By Russel Norman
AUCKLAND — It's a beautiful sunny day, the first day it hasn't rained in months. Winston Peters, the leader of the New Zealand First Party, has gambled on an open air campaign launch for the October 12 election and has won. God is a New Zealand First supporter.
There are a few hundred diehard party supporters seated in the middle of Queen Elizabeth Square, surrounded by a few hundred onlookers. It's lunchtime in the CBD on a weekday. The warm-up speakers are really bad, and there is a general sigh of relief when Winston Peters finally takes the stand. Peters is the populist leader of the party. He was groomed by the authoritarian former National Party prime minister, Robert Muldoon. Then he left National to form NZ First.
Peters is serious. His style is to give the appearance of depth while saying very little. "This is a campaign about who owns this country. New Zealand for New Zealanders."
Peters gained national notoriety when he launched his immigration policy in the Auckland suburb of Howick, which has a high Asian population. He spoke of the need to reduce immigration — everyone understood exactly who he meant. A lot of people have been hurt by the New Right policies of Labour and National over the last 12 years, and Asians were an easy target to blame. NZ First shot up to over 25% in the polls.
Since then, he has attacked radical Maori activists, advocated that gang members should have their sentences doubled, suggested that sentences could be halved if prisoners did hard labour and relaunched his immigration policy just for good measure. The politics of hate and fear.
There is a lot of anger because of the remarkable level of poverty. And there is a lot of fear. People lock themselves in their houses in the middle of the day. The elderly are especially frightened, and they form the core of Peters' support.
NZ First's campaign launch was pretty flat. The party has run into trouble over who it could form a coalition with post-election. Those who followed Peters out of National look in that direction. But there is also a significant Maori section of the party to whom the idea of coalition with National is anathema. The deputy leader, Tau Henare, has stated that he will refuse to serve in the cabinet of a coalition government with National. Peters rules nothing out, and the possibility of a split in the party remains.
NZ First's policies have been low on detail and high on rhetoric. Peters talks of the need for an equitable health and education system, yet plans to spend little more than National on them. Waiting lists for surgery are around 100,000 people long. I have met people waiting 10 years for knee surgery and two years for surgery on an enlarged prostate. Many people have died on the cardiac waiting list. It is unclear how NZ First will deal with this problem, because it plans to spend only $450 million extra over three years (compared with the Alliance's $2.3 billion extra).
On industrial relations, Peters plans only to reform the Employment Contracts Act. Among other things, the act makes multi-employer collective bargaining illegal, but Peters won't abolish that section of it. The Alliance and Labour have announced their intention to abolish the act. However, to her discredit, the Labour Party leader, Helen Clark, is willing to talk compromise with Peters on this issue.
As the campaign progresses it is clear that both Peters and Clark are desperate to be PM at just about any cost. The most likely post-election scenario at this stage is a Labour-NZ First coalition government, with Alliance support when the policies coincide. This would certainly be better than a coalition of National, the Christian Coalition and the new right ACT Party. However, this is likely to be very unstable, and another election within 12 months is on the cards.
In the latest leaders' debate on national television, Peters stated: "Above all NZ First stands for the very essence of New Zealand — the soul of this country — what it means to be a New Zealander. We are unashamedly New Zealanders. This country was the greatest country on earth once, and it can be again. And in partnership with New Zealanders, New Zealand First is going to set out to achieve that goal."
But what exactly "it means to be a New Zealander" remains necessarily vague to give Peters the space to make whatever post-election compromises he needs to get himself into a comfortable position.