Neutralising Peters is a smart move
For more than two decades, NZ First leader Winston Peters has been the kingmaker, both feared and sought after by parties on the left and right that hoped to form coalitions. What would Winston do, they asked. Which way would he jump? By sitting firmly in the centre, he could bargain equally with both sides.
But like John Key in 2008, National leader Simon Bridges has ruled Peters out. National under Bridges will not accommodate NZ First in 2020, thus neutralising the kingmaker’s power. With each day that passes, Bridges’ call looks smarter and smarter.
Peters’ political longevity is due in part to his unique mix of bluster, charm and obfuscation. His interviews tend to leave listeners less informed and less certain than when they started. He is frustrating, but there is a sector of the voting population that responds to his nostalgic economic nationalism and enjoys the performances that present Peters as an outsider – even though, with four decades in Parliament, he is truly an insider.
By ruling out Peters, Bridges is suggesting that a vote for NZ First is a vote for Labour and vice versa. From now until September, the parties are tied to each other. Whatever is happening to NZ First is, by association, also happening to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Labour.
To say it has not been a good week for NZ First is to deliver a massive understatement. The week began with news that donations to the NZ First Foundation had been referred to the Serious Fraud Office by police, after the Electoral Commission found that donations to the foundation should have been treated as donations to the party.
The week ended with the unwelcome return of dirty politics, last seen during the turbulent 2014 election. Peters admitted during a radio interview that ‘‘we’’ took covert photos of journalists Guyon Espiner and Matt Shand meeting a former NZ First president. The photos of the journalists, who had both investigated NZ First and its donations, were then published by right-wing blog The BFD, the successor to the notorious Whale Oil blog that was at the heart of dirty politics in 2014.
The journalists’ union rightly calls the publication a ‘‘chilling’’ attack on journalistic freedom.
The Whale Oil blog was alleged to have run campaigns on behalf of backers, sometimes using false bylines. Similarly, The BFD used an improbable byline in its expose of Espiner and Shand, making it impossible for the ordinary reader to know who or what the blog is acting for. Peters, who is also deputy prime minister, has still not clarified what he meant by ‘‘we’’.
When the dirty politics scandal erupted in 2014, Labour and the Green Party were outraged, and National moved to distance itself from Whale Oil. Peters called for a commission of inquiry.
That was six long years ago. This time it is Labour’s muchvaunted positive campaign that risks being tainted by dirty politics. Voters will look to Ardern to set a moral example and remind them, and NZ First, that there is no place for such practices in her Government.