Winston Peters says his party is performing far better than published polls suggest, telling delegates at the party’s 33rd convention, held at the Due Drops Events Centre in Manukau, the weekend is about rebuilding both the party and the country.

“We’re doing better in the polls than you think,” he said. “What you got there is not what’s going on in the country. Out there in the real New Zealand, the people who stop you on the streets, who want to talk to you, are becoming part of this movement, because they realise it’s now or never to turn this country around.”

Peters said the convention would focus on the economy, power prices and grocery bills troubling many households, arguing the answer was to lift the incomes of New Zealanders.

He reserved some of his sharpest criticism for Labour’s proposed future fund, which he said was announced months ago with just $200 million attached and no detail.

“Did anybody in the meeting think to themselves, these guys got the decimal point in the wrong place? That is not a future fund at all,” he said, adding it was “ridiculous” the media had not condemned the policy.

The politician also renewed his attack on the free trade agreement with India, citing official forecasts that it would grow GDP by a tenth of one percent by 2050.

“How can the India Free Trade Agreement be so marvellous if, by 2050, it will have grown our GDP by one tenth of one percent? It’s not my forecast, it’s theirs,” he said.

Peters confirmed the party would campaign on the issue, telling delegates “we’re not going to have New Zealand diluted, and we’re not selling our country down the drain.”

He accused the Labour leader of trying to hedge both ways on the agreement, describing his position as “another sausage roll eating exercise” and claiming he had not read the deal properly.

Positioning the party as unashamedly nationalist, Peters said New Zealand First was not driven by international trends or unelected overseas bureaucracies.

“We are not globalists. We’re nationalists, and we’re proud of it with a capital N. Without qualification, without equivocation,” he said.

He pointed to New Zealand’s democratic record, noting the country had been a democracy since 1854, one of only nine nations able to make that claim, with Maori gaining the vote in 1868 and women in 1893.

On the economy, Peters said global financial turmoil was having a profound effect in New Zealand but could be a chance for a “great reawakening”, with the country’s resources and minerals offering a path to greater independence.

The party’s strategy, he said, had always been to reduce New Zealand’s vulnerability to economic shocks by tackling foreign ownership, boosting exports and shrinking overseas debt.

Peters closed with advice for members approached by journalists during the convention.

“Just because there’s a microphone in front of your mouth doesn’t mean you have to answer. If you’ve got any doubts, say I will leave it to the leader,” he said.

“You are the message. You’re all that New Zealanders have got. This is a real campaign for a real outcome.”