Coalition parties trade blows
The minor Coalition partners are at war, with NZ First saying the Greens are “away with the fairies” and the Greens hitting back yesterday, saying NZ First are “an agent of chaos”.
The veneer of collaboration has been stripped bare with less than nine weeks to the election and as both parties fight for survival.
After NZ First leader Winston Peters had a crack on Tuesday at the Greens, James Shaw, the party’s coleader, hit back yesterday.
“We’ve known for a long time, that the closer we got to election, the more likely it was that NZ First would start misbehaving,” Shaw told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking.
Labour had not been able to exercise any discipline over NZ First over the past three years, Shaw said.
“If you look at some of the difficulties that the Government has had over the last three years, a lot of them have come down to NZ First ankle-tapping them and blaming them for saying they can’t get anything done.
“I know they like to say they are a force for moderation; it’s more like an agent of chaos.”
Peters on Tuesday called the prospect of a Labour-Green coalition a “nightmare”.
“If you think a red-green [Labour-Greens] government is good for you, then you’re in cloud cuckoo land,” he said.
“These people are away with the fairies,” he said, referencing the Greens and their wealth tax policy.
Shaw responded yesterday: “In my experience over the last three years, NZ First has not been a moderating force, but a force for chaos.”
Shaw told Hosking that NZ First could have expressed its opposition to policies and issues — such as the rebate for electric vehicles — much earlier, saving public servants’ time and taxpayer money. “They basically killed it off at the last minute . . .”
Shaw did not think NZ First would be back in Parliament, based on current numbers, but the Greens would work with them again “if that’s what it takes”.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her Deputy Prime Minister’s comments were not fair.
She said she put Peters’ comments down to “an election period”.
“It’s an election period and you will see parties starting to differentiate.”