With a week to go until the election, Winston Peters is making friends with old foes and enemies of new rivals. At a public meeting in Lower Hutt, he backed National’s Chris Bishop, ruled out working with the Opportunity Party and said NZ First's SME tax policy should go “much further”.
Meanwhile, question marks keep popping up on who New Zealand's next Minister of Finance could be.
An eventful public meeting with Winston Peters
A public meeting held by Winston Peters is never boring. The first I ever went to as a junior journalist was about a decade ago in Tauranga. I was there more recently in 2024 when protesters caused somewhat of a stampede at the conclusion of the NZ First conference.
It was no different this week in Lower Hutt.
Peters 4 Bishop
Interestingly, Peters threw his support behind National MP Chris Bishop for the Hutt South seat.
"For the second time as leader of New Zealand First, I've endorsed some other party's candidate for a seat," Peters said (the first was Labour's Kelvin Davis in 2014).
"Unlike the claims of many political parties, people with real skills, insider knowledge and experience are not abundant in Parliament. I'm telling you. So something like that would be a loss," he said, referring to if Bishop lost the Hutt South seat. If current polling were replicated at the election, National would not be bringing in any list MPs either, meaning Bishop would be out of Parliament.
"Chris Bishop is a cut above the usual MP, and unlike his opponent [Labour MP] Ginny Andersen, he usually has a grasp of the issues in front of him," Peters said.
Times have changed since 2020, when Bishop took to Facebook to say he hoped voters would cast Peters into "political irrelevance" at that year's election.
Disruptions
That wasn't the only surprising thing to happen. A man standing at the back behind the media table appeared to be making hand gestures during Peters' speech.
From the angle I was at, sitting what felt like almost beneath him, I assumed it was a religious praise hand gesture. Turned out it wasn't, the realisation coming to me as he was led out of the room yelling, 'white New Zealanders first'. Peters promptly told him, "no, no sunshine, naff off, you came to the wrong meeting".
Later, police (who were already at the venue, presumably because there were pro-Palestine protesters outside) had to be called to forcibly remove another person after a question was asked about Oranga Tamariki.
Business tax policy
Talking to media, Peters said if his policy to cut the company tax rate for businesses with a turnover under $30 million to 20% from 28% was implemented, he would like it to go "much further".
"We did say at the time, that's just the opening gambit on the question of corporate taxation."
Who wants to be New Zealand's Minister of Finance?
Speculation is swirling over who the next Minister of Finance could be.
While the major party finance spokespeople Labour's Barbara Edmonds and National's Nicola Willis, who is also the incumbent, seem like the obvious choices, both sides are throwing wildcards into the mix to attack the other bloc.
The right have been releasing comments such as National MP Simeon Brown on Thursday saying, "imagine waking up on 8 November and Chlöe Swarbrick is Finance Minister", Swarbrick confirming last month she was keen on the job.
More recently, Labour's Kieran McAnulty fuelled the flames, saying David Seymour was "already eyeing up the Finance Minister’s job because National is so unpopular it can’t even be confident of holding on to the Treasury benches".
Seymour told the Herald he was "not measuring up any curtains before looking out the window".
Peters, asked about this, said it was "very clever of the Labour Party to scare the public like that, but I'm not worrying about it".
"I've already had the job during the Asian financial crisis when we didn't go broke... [the] Treasurer ran everything just like the Australian system. I'm afraid back then the Finance Minister just did the counting on the books."
Opportunity v NZ First
Holding a media conference on Parliament's forecourt, Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong said New Zealanders were; "really tired of politicians doing the name-calling, the bickering, the political point-scoring", after Winston Peters called her party 'pinko communists'.
If she was seriously considering ruling out NZ First, Wong said: "We've made it really clear the kind of behaviour that we expect from partners that we potentially will work with in government. I think it's over to New Zealand First to decide whether they want to be the kind of constructive and collaborative partner that we want to work with."
Peters has ruled out working with Opportunity, and at the public meeting ripping into its land tax policy, saying it would leave some people in caravans.
"The media's surrogate kingmaker, and night after night, they've been telling you what's going to happen after the election - that there's a new kingmaker in town. Oh yeah? Stand back and watch," Peters told the crowd.
Wong said Opportunity was not making any rule-outs.
"We've said that if New Zealand First are there around the table, that is a serious consideration for us in terms of whether we can work with them because of the behaviour that they have displayed. Ultimately, if they decide not to act like that anymore and focus on the big issues, then that's a choice for them."
Election week
The countdown is on to November 7. Interest.co.nz will be around the country reporting the latest political news over the next week and on election night.
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