New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said colonoscopy wait times at Christchurch Hospital are unacceptable and the country should pay overseas medical specialists to plug the gap immediately.

More than 10,000 people are waiting for a colonoscopy at Christchurch Hospital, with surveillance patients, including people already considered at greater risk of bowel cancer, waiting an average of five months beyond the date they were clinically due, as first reported by Chris Lynch Media.

“Those figures are not acceptable,” Peters told Chris Lynch Media.

“In terms of our past record and our expectations, it is a time of crisis.”

He said the answer was targeted immigration rather than waiting years for local training to catch up.

“You don’t wait around to train people. Get the people, stop gap measures in the meantime. Even if you’ve got to say we’re going to pay you so much, come to New Zealand to fill this gap for the next two years.”

Peters said resources should be shifted from areas of unjustified expenditure into frontline health, and the public told exactly where the money was coming from.

The comments came in a wide-ranging interview ahead of New Zealand First’s official campaign launch this weekend, under the message that the fight for New Zealand’s future starts now.

Peters was scathing about the scale of the reception given to the Indian Prime Minister during his visit to New Zealand, saying the Prime Minister would look back and be somewhat embarrassed by parts of it.

“We’re the host, not the guest. And that’s the difference.”

He said the visit’s promised economic benefits amounted to a lift in GDP of one tenth of 1 percent by 2050 on the Government’s own forecasts.

“There’s a whole lot of hype here that’s not justified.”

Asked whether National was sliding in the polls because it had failed to read the mood of everyday New Zealanders, Peters agreed.

“Failing to read the room in terms of the economic and social circumstances of the country.”

He said voters wanted the fundamentals dealt with, including the cost of living, power and transport, and that people deserved hope after years of living hand to mouth.

New Zealand First is polling at 11.5 percent, its strongest result in nine years, while National has fallen below 30 percent.

Peters said his biggest frustration inside the coalition was failing to talk National out of its tax cuts.

“I wasn’t able to convince them from the word go. Don’t have these tax cuts. The economic situation is far more serious than you think.”

He said delaying the cuts would have been understood by the public, and proceeding with them undermined the Government’s message about the seriousness of the economy.

Peters repeated his party’s promises to break up what he called oligarchies in the electricity sector and the supermarket duopoly, and dismissed Finance Minister Nicola Willis’s claim that New Zealand First’s banking policy would cost $30 billion.

“That’s just chaff. That’s nonsense.”

He said the Electricity Authority had held the power to regulate costs since 1998 but had never used it.

Asked whether he wanted to be Prime Minister, Peters said he was not interested in the job as a line on a resume.

“I want somebody to do something for this country in the way that the great leaders did in a former time.”

Asked directly whether Christopher Luxon was a CV Prime Minister, he said, “I’ll leave it to you and your viewers to come to your conclusion.”