Wherever the mark is, veteran New Zealand politician Winston Peters is usually prepared to step over it, regardless of his current job as foreign minister, a job he relishes and has held more than once and was apparently quite good at.
He may have gone too far in telling a Chinese-born New Zealand politician to “go back to your own country” and then doubling down by criticising Beijing’s ambassador to Wellington for a rather moderate comment on the affair, telling him to remember that New Zealand was a democracy unlike China.
Helen Clark, a former Labour Prime Minister who formed a coalition that led to Peters’ first elevation to foreign minister, reckons he has gone over the top and should be sacked. In the Hoon podcast with Bernard Hickey, I asked if she would have fired him had she been prime minister, not the incumbent Christopher Luxon.
“Yes, because he is now not capable of effectively managing the New Zealand relationship with China, a great power by any measure, and also New Zealand’s largest trade partner,” said Clark, who was a guest on the Hoon.
“We are putting ourselves in considerable danger by Winston Peters continuing,” she said. “Let’s remember, he told a member of Parliament who had lived in New Zealand for 32 years since the age of seven that he should quote ‘go back to his own country where they lie like a flatfish’, end quote. So, he not only offered a racist insult against an individual member of parliament, a migrant to New Zealand as a child, but he also accused China of quote lying like a flatfish. Now that’s not a double triple whammy. I don’t know what is.”
Diplomacy, but not as we know it
Peters is theoretically the top New Zealand diplomat — a job he relishes and has held in several coalition governments and apparently done quite well. An unashamedly populist politician, he has lately adopted a Trump-like tone that may suit his role as leader of the New Zealand First Party but not his diplomatic role.
Helen Clark discussed other issues related to Peters and New Zealand foreign policy, especially his and the current government’s reluctance to rock the boat with the United States, including abstaining from a vote on reappointing the United Nations high commissioner on human rights, an appointment Washington objected to.
The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the abstention in the vote to reappoint Volker Turk as a “procedural” matter in which the decision to abstain was taken by officials, not the minister. Helen Clark called bullshit, almost literally, on that.
“I don’t believe our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I believe the minister was involved. Only a comprehensive release of official information will reveal that, and I’m sure the requests have already gone in. But clearly, this is not a procedural matter,” she said on the Hoon. For those who know Helen Clark, her criticism of the foreign ministry seems out of character and unusually blunt.
She saw the hand of Washington — which opposed Turk — in the New Zealand decision to abstain: “Clearly, the United States had lobbied against his renewal, and New Zealand, I think, responded to that lobbying by lodging an abstention.”
She went on after I asked if it would have been more honest if New Zealand voted against Turk: “I think that would have been several steps too far. But abstaining is also several steps too far because, firstly, it’s very unusual to oppose a secretary general’s recommendation for the reappointment of a high official…secondly, Volker Turk does not deserve this verdict from New Zealand…So, I feel very, very concerned about this decision, and I do feel concerned that our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has not been straight with the Kiwi public.”
Snivelling wokesters?
New Zealand is 100 days away from a general election in its three-year term system based on MMP proportional representation. The system has made coalitions almost inevitable, and Peters has often been the man the main parties have had to court. He is foreign minister for the third time now, having held it twice under a Labour-led government, and now under a coalition led by the centre-right National Party with the ACT Party, which has a more or less libertarian or individual responsibility stance.
Winston, as he is ubiquitously known, is what one might colloquially call a grumpy old bugger. At 81, he claims to call it as it is against “snivelling wokesters” and to speak for true Kiwis. Of Māori heritage, he denies the first people of the country are indigenous and rejects the Te Reo name for the land as Aotearoa.
Always an astute judge of the public mood, Peters taps into a rich seam of older, whiter, perhaps less-educated, New Zealanders alarmed by immigration (especially from China and India, despite each having multi-generational populations), the growth of Māori consciousness and climate change-related policies. New Zealand First rates around 11 percent in polls, almost double its share of the 2023 election that was enough to allow him to re-enter government as a “handbrake”.
He generally piles on rather than withdraws when he generates controversy. This time the Chinese embassy has submitted an official complaint about “the negative China-related remarks made by a certain politician in the New Zealand Parliament”. One News reported that Peters said his comments in parliament were “defending New Zealand’s democracy” and dismissed accusations of racism as “drivel.”
“I’m defending our democracy, and I’m proud of it.”
It is almost as though the New Zealand First leader and coalition government foreign minister is deliberately challenging Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to fire him or at least make his position untenable, probably triggering an early election and giving Peters a burning platform on which to appeal to his base.
Luxon did eventually make an anodyne response to Peters crapping on Beijing and telling another MP to go home, saying the remarks were the latest “long track record of inappropriate attention-seeking comments”. Peters remains in post for now.
For what it is worth, maybe not very much, early this month Peters described a Māori Party MP as making a “retard comment” and accused her of racism. Helen Clark also weighed in on that one, but Peters — who could probably still have a fight if he was the only person present — said he was just speaking like a normal New Zealander. Oddly, Peters has also adopted more American and Trump-like language, happily accusing others of being “shills” (a word apparently derived from a 19th-century American carnival barker or what Australians call a “spruiker”.
This is not an ordinary news article, so I can say that I reported on Winston when he arrived in parliament with a couple of other National Party (conservative) rookies with big egos and bigger ambitions. He is the only survivor and a born survivor. It is entirely possible that there are enough grumpy old buggers to bring him back.
Do listen to the Hoon on wherever you get podcasts or watch on YouTube.
