Christchurch massacre: NZ Deputy PM Winston Peters moves to justify historic comments attacking Muslims

New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has been forced to defend his past history of conflating the Islamic religion.

NZ Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters. Picture: AP

New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has been forced to defend his past history of conflating the Islamic religion with violent extremism and making accusations against the Muslim migrant community following last week’s Christchurch attacks.

Mr Peters in 2005 said that moderate Muslims were working “hand in glove” with extremists and sent a letter to Islamic groups in New Zealand tasking them to name any “radicals, trouble­makers and potential dangers to our society”.

The New Zealand First leader said this week, in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, that he was simply echoing the concerns of global Muslim leaders at the time and had made similar ­criticisms about other extremists.

“Leadership of the Muslim world was saying right then ‘We have got to out our people if they’re behaving that way’,” he said.

“The Muslim leadership was saying it, not just me. I don’t believe that terrorism, whatever its background creed, or wherever it comes from, is acceptable.”

He suggested, however, he may have been mistaken.

“If you want to look at someone who’s had the longest political career of anybody in this parliament, and you think that I would claim that I’m blameless over that long career — well, you might but I don’t assume such a thing, and I never will.”

In 2005 in a speech titled The End of Tolerance, delivered after the London tube station bombing, he said New Zealand had never been a nation of Islamic immigrants, and that the Muslim community there had a “militant underbelly”.

In 2017, Mr Peters was accused by academics of turning the local Muslim community into a “whipping boy” for his political campaign after he said the “Islamic community” needed to “clean house” and turn terrorists in.

In 2013, Mr Peters denied one of his MPs, Richard Prosser, had incited hated when he wrote a column saying Muslims shouldn’t be allowed on “Western” airlines.

“You cannot go and generalise in the erroneous way he did … (but) before you all take that soft-headed approach, there is an ­element of truth to what he is saying,” he said.

Mr Peters’ party has taken a hard line on immigration and recently tried to push for migrants to take a Kiwi values test.

Jacinda Ardern was elected on a platform of cutting immigration by about 20,000 to 30,000 a year — a plan from which the New Zealand Prime Minister has since stepped back.

New Zealand resettles just 1000 refugees annually. Ms Ardern has committed to raise that to 1500 during her first term.