{"id":431716,"date":"2026-05-17T07:53:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T07:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431716\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T07:53:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T07:53:15","slug":"election-2026-nz-first-leader-winston-peters-takes-aim-at-national-act-over-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/431716\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: NZ First leader Winston Peters takes aim at National, Act over immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peters\u2019 supporters<\/a> packed out the conference room in Trusts Arena in West Auckland, \u201cthe home of traditional hard-working Kiwi battlers\u201d, where he announced two cost-of-living themed campaign policies.<\/p>\n

New Zealand First will campaign on buying back the BNZ bank and merging it with Kiwibank, as the Government ponders the potential part-privatisation of the state-owned bank. Peters\u2019 party would also campaign on making KiwiSaver enrolment compulsory at birth with a $1000 Crown contribution.<\/p>\n

This, he said, would birth the \u201cKiwisaver generation\u201d<\/a> where no New Zealander entered adulthood without a savings foundation in place.<\/p>\n

As 63-year-old Daniel Lee from East Auckland, a long-time National voter, walked into Trusts Arena, a party staff member asked if he wanted to sign up as a member of New Zealand First.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will see,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lee was open to switching his party vote to New Zealand First and was here to see what Peters had to say. He believed Christopher Luxon\u2019s National Party was doing its best to fix the economy but had underestimated the challenge of tackling debt.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Sir] John Key … [in] his first term, he didn\u2019t do much at all, but it was the second term [that he did] and to expect the same result from Christopher Luxon after he has inherited $180 billion debt I think it is not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking after Peters\u2019 speech, Lee said he would stick with National. He liked Peters\u2019 idea of buying back BNZ but said he struggled to see how New Zealand could do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of having a national bank of New Zealand is a very good idea. If you buy [BNZ], it is going to be very expensive. If you want to, you can develop Kiwibank. You can get enough shareholders but the trouble with New Zealand First, they are not open to foreign investment. All you need is to own 51% of the bank, and issue capital for 49%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee said National, Act and New Zealand First all had good policies \u201cif they can just work together … [there would be] more harmony\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t have perfect agreement, but even in a family, a husband and wife will not agree on anything. But I think if we can focus on the common things for the sake of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coalition Government has certainly become less harmonious in recent months, with the three parties appearing more inwardly focused as they try to separate themselves from each other and carve out their own policies and identities ahead of the election.<\/p>\n

In the weeks before his speech, Peters admitted he made a mistake<\/a> when his office released to the Herald emails which showed Luxon wanted to shift the Government\u2019s position to show \u201cexplicit public support\u201d for the US-led war in Iran, days after it broke out.<\/p>\n

This prompted night-time crisis talks<\/a> between the two senior leaders at the Beehive.<\/p>\n

In the hours before Peters\u2019 address in West Auckland, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford appeared on Q+A with Jack Tame, where she said she had needed to clear up \u201cthose misunderstandings from Mr Peters\u201d as to whether people who received visas under the India free trade agreement could eventually bring their family members to New Zealand. But Peters reiterated these same statements again during his speech.<\/p>\n

At the podium at Trusts Arena, Peters accused Stanford, National and Act of not speaking up when the previous Labour and Greens Government\u2019s \u201cfeet came totally off the breaks and [they] began approving 213,000 residencies in just 18 months.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cErica [Stanford, Minister of Immigration], what did you say when they were bringing in 213,000 residents in just 18 months? Not a mutter, not a murmur,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr Luxon, he did a speech the other day as leader of the National Party talking about his concern about immigration. Wow, where did you get this 11th-hour experience? This road to Damascus epiphany? Or [Act leader David] Seymour, he made a similar speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peters said he did not want to \u201cpush the Bible too hard here\u201d but \u201cit does say in the good book, \u201cby their deeds you\u2019ll know them\u201d.<\/p>\n

This, he said, was \u201cnot a coalition breakdown, no, no. It\u2019s about politics in the next election\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been warning for a long time now about unfettered immigration being used as a crutch for the economy and failing workforce planning for our own people. Just bringing in others when we should be training our own.<\/p>\n

At times, Peters appeared to divert off script. He addressed the high-profile incident involving himself at the Northern Club<\/a> and took aim at Te Pati M\u0101ori president John Tamihere, whose business and presence is most felt in Auckland\u2019s west, before stating if Tamihere did not like what he said about him then \u201ctake me to court, come on\u201d.<\/p>\n

Howick man Jonas Ng, 57, said he liked Peters because \u201che dares to speak up\u201d. He had not voted for New Zealand First before but said he was \u201copen to him this time\u201d as a party vote because Peters brought fresh ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings that he thinks are wrong, he dares to speak up. I think some disagreement with [coalition partners] is good because we need another voice, we cannot have all the same voices.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Zealand First recently announced former All Blacks captain Taine Randell<\/a> as a candidate in the election. Randell will stand in the Tukituki electorate. On Sunday, Peters also announced that former National MP Alfred Ngaro would stand for the party in Auckland\u2019s Glendene electorate.<\/p>\n

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peters\u2019 supporters packed out the conference room in Trusts Arena in West Auckland, \u201cthe home of traditional hard-working…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,23545,4619,3255,7229,1975,51,1558,682,7230,2837,5903,1888,14154,19724,917,15221,6721,13489,3556,111,43,139,69,1523,143,6729,26525,85935,2687,23851,10809,1120,2044,3807,6728,1530,80],"class_list":["post-431716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-accusing","tag-act","tag-address","tag-aim","tag-at","tag-auckland","tag-been","tag-being","tag-coalition","tag-during","tag-election","tag-first","tag-give","tag-given","tag-immigration","tag-improve","tag-labour","tag-leader","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-partners","tag-peters","tag-pulled","tag-punches","tag-saying","tag-slow","tag-sunday","tag-takes","tag-time","tag-west","tag-winston","tag-years","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431716","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=431716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}