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RICKY WILSON / Stuff
Tauranga has long been a fixture of NZ First campaigns. File photo.
CAMPAIGN JOURNAL: Winston Peters was first elected to Parliament after a court ruled in his favor in Auckland, but his career really got underway when he won the Tauranga seat in 1984.
Against the libertarian-Labor tide, Peters stood his ground here during the 1980s and later used the seat as a springboard for his new party after leaving National in the early 1990s.
Tauranga took care of NZ First and then kept it breathing when its vote fell below 5% in 1999.
Peters lost it by a hair to National in 2005, and then by a long shot in 2008, when a young Simon Bridges mopped the floor with him.
RICKY WILSON / THINGS
Winston Peters visits Waiheke Island to announce a 1080 policy, when news emerges of the charges facing two people related to the NZ First Foundation.
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Since then, Tauranga has remained a fixture of the NZ First campaign and conference circuit, with the city voting for NZ First far more than most other constituencies.
But Peters’ visit on Tuesday may well be his last as a member of Parliament.
The Deputy Prime Minister was in good shape as he exited his giant field bus to the Classic Flyers aircraft museum, the bus driving straight into the huge hangar.
This was a greatest hits speech for a local audience that loves greatest hits tours.
HENRY COOKE / THINGS / Things
NZ First leader Winston Peters is addressing a meeting in Tauranga on the final days of the election.
He spoke of his record in Tauranga, including getting him first in the phone book ahead of Rotorua. He attacked Roger Douglas and foreign banks. He received his biggest applause from the more than 100 spectators when he took the “path of separatism.”
Peters noted that Judith Collins had not visited Tauranga and repeated the line she has been using throughout the campaign: that voters need some insurance between a right turn with a National-ACT government or a left turn with a government. Labor-green.
“This is not the time for experiments. This is not the time to move the dial extremely left or violently to the right,” Peters said.
However, he tried to adhere to an attack by Collins in recent days: that Labor would break his word and enact a wealth tax, something the Green Party wants and Labor has completely ruled out.
“The headlines are furious about a ‘wealth tax’ and the parties that say there won’t be one are the same parties that tried to get that done in the last three years,” Peters said, referring to Labor’s past. defense of a capital gains tax, which is quite different from wealth tax.
In subsequent statements to the media, Peters said that Labor’s promise not to introduce this tax would evaporate when they had the excuse to change economic circumstances.
“Every change they’ve had, they’ve used this excuse to break their word, so why would it be any different?” Peters asked.
He declined to elaborate, saying that the media should ask him questions about his own party or simply broadcast the segment of the speech, eventually dropping out of the press conference.
Attacking the media, with whom he has a symbiotic relationship, is part of Peters’s charm.
Henry Cooke / Stuff
NZ First leader Winston Peters is addressing a meeting in Tauranga in the final days of the election.
His other political skills were on full display during the audience question session. He is a master of the useful political art of professing sympathy for a position (like removing GST from food) without promising it.
And he shut down a young Covid-19-doesn’t-really-exist interrogator with ease, for the clear enjoyment of the older crowd.
Heather Roil and Ian Crebs were in the audience and completely turned away in support.
“I think it makes a lot of sense. He has great knowledge, “said Roil.
Crebs, who backed National in the last election, said he now wanted Jacinda Ardern to speak as prime minister, but with Peters still involved.
“He has the wisdom compared to the others.”
These two voters are buying the exact message Peters is selling. But recent polls suggest that there are not enough people like them.
Roil, who had attended Peters events before, said his performance gave him complete confidence that he would return to Parliament.
“Every time you see him, it reinforces that he has to go back,” Roil said.
“Now more than ever.”
