By late yesterday, Winston Peters was replying to messages by saying that “at this time” he had decided to stay out of “this” issue.
He could afford to.
He had done enough to thoroughly undermine the Prime Minister and raise questions about the coalition’s stability.
“This issue” is, of course, the question of how Peters managed to get the Prime Minister to abandon his own instinctive reaction to the Middle East war and end up not joining Canada and Australia in supporting the US attacks.
And yesterday in Parliament, Peters escalated things further by claiming it was his job, not the Prime Minister’s, to set foreign policy.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark told POLITIK it was an “extraordinary” statement and made the obvious observation that the Government set foreign policy.
That usually means the Prime Minister and their Cabinet, but ultimately it is the Prime Minister who has to carry the can.
But Peters told Parliament yesterday that “As the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I am ultimately responsible for determining New Zealand’s foreign policy, in close consultation with the Prime Minister and other Ministers and MPs.”
“I’ll say it slowly, the person in charge of foreign policy is the Foreign Minister. That’s me, not the Prime Minister,” he said.
Constitutional experts would argue that he is ultimately responsible not for determining New Zealand’s foreign policy, but for implementing it, just as any Minister must implement policy formulated by the Government in Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister.
However, yesterday afternoon, he also found he was running head-on into the new National Party approach to dealing with him: punch back whenever he tries to have a go at them.
Thus, Finance Minister Nicola Willis told journalists yesterday afternoon that Peters was “very, very confused” over the handling of official information relating to the Iran war.
The saga began on Monday night when the New Zealand Herald obtained a series of emails exchanged between Peters and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon over the first weekend in March.
The emails go back to the weekend of February 28, when the US bombing of Iran began.
The Australian Prime Minister and Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence issued a statement saying they supported “the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.”
Canada issued a similar statement.
New Zealand issued a subtly different statement:
The New Zealand statement:
“New Zealand has consistently condemned Iran’s nuclear programme, its destabilising activities in the region and elsewhere, and its repression of its own people.
“Iran has, for decades, defied the will and expectations of the international community. The legitimacy of a government rests on the support of its people. The Iranian regime has long since lost that support.
“In this context, we acknowledge that the actions taken overnight by the US and Israel were designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security.”
Then, on RNZ Morning Report on Monday (March 2), host Corin Dann asked Luxon 17 questions over six minutes, trying to get him to answer whether New Zealand supported the weekend American strikes on Iran.
Luxon began by saying that we “acknowledged” the US strikes, but then answered each question by repeating lines like this:
“We understand fully why the Americans and the Israelis have actually undertaken the independent action that they’ve taken to make sure that Iran can’t threaten international peace. I know, well that… My position isn’t that different from the Australian position or the Canadian position.”
But it was.
Both Canada and Australia said they supported the strikes. Asked repeatedly whether he did, Luxon would not say yes or no.
It seems (from the Herald’s report on the emails) that shortly after that, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet contacted Peters’ office, suggesting New Zealand modify the “acknowledge” line to a clearer expression of support.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs official from Peters’ office, Michael Appleton, travelling with him in Argentina, said Peters did not wish this to happen.
None of this, by the standards of the Beehive or the Wellington bureaucracy, is unusual.
Officials and ministers disagree as they debate issues.
But what was unusual about the emails is not what they said but that Peters chose to release them.
Yesterday, he was claiming that this was a general policy in his office: “If you can release it, then release it.”
That might surprise many journalists whose experience with Official Information Act requests to NZ First offices is more likely to be like the rejection POLITIK got this week over an OIA request to an NZ First Minister.
But it was the decision to release the emails that made this whole affair what it is.
The impact of the release would surely be to show Luxon as weak, subservient to Peters and on the wrong side of public opinion on the war, particularly as fuel prices rise.
Peters claimed the release decision was accidental and that “staff training” was taking place in his office to ensure it didn’t happen again.
Yeah, right! His staffers, Michael Appleton, Jon Johansson and John Tulloch are among the most experienced in the Beehive.
Whether NZ First intended it or not, the effect will be to undermine Luxon’s leadership once again.
Peters has been claiming that he knows the voting numbers from the confidence vote last week.
It’s hard to see how he does since the National Party scrutineers have closely guarded the votes.
But POLITIK understands that he subscribes to a rapidly spreading claim that the vote was much closer than had been assumed.
Even if it wasn’t, if he believes that to be the case, then it might be expected that he would keep the pressure on Luxon in the hope that he is rolled.
That would underline his claim that NZ First is the stable part of the coalition.
It could even give him a reason to break up the coalition and thus spark an early election.
That would depend on how well he and NZ First continue to poll.
And so, having thrown the match to start the fire, he appears to be now standing back and enjoying the flames.
For National, the emails once again raise questions about the Prime Minister’s political judgment.
This affair has a long way to run yet before it plays out.
