Deja vu but a very different scenario in 2008
It is hardly surprising that Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern are being asked to make comparisons between now and 2008.
Peters stood aside as Foreign Minister during an SFO investigation in 2008 into donations and yet he hasn’t stood aside as Foreign Minister during an SFO investigation in 2020 into donations.
While there are some similarities, there are also some important differences that make it highly unlikely Peters, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, will stand aside this time.
Most importantly, Peters’ place in Government back then was nothing like as powerful as it is now. In fact, he wasn’t actually in Government at the time.
Peters was Foreign Minister outside cabinet, and supporting the Government.
Peters had ended up Foreign Minister against his own stated position.
He had previously vowed that his party would sit on the cross-benches, eschew the baubles of office, and give confidence and supply to the largest party to form a government.
He broke part of that undertaking and asked to be Foreign Minister, causing his old friend Doug Woolerton to resign as New Zealand First president.
Woolerton is now one of the trustees of the New Zealand First Foundation which received donations which has been referred to the SFO for investigation.
Helen Clark was boss in 2008 and there was absolutely no doubt about that. It wasn’t an arrangement which could be described as a partnership in the way that Labour and New Zealand First are now Coalition partners, each effectively having a veto on the other.
While it was accepted in 2008 that Peters had stood aside himself, it was also widely accepted that if he had not stood aside, Clark would have forced him to do so.
He had no choice because the last thing he wanted to avoid was being sacked again by a Prime Minister, it having happened twice before, by Jim Bolger and Jenny Shipley.
And if Clark had been forced to call an early election in the event of Peters withdrawing his support on confidence and supply, New Zealand First would have been blamed.
She sweetened his decision by taking on his portfolios herself, which gave the impression it was a temporary caretaker measure and she said he would be reinstated if cleared.
The dynamics of the Ardern-Peters relationship are vastly different. He installed her as Prime Minister. In theory, it doesn’t mean he can do anything but in practice he almost can. He is more experienced. It was perhaps her inexperience showing on Monday when she failed to express trust in Peters, when asked, a position she swiftly corrected yesterday morning.
Any attempt to pressure Peters today into stepping aside would be resisted by him and his party and the Government would collapse eight months before an election.
Back in 2008, with the election much closer, Clark had to do what she could to inoculate Labour against the toxic narrative that had built up for several months around NZ First.
Labour had already been damaged over its draconian Electoral Finance Bill. New Zealand First then became mired in the undeclared $100,000 donation by Owen Glenn for Peters’ legal expenses, then around whether donations to the Spencer Trust had been declared as donations to the party.
Peters stood aside in August 2008 as soon as the SFO said there was enough to warrant an investigation.
Clark said she would reinstate him if cleared. The following month, September 13, she called an election for November 8 and he was never reinstated.
Six weeks before the election, the SFO said there was no evidence to warrant fraud charges although it referred some matters back to the police. Only three days before the election, the police said it would not be laying charges. The same intense conditions do not yet exist today.