NZ’s anti-woke warrior Winston Peters is the Trump of the south

Coy is not a word usually associated with Winston Peters, New Zealand’s famously forthright foreign minister. Yet, that’s how he behaves when the topic turns to American politics during our lunch interview in Auckland.

We’re meeting a week before the United States election, and the silver-haired 79-year-old is adamant he knows who will triumph. But he won’t say the name out loud. “I’m certain of the outcome, but my job as foreign minister is to be seriously circumspect,” he says. “If you don’t know what the outcome of this election is, you haven’t been watching it.”

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been a key player in his nation’s politics for over four decades.Credit: Getty Images

Based on Peters’ history – he correctly predicted Donald Trump’s shock 2016 victory – and his “anti-woke” political leanings, I have little doubt he is referring to the Republican candidate. Indeed, he is. Peters’ press secretary John Tulloch later provides a photo of a whiteboard showing that his boss (writing under the codename ANON) predicted Trump would win the presidency with 305 electoral college votes, just seven short of Trump’s actual tally. “I witnessed him writing it up two days before the election,” Tulloch says.

Robert Patman, a professor of politics at the University of Otago, says Peters is “probably the closest thing we’ve got in domestic politics to a Trump”, while stressing he considers him less radical than the incoming president. Patman points to Peters’ often adversarial relationship with the Kiwi press. In 2002, Peters described a New Zealand journalist as a “smart alec, arrogant, quiche eating, chardonnay drinking, pinky finger pointing snobbery, fart blossom”.

He has channelled Trumpian rhetoric, urging his supporters to “take back our country” while decrying his opponents as “globalists” and “elites”. He cannot be accused of being a mere copycat: long before Trump entered politics, he was vowing to “make New Zealand great again”.

Peters entered New Zealand’s parliament in 1978 as a member of the centre-right National Party, but became increasingly critical of the party’s free-market economic policies. In 1993, he broke away to form his own conservative populist party, New Zealand First.

In Australian terms, the party is ideologically closest to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Peters has consistently claimed that immigration was turning New Zealand into an “Asian colony”; in 2014 he said “two wongs don’t make a right” (accused of racism, he defended it as a joke that people in Beijing would find funny).

Peters’ (listed as Anon according to his press secretary) prediction for Trump’s victory was just seven electoral college votes short of the final result.Credit: John Tulloch

Of Maori descent himself, he has decried government departments’ use of the Maori language as “virtue-signalling” that divides New Zealanders by race. Labour leader and former prime minister Chris Hipkins described Peters as like a “drunk uncle at a wedding” in March when he drew a parallel between Nazi Germany and New Zealand’s system of co-governance (in which Maori have dedicated parliamentary seats and exercise self-determination over some social services and environmental management).

Like a grizzled political phoenix, Peters has lost his seat in parliament three times, only to return to the heights of power. Under New Zealand’s mixed-member proportional electoral system, winning a small vote share is enough to guarantee him a seat in parliament and often a kingmaker role in a minority government. His party came in fourth place in last year’s election, with 6.5 per cent of the party vote.

He has served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister three times each under both centre-left Labour and centre-right National governments. National leader Christopher Luxon said Peters was on “another planet” for campaigning on gender-specific bathrooms during last year’s election build-up. Now they are serving together with Luxon as prime minister and Peters as his deputy.

Long-time observers of New Zealand politics speak of Peters as having two sides: a firebrand populist who dominates in opposition, and a more pragmatic, considered politician who emerges in government. “He can be abrasive and controversial in domestic terms, sometimes a little bit outrageous,” says Patman. “As foreign minister, he tones all that down and takes the role extremely seriously.”

It’s a warning you hear from many who have observed Peters’ long career: don’t let his at times outlandish commentary distract you from the fact he is a shrewd and strategic political operator.

A year older than Trump, Peters boasts the same abundant energy levels of the incoming US president. The passionate boater and horse-rider attributes his stamina to a good diet. As we dine at Sails, an upscale waterfront restaurant at Auckland’s Westhaven Marina, he removes all the batter from his deep-fried fish, leaving it uneaten in a pile on his plate. He’s got firm views about food, as well as politics. “I can’t stand the chips being overcooked,” he tells the waiter when ordering, insisting they be served golden rather than brown.

Since becoming foreign minister in December, he has visited 35 countries, including six twice, on a mission to expand New Zealand’s access to global trade markets and boost its international influence. “It is not a sinecure, I’m not doing it for my CV,” he says of his portfolio. “Foreign affairs to me is very much a seriously underrated ministry for a country that is totally export dependent.”

As well as visiting all Pacific Islands Forum countries within a year, he has focused on gaining greater access for New Zealand farmers and other exporters to big emerging markets like India and Brazil. New Zealand politicians, he says, made “the terrible mistake” of thinking the country could depend on one product (milk powder), one company (Fontera) and one market (China).

“No one in the history of humanity would ever put the eggs in one basket like that. I said so at the time and I’m still saying it.”

Anne-Marie Brady, professor of political science at the University of Canterbury, describes Peters as the only Kiwi politician with a genuine foreign policy vision.

“He is like a man looking out at the sea, seeing risks on the horizon,” she says. “We’re in a very bad time in global politics and he gets that. He has a sense of urgency.”

New Zealanders recall the close relationship Peters developed with then-US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice during his first stint as foreign minister, helping to ease longstanding tension over New Zealand’s strict anti-nuclear stance. Standing beside Peters at a 2008 press conference in Auckland, Rice described New Zealand as a US ally, the first time a senior US administration official had done so in decades.

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Minister Winston Peters in Auckland in 2008.Credit: Getty Images

Despite stark political differences, foreign affairs insiders say Peters has worked well with Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, a leader in Labor’s left faction, and that the pair respect each other’s diplomatic skills.

Although diplomacy is his day job, Peters’ combative side can still burst through. When I ask him about the Albanese government’s efforts to make it easier to deport New Zealand-born criminals, he pointedly notes that an Australian committed the 2019 Christchurch massacre, the worst terror attack in New Zealand’s history. “I don’t want to hear no jingoistic behaviour from your politicians,” he says. “Don’t come the dingo with me.”

Having worked in his youth as a blast furnace worker with BHP in Newcastle and a Snowy Mountains tunneller, Peters urges Australians to show a “bit of gratitude” for the contribution Kiwi migrants make to the nation’s economy.

Earlier this year, Peters described Bob Carr as a “Chinese puppet” among other unflattering remarks, prompting the former Labor foreign minister to threaten to sue him.

The fracas erupted when Carr visited New Zealand in March and described the so-called pillar II of the AUKUS security pact, which relates to the sharing of advanced defence technologies, as “fragrant, methane-wrapped bullshit”.

Peters stands by his comments, accusing Carr of seeking to lecture New Zealanders while in their country.

“You were the premier of NSW, you were a foreign minister for about five minutes, and you’re telling somebody who has been around for 45 years [what to do],” Peters says. “Sorry sunshine, the vast majority of Australians I know are far more humble than that.”

Peters says Carr has not followed through on his legal threat, but he would be happy to go to court. “Go right ahead,” the trained lawyer dares Carr. “There’ll be a thing called discovery.”

Peters says he is baffled by the partisan debate that has erupted over AUKUS in New Zealand, insisting the current government, like its Labour predecessor, is simply exploring whether there are opportunities for New Zealand to co-operate on military technology with three trusted partners.

Peters (second right) with (from left) NZ Defence Minister Judith Collins, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.Credit: AAP

Signing up to AUKUS, however, would rankle New Zealand’s biggest trading partner. China’s ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong has warned the country against “taking sides” between the US and China by signing up to AUKUS.

Peters has described the relationship with Beijing as “complex”, praising China as a vital economic partner while criticising its human rights record. A New Zealand warship this year sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time in six years, sending a message to Beijing that it will not be allowed to control crucial international waterways. Asked whether he is concerned by the prospect of Chinese President Xi Jinping invading the self-governing island of Taiwan, Peters replies: “Massively.”

Don Brash, a former New Zealand National Party leader and central bank governor, says: “He is quite explicitly taking New Zealand down a pro-US anti-China track, which I think is a serious mistake. If China suddenly decided not to take so many of our dairy exports, log exports, fruit exports, we are up the creek without a paddle.”

Peters, who hosted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for a cordial visit to Wellington in March, says pursuing a constructive relationship with China does not mean grovelling to Beijing.

“I’ve seen far too many people kowtow, not just to China, but to other countries,” he says.

“I’ve heard Wang Yi, who I know well, and I respect him, say that China has never invaded anybody. I know a bit about Vietnam [which China invaded for a month in 1979] ... So please don’t move into my space and tell me something that is not true as though I don’t understand.”

Peters has also criticised Israel for going “far too far” in its response to the October 7 terror attacks, saying that “we have to do the best we can to try and see that this misery is over”. In September New Zealand voted in favour of a United Nations resolution calling on Israel to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories within a year, going further than Australia, which abstained.

Bob Carr, of all people, tells me he “congratulates” Peters for his stance on the war in Gaza, while declining to comment on their earlier stoush.

Peters’ retirement has been predicted for several election cycles, but he insists he will run again in 2026, aged 81. “If we had lost the last election, we were on the way to Myanmar, and, dare I say it, Venezuela,” he says, painting a florid, dystopian image of New Zealand under a left-wing government. “I’m a middle-of-the-roader, balanced, a practical person.” He flashes a mischievous grin before heading off to his next appointment.

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