The point of Peters

There's been much to admire about the NZ First leader's politics over the years, but where has it got him?

- DARON PARTON

When Ruth Richardson finished delivering the Mother of All Budgets in 1991, her fellow National Party MPs rose as one in the House to give her a standing ovation. Well, almost as one.

Throughout the speech, Māori Affairs Minister Winston Peters had kept his head down at his desk, preoccupied with correspondence. By pure chance his need to stand, stretch his legs and shake out the crumpled pages of the evening paper coincided with the standing ovation. Understandably, he found it difficult to clap while gathering up his papers at the same time.

That night, you might say, New Zealand First was born. Peters was making his distaste for Richardson's policies plain, and he went on doing it so publicly that three months later, he was sacked from the Cabinet after delivering a speech provocatively entitled "Low flying with an Erebus economy". Before the next election, he quit National altogether and formed his own party.

It's still with us today, the longest-lived "minor" party, and Peters himself is serving his 37th year in Parliament. Remarkably, he's the only politician of his generation still in the House, and at 79 he shows no sign of stopping.

Even more remarkably, he has led his party for 31 years: imagine if someone tried to lead National or Labour that long. Actually, you can't imagine it. New Zealand First is Peters' baby; he created it in his own image, and has nursed it, nourished it, held its hand from day one.

Richardson's devastating, promise-smashing budget fuelled the growing mood for a better electoral system than the one that kept giving either National or Labour all the power, and with MMP looming, Peters perceived earlier than anyone else the potential in being a centrist party, like the Free Democrats in Germany.