But while the differences between NZ First and Labour may be stark, over the past month or so, several issues have come to the fore on which there seems to be greater similarity between those two parties than NZ First and its current partners. <\/p>\n
NZ First leader Winston Peters says his party would repeal the Regulatory Standards Act. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Act\u2019s David Seymour said Peters\u2019 promise to repeal the Regulatory Standards Act sounded like the<\/a> NZ First leader was \u201cgetting ready to go with Labour\u201d. Peters laughed that off, suggesting Labour had \u201cno position on anything basically\u201d, despite Labour also wanting to repeal that legislation. <\/p>\n In light of Seymour\u2019s comments, the Herald repeatedly asked Peters whether he was open to working with Labour after the election. Peters wouldn\u2019t answer, firstly ignoring the question and then calling it \u201cstupid\u201d. <\/p>\n He\u2019s historically refused to make such calls, bar ruling out Labour before the 2023 contest. Peters did, however, tell the Herald in May he had ruled Hipkins out \u201cpermanently\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n That, of course, leaves open the option of working with a Labour Party led by someone else. But with Labour polling well, a leadership change seems highly unlikely at this stage, dampening the idea of a Labour-NZ First coalition further.<\/p>\n Personal differences haven\u2019t stopped Peters before. Weeks out from the formation of the current coalition Government, it would have been difficult to see how Peters and Seymour could work alongside each other. <\/p>\n How smoothly that\u2019s going probably depends on the day. <\/p>\n Peters has worked with politicians from around Parliament his entire career, jumping back and forth between supporting Labour and National Governments, with other parties attached. <\/p>\n NZ First may not be actively working to prepare for a future partnership with Labour, but rather positioning itself to appeal to certain Labour voters, particularly the working class in the regions. <\/p>\n Peters argued in September that Labour no longer represents the \u201chard working, blue-collar battlers of our country\u201d, like miners, labourers, foresters and fishermen. <\/p>\n In that same speech, he said NZ First \u201cunderstands with great clarity the struggles of workers in our country who are working harder, sometimes two or three jobs, just to get by\u201d. <\/p>\n These are various issues that have recently come up and show some connection between NZ First and Labour.<\/p>\n Regulatory Standards Act<\/p>\n NZ First was always tepid on this centrepiece Act policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n After it was introduced to Parliament, Peters said changes were necessary, hinting at an issue with the proposed Regulatory Standards Board, a panel of people appointed to consider the consistency of legislation with specified principles. <\/p>\n In an interview with the Herald in July, Peters said good law-making included \u201censuring that the people responsible are those who will be elected by the people who, if they\u2019re not satisfied with them, can dismiss them at the next election or even sooner\u201d. <\/p>\n Changes were then made to how the board was appointed<\/a>, to give it greater independence from the responsible minister. Seymour told the Herald this was done at the request of NZ First. <\/p>\n But even with this change (and despite voting for it), Peters said NZ First wanted to repeal the legislation. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m making it very clear where we stand. We believe in the fundamental principles of democracy and the paramountcy of Parliament \u2013 not an unelected committee.\u201d <\/p>\n Labour would be happy to take NZ First\u2019s numbers on this. It has called the legislation \u201cdeeply flawed and ideologically driven\u201d and said it sought to \u201centrench into New Zealand lawmaking a set of principles that puts private interests above public good and property rights before community wellbeing\u201d.<\/p>\n It wants to repeal the legislation within the first 100 days of returning to office. <\/p>\n Asset sales<\/p>\n There\u2019s a growing view that asset sales could be a key proposition to the public at the 2026 election. <\/p>\n Act has always had a strong view on privatisation<\/a>, while National\u2019s not ruling out campaigning on asset sales. Christopher Luxon appeared to be sowing the seeds for the policy with his call for a \u201cmature conversation\u201d on it<\/a>. <\/p>\n Labour is on the other side of the debate, warning National has the sale of the \u201cfamily silverware\u201d in its sights, which would \u201crob future generations and drive more young Kiwis out of the country\u201d. <\/p>\n Knowing asset sales have been controversial in the past, the Opposition party seems to have designed its first economic policy (more on that soon) around giving it a platform to campaign against them<\/a>.<\/p>\n Peters, who has long opposed privatisation, said this month flogging off assets to generate money for the Crown coffers was a \u201ctawdry silly argument\u201d. In an RNZ interview, he noted Labour had begun sales in the 1980s and National continued them.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause they\u2019ve failed to run the economy properly, they want to go to the assets of a time when the country was run properly, when we were No 2 in the world and built up by our forefathers and to start to flog those off… to so-called balance their books.\u201d<\/p>\n Although his comments about asset sales may not have come as much of a surprise, Peters went a step further by criticising how the economy was being managed by a Government he is a senior member of.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t turned the economy around in the way we should have, as fast as we should have. I know it can be turned around, but not with this sort of strategy where you\u2019re not actually fixing the economy, you\u2019re just getting rid of assets.\u201d <\/p>\n Labour took those comments and ran with them.<\/p>\n \u201cDoes he agree with Winston Peters that the Government is \u2018not actually fixing the economy\u2019?\u201d Hipkins asked the Prime Minister in the House.<\/p>\n \u201cIf not, how does he explain that more people are out of work and staying out of work for longer than at any time in the last 30 years?\u201d<\/p>\n Luxon responded by criticising spending under Labour.<\/p>\n Future Fund <\/p>\n After months of waiting for Labour\u2019s first new policy for the 2026 election, there were some raised eyebrows when it had the exact same name as an idea mooted by NZ First. <\/p>\n Labour\u2019s version of the New Zealand Future Fund is a wealth fund intended to take the dividends<\/a> of some Crown assets and redistribute them into New Zealand businesses. A $200 million capital contribution from the Crown would help get the ball rolling. <\/p>\n While the proposal from NZ First, made at its party conference last year, didn\u2019t have a lot of details attached to it, it had a similar purpose of ring-fencing money away from politicians to invest in long-term New Zealand.<\/p>\n Labour\u2019s focus was on supporting Kiwi businesses, while NZ First wanted a $100 billion fund developed<\/a> to \u201cinvest solely in a multi-decade infrastructure build… to enable future economic growth and social enablement\u201d. <\/p>\n There is little information about where the NZ First fund\u2019s money would come from \u2013 Peters has pitched attracting international investment through \u201ctaxation incentivisation\u201d \u2013 and the scale of the two funds are very different. Peters called the $200m a \u201cjoke\u201d this week.<\/p>\n After Labour\u2019s announcement, Peters said Hipkins had \u201cthe temerity to name their cheap knock-off the same exact thing we did\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cThey say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery but this is just getting ridiculous.\u201d <\/p>\n Hipkins said NZ First\u2019s fund appeared to be about \u201cinvestment in infrastructure that has overseas investors investing in it\u201d, which Labour\u2019s wasn\u2019t about.<\/p>\n Stuart Nash <\/p>\n Not exactly a policy issue, but a personnel one. <\/p>\n It\u2019s not every day that a high-profile former minister who previously represented a different party in Government speaks at your annual party convention. <\/p>\n But it was just two and a half months ago that former Labour minister Stuart Nash spoke at the NZ First conference<\/a>, with Peters saying he would be a \u201cseamless\u201d addition to the party after their time in Government together in 2017-2020.<\/p>\n Nash said the Labour Party of today had gone \u201cwoke\u201d and Hipkins had \u201cstabbed him in the back\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n While that makes it difficult to see him, or NZ First, working with Hipkins post-election, Nash\u2019s appearance at the conference may speak to the type of Labour values and voter Peters is interested in.<\/p>\n In the time since the convention, Nash has said during an interview that a woman<\/a> was a \u201cperson with a p***y and a pair of t**s\u201d, subsequently resigned from role at a recruitment agency<\/a>, been dumped from a Government trip<\/a> to the United States, and sworn in texts with the Trade Minister<\/a>. <\/p>\n Peters said Nash\u2019s description of a woman \u201cweren\u2019t acceptable\u201d. <\/p>\n The NZ First leader said this week he wasn\u2019t aware of Nash being in the party\u2019s candidate school. When questioned further, Peters responded: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you ask his mother?\u201d <\/p>\n Jamie Ensor is a senior political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist this year for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Take Thursday, when Peters asked this question to Police Minister Mark Mitchell: \u201cWhat happened to the perverted catch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,5432,3276,24004,98681,5903,35674,1888,63625,13480,1452,9519,6721,111,43,139,69,1341,6729,24684,69452,1305,98680,1361,223,61,6728,102,19135],"class_list":["post-147428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-between","tag-chris","tag-coming","tag-eater","tag-election","tag-ensor","tag-first","tag-fore","tag-hipkins","tag-issues","tag-jamie","tag-labour","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-permanently","tag-peters","tag-ruled","tag-sausage","tag-show","tag-similarities","tag-that","tag-the","tag-to","tag-winston","tag-with","tag-working"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}While Chris Hipkins remains Labour leader any partnership with NZ First appears unlikely. Photo \/ Anna Heath<\/p>\n
Regulation Minister David Seymour was in charge of pushing the Regulatory Standards Act through Parliament. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says there should be a “mature” conversation about asset sales. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Former Labour minister Stuart Nash (left) and NZ First leader Winston Peters at the latetr party\u2019s annual conference. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n