Winston Peters: ‘We dodged a bullet’
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has revealed China tried to dissuade New Zealand from going into lockdown.
‘‘Without speaking out of turn, they wanted a discussion as to why we were doing it, because they thought it was an overreaction,’’ Peters told Stuff’s Coronavirus NZ podcast.
In an extended interview, the deputy prime minister talked about the ‘‘agonising’’ moments of deciding how to react to the Covid19 threat, and how New Zealand had ‘‘dodged a bullet’’.
He also talked about his time in lockdown in Northland, juggling video calls with foreign governments as well as enjoying seafood and field mushrooms.
‘‘Sometimes when it was raining the mushrooms were coming up – unbelievable,’’ he said.
‘‘Of course then you get a bit more resourceful – I was making bread and sending the prime minister a photograph, to show that we’re all up to this game!’’
Peters’ first call as foreign minister on the Covid-19 crisis was with his Chinese counterpart.
‘‘They didn’t want us to go into lockdown ... We had a long discussion, but in the end said: ‘Look,
you’ll understand we’ve heard what you’ve got to say; that we’ve got to protect our own people, and as fast as we can.’ And it ended up with, ‘Well, I hope I see you one day,’ sort of thing.’’
Asked about whether there was agreement between the coalition partners about the ‘‘go hard, go early’’ approach, he said the only questions were how far and when.
‘‘Those are agonising moments because you’re concerned at the level and speeds to get on top of the malignant health crisis that your people are going to face, whilst bearing in mind this is going to have terrible economic ramifications from which we will have to take a long time to recover.’’
One of Peters’ roles was overseeing the repatriation of New Zealanders and helping other countries seeking the safe return of their citizens.
He acknowledged that getting so many New Zealanders home did carry risk of infections spreading.
‘‘That’s your biggest worry. It’s still a worry now. But all in all, yeah, we dodged a bullet, and we can thank heavens for it.’’