 OK, Kam Slater, reallity check radio. Here with Winston Peters now. Winston, looks like you're back in Parliament with a team behind you. Well, I'm very grateful to the team and I'm also grateful for those voters that brought us back because we've done the impossible and that's so important in this campaign. There's a lot of people, listeners and reality check radio that are sitting on a webinar right now. Have you got a little message for them? They're probably not going to stay too long with us and we'll be broadcasting this later but have you got a message for those people on reality check radio? Well, simply that a grateful thanks goes out to them because it's impossible in this environment to actually get back to the circumstance we're in but with their help we've made it and the Parliament will have a watchdog, someone watching every day to make sure we keep the system honest. Just speaking about that watchdog role there, the numbers look a bit baked in now but of course there's special votes to come which could be a surprise for everybody. You're looking just a bit under 6% which is what 7 MPs, something like that. Do you see yourself being in government with the National Party at some point or do you think you're just going to wait and see? Well at the time of this interview it's much more clever to wait and see because a lot could happen even now and always celebrate this one thing. Whatever we're talking about you could not do an issue back in Parliament. Of that we're assured. Obviously if you were in government there's a couple of things that you've said were very important. One being of course the inquiry into the COVID debacle. Will you still be pushing for that even if Christopher Luxon doesn't give you a call and have you formed part of the government? Well you can have an inquiry by way of parliamentary questions every day. We're going to have a proper inquiry within a year, finish it off and respond to the people who have been in our view misled, maltreated and it is there to be considered in the considerations going forward. So we're going to press on with that no matter what happens tonight. This campaign everybody wrote you off and then David Seymour and the Labour Party attacked you and you're back in Parliament now. Have you got a message for either of them? Well in the big picture we're looking going forward at ensuring this country recovers its economic and social circumstances from what is a clear position of crisis in so many places and whatever they might have said that's their job but that's our job now. We're going to go out and fix these fundamental things up with our economy and our social life. I mean that's the thing isn't it? Christopher Luxon is going to now have to sit down and get an actual state of the accounts and things might be a little bit different from what they've promised. Oh I know that about it. I mean I thought that when they were talking about the pre-view that's a pre-election fiscal update on the 12th of September they hadn't seen with clarity and acuity the true state of the economy. They need to open the books tomorrow and the next week and find out the true circumstances because they look and will be much worse than we thought. Chris Hipkins has been talking it up all week that there was a surge on that they were going to come back. You stated quite clearly you wouldn't work with Chris Hipkins or the Labour Party. Are you satisfied with the result that Labour looks like they've got about 25-26%? They need to understand that when they got the election victory of 2020 it wasn't them and tonight they've found out by themselves they were a mess month after month and this is a massive loss from having more than half of Parliament last time to now having such a small number in Parliament. It's been a shocker for them and I hope the day and their supporters will have learned some lessons from it and there I say at the mainstream media and their work supporters so to speak. The mainstream media have certainly been running an agenda against New Zealand First. The National Party and the ACT Party also pretty much didn't send too many people our way certainly on my show but I found the New Zealand First candidates were willing and able to come at the drop of a hat onto the show. I look this is a long term matter here. We're looking going forward at a party that's on the rise again that they all dismissed, they all shut down and they so malevolently treated but in the end we've got to be grateful for small nurses in this context. We are on our way back big time. It'll take a little time to ensure that the system understands that. Winston Peters is always the comeback King. Have you thought about a song for you when you go down and talk to your supporters later on? No, I truly haven't. There's too many similar songs. There's a lot in folk songs and singing that's about politics and often the message is more with greater clarity in singing than there is in actually speech making and if you've seen the last four months of sausage rolls and ice cream, people are going to find out very shortly what that means. Chris Hipkins is going to have to buy his own sausage rolls from now on. Look, we always knew that he was going to be a problem that he wasn't up to it but then as it turns out nor was his predecessor. No, anyway Winston you're back in Parliament and you can be very pleased with that result. We've got to wait for the specials of course and that's always your refrain isn't it after every election? Well, you know, people have all sorts of thoughts and be cheering from the rafters but the big picture going forward is as it always was going to be, how good will our country be as a result of tonight's election and what have we think? We've got to make sure we get a far better outcome than we were living through. And that's the key thing. You can make promises all you like during an election campaign but now the rubber hits the road and you've got to look into all of the accounts and see where we're at. I have a suspicion that Grant Robertson has left the cupboard literally bare and there's no reason of debt that we're going to take a generation to pay off. Look, I don't think the commentary and even the economists quite got what happened here. If you go from the preview, that's the update just before the 2020 election to where we would be in 2023 and going forward there's a massive change there. I don't actually read what was going on. They were just too close to it and not looking, stepping back forward and examining it. For example, had a budget of $19 billion more than we did in these four predictions. That's a colossal amount of money. And there's a good chance that Grant Robertson might actually be out of Parliament if Labour doesn't get any list MPs. Is that a good thing? Look, the fact is he tried and he found out that in the end. Pollux is not about the Beltway. It's not about the experts. It's not about a group of university-trained people. Most of them have never done any business in their life. It is about the people and tonight the people have spoken. And I hope they understand that. Better still going forward, they learned some dramatic lessons from it. Whether you're in government or without government your comments are that there's going to be a watchdog someone that's going to hold the government to account or keep control of what's going on. This does though give New Zealand first a good footprint to go into the next election, doesn't it? Well, it's always about rebuilding and going forward. It's only a three-year term, so to speak. But our job is to make sure that those people, that the people voted for us for a certain purpose get us to fulfil that purpose. And that's keeping an eye on things, making sure the public hear the facts and not be drilled down on hype and spin that we actually go forward with our eyes wide open right here and right now. That's our purpose, and we are very, very good at it. That's what our history has been. To say things and do things, to raise a roof where nobody else would raise a finger. We're going to go forward doing that. Well, Wilson, congratulations on getting back into Parliament and I'll leave you now to organise the rest of your evening and watch the rest of the numbers roll in. Thank you very much. Thanks for the time on your show all this time because in the prison climate having independence of messaging, so to speak, is important. It's the essence of the fourth estate in a democracy and we were losing it. Well, that's what reality check radio is all about. It's about giving voice to every political party and every candidate that's out there. You know, we've done over 200 interviews in the election campaign. A fair few of them with New Zealand first, but that's because they always said yes. And that's our mission. Our mission is to challenge the mainstream media and to get the truth out there and you'll welcome any time on my show. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.