Winston Peters
Categories: 1945 births | Members of the Privy Council | Maori people | New Zealand politicians | New Zealand First | New Zealand National Party
- This page refers to the New Zealand politician. For the Trinidad and Tobago calypsonian and politician see: Gypsy (calypsonian)
| Image:Winston Peters.jpg | |
| Personal Details | |
| Birth: | April 11 1945 in Whangarei, New Zealand |
| Marriage: | Divorced |
| Children: | Two |
| Background: | Worked as a teacher and a lawyer |
| Political Details | |
| Electorates: | Tauranga |
| Political Party: | New Zealand First |
The Right Honourable Winston Raymond Peters (born April 11, 1945) is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs of New Zealand.
He is a New Zealand politician and Member of Parliament, and is the leader of the New Zealand First political party.
Contents |
Career
| Parl. | Electorate | List Pos. | Party |
| 39th | Hunua | National | |
| 41st | Tauranga | National | |
| 42nd | Tauranga | National | |
| 43rd | Tauranga | National | |
| 44th | Tauranga | NZ First | |
| 45th | Tauranga | 1 | NZ First |
| 46th | Tauranga | 1 | NZ First |
| 47th | Tauranga | 1 | NZ First |
| 48th | List | 1 | NZ First |
Peters was born in the town of Whangarei. He is half-Maori, his father being Pākehā (European) and his mother Maori. He studied history, politics and law at Auckland University and has worked both as a teacher and as a lawyer.
National Party
Peters initially entered parliament under the banner of the National Party, being elected in 1978 as the MP for Hunua (an electorate in the Auckland area). He lost this seat in 1981, but in 1984 he successfully stood in the electorate of Tauranga.
After winning Tauranga, he became the National Party's spokesperson on Maori Affairs, Consumer Affairs, and Transport. In 1987, he was elevated to National's Front Bench, acting as spokesperson for Maori Affairs, Employment, and Race Relations. After National won the 1990 elections, Peters became Minister of Maori Affairs in the government of Jim Bolger.
While Peters was relatively popular with the public, he became increasingly disliked within his own party. Peters disagreed with the party leadership on a number of matters, and frequently spoke out against his party regarding them. While National could possibly have tolerated his difference of opinion, they were far less willing to accept his public criticism, which they regarded as undermining the party. Eventually, in October 1991, Bolger dismissed Peters from his cabinet position.
Peters remained as a National backbencher, continuing to criticise the party. In late 1992, when the National Party was considering possible candidates for the elections in the following year, it was decided that Peters would not be allowed to seek nomination for Tauranga. Peters unsuccessfully challenged this decision in the High Court, and in early 1993, he chose to resign from the party and from parliament. This prompted a by-election in Tauranga some months before the scheduled national elections. Winston Peters won this by-election easily, standing as an independent.
New Zealand First
Shortly before the 1993 general elections, Peters established the New Zealand First party. In the election, Peters retained his Tauranga seat. Another New Zealand First candidate, Tau Henare, was also successful, helping to convince people that New Zealand First was not simply an extension of Winston Peters.
In the 1996 elections, the MMP electoral system delivered considerable success to New Zealand First. The party won 17 seats and swept all of the Maori seats. More importantly, it held the balance of power in Parliament. Neither National nor Labour was able to secure a majority in parliament without the backing of New Zealand First, leaving Peters in effect to choose the next prime minister
After over a month of negotiations with both parties, Peters decided to enter into coalition with his former colleagues in National. Earlier, he had appeared to promise not to align with National, but Michael Laws, the party's campaign manager, later claimed that Peters had already decided to join forces with them and used his negotiations with Labour simply to win more concessions from Bolger.
Whatever the case, Peters exacted a high price for allowing Bolger to stay on as prime minister. Peters became Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer (senior to the Minister of Finance), the latter post created especially for him. Initially, there were concerns about whether Peters would be able to work with Bolger, the National prime minister who had previously sacked him from Cabinet, but the two did not seem to have any major difficulties.
Later, however, tensions began to develop between Peters and the National Party, which only worsened after Jenny Shipley staged a party room coup and became prime minister. After a dispute over the privatization of Auckland International Airport, Peters was sacked from Cabinet again on 14 August 1998. He immediately led New Zealand First back into opposition. However, several MPs, including deputy leader Henare, opted to stay in government and leave New Zealand First. It later came out that Henare had tried to oust Peters as leader, but failed.None of the MPs who opted to stay in government retained their seats in the next election.
New Zealand First's ongoing problems caused it to perform badly in the 1999 elections. It collapsed to 4.3% of the vote, and would have been shut out of Parliament had Peters not managed to hold onto Tauranga by a slim margin. This only allowed New Zealand First to win five seats. Still in opposition, he continued to promote his traditional policies, but also became more noticeably hostile to immigrants.
In the 2002 election, Peters performed well once again, campaigning on three main issues - reducing immigration, increasing punishments for crime, and ending the "grievance industry" around Treaty of Waitangi settlements. This message regained much support for both Peters and his party, which won 10% of the vote and 13 seats. Peters seemed to hope that Labour, in a position to form a government, would choose to ally with New Zealand First. However, Helen Clark, the Labour Party's leader, explicitly rejected this possibility, instead relying on support from elsewhere. This appeared to anger Peters considerably.
Peters objects to the image that either he or his party is racist, although many people in New Zealand would consider it so even though he is half-Maori. He tried to appeal to Asian voters in 2002 without much success by claiming himself as having Chinese blood. In a speech at Orewa in 2005, he openly criticised immigration from the Asian countries as "imported criminal activity". In July 2005 Peters said New Zealand should err on the side of caution in admitting immigrants until they "affirm their commitment to New Zealanders' values and standards." In the same occasion, Peters claimed to know that Muslim extremists were regularly entering New Zealand, and accused Islam in New Zealand as "having two faces - a moderate face and a militant underbelly". However, he refused to identify the person or the source.
As the 2005 general election approached, Peters did not indicate a preference for coalition with either of the major parties. He promised to either give support in confidence and supply to the party with the most seats, or at least abstain from no-confidence votes against it, and that he would not deal with any coalition that included the Greens. He pledged to keep post-election negotiations to under three weeks following criticism of the seven week marathon it took to broker a deal with National in 1996.
In the election, New Zealand First was severely mauled, with much of its support flowing to National. Peters himself narrowly lost his supposedly unbreakable hold on Tauranga, but New Zealand First did well enough to receive seven seats (down from thirteen in 2002), allowing Peters to remain in Parliament as a list MP.
In negotiations after the election with Clark, Peters secured the ministerial portfolios of Foriegn Affairs and Racing in a Labour-led government. He is a member of the Executive Council, although he is outside cabinet. He has been given permission to criticise the government in areas not related to his portfolios. Constitutional experts say that this is an unprecedented situation. Considering his previous comments relating to immigration, reaction from overseas was one of concern.
In the Independent, commentators gave some insight on the process of how Peters decided to join a Labour-led Government in an article titled 'Who screwed whom?'.
Views and policies
Considerable debate has centred on how to classify the politics of Winston Peters. Common descriptions applied to him include "radical centrist," nationalist, and populist. He says he distrusts the corporate world (a fact sometimes used to classify him as left-wing), but exhibits strong conservatism in his social policy (sometimes used to classify him as right-wing). Perhaps his most notable policy in recent years has been his campaign against immigration, causing some to claim that nationalist describes him best (some critics say "racist", although Peters denies this).
Some observers, however, say that his policies do not follow any ideology at all, and claim that he simply attaches himself to whatever cause is popular. This view of Peters as a populist can be either a criticism or a compliment. According to some, he is an opportunist, using his various crusades to keep himself in power. However, others argue that he is a genuine supporter of the people's interests, fighting for them against big government and big business. This latter view is probably the one which Peters himself most promotes - he frequently portrays himself as working for ordinary New Zealanders against an elitist and paternalistic government. As a result of the MMP voting system in New Zealand, many see this populist appeal as one of the main reasons for the longevity of his political career.