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Kavinda Herath / Things
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters announced more support for the prisoners while in Gore on Tuesday.
NZ First leader Winston Peters has vowed to help more prisoners re-enter society as his campaign bus traveled through Southland.
Providing more training and support to increase skills and experience would allow inmates to participate in society, he told reporters in Gore.
When asked why this was being advertised as a policy when prisoner support programs were already underway, he said a new program had been launched on Monday.
HAMISH MCNEILLY / THINGS
Winston Peters’s election campaign at the University of Otago included showing off his table tennis prowess.
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“KiwiRail has launched its ‘Second-Steppers’ program with government funding, reintegrating the prisoners into the Northland community,” he said.
Peters said that about 3,000 had already been trained through the Howard League’s Prison Driver Program, adult literacy classes and the Greyhound Great Mates Prison Program; which was “perhaps the biggest news this country has ever heard.”
These programs had been in the background for a while, but “here we are in the final weeks of the campaign, listening to each other for the first time,” he said.
Peters objected to questions about whether he would join National in negotiations with Rio Tinto and Transpower to secure the future of the Tiwai aluminum smelter, which is due to close next year.
He plans to be at the smelter near Bluff on Wednesday to speak with workers.
Peters came to Invercargill in July for a public meeting to “Save Tiwai.” At the time, he said, if his party was in government after the elections, it would commit to a 20-year agreement with Rio Tinto with a 10-year review.
While in the south on Tuesday, the field bus also stopped at the site of a former paper mill in Mataura.
Kavinda Herath / Things
First NZ candidate Mark Patterson (left) with party leader Winston Peters and first NZ MP Darroch Ball in Gore.
The old mill has stored a premix of ouvea, which can release ammonia gas if it gets wet. Residents have publicly told the Gore District Council and Rio Tinto that they want him removed from the city.
Peters was greeted by a group of about 25 people at the mill, where he promised that the premix would be gone by Christmas, if they voted for him.
Winston McCone, a Mataura resident, said Peters was the only politician who had led the Mataura community on the premix issue, but Pastor Newton Wills was not impressed.
“The fundamental thing is that he [Peters] he loves vows more than the people of Mataura, whose lives are in danger. That’s all I heard, ”Wills said.
