Kerre Woodham: What's ahead for Winston Peters and NZ First?

The New Zealand First convention took place at the Distinction Hotel in Palmerston North over the weekend. And all these silver fern, pin-wearing NZ First faithful gathered, along with a few wannabes, like Stuart Nash, he spoke. Just a few formalities to go through and it looks like Stuart Nash will be a signed-up member of NZ First and one of their high-profile names going forward at the next election.

I don't know how the coalition government decided who would go first in the Deputy Prime Minister's role. If they said how they did it, it's escaped me, I'm sorry. They might have tossed a coin. They might have played paper scissors rock. They might have put their names in a hat and Christopher Luxon drew out one. Might have been done on seniority - oldest and most experience goes first. You just know that Winston Peters, leader of NZ First, would have totally gamed the system to ensure he served first as Deputy Prime Minister because after a good stint of being Foreign Affairs Minister, which he still is and which he still works hard at, and a good stint of standing in for the Prime Minister when he was out of the country and fulfilling his obligations admirably,   it free’s him up now, now that David Seymour's in the role, to really get the campaigning underway for NZ First well before 2026 rolls around. To be fair, ACT are not far behind. David Seymour's State of the Nation speech at the beginning of the year was a rallying cry to the party faithful. But at NZ First's convention over the weekend, you heard speeches that sounded more like promises. Promises that would normally be made on the hustings.

It wasn't a convention per se, it was more of a, "Let's get going, brothers. Let's start promising," the kind of glorious kind of promises that NZ First voters are looking for when it comes to political parties. Things like making KiwiSaver compulsory, contributions being raised to 10%, offsetting that raise with tax cuts. 

What's happened here is you've got thousands and thousands of people, hundreds of thousands have signed up, but they're not contributing. They're not saving. And so it's not as easy as some of the journalists thought, just to work out what's going on. But we're going to make it compulsory and we're going to ensure this is phased in at a level which you'll see comprehensively is followed overseas. We need to turn this into a super, super saving fund and a super investment fund at the same time, but not in the control of politicians. 

And when you talked about yesterday tax cuts, that's literally a tax cut for a person who's contributing to KiwiSaver, or is it a rebate or how would it work? 

That's a tax cut for the person contributing to Kiwi Saver and also for the employer.

Right, so I would pay less tax if I'm contributing to Kiwi Saver.

You still with us?

Yes, I said exactly, yeah.

I think there must have been a drop out on the line. That was Winston Peters talking to Mike Hosking this morning. There was more preaching to the converted. Winston Peters called for new migrants having to sign a Kiwi values document, incorporating respect for the flag, respect for democracy, one person, one vote, that sort of thing. I imagine it'd be much like the Australian values statement that migrants to Australia must sign.

And Peters said the party was responsible for getting cabinet to agree to bring legislation to the House very shortly, making English an official language of New Zealand. As is generally the case with election campaign promises, there wasn't a great deal of specific detail. No costings from Peters on how much the Kiwi Saver policy would cost or how it would be implemented, other than to say the rise in contributions would be staggered, first 8% then 10%. But let him be perfectly clear, there is life in the old boy yet and he is determined to get himself and NZ First back into Parliament and back into government with even more sway than he had this time around.

As far as Winston Peters is concerned, ‘25, as in 2025 is done and dusted. It is 2026, baby. NZ First is on the road, looking to win over voters who are unimpressed and underwhelmed by National and Labour. 

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