Was NZ First built to last?

It’s New Zealand First, not Aotearoa First. Got that, sunshine? That, as far as we know, is not a direct quote from Sunday’s NZ First conference in Auckland, but it could be. According to reports, the following are among the topics or ideas that founder Winston Peters attacked during his speech.

The Labour Party. Also, the National Party, the Ma¯ ori Party and the Greens. ‘‘Cancel culture’’ and the woke-sters who insist on using Ma¯ ori words, not English-language place names. Aotearoa is a particular irritation.

But wait, there’s more: mental health treatment, the Government’s Ihuma¯ tao solution, expanding the Bright Line Test, removing referendums on Ma¯ ori wards, the vaccine roll-out, the feebate, the He Puapua report, KiwiBuild and the light rail project in Auckland.

The politics of negativity, nationalism and nostalgia have been Peters’ forte since he learned at the feet of the master, former prime minister Robert Muldoon. The stereotype is that his politics relies upon a rump of typically old and largely white voters who remember better days and are looking for someone to blame.

According to a former NZ First researcher, the party’s typical voter in 2017, as outlined in the New Zealand Election Study, was ‘‘a 60-year-old working-class Pa¯ keha¯ male who lived in a provincial North Island town and leaned National. But this person was not the stereotypical ‘redneck’ motivated by fear and prejudice.’’

Is this hypothetical voter, and others like him, attracted by the politics of negativity that we saw practised on Sunday or would he like to be presented with a more positive vision of life in New Zealand? The NZ First pitch is mostly about what the party stopped from happening in Government, not what it achieved.

There is already a crowded political market for anti-‘‘woke’’ sentiment, especially when it comes to whipped-up fears of ‘‘Ma¯ orification’’ in New Zealand. ACT and National have been beating that particular drum for months and, while it could be argued that Peters helped to perfect the politics of racial fear in New Zealand in the 1990s, when it was about Chinese immigrants, he does not have the field to himself. It’s like Elvis coming back in his 70s and realising he has to compete with Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift.

The NZ First voter is a unique creature. While perhaps nostalgic for a pre-Waitangi Tribunal age when Whaka¯ tane was still said with a W and you never heard te reo from weather presenters on TV, the NZ First voter has centrist views on issues like income equality and economic redistribution. That voter also, as the study showed, likes Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The political middle that NZ First once occupied was taken by Labour at the last election.

There are still uncertainties. Will Peters even be leader in 2023 and will he play one of his protracted games with the media? What kind of shadow will be cast by the NZ First Foundation fraud case in the High Court in 2022? And who is with Peters? Shane Jones may have stayed on as the faithful lieutenant, but his political career has never matched the hype. Two of the best-performing MPs, Tracey Martin and Jenny Marcroft, quit after the election and openly aired their frustrations with the undemocratic and old-fashioned style of politics within the party.

There is a political adage that says you never write off Winston Peters. But all adages have expiry dates.

It’s like Elvis coming back and realising he has to compete with Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift.