It was a $5 New Zealand note that features a drawing of Sir Ed and it was signed by the legendary mountaineer.<\/p>\n
It coincided with the anniversary of Hillary and Tenzing Norgay\u2019s ascent of Mt Everest in 1953, and Peters was choppered up to visit Khumiung School and Khunde Hospital, which Sir Edmund helped to set up. <\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Winston Peters with Alexander Hillary during a visit to Nepal. Photo \/ Ministry of Foreign Affairs<\/p>\n
He was met there by the young Hillary, who is the general manager of the Himalayan Trust. Peters announced a $1.8 million partnership with the trust for education in the Solukhumbu district over five years.<\/p>\n
Peters points out that strictly speaking, it is illegal to write on New Zealand notes \u2013 but that only adds its historic value, and it also sits in pride of place in a glass frame behind his desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018this is pretty special\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The $5 note signed by Sir Edmund Hillary and given to Winston Peters by Hillary’s grandson, Alexander. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
But increasingly, the gifts Peters is receiving have a horse theme, or in the case of his visit to Mongolia in February, an actual horse, which he was taken to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re tough. You take one look at that horse, you know, it\u2019s tough as nails,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Peters was also given naming rights and called it Stamina, although it remains in Mongolia. <\/p>\n
It may be a subtle reference to his own political career, but also because Mongolian horses are famed for their endurance. Horse racing in Mongolia is quite different to elsewhere in the world. <\/p>\n
The longest horse race in the world, the Mongol Derby, is held over 10 days across a 1000km course in the Mongolian steppe and they race 35km at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could bring it home, but it\u2019d be coming out of a freezing desert to a warm north and it just wouldn\u2019t look right. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be good for the horse.\u201d <\/p>\n
Winston Peters meets his horse, Stamina, on a visit to Mongolia. Photo \/ MFAT<\/p>\n
Peters has a photo of Stamina and has been promised annual reports about its progress. It stays with a breeder with about 600 other horses.<\/p>\n
Peters has long been a horse lover and once took two Kaimanawa horses and named them Rodney and Richard after the former Act leaders. He is also the Racing Minister.<\/p>\n
But Peters believes the main source of the horse-themed gifts is his election advertisement in 2023, showing him sitting on a horse in a cowboy hat, saying, \u201cTo govern a country, you need experience, and this is not our first rodeo\u201d, then riding off.<\/p>\n
It was filmed in one day at Pukekohe on a borrowed horse in a borrowed hat that was so big it had to be taped to his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that was my original line, though,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Winston Peters in the 2023 advertisement. <\/p>\n
Peters says the ad went global and he has had quite a few compliments about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had the Foreign Minister of India tell me that, the Prime Minister of Thailand tell me that, and a few of them actually dropped me a line saying \u2019fantastic\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cWell, you\u2019ve got to do something different, right?\u201d <\/p>\n
Another of his horse gifts came from Saudi Arabia during a visit there in February, on the same trip as his visit to Mongolia.<\/p>\n
The Miami Dolphins ball given to Winston Peters by Marco Rubio. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
Officials arranged for Peters to attend the $20 million 2025 Saudi Cup in Riyadh \u2013 one of the world\u2019s richest horse race meetings in which acclaimed New Zealand jockey James McDonald was riding (he was second on Romantic Warrior).<\/p>\n
Peters also attended Joseph Parker\u2019s world heavyweight IBF title challenge against Briton Daniel Dubois (Dubois withdrew and Parker knocked out Martin Bakole).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw a chance for those brief days to get inside the minds of the Saudi Arabian government, and it would work like a charm,\u201d says Peters. <\/p>\n
He got to interact with the top levels of government because they were at the races or at the boxing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you cut to the chase, not a huge long meeting and bilaterals and pull-asides. You\u2019re sitting there for two or three hours with the guy. \u201c<\/p>\n
The Saudis gave Peters a shiny horse statue in a special case. He also has one from China and one from Mexico, among the nine horse gifts in the past two years.<\/p>\n
The statue given to Winston Peters by the Saudi Arabian government after he attended the Saudi Cup in Riyadh. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
They are not gifts that Peters keeps and before they make it to the shelf in his office, their details are formally recorded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI usually have a function where I give them out to a lot of people, my staff and others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside the square<\/p>\n
So what does Peters give in return? It seems the nation does not have a record of generosity when it comes to gift-giving.<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Zealand in that respect has been awfully parsimonious to the extent of being embarrassing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
What he likes to do when he can is to take decent-sized pots of manuka honey, \u201cthe best manuka honey in the world and I take serious presents like that\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d be astonished how many people think that\u2019s fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was particularly in Asia, India and the Middle East, he says, adding the fact that high-quality edible honey was found in the pyramids after thousands of years.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peters said he also likes to think outside the square when giving gifts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also been my view that sometimes, forget about the man you\u2019re meeting, he\u2019s got a wife. Maybe she\u2019d like some decent greenstone earrings. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019ll never get that unless somebody else thinks about that, and you\u2019d be astonished how thinking outside the square gets you the impression you\u2019re trying to create.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of impressions, Peters has one gripe about New Zealand: he believes the lack of a decent reception area for foreign VIPs at Auckland reflects badly on the country.<\/p>\n
They would have been to Third World countries with a better reception area than New Zealand, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just plain short-sightedness\u2026it\u2019s not an arrogance thing, it is not a pride thing, it is just plain common sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t get a second chance to make a first impression.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt was quite a present when I think about it,\u201d says Peters. Another favourite last year was not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[59346,6727,71,78933,1437,140209,14568,3112,809,140210,42677,140208,111,43,139,9332,69,6270,106774,6729,2846,61,6728,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-237584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-beehive","9":"tag-cabinet","10":"tag-from","11":"tag-gifts","12":"tag-global","13":"tag-hillarysigned","14":"tag-horse","15":"tag-job","16":"tag-keep","17":"tag-mementoes","18":"tag-ministers","19":"tag-mongolian","20":"tag-new-zealand","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-newzealand","23":"tag-note","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-office","26":"tag-overflows","27":"tag-peters","28":"tag-them","29":"tag-to","30":"tag-winston","31":"tag-with"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237584","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=237584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}