If you do not follow the politics of New Zealand, you are missing out. The deputy prime minister of New Zealand and leader of the New Zealand First Party, the Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, is a veteran of New Zealand politics and a prominent fixture on the global political scene. One-on-one interviews with him, however, rarely happen—until today.
In a finely tailored dark blue suit, sitting in his office against the backdrop of the New Zealand flag, the deputy prime minister was on the dot for our 9 a.m. interview.
Who is Winston Peters, and what motivates his enduring career in politics that spans four decades? That is the question many journalists try to answer by painting a portrait of the veteran “kingmaker,” as he is called in New Zealand for often holding the balance of power. It is Winston Peters who, throughout many elections, has determined the next New Zealand government.
The world changes rapidly, and it is rare to speak with someone who has witnessed the political landscape shift from the 1970s to today. With that, the question of his political legacy naturally enters the conversation.
“I did not go into politics to be someone who left a legacy,” he began. “As a former lawyer, I spent time writing legacies for people who wanted to pass something onto their sons and daughters by way of a testamentary claim. I always find it rather, how shall I say, unusual, that politicians should be talking about their legacy, particularly when they haven’t died. And they, in many cases, haven’t done anything. So if you don’t mind, I don’t want to really talk about any legacy that I might have, other than standing up for the principles I believe in. And being in politics for a considerable time, trying to advance those beliefs and principles, which brought me to politics in the first place,” said Peters.
As a young lawyer, Winston Peters found his intellectual and political home in the ideas of “democracy and real freedom and the right of private ownership of land.” In his formative years, he rebelled against the notion of a socialist government seizing land for public utility, recreation, and other purposes without any rightful authority.
“I mounted a huge case against the Crown and the Council. The case took 16 years, but, in the end, we won about 90% of it. So the initial cause for getting into politics was an attempt to take people’s fundamental property rights in a democracy and in a capitalist system by a socialist government at the time. I stood against that, and I’m pleased I did,” he fondly recalled.
A Year of Upheaval: Covid-19
Flash forward to 2020, a year of unprecedented pandemic and global upheaval, New Zealand consolidated quickly and gained prominence as one of the world leaders in tackling COVID-19. Once the country’s leadership thought they were out of the woods, the election campaign began. Then, new COVID-19 cases emerged. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, on behalf of his party, New Zealand First, called for prioritizing public health by asking Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to postpone Election Day. In an unlikely bipartisan decision—almost unthinkable in the current American political landscape, where politicians seem to only politicize the pandemic—Ardern responded positively to Peters’ appeal and agreed to delay the election.
“How did New Zealand manage to come together and put the health of its people above politics in the middle of an election run-up?” I inquired.
“We came out in a hundred and two days without any cases at all. And whilst we were doing very, very well, it clearly was that in the closing days of those hundred and two days, there was a COVID-19 outbreak in our biggest city, Auckland. The moment that became the case, in the middle of an election run-up, it was essential to focus on the health problem. We had to understand what the magnitude of it was, how widespread it might be, by way of a spread, and be on top of it as fast as possible. It was my party’s belief, and my belief, that health was the number one priority that we had to deal with before we dealt with the election. We went public and said, ‘We must change the election day.’ You’ll hear a lot of people saying a lot of things, but the reality is that the reason why the election date was changed was because New Zealanders called for it. Otherwise, it would not have happened. I can assure you of that. I know the inside circumstances. And I’m very comfortable saying that I’m pleased that the prime minister was persuaded to change the election date for the very reasons we set out—to get the health situation under control. Then, when you have that under control, you can be much more confident of a free and fair election. You couldn’t have the second outcome—a free and fair election—in the middle of a lockdown situation. And 71 other countries have had deferrals of elections because of that,” Peters remarked.
Given all the crises he has steered his country through in four decades in politics, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is ideally positioned, both in terms of his experience and precocity, to categorize the COVID-19 pandemic on its scale of devastation for humanity.
“I think this is the worst situation,” Peters said candidly, acutely aware of the early effects of the pandemic.
“Put aside wartime—First and Second World War—this is the worst situation because you’re dealing with an unseen enemy. That’s very hard to typecast because it changes and moves in circumstances where the science is not known as well as we would like it to be, and the international ramifications and circumstances are just disastrous. World trade has been affected. The movement between countries and societies has been dramatically affected. The airline industry. All sorts of people who had their lives absolutely dislocated. And for some of them, sadly, it’ll be permanent,” Peters said.
“I cannot conceive, in all the history of the last, say, 40-plus years in politics, anything nearly as bad as this,” he added, recalling the global financial crisis, measles outbreaks, and major energy shortages that affected the world in the 1970s and the period after. “But nothing like this year,” he continued. “This has got to be the very worst. And very few countries are getting on top of it. Taiwan is a place where they’ve got less than 500 cases and less than eight deaths—just for 24 million people—but they got on to it early. They were very, very successful. And we’ve done well too. But we’ve got to get back on top of this now, and I think we can. But until we do, we’ve got no grounds for relaxation or loosening up our determination to beat the virus one more time.”
On China and Huawei ban
“Do you think that there should be an independent investigation launched into China into the origins of the virus and how it started?” I asked.
“There is an investigation by the World Health Organization that China ended up agreeing to be part of. There was an investigation going on with respect to the outbreak and origins in Wuhan in China. And that was not initially popular. But in the end, we’ve got a circumstance where even China is part and parcel of it, and I hope it’s a real investigation that gets to the truth because we need to have this information as a forewarning for the future,” he insisted.
Winston Peters belongs to a group of world leaders who are openly tough on China. In 2018, he made blunt comments about China’s actions in the South China Sea with no concern that his direct approach would blow back on New Zealand’s diplomatic relations.
“What is New Zealand’s stance on Huawei? Will New Zealand follow the UK’s Huawei ban?” I asked the deputy prime minister.
“Well, we have what we call the TIKSA legislation of 2013 [Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013]. It’s our security services, the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), who decide in my country whether such an applicant, wherever the applicant is from, is allowed in or not. It’s not decided by the prime minister, it is not signed by the Cabinet. And those two security bodies have said no, it does not conform. So that’s where things stand.”
COVID-19 and Political Participation
He added, “There’s been, as you know, quite vocal protests by the Chinese with respect to that. But on each and every occasion, we’ve said to them, this is totally separate from politics. And it happens to be that the legislation we are talking about—the 2013 legislation—was passed by our predecessors. So in this context, you’ve got all parties in Parliament supporting the TIKSA legislation of 2013. Its application is totally separate from Parliament, the prime minister, and the Cabinet. It’s just the two security bodies who received the application and decided upon it. So no one can argue that we’re playing some political game. And unlike the UK and some other countries, we said that from the word go, and so we were first off the block, not the last, on this matter.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected political participation worldwide. However, Winston Peters consistently emphasizes the importance of in-person voting over mail-in voting, explaining that New Zealand’s postal service could struggle to process the volume of votes.
I asked him about potential big ideas regarding the future of political participation and whether voting, as we know it, will change.
“Well, first of all, when you talk about the postal service, all around the world, because of the arrival of new means of social media, communications, and all the new technology, postal services have taken a serious hit. You can see it in the United States, we can see it in New Zealand. We’ve had to put sizable amounts of what you might call social investment support into keeping our postal service going, just like they have around the rest of the world.
“But on the question of how this will shape politics in the future? Well, you’ve got social media, but the trouble is, with social media, you’re inside bubbles of a certain size, and often, the conversations have very little intellectual value. It’s actually a reinforcement of what people think—or worse still, just a reinforcement of what they don’t know. They repeat it over and over again. Some of the social media discussions might sound attractive, but I do not think they are a replacement for open public dialogue, conventional media, and, dare I say, campaigning itself.
“It depends on the political parties. But if your party has a certain type, you’ll need to get out and meet people on the streets, in the villages, and in the towns and cities around your country—there’s no option but to do that. And many parties’ survival will depend on it.
“I think it’s too early to say it’s all going to change. What’s very important, though, is that many of the commentariat and traditional media outlets are of less importance now, given the capacity to reach people directly—conducting an unedited, unfiltered dialogue straight with the public,” said Peters.
The Ideal Voter
As the most experienced contestant in New Zealand’s forthcoming general election, Winston Peters understands the importance of connecting with voters on a deeper level.
“Who is the ideal voter that you would like New Zealand First’s policies to help?” I inquired.
“The ideal voter? Someone that goes and votes when he’s a young fish—that’s number one. But there’s no standard voter because, under MMP (Mixed Member Proportional), people have two votes. You have your local constituency vote, and then you have your second vote for the party. If a party gets 20% of the vote, then it gets 20% of the members of parliament. That’s what MMP means.
“It’s very similar to the German system, except we have a nationwide threshold of 5%, while in Germany, it’s state-by-state. So our threshold is much harder to get over. But from the start, we have always supported the 5% threshold because it eliminates what we call the absolute extremists, which you’ll see in some other MMP environments with a lower threshold,” Peters explained.
“Now, having said that, there’s no ideal voter. You’ve got to look and see—yes, that might seem like a voting bloc for some other political party. But on their second vote, you may well have a chance of getting your fair share.
“It’s not like circumstances where you’ll see, ‘That’s Republican,’ or ‘That’s Democrat,’ and you just forget about it. When you’ve got a second vote, you never forget about it—because that person might vote for Party A in their first vote and then vote for you in their second vote. That’s why you’ve got to keep your focus,” he explained.
The Rise of Conservatism
The conservative wave has gained significant electoral support not only in New Zealand but around the world. We have seen it in Hungary with Viktor Orbán, in Poland with Andrzej Duda, in the United Kingdom with Boris Johnson after Brexit, and in the United States with the rise of Donald Trump.
“What would you say are the limits of liberal politics, if any?” I asked.
“Interesting that you use the word liberal,” Peters noted. “It’s probably the most misunderstood word in politics worldwide.
“There has been a rise in conservative politics across the globe. You saw it in the Brexit campaign in 2016. You saw it the same year in the Trump campaign in the United States. It was an issue in Australia, and then you look at Italy, Hungary, and a lot of other countries—and, dare I say it, Brazil. Around the world, there has been a shift toward conservatism, a politics that is not liberal, that is not of the Left.
“It’s a trend that was unnoticed by the media and is still ignored by the media, but it’s still there. I think it’s still happening, particularly in the Western world.”
What explains this shift toward conservatism? According to Peters, it’s “the Venezuelas of the world.”
“Once the leading economy of South America, now a disaster. You don’t need too many international examples like that for businesspeople and ordinary people to realize they’ve got a stake in politics and in where their country is headed. These are disastrous things to happen.”
He also pointed to Lebanon, “which was once among the most exciting countries in the Middle East, and its capital, Beirut, was perhaps its most exciting city. That all changed dramatically due to outside interference and disastrous domestic policies. Now, it’s a tragic situation.”
“These countries have had great difficulty. As to why this shift happens? I think people have looked very hard and realized that governments do matter. But how long this trend will last remains to be seen. Still, there is a trend toward conservatism,” he concluded.
The Personal Is Political
Over his career, Peters has made many difficult decisions—but which was the hardest?
On that, he recalled the time he took his party out of the coalition. In August 1998, Peters and his ministers walked out of the Cabinet and government over the privatization of Wellington Airport.“A long time ago, in 1998, I wasn’t willing to compromise what I stood for. I made it very clear, as then Prime Minister [Jenny Shipley, the country’s first female Prime Minister] was determined to go on. I was in the same party [New Zealand First] at the time, but I was determined that as the Prime Minister has been pulling out some secret agenda, then I wasn’t gonna stay. And so I walked. I’ve never regretted it,” he revealed.
“That person [Jenny Shipley], of course, took the party to the worst result the National Party at that time ever had in 1999. It’s the kind of thing that, in politics, I look back and look at all of my colleagues I know full well, they knew what she was doing was wrong. She knew there was a disaster. But you know, courage, grit, and determination is not a common thing in politics. And particularly in Western democracies, where people see advantages to themselves by staying silent and not taking the action. And as a consequence, you know, the National Party at that time went out of town and stayed at about nine years. A long time,” said Peters.
Winston Peters’ relationship with the United States grew stronger over time. In his role as the Foreign Minister of New Zealand, he brought the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to New Zealand in 2008. Flash forward to 2020, his good relationship with the Trump administration is widely known. His assessment of VP Mike Pence during their encounters in Washington D.C. was that he is “personable”.
“Relationships really matter in politics. Just like they do in business, just like they do in every profession I know in terms of getting cooperation and getting progress. If you can establish a good relationship with whoever you’re dealing with internationally, and in this case, the United States, and where people understand themselves directly from the word go, then it’s a huge advantage,” he said.
Alluding to the Trump administration, Peters approves of their open demeanor. “ It’s excellent to talk to people who mean what they say and say what they mean. That’s what we need to know. That’s what we want to know as a small country. A democracy that’s been only one of nine that’s survived since 1854. That’s only nine in the whole world. We’re proud of that,” he said.
“Our relationship with the United States is as good as it’s ever been because of circumstances to do with personal context, and also because I think countries more acutely see that typically that we have weighed down in the South Pacific, to play a much larger role in the world’s political circuit, the political movements, and political causes,” Peters assessed.
“Because we’re surrounded by smaller Pacific island nations, but in a huge part of the world’s surface, plus possibly between one and a quarter of the world’s surface if we reach all the way to Hawaii, across the whole Pacific itself. And so the presence is important. And we have to spend so much time trying to get countries to understand that we [New Zealand] could play a far more important, significant and helpful role to all parties concerned if they give us some support with respect to open access to their economy and trade with their economy. So it’s a long slog that we’ll get there and someday soon, I believe,” he affirmed.
On July 18, 1993, Winston Peters founded the New Zealand First Party, a political creation that was tough on immigration but was not easy to place either on the right or the left side of what usually is a black and white political spectrum. One of the interesting components of the New Zealand First platform is that it places the national interest within a global context.
“We stand for free and fair trade. You can have free trade, but it’s got to be fair. If you’ve got trade, which is weighted seriously against one economy to the advantage of another, then it just won’t in the long run be supported by the local people. If you’re going to have free trade between two economies, and one economy doesn’t have a free health system or a free education system, and your economy does then you can see what the disadvantage is for this economy that has serious sound investment policies and human capital. So we are for free and fair trade and always will be. That’s not a challenge to nationalism, it is actually a reinforcement of nationalism because in the end, you’ve got a far greater chance of lifting your country’s wealth base, and health base,” said Winston Peters.
“If you’re going to turn inwards, and trade only with your population, then we know what the outcome of that is. Until somebody goes offshore to make money to bring it back to your country, you won’t get any wealthier at all. So it’s not complicated, so to speak, but it’s when you talk about trade, it’s often seriously misunderstood. And there is a cabal of people on the international stage who just think trade is fantastic, but they don’t look at the quality of it,” Peters revealed.
“Remember”, he continued, “they said free trade was far more a worldwide concept at the end of the 1800s then it was at any time in the last century or this one. In short, there was far greater trade and access. Then, the world has been working on protectionism and the defense abundant economy, following the Second World War. It is just a difficult environment, wherever you’re dealing with it, but I saw a chance for the Commonwealth, which is 2.2 billion people. And pre-COVID19 it was growing at an average rate of 5.5%. And yet, no work had been done towards that at all. Nothing has been done, in the UK, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand. I’m trying to promote such a concept, I still think it’s got value.”
Trade Deal with the U.S.
Winston Peters is big on strengthening trade and economic cooperation between New Zealand and the United States. The New Zealand First party leader and deputy Prime Minister pushed for the free trade deal with the United States during his high-level meetings in Washington.
“We’re approaching on an aspect of a trade deal with the United States, pressing it real hard, but you can understand that it’s not an excuse, but you can understand, at least, COVID-19 challenging days. It’s all administration’s got a preoccupation with that. And as you’ve got the COVID-19 damaging effect on domestic economies, the chances of pushing a free trade deal I can list an attractive bullet economy in each case, not on our case, but definitely for others,” said Peters.
“So I’m going to press on this.” he declared, “because it’s important in the big picture of defending democracy, freedom and international trading rules in this world.”
Trade Deal with UK
“In terms of the trade deal with the UK, what is the main barrier right now? Is this deal going to happen in the way that you’re hoping for?” I asked the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand.
“I think when you say the main barrier is not the right word but with what we’ve got of course is, they still have to do the UK exit from the EU. That’s number one. Number two, they’ve got a number of trade relationships that they are seeking to work on, including the United States. And dare I say it, getting out of the EU, nevertheless dealing with the EU and their trade relationship as well. So they’ve got quite a lot on their plate. And the UK, as of late, has not been doing much in the world of free trade agreements and talks,” the Deputy Prime Minister assessed.
“So you’ve got to ask, what is their practice, what is the professional build-up of this skill amongst a lot of people? Because these are skills positions, and whether or not they’ve got so much on their plate with Australia, with New Zealand, with the Commonwealth, with the United States, and with the EU that we will be required to take more time than we thought we originally would,” he said.
“We believe we can get a deal done very fast with the UK. We – Australia, and New Zealand— are, to use the phrase “match fit” in terms of preparation, because we’ve been doing it for years.”
Tough, but necessary choices
Winston Peters is a rugby aficionado, and in sports, like in politics, an incumbent has to learn to win and to lose. Throughout his career, he went through highs and lows, but so far always managed to stay in the game of politics and outlast expectations even when many quickly wrote him off.
“What would you say is the biggest life lesson politics taught you so far?” I asked.
“The biggest lesson I learned was before I came into politics. I know of no profession that can do so much harm to people so quickly as politics. Conversely, I know of no more efficient way that can do people so much good, so quickly as well,” Peters revealed.
As a country, New Zealand was very successful in banning automatic weapons. After the 2019 Christchurch mosque terrorist attacks, when white supremacist Brenton Tarrant killed 51 people, Peters’ government acted decisively and swiftly. In the United States, its problem with mass shootings remains unresolved.
“What is the ‘secret’ to that, was it hard to make that decision at the time of the attack in Christchurch?” I wondered.
“Well, sadly, you say what’s the ‘secret’?”, Peters quickly observed the undertone of my multifaceted question. “51 people massacred, terribly damaged, and terribly wounded and harmed, required us to take action. And one of the difficulties is that this is political for some people who want to maintain, despite that example, the same access to military hardware. These are not just sports guns, they’re much more serious than that, and we’ve had to make a decision and come down firm.”
He continued, “As a party with significant support from, you might say, the gun lobby and the rural lobby, we nevertheless realize that we just had to make a stand in the interest of New Zealand’s long-term safety. We couldn’t have this. And as a consequence, there’s been a dispute between the gun lobby, so to speak, and the usual person. Our response is we’re not going to face the world not reacting properly. So we had to make a decision. And we made it, we think that the law is sound, it is yet to be totally finalized, but it will be sound and in the long run, also, we are stapled to them as well. That’s the responsible outcome after a mess of international disaster. This person came from outside New Zealand, it was not a New Zealander that did this.”
There’s no substitute for experience
In a recent interview for the Guardian, Peters said that he helped Jacinda to put forward good policies while saving her from some disastrous ones.
“How do you tell the difference between the two?”, I asked.
“In the history of humanity, people, and animals as well, have serious instincts that they learn because they are instincts for survival. But what is most important in politics? I think it’s not just knowing the facts. You better know all the facts you possibly can, and if this suspicion that you’ve got has got eight legs to it, you better know each one of them and know them very, very well. But having said that, there’s no substitute for experience. You can be brilliant, you can be an absolute genius, but experience teaches you if you’ve got time to decide by all the time you can so that you can find out every aspect of what you’re going to decide, not just half of the story, but the total story so you know that you’re not caught by any surprise,” he said.
“Also”, he continued, “be prepared to be a good listener of what goes around you. You’ll have a lot of people with a lot of talent, ability, and also experience. But in the end, if you’ve heard all that, and you’ve got to make a decision, that experience teaches you that you got to be bold. You get nowhere by being timid, or too scared. That tends for you to make half a decision or a very inadequate decision.
We’re celebrated for great ideas and a serious hand break for bad ones, and we’re proud of that. New Zealand First can prove where we have been so right, where we can look back and say if you’d gone down that path, this would have been a disaster, it would have cost you this amount of money. It would never have worked. And there’s often resentment when you do that. But, funny enough, you are you can be, and you’re often so surprised that something that you were the cause of happening, is now being claimed to be the brainchild of someone else in your coalition arrangement. It’s not unheard of,” he revealed.
Failure is always an orphan
New Zealand’s political insiders often say that Winston Peters has “turned Jacinda conservative.”
“Is it true that you are, in fact, behind most of Jacinda’s great policies?” I asked.
“No, I can’t say that’s all true,” he insisted. “What I can say is that the great policies to do with rejuvenating all the provinces with serious infrastructural investment, a billion trees to change our climate footprint, reviving our defense capacity and our military utilities and assets, putting far greater investment into Foreign Affairs and Trade offshore—there’s a lot of ideas that come from New Zealand First, exclusively.
“But as I say, success has many fathers; failure is always an orphan. You’d be surprised how many people claim to be the architect of the policies we’ve been pushing.”
At a time when politics remains the most powerful force for change in people’s lives, I asked him: “What is the most important value Winston Peters stands for—a touchstone of New Zealand First?”
“You cannot be in a country of freedom without freedom. That is the most important value that I’ve got. If you look at the canvas of history, democracy and freedoms are pretty rare outcomes for humanity. Most of history has been anything but democracy, anything but freedom, anything but the rule of law. There have been dictatorships and despotism down through the centuries.
“So that’s the number one value that we’ve got. And in my view, all countries matter. Small countries matter just as much as big countries. I can’t emphasize how important that is. Just because you’re small does not mean you can’t be a world leader. We’re not a big place, but in many ways, we’re a very lucky country. And our international relationships are based on shared principles that are very important to us,” the deputy prime minister concluded, as New Zealand’s political story continues to write itself.
