Peters: From lion to pussycat

thinks the seating in Parliament should be rearranged to make it less adversarial. The traditional Westminster shape pits the two sides of the House against each other like armies fighting across a chasm.

How much better, Peters says, are those parliaments where MPs ‘‘sit like a delta and the Speaker is up there. Every group is lined up over here looking in the same direction, so to speak, rather than eye-balling each other in a bear pit which is what our Parliament sometimes resembles.’’ He wants more co-operation and has suggested giving more power to the Opposition through select committees. The lion has become a pussycat.

Peters has also changed his tune on China. In August he put out a press release headed: ‘‘China’s growing Control in NZ must be investigated’’. He noted that the week before he had called for ‘‘a full inquiry into how Jian Yang, a member of the Chinese Communist Party with strong ties to their intelligence community, could become a National List MP in our Parliament’’.

He quoted China specialist Anne-Marie Brady’s call for a special commission ‘‘to investigate China’s impact on our democracy’’.

But now, things don’t look quite so grim.

The new minister of foreign affairs says we shouldn’t be too quick to judge China over freedom because ‘‘when you have hundreds of millions of people to be reemployed and relocated with the change of economic structure, you have some massive, huge problems’’.

He’s also changed his tune over Chinese influence in New Zealand. Now he says it’s because New Zealand hadn’t got any better trade deals elsewhere.

Also, he says he never wanted a full-scale public inquiry into China’s influence.

Some might be cynical about these astonishing changes of attitude and policy. In fact, they are as predictable as they could be.

Once he’s a minister, he will be cautious and even timid. He makes an ideal minister of foreign affairs, because he never says anything offensive or even interesting. He’s just like Murray McCully, in short.

The downside, however, is that when he preaches co-operation and less opposition to the new Opposition, he can’t expect to be taken seriously.