At the heart of New Zealand First lies a fundamental tension.
And it is all about Winston Peters.
He has led the party since its formation in 1993, and he confirmed yesterday that he will be standing again at the next election.
He is one year older than Donald Trump, and he will be 81.
And hundreds of his grey-haired faithful turned out on Sunday to hear his speech with its frequent evocations of a New Zealand from times past as he ticked off a long list of New Zealand First achievements and paid tribute to his long-term supporters.
“We set out to return New Zealand to where it once was, number one in the world, the best country to live in,” he said.
But his party is changing.
It was even obvious in the signage at the conference.
The “All Black” black that has traditionally been the party’s colour is now being subtly changed to dark blue.
Most noticeably, the delegates who attended the conference were younger. that those supporters who came to his public rally.
Party president Julian Paul, who has presided over a much more professional reinvigoration of the party, told POLITIK that the party would no longer be a party of Grey Power volunteers.
“We’ve got to be better public-facing, and a lot of our team are quite young,” he said.
“When I say that, I don’t mean people in their mid-20s but in their 30s and 40s, and that’s the face of New Zealand First now.”
In a closed session, conference attendees were asked to raise their hands if this was their first conference and they were new members; POLITIK understands that over 25 per cent of the 250 delegates raised their hands.
This new, relatively younger New Zealand First membership was prepared to challenge some of the fundamental plans that Peters brought to New Zealand First when he founded it.
They also brought a new twist to long-term New Zealand First policies, such as opposition to immigration.
A remit to deport those on migrant visas who had committed serious crimes only narrowly passed.
And a remit calling for a sustainable immigration policy was opposed by a farmer, Stue Husband, who said his sector was heavily dependent on migrants.
“Believe me, if we could find young Kiwis to do the work, we would hire them,” he said.
The remit mover, Nicholas Wells from Young New Zealand First, said he was not calling for a blanket ban on immigration but for immigrants with the required skills.
“The whole idea focused immigration is that we’re not bringing in people we don’t need and can’t support,” he said.
“That’s what this remit gets us back to.
“It gets us back to sustainable workforces and training young New Zealanders so they’re not being locked out of the job marketplace.”
Another remit calling for New Zealanders to be prioritised in the queue for social housing and social services ahead of non-citizens went to a show of hands before it passed, with speakers who opposed it saying that once you were in New Zealand and had a job, you should be treated the same as anybody else.
And in perhaps the most unusual move of the convention, two remits designed to protect New Zealand’s built heritage and wahi tapu passed with some passionate speeches in support.
Party President Julian Paul said he was sick of people attacking our cultural heritage.
“I’m sick of people who erase our history,” he said.
“Let’s not let anyone attack our history and our places of heritage.”
Remits calling for attacking heritage buildings and sites to be made a criminal offence and for greater heritage funding passed without any dissent.
But New Zealand First has not gone entirely woke.
Peters actively courted the anti-vax movement during the election campaign with a stream of dog whistles.
MP Tanya Unkovich got loud applause at the conference when she said how pleased she was that the Government had agreed to extend the terms of reference for the Covid Inquiry.
But there were few remits that the anti-vaxers or conspiracy theorists could get their teeth into.
About the best they could find to act as a proxy was a remit calling for local referendums on chemical additions to drinking water, such as chlorination or fluoridation.
Selwyn delegate Elizabeth Mundt said fluoride was a neurotoxin.
The fluoride added to water supplies is fluorosilicic acid and sodium fluoride,” she said.
“These are sourced from industrial water products and may contain heavy metal contaminants, including arsenic.
“A 1995 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives implicated chlorination in rectal cancer.
“The issue is that we cannot put a price on human health.”
But an attempt by MP Andy Foster to stop the remit in its tracks backfired.
Foster, a former Mayor of Wellington, suggested that the conference agree to refer fluoridation and chlorination to the Ministry of Health and get them to develop a national policy instead of trying to decide the issue by referenda.
NZ First members usually strongly resist handing anything to a central government agency, and if the agency is the Ministry of Health, the resistance is likely to be even firmer.
Foster’s amendment was defeated, and Mundt’s original remit was passed.
It wasn’t the only embarrassment to be suffered by Foster.
On Saturday, he was a frequent contributor to the remit debate, which most of his MP colleagues tried to stay out of, arguing that it was the delegates’ convention.
On Sunday morning, Paul announced that Foster would chair the remit session; that way, he said, they would get through the remits faster.
But the heart of New Zealand First is economic nationalism, and there is no more passionate advocate of that than the Minister they refer to as the “Prince of the Provinces”, Shane Jones.
His speech to the conference was a rousing call for New Zealand to get back into economic development.
“So what have we done to aid the process of making wealth?” he asked.
“The first thing that went into our coalition agreement on your behalf was the fast-track legislation.
“What lies at the heart of that?
“It’s the frustration and, quite frankly, cynicism that local government, regional government, department of conservation and these other characters have slowed everything down.
“It’s virtually impossible to get large projects in New Zealand completed, either in time or within cost parameters.
“With the passage of the fast-track legislation, we are going to accelerate development in New Zealand.”
And there was the inevitable reference to Freddie, the frog.
“This doesn’t mean that we’re going to trash the environment,” he said.
“It’s a low blow for my combatants in the Green Movement to say that about me.
“And look, I know a number of you figuratively kicked me in the shin when I said if there was a mining opportunity and a blind frog was in the way, then Haere Ra Freddie.
“I didn’t mean, on your behalf, that we were going to commit species extinction
“I just meant that Freddie was in the departure lounge.”
But frogs aside, Jones had a sheaf of proposals to get some economic action.
He is promising regulations will be announced today that will force fuel importers to store strategic supplies of fuels in New Zealand.
He is also talking about the Crown leading the development of deep geothermal fields near Kawerau because he believes the electricity generators are unwilling to do so themselves.
“We’re at an inflexion point,” he told the media after his speech.
“Do Kiwis want an energy system that is dominated by short-term profit-driven entities, or do they want the crown to ensure that we have an overarching security plan that makes energy affordable and does not price us out of the market in terms of international investment.”
So, was he suggesting that the agency that did this very deep geothermal drilling be crown-owned?
“Yes,” he replied.
Jones was careful on Saturday not to discuss the Crown’s involvement in too much detail because doing so would have stolen some of Peters’ thunder from yesterday.
Both Peters and Jones have been working for some time on a proposal for a New Zealand version of the Singaporean state-owned investment company, Temasek.
It was foreshadowed with a remit calling for a “New Zealand Future Fund” of up to $100 billion to invest solely in multi-decade infrastructure and “to ensure our future infrastructure security and to enable future economic growth and social enablement.”
The remit passed, and Peters filled in the details in his speech.
“If we are to make a recovery, we desperately need international investment,” he said.
“We will not attract international investment if we cannot answer the simple question, “Why invest in New Zealand?”
“Our failure to answer that question comes from the paralysis of blind ideology, which begins with the belief that the tax system should be neutral, not pick winners.
“All over the world, successful countries know better than that. And their economic record is proof. Singapore, Ireland, Croatia, and small populations, Iceland, and the Nordic countries have climbed to the top of the economic performance ladder while we have been on a constant slide.
“We have to attract international investment, the same way these countries have done. By taxation incentivisation.”
Peters envisages the funding would be borrowed and is unconcerned about any impact that might have on debt targets.
“If you’re spending on consumption, that is an appalling outcome,” he said.
“If a debt target is spending on creating wealth, added value and infrastructure resilience, then it makes sense because it will be around 50 years from now; other smart economies understand that.”
Peters has done a lot of work developing the idea, which could see some of the state-owned enterprises folded into the Future Fund along with new enterprises, such as the one that might undertake the Kawerau drilling.
However, the proposal has not been discussed with either ACT or National, and at least some opposition might be expected from them.
In that case, Peters will take it to the 2026 election as a bottom line for New Zealand First.
If he does, he might just assure his newer, younger members that he is not stuck in nostalgia forever, reliving the battles of the past.
