Inside Tauranga\u2019s The Atrium on Sunday, Peters\u2019 state of the nation speech picked from a charcuterie board of his party\u2019s classic tasters. Immigration concerns, the problems with the left, and a call for justice for those allegedly injured by the Covid vaccine were heard by a 1,000-strong crowd that could only be described as having the potential to keep the NZ Super 0800 number busy for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
Peters\u2019 speech lasted 70 minutes, and revealed only two new tidbits: that National minister-turned-NewZeal-leader Alfred Ngaro (who opened the show but forgot to introduce himself, prompting calls from the crowd of \u201cwho are you?\u201d) has turned again, this time into an NZ First candidate. (He may well end up not the only former MP from a major party to come out of the woodwork in the coming months and run for NZ First.) The second was a promise from minister Shane Jones to restructure the electricity market, which was repackaged as an election policy to split up the gentailers.<\/p>\n
Winston Peters and Shane Jones speak to media after the state of the nation speech.<\/p>\n
Entry into the venue came with a gift of a mini New Zealand flag and was set against a soundtrack of rap music from a boombox in the carpark. Outside, pro-Palestine protesters waved flags and opponents to Shane Jones\u2019 commercial fishing reforms<\/a> held signs lambasting his \u201cfishy deals\u201d. There was a brief standoff between Jones and Jenny Marshall, assistant to Brian Tamaki, but when she tried to implore Jones to protect kaimoana for future generations with the suggestion that she would be more likely to live to see that future than he would, Jones turned spiritual.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s up to the lord, lady,\u201d Jones replied. \u201cThat\u2019s up to te atua as to how long I last.\u201d<\/p>\n God does appear to be shining on NZ First. The party continues to hit a consistent sweet spot of 9-11% in polling, which would give it at least four more seats in parliament than its current caucus of eight. Those polls suggest NZ First is swallowing up a chunk of Act and National\u2019s votes, reflecting a global surge in populist-nationalist parties<\/a> such as Reform UK, whose leader Nigel Farage is a friend of Peters\u2019.<\/p>\n And while Peters rallied against the the woke agenda with gusto, it was the state of the economy and a nationalist approach to managing assets that took up a bigger chunk of his speech. Waging a war on woke may have been effective in making some noise in the first two years of a parliamentary term, but in an election year, you should expect bathroom politics to be shunted aside to make way for policies focused on financial relief<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important to set yourself out from the crowd. Here, Peters\u2019 digs at his coalition partners were more subtle than in comments he\u2019s made in recent months<\/a> \u2013 \u201cexperience has never mattered more\u201d than it does now in a \u201cchallenging international environment\u201d, he told the crowd. And there was the reminder that the party has \u201calways fought against neoliberal economics\u201d, stressing the \u201clunacy\u201d in recent calls for the government to sell off its Air New Zealand shares \u2013 calls championed by Act Party leader David Seymour<\/a>.<\/p>\n As NZ First looks towards the rest of 2026, it\u2019s hoping to lead more face-to-face engagements with voters. Peters made a big deal of this state of the nation being a \u201cpublic meeting\u201d \u2013 despite little input from the public \u2013 and NZ First being the only party willing to go back to the old-school style of hosting gatherings. (They\u2019re not; Seymour just held a public meeting in Christchurch on Friday night, and Greens co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick is hosting two \u201cpints and politics\u201d sessions in the South Island this week.)<\/p>\n One of the prominent features of a public meeting, as Peters noted, is the ability to hear from voters themselves. And while his caucus was busy working the crowd (and Jones busied himself with protesters outside), the same couldn\u2019t be said of Peters, who hopped on the next plane out of Tauranga when it was all said and done.\u00a0<\/p>\n But maybe he doesn\u2019t need to be there anyway. If NZ First is good at anything, it\u2019s reading the room. That room specifically being the one where those disenchanted with the bigger parties, and with the establishment in general, hang out.<\/p>\n Concerns on the ground from members largely revolved around the economy, the price of fuel, the lack of jobs. These are worries every New Zealander is facing. Yes, the woke nonsense coming out of Labour and the Greens (the \u201cparty of Palestine and pronouns\u201d) troubles them, but so does being able to pay the bills. So at least there\u2019s a party that is unabashedly nationalist with a capital W out there willing to criticise the status quo and bad economic vibes \u2013 even if they\u2019re a part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At New Zealand First\u2019s state of the nation event in Tauranga, the war on woke played a bit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[492,112585,111,137,43,139,69,12242,135,1227,136],"class_list":["post-344312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-comments-enabled","tag-election-2026","tag-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand-first","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nz-first","tag-politics","tag-tauranga","tag-winston-peters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344312","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=344312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Shane Jones said he\u2019d \u2018agree to disagree\u2019 with protesters.<\/p>\n
The handshake after the coalition agreements were signed, November 24, 2023. (Photo: Marty MELVILLE \/ AFP).<\/p>\n