Speech by Geert Wilders on the first day of the General Debate in the Dutch parliament

Madam Chairman, this government, this elite does not have even the slightest will to oppose Islamization. No, it looks to it as a great enrichment of the Dutch landscape. All those snug mosques, those cute headscarves, those cozy burkas. Yes, the Netherlands really becomes more beautiful with that. Here and there from time to time some are left dead, or some are raped, and eventually our country will go bankrupt. But all that may not spoil the fun. Only a grumbler would pay attention to that. Just have patience for a little while, because we await the Islamic Utopia.

Madam Chairman, a better environment begins with yourself. Many Dutch are irritated by the pollution of public space by Islam. In other words, our streets in some places are increasingly looking like Mecca and Tehran. Scarves, hate-beards, burkas, men in long weird white frocks. Let us do something about that. Let us start to reconquer our streets, and ensure that the Netherlands will look like the Netherlands again.

Those headscarves are a true sign of oppression of women, of subjugation, of conquest. It is a symbol of an ideology that is out there to colonize us. Therefore: it is time for a big spring-cleaning of our streets. If our new Dutch citizens want so badly to show their love for that seventh-century desert ideology, then they should rather comfortably do that in a Muslim country, but not here, not in our country.

Madam Chairman, this country has an excise tax on petrol and diesel, it has parking permits and a dog-tax, it has an airline ticket tax and has a packaging tax, so why not tax the headscarf? A Head Rag Tax. Just pick up a license once a year and immediately pay for it in cash. €1000 a year [$1500] seems like a tidy sum to me. Then we will finally get some money back out of what has cost us so much. I would say: the polluter has to pay. My question: is the government prepared to introduce a headscarf-tax?

Madam Chairman, the government refuses to tell the citizen what mass immigration and the presence of non-western immigrants costs us. The government refused to answer our questions on this. Fortunately we know approximately what this joke costs us. The Dutch weekly Elsevier did a calculation and came up with over two hundred billion euros. To be precise: 216 billion euros [$318 billion]. For this year alone that already means nearly 13 billion euros [$20 billion].

But, Madam Chairman, this government does not want to know it. "For we aren't going to calculate how much the elderly cost us, either," the government says. How is it we do not know how much an elderly person costs? Someone in a nursing home costs €165 a day, a prisoner €192 and a TBSer €476 euros. But when it comes to the electoral cattle of the Socialist Party [PvdA] then suddenly it is: all eyes closed and all peckers tight. Then the truth has to remain under the hood. When it comes to immigration, that information suddenly almost seems a state secret. And this while immigration is the result of government policy, the result of the decision to open the locks wide.

Madam Chairman, The Netherlands has approximately one million Muslims. Many of them are immigrants. And none of those really came over here out of love for the Netherlands. They did not really come en masse to the Netherlands because they find it such a fabulous country with all those unbelievers, all those kaffirs. What did they come over for then? Well, for state benefits, for instance. And before you attack me on this, I am not the only one who says this. GreenLeft MP Tofik Dibi recently said that young people in Morocco view the Netherlands as a utopia where you can get free benefits. A takeaway counter for free money, as I understand it. In short, they come here out of an economic calculation. Over there penniless, here a fat benefit.

Madam Chairman, is it such a surprise then, that we start to wonder how much that leftist hobby costs us? That we carry out an economic calculation? If they do it, why can't we? The message of the government is: you pay and you shut up, and you know what? The immigration party must go on, you just are going to enjoy working two years longer for it [past your pension year]. Two years of toiling and sweating, to finance Islamization. What a vision!

The government remains silent over those costs and sets aside Constitution because of it. The PVV will reward that tomorrow with a vote of mistrust. We will also start an investigation ourselves. All of the Netherlands is very welcome to contribute their ideas. What do we have to count for it? What items have we forgotten? How much does mass immigration cost us? Everyone will soon be able to go to the new website www.watkostdemassaimmigratie.nl [what-does- mass-immigration-cost]. Coming soon. We will do our own research or we will subcontract it.

Madam Chairman, all the money that mass immigration is costing us we can use in much better ways. For example, for our own elderly. Hands off the AOW [state pension]. We do not accept that there will be reductions of the AOW. What an antisocial proposal! What nonsense too: of the 63- and 64-year olds, less than 15% are working now. According to us those people do not have to trudge an extra two years longer [until 67]. The people on the street know what the problem is. They can tell you exactly. They know that mass immigration is the problem. That cost us at least 216 billion in the past forty years. Government, don't get it into your heads to cut 4 billion of the AOW.

So do not get it in your heads to send the bill to the common man. Everyone should just be able to retire at 65. Our proposal is: close the borders to the fortune seekers from Muslim countries. This provides us with billions that we can make good use of for the defense of the AOW.

We stand at a crossroads: do we opt for more mass immigration or do we choose for our own elderly? The Party for Freedom chooses for our elderly.

Madam Chairman, sound economic policy starts with lower taxes. These are necessary for the first steps on the road to a better Netherlands, and that can already be done next year. Therefore we created a counter-budget proposal. In 2010 we start with a cut of seven billion on leftist hobbies and subsidies. With this we lower the income tax in the second level [tax on income and property and for social security "insurances", now circa 42%] by 3%. This means not a few euros less [like in the government budget], but a few hundred euros more for an average family.

Many people therefore will have more money in their pockets. We also reduce the deficit by over one billion euros, so we budget one billion extra for care [like old pensioners' houses] and will finally return the stolen "quarter of Kok" [temporary extra petrol tax of 25 cents, introduced by Socialist Finance Minister Wim Kok in 1991 to help budget cuts, and which became permanent] at the gas station. And from the PVV, no cuts in the police budget. Not a penny. We will completely annul the irresponsible cuts by this government on the police.

And, apart from tax reduction, we have to other plans to plans to slightly soften where possible the economic crisis. Two plans to boost the economy. First: we cut the property transfer tax in half [tax on house sales, circa 6-8% of the sale price]. That will make the housing market slowly start up again, because buying a house becomes cheaper.

Second: we boost job creation by temporarily making labor cheaper. The PVV budgets 320 million euros to help people who lost their jobs get on a faster track to a job in the private sector. We scrap the social security charges for one year for employers who take on people from unemployment. This enables 100,000 people who could no longer have jobs because of the crisis to get back to work faster! 100,000 people! Chairman, this seems to me -- during the biggest job losses since the Second World War -- many times more effective than to continue to allow hordes of Polish workers in, as the government does.

The government is preparing itself for the biggest reductions ever. "All political taboos are open for discussion," said Wouter Bos [Vice PM and Finance Minister, Socialist], the man who has embellished the bankers with many billions and now wants the common man to pay the bill. Chairman, the financial policies of this government are indefensible; I understand that the financial spokesman for the Socialist Party [PvdA], Mr. Tang, has really done everything he could not to have a debate about that.

Madam Chairman, Monsieur Bos should finally begin with his own leftist tough meat. And keep your hands off the care, the police, and education. It will not be easy to address your own constituency, but it can be done. Madam Chairman, cut that leftist public broadcaster, minimize the contribution to the European Union, stop those arts-subsidies, stop -- except for emergency aid -- this crazy development aid, and no expensive JSF aircraft.

Madam Chairman, crime must be taken on much harder. The Netherlands should be reconquered, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, beach party by beach party. With officers who act rock-hard against criminals instead of issuing speeding fines for driving a few miles too fast, as ordered by people from above.[V2] Madam Chairman, the scum who is caught by the scratch also has to receive real penalties. Thus longer behind bars. Never again a community service or a low prison sentence for rape. Moroccan street terrorists we must pick up. We must take them on rock-hard.

Madam Chairman, in our new Netherlands, the heaviest punishment will be imprisonment, and therefore not in the nursing homes. The nurses are really kind there, but there are not enough of them, therefore, among other things, we want one billion extra for care. A 24-hour diaper replaces the toilet at the moment, there is no time for a daily shower. To have a cigarette, the elderly -- often with wheelchair and all -- have to be carted outside. But they often have not been outside for days, for weeks. They even have to pay extra for having their clothes washed, and a biscuit with your coffee? That is often something of the past.

No such thing for the criminals though. They have it much better in prison. They are entitled to go outside one hour each day, they have the right to recreation and to sport. Clothing, shoes? Absolutely free. Prison cells are full of smoke, because they are allowed to smoke in there. They have more guards per inmate than there are nurses for the elderly.

The PVV proposal is crystal clear. Older people must have it much better than prisoners. But now it is the other way round. That has to change, and I would like to see the Prime Minister to respond to that. Give our elderly in the nursing homes more rights than prisoners, and take away the luxuries for those villains in prison. No game computers, no TVs anymore, no halal food, no sport and recreation. Let them feel they are criminals. And spoil our elderly.

Give them at least as many attendants as there are guards in prison. Give our elderly the right to have a shower every day, to go out every day, to have a smoke in their own rooms. Madam President, it does not seem too much to ask that the people who had to eat tulip bulbs in the famine winter [1944-45], who worked on the rebuilding of the Netherlands after the war -- that these people may have a better deal than burglars, rapists, and murderers.

Because of such abusive situations, the PVV wants to mount the barricades. The government occasionally also gets furious, but for other reasons. The [Socialist] Home Secretary Ter Horst, just before the summer, called for a true revolt. A revolt by whom? Well, a rebellion by the elite! Has a Dutch minister has ever before said anything so bizarre? Miss Ter Horst deluded herself that she was the Che Guevara of the Binnenhof [ parliament buildings in the Hague]. Above-average of all countries, unite! You have nothing to lose but your side jobs.

Madam Chairman, I conclude. The Netherlands would look so much better without this government¹. Richer. Safer. More social. And above all: more Dutch. The elite is dreaming their sweet pink dreams, but the people are not crazy. The people, who have been betrayed for decades, will no longer take it. Change is in the air. Hope glimmers on the horizon. You can taste it everywhere. There is no stopping it. Everybody sees it. Except the people in that little car, in the dead of night, somewhere in the middle of the woods. Stuck in the loose sand. The battery is dead.

It is pitch dark and dead quiet. A dog urinates against a front wheel. Van der Laan eat his last bun with halal meat. It cannot last much longer. The wild animals already smell their cold sweat. Nobody dares to say anything. Wouter [Bos] hides his eyes of fear behind his -- expense-account -- RayBan sunglasses.²

They are all lost. Nobody cares for them anymore. The silence is only disturbed by the little GPS that says to this government "You have arrived at your destination".

It is time for elections!