Feisty Peters predicts early poll
New Zealand First targets ‘aw shucks’ PM and says small parties will fail. By Steve Kilgallon.
POLITICAL SURVIVOR Winston Peters is predicting an early election as people turn on an ‘‘aw shucks prime minister’’.
Indicating he won’t work with National, the New Zealand First leader says the country is waking up to John Key and his ‘‘nonsense’’ economic policy.
Peters says Act, United Future and the Maori Party will perish at the next election after failing their voters, while his party will double its vote. Both predictions seem less outrageous after a poll last week put National at 41.5 per cent, the Green/Labour/NZ First vote at 53.5 per cent, and Peters’ own support at 6.5 per cent.
Not that the Roy Morgan poll numbers matter to Peters, with pollsters replacing the media as his biggest enemy.
‘‘ Their polls are drivel, they apologise.’’
Peters even admits that during the Owen Glenn donations affair in 2008, he made a mistake. ‘‘I did the one thing I knew I shouldn’t, I got upset with the messenger. That was counter-productive, but we all live and learn.’’
Now, encouraged by his success in hounding Key over the Dotcom affair, he wants to skewer National on economic policy.
He says National has been ‘‘hysterical’’ in trying to suppress debate on a sliding economy, and a bill he will table this week to reform the Reserve Bank will force the issue. ‘‘The past three weeks have been illuminating for people about the aw shucks prime minister. Public opinion usually lags by three months, but the critical point has been reached, and even in the National camp there are at least a third alarmed at where the Government is going,’’ he says.
‘‘Given provincial and rural New Zealand heavily support National, it must be around now they start asking when they will start doing something and stop giving us excuses. One day farmers are going
never to stop holding their noses and bishly voting National, and wake what is good for them.’’
Peters is talking to farmers, fishermen and manufacturers, who he says are suffering from an over-valued dollar, to persuade them to harangue National themselves, which explains his early poll prediction.
He won’t talk about David Shearer’s performance as Labour leader, but says the main opposition party should be taking advantage. ‘‘ There’s an absolute minefield of issues to be used if they can focus on them.’’ And if they won’t, he will. snobup to
Peters, who first arrived in Parliament in 1981, says he was shocked on his return last year to find a compliant opposition. ‘‘There was definitely a need to put some steel into the opposition, and to confront a prime minister who was not laying out the facts.’’
He doesn’t regret his skirmishes with Speaker Lockwood Smith, says he isn’t there to be popular, and has no intention of adopting an elder statesman role.
And while many have tried to pin him down on his potential post-election allegiances, he sticks by his speech last October, that NZ First could sit cross-bench and not align with Labour or National.
‘‘ I still see countless writers saying what’s going to happen, and not one has phoned me.’’
But he leaves the impression he’d support the left if it adopted his economic policy. ‘‘NZ First is not signing up with anyone until it is clear what we are going to get from that outcome. We don’t sell ourselves short when it comes to getting policy concessions.’’
That seems a dig at the Maori Party, which he says is out of touch with ordinary Maori. ‘‘Saying you are at the table is one thing, being under it having your head rubbed is another.’’
The party is doomed, he says,
as
are United Future and Act – ‘‘the most venal, nasty, hypocritical bunch I’ve ever seen in Parliament’’.
Only NZ First will remain, of course, and Peters shrugs off as ‘‘idle criticism’’ any suggestion he’s a one-man band. But equally, he’s not interested in talking succession. He’s planning to return at the next election as leader. ‘‘I still enjoy it. I’m doing it because I can. There are a lot of other reasons, but it’s a job that’s seriously worthwhile.’’