{"id":391950,"date":"2026-04-22T10:38:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/391950\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T10:38:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:38:15","slug":"christopher-luxon-fires-up-at-winston-peters-says-nz-first-responsible-for-prime-minister-dame-jacinda-ardern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/391950\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Luxon fires up at Winston Peters, says NZ First responsible for Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now Luxon has piled in, telling Newstalk ZB\u2019s The Country<\/a> that while he didn\u2019t believe Peters was undermining him, NZ First had a different agenda to National.<\/p>\n

Among the differences Luxon identified was National and NZ First\u2019s division over the New Zealand-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA). He said NZ First was behind the programme to plant a billion trees, which has received some backlash from farmers. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re the guys that claim to be socially conservative and then put Jacinda Ardern into power,\u201d Luxon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just saying we are different and we have our differences. We have things that we can align on and we can work very constructively around and we will if it\u2019s needed down the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real answer is if you\u2019re sitting out there thinking about what kind of government you want to take New Zealand forward with, you need a National-led Government period, it\u2019s that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChristopherChristopher Luxon (left) identified some differences between his party and Winston Peters’. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n

Luxon said Peters was \u201cdead wrong on the India FTA\u201d. NZ First has opposed New Zealand signing the deal, raising issues like the number of migrants and their families coming to New Zealand, as well as concerns over an investment clause.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is trying to scaremonger. He\u2019s trying to crank it up,\u201d Luxon, who highlighted that NZ First had opposed the China FTA as well, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has, for want of a better word, an anti-immigrant sort of bias in his party and his constituency and his belief system. We don\u2019t buy that. We\u2019ve got smart, targeted, and immigration settings in New Zealand that have served us well.\u201d <\/p>\n

He said areas where the parties agree include growing the economy, law and order, health and education.<\/p>\n

Parties often have differences under the Mixed-Member Proportional (MMP) system of Parliament, Luxon said.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister went on to say Peters \u201cshocked\u201d New Zealand when NZ First went with Labour over National following the 2017 election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it shocked a lot of his own supporters, frankly, but ultimately, that\u2019s his decision. What I\u2019ll do is, we\u2019ve had a very constructive working relationship in this Government,\u201d Luxon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m actually very proud of the strong, stable Government the three parties have been able to deliver in this coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n

When later asked about Luxon\u2019s comments regarding putting Ardern into power, Peters responded: \u201cI don\u2019t know what on earth that would mean at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he had put other people into positions of power as well.<\/p>\n

Peters also denied New Zealand First had an \u201canti-immigrant bias\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor goodness sake, we\u2019re the first lot of immigrants that came here. I am the original immigrant, okay? So how can we be anti-immigrant?\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the back-and-forth between the leaders, Peters said the coalition was stable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now Luxon has piled in, telling Newstalk ZB\u2019s The Country that while he didn\u2019t believe Peters was undermining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13176,1975,16426,10712,7230,2947,26663,63,1888,2082,8454,296,13175,13489,16427,6722,111,43,139,69,5502,4762,6729,10112,415,88286,15388,312,202596,28355,810,6728,80,24750],"class_list":{"0":"post-391950","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-ardern","9":"tag-at","10":"tag-christopher","11":"tag-claiming","12":"tag-coalition","13":"tag-dame","14":"tag-fired","15":"tag-fires","16":"tag-first","17":"tag-for","18":"tag-including","19":"tag-into","20":"tag-jacinda","21":"tag-leader","22":"tag-luxon","23":"tag-minister","24":"tag-new-zealand","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-newzealand","27":"tag-nz","28":"tag-partner","29":"tag-party","30":"tag-peters","31":"tag-power","32":"tag-prime","33":"tag-reminding","34":"tag-responsible","35":"tag-says","36":"tag-scaremonger","37":"tag-trying","38":"tag-up","39":"tag-winston","40":"tag-zealand","41":"tag-zealanders"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391950","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=391950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}