It felt like the start of the farewell tour.
Yes, we all know the received wisdom: never write off Winston Peters. But, bar an act of God, he really is gone this time – and that is not to dismiss him, but to celebrate an utterly extraordinary career.
Voting has begun in Election 2020. This week, the polls opened at New Zealand’s overseas Embassies and High Commissions. Tomorrow, advance voting begins in New Zealand.
When polls close at 7pm on Saturday, October 17, it will be more than 41 years since Peters first entered Parliament. Others may have held their seats longer without interruption, but nobody has given so much of their life to New Zealand Parliamentary politics.
“I’ve been to many of Winston’s tangihanga where people said it was all over for New Zealand First.” – Shane Te Pou
The young lawyer’s political career began in controversy and court proceedings; it took six months of electoral petitions and judicial hearings before a Judge ruled him duly elected to the seat of Hunua in May 1979.
And with the Serious Fraud Office prosecuting two men about allegedly fraudulent donations to the New Zealand First Foundation, there is every likelihood the 75-year-old veteran’s political career will also end in controversy and court proceedings.
Peters had said he wouldn’t show for Newshub’s specially pre-recorded “powerbrokers” debate. The broadcaster had sent out invitations with just the faces of Greens co-leader Marama Davidson, Act leader David Seymour and Māori Party co-leader John Tamihere.
But last night, before an audience in Auckland’s Grey Lynn, Winston Peters confounded expectations just by turning up. And he turned up in warm humour.
Peters didn’t win the debate. If this had been a four-person race, he wasn’t even a medallist.
Davidson clearly communicated the Greens’ successes and their policy platform for the next three years. Seymour was confident and assured without ever seeming brash; ready to lead a much bigger caucus. Tamihere, with nothing to lose, was a fearless and unequivocal force for Māori.
But it didn’t seem as if Peters was here to win.
Peters’ election campaign has been characterised by trips down memory lane. And in this debate, he again reminisced about his childhood growing up in impoverished, rural Northland – going to a school where the kids turned up barefoot, two or three to a horse.
The only time he really fired up was when Māori Party co-leader John Tamihere challenged his personal credentials as a Māori leader – by implication, his very legacy.
This was a debate in which all four party leaders whakapapa as Māori, and Peters wasn’t about to stand there and be told he was just a worker in the Pākehā master’s house.
“This guy’s been the biggest handbrake on Maori renaissance, on Māori looking after Māori problems and not making them Pākehā problems, out of all politicians,” Tamihere said. “I’m here because I’m proud to be Māori. I’m not ashamed to be one.”
Peters retorted: “I was born to a family of 11 children. I know what I’m talking about.”
He said Māori people had a proud legacy and he had inherited that.
“The people that came across the Pacific were a magnificent people. They were again in the Second World War … Please don’t tell me we’re not capable of doing this.”
As Labour-affiliated commentator Shane Te Pou warned afterwards, “I’ve been to many of Winston’s tangihanga where people said it was all over for New Zealand First.”
But voting has already begun around the world, even before NZ First got around to belatedly releasing its policy manifesto yesterday.
The manifesto harks back to better days; it bemoans New Zealand’s decline down OECD rankings on some economic and social indicators. “Concepts such as hard work, productivity, excellence and sacrifice must no longer be frowned upon,” the manifesto says.
Many there last night may have disagreed with the policies in that manifesto, but few would question Winston Peters’ years of hard work and sacrifice.
The cover of that 44-page document shows someone looking into the sunrise.
Or, perhaps, the sunset.
* The debate screens on Newshub Nation on TV3, at 9.25am on Saturday.
