There are two faces to New Zealand First.
Their “annual” convention in Auckland over the weekend demonstrated that.
What emerged was, on the one hand, an anti-immigrant, anti-elite, anti-vax populist party and, on the other, a conservative, regionally focused economic development party.
The populist strand was most evident in two speeches; one from former National MP and longtime Peters associate, Michael Laws and then the second was Peters’ own keynote speech to the convention.
Laws’ speech came immediately after a convincing speech from former All Black captain and Tukituki candidate Taine Randell, who talked about the difference between the New Zealand his grandparents and parents had grown up in and what he feared might be the future his “yet to come” grandchildren might face.
Randell, who has a double degree in law and commerce, said his grandparents’ generation hadn’t built New Zealand by playing it safe.
“They built it because they were brave enough to back themselves and back each other,” he said.
“That’s the New Zealand I want my kids and grandkids to inherit.
“I don’t want a New Zealand where success is basically you jump on a plane and go overseas.
“We want one where everyone can afford a home. The energy bills, we can pay them. And in retirement, we’ll look after you. That’s New Zealand that I want.”
But if Randell has come to politics from the outside, Michael Laws is an insider.
He was the researcher for New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, when Peters was a National Party Opposition MP between 1987 and 1990 and when he regularly beat National’s leader, Jim Bolger, in preferred Prime Minister polls.
He then went on to become a National MP and then left and joined New Zealand First, and he then ran their first MMP campaign in 1996.
If anybody made Peters politically, it was Laws, who these days is a shock jock talk radio host on the right-wing “Platform” internet radio.
“Winston Peters was fighting the ideology of the far right, the belief that if the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, then that is a good thing,” he told the conference.
“And Winston Peters fought against that because his argument was that we are all New Zealanders and every New Zealander deserves equality of opportunity.
“Now, 40 years later, here we are fighting another ideology, as ruinous to our nation as that.
“It is the ideology of the liberal and the left.
“It is an authoritarian orthodoxy that says, unless you think like this, your stake in our society is taken away from you.
“And that is not New Zealand First. We are a party of free speech. We are a party of freethought. We are the Party of freedom of expression.”
No one was happier to pick up that challenge than New Zealand First’s Deputy leader Shane Jones.
Whilst Jones likes to challenge the boundaries of politically correct language, he is also the Party’s leading economic thinker.
At last year’s convention, he set out his commitment to regional development.:
“The people that are doing the heavy lifting, taking us out of struggler’s gully at the moment in terms of our economy, the backbone, are your brothers and sisters and your cousins in rural and regional New Zealand,” he said.”
But this year, he abandoned economic arguments and pitched his speech at the populist anti-Indian migrant wing of New Zealand First.
“When the census was taken in 2013 up to 2023, now to 2026, when I learned in that short period of time the migrant population from one part of the world, India, has doubled without anyone campaigning on it, anyone mandating it and no one planning for it, I’m going to call it out every day, every week, every month,” he said.
“Labor Party, National Party, ACT Party, Green Party, the next time you go to an ethno-nationalist rally to receive a foreign leader, take off your knee pads.”
Oddly, he got some support from, of all people, an Indian migrant member of New Zealand First.
“Some of the issues that we are having in the country, especially with some of the immigrants that have come in who do not want to assimilate,” said Bernadette Soares, the Party’s candidate for Upper Harbour.
“So it’s not about they can’t assimilate, they actually do not want to assimilate, which I find quite distressing.”
And there were the usual remits opposing any form of accommodations of Maori culture, such as one that said no one could be compulsorily made to take a course or seminar involving “religion, culture, belief system or similar” as part of any trade or professional qualification.
There was also a hangover from the anti-vax mood that predominated at last year’s conference, with a remit calling for the rejection of any international agreements or trade deals that compromised Parliamentary sovereignty.
This is a favourite theme of Winston Peters despite his being the Foreign Minister. In his list of New Zealand First achievements, in a nod to the anti-vax lobby, he boasted that New Zealand First was the Party that “stopped the WHO imposing International Health Regulations without New Zealand’s consent.”
However, the anti-vax lobby was much less evident at this convention than last year, when they booed speakers they disagreed with, anybody who cited medical qualifications during the remit debate.
Indeed, extreme ideas tended to get disposed of.
A complex remit which was derived from Social Credit economic theory and called for the establishment of a “Synthetic Sovereign Money System” was voted down, to the relief of the party hierarchy.
There was a strong streak in the other remits of economic orthodoxy with a lean towards the kind of policies that Shane Jones has been pursuing as Minister of Regional Development.
This included support for water storage, an SOE to undertake oil exploration, support for manufacturing and a tougher response to dumping.
That remit was moved by Martin Gummer, a well-known former National Party candidate and president of Young Nationals.
He joined New Zealand First this year and is now their candidate in Epsom.
He contrasts the current National Party unfavourably with his new Party.
“For me, the difference is New Zealand First brings a sort of sharper focus on a few key areas that matter a lot to me and which I have strong views about, and that’s energy, and it’s manufacturing,” he said.
“They’re bolder, they’re thinking outside the box, and they’re more pragmatic, and they’re most proactive, particularly in energy, which everybody now realizes is a very big problem; costs are too high for consumers and for businesses in particular.
“And we’ve got to find a way to drive those costs down, and the only party with the imagination and boldness to do that seems to be New Zealand First.”
It is Jones who has won this support for the Party.
The announcement yesterday that the Party’s proposed one billion dollar Future Fund would finance a comprehensive marine geophysical survey is part of its emphasis on energy policy.
Couple that with its introduction of the Fast Track Consenting process into the coalition Government, and it is easy to see why people like the former Buller Mayor, Jamie Clene, are supporting the Party.
Jones has also proposed that mining royalties be returned to the regions where they are generated.
“ We have the same infrastructure needs as everyone else, so that mining royalties coming back will invest in that sort of meaningful intergenerational kind of infrastructure, which is really important,” Cleine told POLITIK.
But the return of Laws will reinforce Peters’ populist instincts.
“We are the Party that has a bill to let the local ratepayers decide about fluoride in their water, instead of central government ramming it down your throat,” he said in his keynote speech.
“We demanded a second Covid Inquiry, but sadly other parties watered that purpose down. Why?
“Because they are all implicated.
“We are the only Party that has called for a new select committee inquiry into those who were injured by the vaccine – and being compensated for it.
“We are not going to let the matter be swept under the carpet by incompetent ministers.”
And he said it was New Zealand First that had stopped all work on He PuaPua.
“We repealed the Natural Health Products legislation.
“We have taken men out of women’s sports.
“We stopped the use of puberty blockers in children.
“We are making English an official language.”
But for all that, economic remits dominated the order paper and therefore debate.
Ultimately Peters still dominates the party and is its public face though there may have been an ominous warning in the turnout for his speech yesterday.
The party has prepared for 1350 but no more than 850 turned up and that included the 350 conference delegates.
If his star does start to wane then the party will have to decide whether it wants to be a New Zealand version of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party or Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party or, alternatively, a conservative economic party.
That will depend on Laws and Jones.
