Winstone Peters’ announcement that NZ First wants to eliminate the Māori seats - the very seats that made it possible for his party to get into parliament in the first place, got me thinking about his shape-shifting politics over the years
For half a century he has stalked the corridors of parliament like a political cat with nine lives. He has been kingmaker, coalition wrecker, minister, populist insurgent and elder statesman. Governments rise and fall on his word. Parties court him. Commentators groan. Voters argue.
And yet, beneath the shape-shifting tactics, Peters’ politics reveal a strange paradox: he changes constantly — but also not at all.
From Māori development to Māori culture war
In the early 1990s, Peters styled himself as a pragmatic Māori development politician. As Minister of Māori Affairs, he pushed policies focused on jobs, education and social uplift. His language then was managerial: fix outcomes, rebuild institutions, get Māori into work and training.
In 1996, his New Zealand First party swept all the Māori electorates. Peters presented himself as proof that Māori voters could back a nationalist populist party if it promised delivery, not symbolism. For a moment, he looked like a bridge between Māori political aspiration and mainstream politics.
Fast-forward to the 2020s and Peters is campaigning against co-governance, Māori seats, the use of te reo Māori in government branding, and what he calls “race-based” policy. His focus has shifted from closing Māori inequality gaps to fighting the structures built to address them.
The rhetoric has hardened. Māori development once meant targeted support. Now, it is framed as “separatism”. The change is not subtle. It is theatrical.
The populist constant
Yet Peters’ defenders insist nothing fundamental has changed. They argue he has always opposed “special treatment” and always believed in one set of rules for everyone. That is partly true.
The core instinct of Peters’ politics has been consistent - find the fault-line the political establishment is nervous about — and step on it.
In the 1990s, that fault-line was neoliberal economics and foreign ownership.
In the 2000s, it was immigration and crime.
In the 2020s, it is the Treaty, co-governance, and Māori political influence.
The targets move. The method does not.
Kingmaker without a crown
Peters has been in government with Labour and National, denouncing each before and after. He brands himself as the defender of “ordinary New Zealanders” against elites — even while occupying Cabinet seats, diplomatic posts and the corridors of power for decades.
He rails against insiders while being one of the longest-serving insiders in the country. This contradiction doesn’t hurt him politically. It helps him. Peters’ brand is not purity; it is disruption.
He is not loyal to governments. He is loyal to leverage.
Beliefs or positioning?
So have Peters’ beliefs changed — or has the battlefield changed around him?
On Māori issues, the evidence suggests both. His tone has clearly hardened. The targets have shifted from policy failure to identity politics. The language has become sharper, more polarising, more culture-war flavoured.
But the underlying political logic remains:
Oppose what the political mainstream is uncomfortable defending.
Frame complex policy as common-sense rebellion.
Turn constitutional questions into retail politics.
It is not so much ideological evolution as strategic mutation.
The Coming Election
Peters has survived largely because of MMP. It worried me from the start that this voting system would give too much power to small parties and Peters has proved the master manipulator of it ..
How many times have we voted on election day only to learn that it will be Peters who decides who will govern our country?
My answer? Too many!
I do hope we don’t see shape-shifting Peters in the King maker postion again when the election results are announced in November. - but, he has made a career out of turning New Zealand’s unresolved tensions into his personal political fuel, and as long as the country remains divided over identity, power, and who gets to decide the rules, he will keep finding oxygen.
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This is another piece that needs to be shareable. There are far too many older New Zealanders (yes, people my age, and I'm ashamed of them) who seem to believe the sun shines out of Winston Peters and who hang on his every word. It's time people were made fully aware of the ongoing, self-serving damage he has created for every government he's ever been part of. He's well past his use-by date and he and his party need to be removed from office at this election, to spare the country further pain and disruption. Perhaps his current acolytes should consider transferring their vote to the Opportunity party, who at least have the sense to be promoting a universal basic income - this might allay some of the fears about national superannuation that Peters delights in playing on.
Peter’s is everything that is wrong in NZ politics. He isn’t the only stumbling block to genuine progress, but is certainly the worst. He’s not as dangerous as Trump because he doesn’t have absolute power, yet he is more dangerous because he is a lot cleverer than Trump. His Peters First party rakes in the shallow thinkers and the conspiracy theorists and since Covid these numbers have risen. He is akin to a stage hypnotist and illusionist using sleight of thinking to, as Bryan says, make complexity seem not only simple but reasonable. Until he goes our political scene will wobble back and forth, vacillating with his whims and his rhetoric. I can’t wait to see him ousted and gone from our parliament.