the focus was Auckland, which only had a third of the country’s population. ”This is more than just a university town. Dunedin should still be considered a major economic hub.
Read more
“Winston Peters is revolting” – I’m not sure that’s news
On Channel 39. What’s in the ODT tomorrow.
Apparently, the ‘summit’ is being held tomorrow concerning the ‘Stand Up Otago’ thing on regional development. It will be held for ‘half a day’, presumably including morning tea, and a news conference will be held in the afternoon. It is a closed session to the public because of organisational difficulties.
Sorry to sound a touch cynical, but does that ‘morning workshop’ include group work with all groups brainstorming their ideas, then writing them down neatly on butchers’ paper, with a spokesman from each group reporting back to the plenary session. All followed up of course with another nice cuppa and bikkie.
Peter – the local political idiots are WAY TOO LATE, and of no consequence.
A few of us have made submission after submission to this council and the last city council… that they cannot afford to IGNORE THE BUSINESS of Otago Southland, or indeed the South Island/New Zealand, but instead let’s do cycleways, warehouse conversion, stadiums (one built, one wrecked) etc etc. Small minded pricks.
Invermay is just one of our microcosmic investments into future diversification of our rural markets, science and technology for… global food production (and many other things)…
Cull and Co ARE DEAD IN THE WATER – all they’ve got is ‘oh let’s do property speculation (because our poor local developers have run out of steam at Lakes District, they can’t compete with active overseas investors) to keep the teenytiny local building industry ‘alive’. FFS. Comes of fronting handyman shows on TV.
I realise the solutions for keeping Dunedin afloat are not easy, and there is no quick fix, but we also have ourselves to blame through ‘opportunity costs’ with daft projects like the stadium. We have to do it on our own because the votes for the main parties are elsewhere and they will just pay us lip service. They don’t have a regional policy to speak of as far as I’m aware.
As you say, Elizabeth, we are also being held back by the Tartan Mafia who have had a stranglehold over us for so long. Their ideas for development are so dated and they just copycat dull city councils elsewhere.
This ‘Stand up Otago’ campaign, after an initial feel good factor, is looking increasingly like bullshit. A one-day wonder and life will go on in Dunedin as it always has done.
[BTW. A very good letter by Jeff Dickie in today’s ODT along the same kind of lines. At least they printed it. (abridged)]
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Yes, our councillors got us into this mess, but central government is far from blameless. How long ago did people start writing to them telling them things were getting well out of hand and asking them to step in? I remember writing to the Minister for Regional Development, Rodney Hide – so that goes back a while. And then there’s the calls, pleas and desperate begging to investigative and regulatory bodies to get their sorry arses down here and stop the madness/badness.
We the people of Dunedin, in what I think are significant numbers, did what we could. The response was to let this southern city be dragged into the mire. Turning Auckland into a super city, spending time >> $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ on its roads and rail system, sheesh everything but replacing with gold-plated ones its kitchen sinks. Dunedin? Dunedin who?
D’unseen. D’unimportant.