Winston Peters
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- This page refers to the New Zealand politician. For the Trinidad and Tobago calypsonian and politician see: Gypsy (calypsonian)
| Right Hon. Vaovasamanaia[1] Winston Peters | |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 19 October 2005 |
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| Prime Minister | Helen Clark |
| Preceded by | Phil Goff |
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| In office 16 December 1996 – August 14, 1998 |
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| Prime Minister | Jim Bolger (1996 - 1997) Jenny Shipley (1997 - 1998) |
| Preceded by | Don McKinnon |
| Succeeded by | Wyatt Creech |
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Member of Parliament
for Tauranga |
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| In office 17 July 1984 – 17 September 2005 |
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| Succeeded by | Bob Clarkson |
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Member of Parliament
for Hunua |
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| In office 1978 – 1981 |
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| Preceded by | Malcolm Douglas |
| Succeeded by | Colin Moyle |
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| Born | April 11, 1945 Whangarei,  New Zealand |
| Political party | New Zealand First |
| Spouse | (divorced, two children) |
Winston Raymond Peters (born April 11, 1945) is a New Zealand politician and the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, outside cabinet. He is also the leader of the New Zealand First political party.
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[edit] Early life
Peters was born in the northern town of Whangarei. He is of mixed ethnicity, his father being Māori and his Pākehā mother being of Scottish descent. His iwi affiliation is Ngāti Wai and his clan is McInnes. Two of his brothers, Ian Peters and Jim Peters, have also been MPs.
After attending Whangarei Boys' High School and Dargaville High School Peters studied history, politics and law at the University of Auckland and graduated BA and LLB before working both as a teacher and a lawyer. He was a member of the University Rugby Club in Auckland and captain of the Auckland Māori Rugby team. He also played in the Prince of Wales Cup trials for the Māori All Blacks. One brother, Wayne, played rugby for Otago and North Auckland in the then National Provincial Championship and was in the Junior All Blacks while another brother, Allan, represented Wanganui in rugby.
[edit] Member of Parliament
| 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 |
[edit] National Party
Peters entered national politics in 1975, standing unsuccessfully for the National Party in the electorate seat of Northern Māori. This followed a successful campaign by Peters and other members of his Ngati Wai iwi to retain their tribal land in the face of the Labour government's plan to create coastal land reserves for the public. The result was that virtually no ancestral land was taken by the government of the day in the Whangarei coastal areas, and the initiative helped inspire the 1975 Land March led by Whina Cooper.
Peters successfully ran again in 1978 but only after winning in the High Court an electoral petition which overturned the election night result for the seat of Hunua (an electorate in the Auckland area) against Malcolm Douglas, the brother of Roger Douglas. He lost this seat in 1981, but in 1984 he successfully stood in the electorate of Tauranga.
He became the National Party's spokesperson on Māori Affairs, Consumer Affairs, and Transport. In 1987, he was elevated to National's Front Bench, acting as spokesperson for Māori Affairs, Employment, and Race Relations. After National won the 1990 election, Peters became Minister of Māori Affairs in the fourth National government, led by Jim Bolger.
Peters disagreed with the party leadership on a number of matters, and frequently spoke out against his party regarding them. This made him relatively popular with the public. However, his Party colleagues distrusted him, and his publicity seeking behaviour made him increasingly disliked within his own party. While National may have tolerated his difference of opinion, they were far less willing to accept his public criticism which they determined was undermining the party. In October 1991, Bolger sacked Peters from Cabinet.
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 renomination 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. He stood as an independent and won easily.
[edit] New Zealand First
Shortly before the 1993 election, Peters established New Zealand First and retained his Tauranga seat. Another New Zealand First candidate, Tau Henare, unseated the Labour incumbent in Northern Māori, helping to convince people that New Zealand First was not simply Peters' personal vehicle.
In the 1996 elections, the MMP electoral system delivered a huge windfall to New Zealand First. The party won 17 seats and swept all of the Māori seats. More importantly, it held the balance of power in Parliament. Neither National nor Labour had enough support to govern alone. Neither party could form a majority without the backing of New Zealand First, meaning Peters could effectively choose the next prime minister. It was widely expected that he would throw his support to Labour and make Labour leader Helen Clark New Zealand's first female prime minister. He had harshly attacked his former National colleagues during the campaign, and a large majority of voters who supported New Zealand First backed Labour in the party vote.
After over a month of negotiations with both parties, Peters had a major surprise for the electorate. Even though the electorate had apparently voted for him to get rid of National, Peters decided to enter into coalition with National. However, Michael Laws, the party's campaign manager, later claimed that Peters had already decided to join forces with National 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 Wellington International Airport, Peters was sacked from Cabinet again on 14 August 1998. He immediately broke off the coalition and led New Zealand First back into opposition.[2] 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 was severely mauled in the 1999 elections, which saw Labour oust National from power. The electorate had never forgiven Peters for going into coalition with National after apparently voting for him in order to get rid of National. The party also suffered for the rash of party-switching. 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 concerned about immigration policies.
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, especially from among the elderly who had in the past backed Winston Peters, and New Zealand First won 10% of the vote and 13 seats. Peters seemed to hope that Labour would choose to ally with New Zealand First in order to stay in power. However, Clark 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 some people in New Zealand do think so. 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.
[edit] The 2005 election
As the 2005 general election approached, Peters did not indicate a preference for coalition with either of the major parties, declaring that he would not seek the "baubles of office". He promised to either give support in confidence and supply to the party with the most seats, or to 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, some of New Zealand First's traditional support moved to National. Peters himself narrowly lost his longstanding hold on Tauranga to National MP Bob Clarkson, but New Zealand First did well enough to receive seven seats (down from 13 in 2002), allowing Peters to remain in Parliament as a list MP. Soon after the 2005 election Peters launched a legal challenge against Clarkson. The case alleged that Clarkson had spent more than the legal limit allowed for campaign budgets during elections in New Zealand. This legal bid ultimately failed, with a majority of the judges in the case declaring that Clarkson had not overspent.
In negotiations with Clark after the election, Peters secured the ministerial portfolios of Foreign Affairs and Racing in the Labour-led government, a move which apparently lay at odds with his earlier promise to refuse the "baubles of office". He is a member of the Executive Council, although he is outside cabinet. He may criticise the government in areas not related to his portfolios, which experts say[3] is an unprecedented situation. Considering his previous comments relating to immigration, there were mixed reactions from overseas commentators.
In October 2006, Peters affirmed that he would continue to serve as leader for the 2008 election[4].
[edit] 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 vehemently denies this). Much of Peters' rhetoric is nostaglic and harkens back to supposedly more secure and certain times.
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.
Peters has a generally confrontational and fraught relationship with the media, dealing with media questioning with ill-concealed contempt. Peters' attributes the hostility of the media to the alleged control by foreign-owned business over the New Zealand media.
Winston Peters has campaigned in previous elections for compulsory superannuation schemes for all New Zealanders. Winston Peters has cultivated support amongst the elderly in particular, and his support has been concentrated among New Zealanders over 60 years of age.
In 2007 Peters was bestowed with the chiefly Samoan title Vaovasamanaia, meaning "beautiful, handsome, awesome, delighted and joyful." [1].
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ a b The New Zealand Herald (Friday July 13, 2007). Peters given chiefly Samoan title. Retrieved on 2007-07-15.
- ^ Laking, Rob (2004). History Case Study.pdf Selling the Family Silver: The Sale of Wellington Airport - A Case Study in Local Government Decision-Making (PDF) p 28.
- ^ The New Zealand Herald (October 17, 2005). Making Peters Foreign Affairs Minister 'bad for country's image'. Retrieved on 2007-07-15.
- ^ The New Zealand Herald (October 15, 2006). Winston in for long haul. Retrieved on 2007-07-15.
Hames, Martin. Winston First: The Unauthorised Account of Winston Peters' Career (Auckland: Random House, 1995).
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| Preceded by Phil Goff |
Minister of Foreign Affairs 2005–Present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
