Peters, double

The deputy prime minister says his Cabinet colleague Shane Jones doesn’t need to apologise to Fonterra because his criticisms of the dairy giant were accurate.

Winston Peters and Jones are doubling down after the Regional Economic Development minister tore strips off Fonterra on Wednesday and called for its chairman, John Wilson, to resign.

Jones first made the comments at a ‘‘Chatham House rules’’ event at the Fieldays on Wednesday morning and later repeated them to media at Parliament.

His scathing attack echoed similar comments made by Peters last year about a $750 million investment by Fonterra into its poorperforming Chinese partner, Beingmate.

Yesterday, Peters defended his NZ First colleague saying: ‘‘If you saw what happened with Beingmate and the haircut the New Zealand farmers have taken and the huge loss of money involved, I think somebody should have been making a comment a long time ago.’’

Yesterday Jones stood by his comments that Fonterra had become ‘‘disconnected from the farming community’’ and that a restructure of the co-operative should be considered by the minister of Agriculture.

‘‘This is coalition politics, I’m a robust member of the NZ First party, I’ve got nothing but admiration for the prime minister and my leader but this is not a Government that’s going to pander to the corporate culture that Fonterra at its highest level shows.’’

It was not unreasonable for him to challenge that culture ‘‘on behalf of the 365 people who messaged me last night’’.