Winston can’t risk going wrong way

The big black and white bus comes up the driveway the wrong way. A man gets out to wave directions to the driver as he makes a threepoint turn in the parking lot.

In the neighbouring childcare centre, a worker calls over the kids to gaze over the fence at the shiny bus with the poorly-designed lettering: ‘‘Look, haere mai, it says Party New Zealand Vote First.’’

At Whangarei’s One Double Five Community House, the foodbank workers and church ministers and community lawyers don’t seem like natural NZ First allies. But like him, they want to talk about jobs, about trains, about housing, about the importance of data-sharing so New Zealand’s most vulnerable don’t slip through the cracks.

This is the day Winston Peters has returned fire on National for, he alleges, leaking his private NZ Super information. Leaning back in his chair, he rouses. ‘‘You talk about data-sharing? People have been data-sharing on me. They’re pretty quick to data-share when they have a malignant purpose!’’

What Peters doesn’t want to talk about is what he and the NZ First party will do the morning after the election, if Jacinda Ardern and Bill English are vying for his support to form a government.

I sat down with him at a favourite cafe in the Whangarei Basin this week, to argue it out. He says any discussion of how the party will decide who (if anyone) to support would be to pre-empt the democratic will of voters.

I tell him voters are entitled to know what he’s going to do with their ticks. Will he, as he’s previously indicated, talk first with the party that wins the most seats? Or does his rhetoric of change indicate he believes the public is ready for a new government?

‘‘There’s always a mood for change, the question is how much change,’’ he says. ‘‘You have to read politics every 24 hours now ... The question is, what type of change there will be a mood for in the next weeks.

‘‘There’s no doubt around the countryside that a lot of people have just had enough. They’ve worked hard, they’ve done the best they can, and their promised nirvana never looks like it’s going to appear for them.’’

As we talk, he shifts in his seat and plays distractedly with a knife and fork. And in his inimitable style, he ducks and deflects questions or bats them back at me.

‘‘I said in the first instance one would talk to the party with the most votes,’’ he acknowledges. ‘‘But that’s only in the first instance. The reality is, the first phone-call may not come from the party with the most votes. That doesn’t mean you say, sorry, I can’t take your call because I’m waiting for a call from someone else. It’s only a rule of thumb and a very loose one at that.’’

Peters and the NZ First board may refuse to say. But there can be little doubt that the prospect of allying with a fresh and resurgent Labour Party must be more appealing than propping up a fourth-term National Government led by those he believes tried to politically assassinate him this week.

If there is little to separate National and Labour on election night, then NZ First will face a very awkward decision. Get it wrong, and his voters will not easily forgive him.

Unlike his bus driver, Peters cannot afford to go the wrong way.