‘ He should look back in pride’
Helen Clark on Peters' legacy
They say you should never rule out NZ First, but as of last night the kingmaker is no more. At the Duke of Marlborough Hotel in Russell the sun set on Winston Peters’ party, which secured just over 2 per cent of the vote.
Winston Peters, 75, has spent 36 years in Parliament, has twice been deputy prime minister, has lost two elections only to return, and has for decades courted a small constituency, primarily seniors, giving an untold number of speeches about his favoured enemies: Neo- liberal reforms, high immigration from Asia, the Treaty of Waitangi ‘‘ grievance industry’’.
His power again reached a crescendo in 2017. NZ First partnered with Labour and negotiated a $1 billion fund for the regions, racing sector reforms, major boosts to foreign affairs and defence spending, and went on to kill any prospect of a capital gains tax.
Yet after this third stint in Government – the only term he survived the full three years in his ministerial roles – the vehicle for Peters’ political aspirations has been voted out of Parliament for the second time. He had spent recent weeks talking up a ‘‘surge’’ in support which never came.
Covid-19 was often claimed to be the killer of political campaigns this election. But some say NZ First’s demise was partly his own doing: Peters was too aggressively anti-Government early on, and arrived late to his touchstone issues.
And last night his party was a spent force. It had 2.3 per cent of the vote by the time 94 per cent of advance votes were counted.
NZ First’s Northland candidate, Shane Jones, who had been touted as both Peters’ successor and a potential route back into power for the party, failed to win over his electorate, trailing well behind National’s Matt King and Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime.
By early evening it looked grim: With more than 25 per cent of the nearly 2 million advance votes counted by 8pm, NZ First’s fate was clear.
Peters had a final sleight of hand at the ready. As the crowd of some 100 supporters, locals and reporters at the Duke of Marlborough waited for him to arrive on stage, all eyes were on the room’s main entrance.
He then sent the cameras scrambling when he suddenly appeared through another door and behind the podium.
It was a brief, subdued but not regretful speech.
‘‘ Elections are about the democracy and what the people wish, and we should never stop trusting the people, who we are privileged to serve in whatever capacity, and for however long,’’ Peters said.
‘‘To those who have been successful tonight, our congratulations and best wishes.’’
Peters characteristically left the door open for NZ First to return.
‘‘For 27 years, there’s been one party that’s been prepared to question the establishment and challenge authority, and tonight more than ever, that force is still needed.
‘‘ As for the next challenge, we’ll all have to wait and see,’’ he said, before hastily departing, refusing to speak to reporters.
The moment was reminiscent of Peters’ loss at the 2008 election, ousted from Parliament after a second stint in power with a promise: ‘‘This is not the end.’’
Political pundits are often reluctant to rule NZ First out completely, and he has returned from the political wilderness before. But after four decades in public life, could this be the moment Peters says goodbye?
‘‘He’s defied the electoral and political gravity before,’’ former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark told the Sunday Star-Times.
Clark formed a coalition government with Peters in 2005, making him foreign minister. She said Peters had lasted because he was a ‘‘ very astute politician’’ who was inherently sociable, and known for being pleasant and courteous.
‘‘What we often see on TV is clips of him snapping at the media or snapping at someone . . . It’s theatre, and when you see him walking away from one of those jousting, he does have a smile on his face.’’
Clark said his people skills encouraged voters in Tauranga to back him and give him the profile to launch NZ First. Peters first won the seat in 1984 as a National MP, kept it when he resigned from the party in 1993, and held it until 2005.
‘‘Eventually his luck ran out there. He’d won it as a National member and eventually it was going back to its origins.’’
Clark said Peters did well as foreign minister in her Government.
‘‘He did the work . . . He struck up a relationship with US Security of State Condoleezza Rice, which was to the great benefit of New Zealand.’’
But there was some ‘‘ sticky business’’.
Late in the term, Peters became embroiled in a donations scandal centred on the failure to disclose $ 100,000 from businessman Sir Owen Glenn. The Serious Fraud Office began investigating.
Clark confronted Peters about the allegations, and he handed over his portfolios. NZ First was cleared, not long before the 2008 election, but the party was wiped out of Parliament that year.
‘‘We made it work,’’ Clark said of the coalition. The same could be said of the 2017 Labour-NZ First coalition: ‘‘NZ First has been reasonably clear about what it would and wouldn’t accept.
‘‘He should look back in pride on a career that’s gone from being an MP in the late 1970s to the end of the second decade of the 21st century. He should be proud of it. There’s really not been a career anything like this by anyone used, it is unique.’’
National MP Simon Bridges trounced Peters in the 2008 electorate race in Tauranga, guaranteeing his exodus from Parliament as NZ First failed to obtain more than 5 per cent of the party vote.
‘‘I made a joke about Winston to my wife this week, and she said, ‘You’ll miss him when he’s gone’,’’ Bridges said.
‘‘Sadly, she’s actually right ... Parliament’s increasingly become this woke and bland place, it hasn’t got a huge amount of character and tomfoolery, and without Winston that trend is just going to continue, and that’s a real loss.’’
Bridges described Peters as politics’ ‘‘ ultimate insider’’, but questioned what he had achieved with this status. The likes of the SuperGold Card were not much to show for a 40-year career.
Another sadness for Bridges: what Peters could have achieved if he hadn’t ‘‘ a chip on each shoulder’’.
‘‘He could have been New Zealand’s first Ma¯ori prime minister, and he could have been a great one for the National Party.’’
Peters, who entered Parliament as a National Party MP in 1978, first made the preferred prime minister polls in 1988 and then surged to 17 per cent – ahead of National leader Jim Bolger. But Bolger and Peters fell out in the early 90s, and Peters quit the party.
‘‘It probably would’ve come to him on a plate, but he just had too many personal grudges and chips, and that ruined it,’’ Bridges said.
‘‘He was hugely admired back then. Whilst a lot of people say that Winston’s a real gentleman, when they say that they are downplaying the quite capricious and sometimes vicious way he has spoken about people in Parliament, or carried grudges over the years.’’
However, Bridges in a way commended Peters for not being more vicious – acting as a way the ‘‘ safety valve’’ for his brand of populist politics.
‘‘He has given voice to a segment of New Zealand that has felt forgotten or belittled, and he’s done that in a more or less gregarious, non-harmful way.
‘‘He’s broadly in the tradition of a bunch of other protectionist, anti-immigration politicians globally, some of them though are a lot more frightening than Winston’s been in his career.’’
These voters may well go elsewhere now. Bridges said he thought this was truly the end of Peters and NZ First.
Peters’ decision to form a Government with Labour may have been the original sin, dooming his prospects in 2020.
The New Zealand Election Study, a survey of 3000 voters, showed 44.5 per cent of NZ First voters wanted Peters to work with National, compared to 34.1 per cent who wanted him to go with Labour. His supporters wanted change, but not as much as Peters gave them.
Professor Jack Vowles, a Victoria University political scientist, said there was likely a ‘‘burn off’’ of support then, compounded by a shift of votes to Labour after the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
‘‘ The Covid-era has made people a lot more risk adverse, and I think it has made them more sympathetic of the idea of collective action to solve social problems.’’
Though Peters held views about how the Government’s Covid-19 response could have been improved – call in the military, mandate mask wearing more often and earlier – he most vocally campaigned on his ‘‘handbrake’’ message.
‘‘While people could also say NZ First has stopped Labour from doing things that they didn’t like, I think that the stronger narrative is that they’ve been more of an impediment to good government than an example of it,’’ Vowles said.
The political analysts, readily writing Peters’ political obituaries this week, pointed to the aggressive stance he took after the Covid-19 lockdown and early in the campaign.
Possibly hoping to separate NZ First from Labour, Peters blasted the Government he was part of for the length of the Covid-19 lockdown, and said a second lockdown of Auckland ‘‘ should never have happened’’.
One of his key issues, immigration, had dried up with the closure of the border. Covid-19 meant his key audience, seniors, were less inclined to assemble in large groups.
On the outer rim of Peters’ orbit, there was a view he had
misjudged the needed political strategy this election – he was too jarring, and needed to promote the role he played in Government.
This past week he was pushing the message that his party had been a rock of stability in the Government.
But he was also batting away questions about the NZ First Foundation, storming off from press huddles at mention of the court case. Not without a smile on his face.
The Serious Fraud Office, in the week before voting started, charged two people with fraud after investigating the NZ First Foundation.
‘‘ As a reputation as an anticorruption campaigner, there are hints that NZ First itself is not immune from the kinds of accusations of corruption that come up time to time’’, Vowles said, making voters ‘‘sceptical’’.
While NZ First had carved out a core constituency in New Zealand politics, Vowles said this would likely be the end of the party.
‘‘ There’s a point where all good things have to come to an end, and this may be that for Winston.’’