In a statement to the Herald, a spokesperson for Peters said the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister made the decision to offer to host the 2027 PIF in mid-2025. <\/p>\n
That offer was accepted by the PIF membership at last year\u2019s forum. <\/p>\n
A Beehive press release last August said Peters made the offer at a foreign ministers\u2019 meeting in Fiji. <\/p>\n
\u201cCabinet has responsibility for approving funding in order to enable hosting, which was done through the 2026 Budget process,\u201d the spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Pacific Islands Forum has expanded significantly in scope over the past 15 years. It is a much bigger and more complicated event than it was in 2011 when New Zealand last hosted it.\u201d <\/p>\n
NZ First leader Winston Peters. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
In a briefing to Finance Minister Nicola Willis in March, Treasury recommended against the original funding bid, saying \u201cCabinet approval was not sought before announcement of the hosting arrangement\u201d. <\/p>\n
This made it \u201cmore difficult to assess the strategic alignment of this initiative\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe value for money of the bid is not clear, and we consider that there is significant scope to manage down the cost in line with the obligations of hosting.\u201d <\/p>\n
Treasury officials said public commitment to host PIF had created \u201cunavoidable costs\u201d, though it did \u201cconsider that it is valuable to host the Forum\u201d. <\/p>\n
It was recommended that if Willis wished to fund the initiative, she provide $10m, described as the inflation-adjusted cost of New Zealand hosting in 2011. <\/p>\n
Later, at the end of March, the Budget bid had fallen to $23m, with MFAT saying the \u201cinitiative has been reduced in size, at the request of the Minister of Finance\u201d. <\/p>\n
Treasury officials still recommended $10m, noting that Willis had \u201crequested that the figure more closely aligns with the inflation adjusted cost of hosting the Forum in 2011 ($10m)\u201d. <\/p>\n
However, officials said Willis could consider another $5m \u2013 taking it to $15m \u2013 to \u201creflect that the Forum has increased in scope and importance since 2011\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not recommend the requested $23m, noting that the original initiative included components that are either discretionary or could be scaled, including $6.4m for policy work,\u201d the document said, with the rest of the paragraph redacted. <\/p>\n
The Budget documents show $20m was ultimately allocated. <\/p>\n
After this year\u2019s PIF meeting in Palau, Peters said meeting with leaders had been beneficial as New Zealand prepared for hosting responsibilities. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have been listening intently throughout the discussions. We are committed to ensuring the 2027 Leaders Meeting and our Troika membership delivers concrete benefits to our region.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we take on this responsibility, we are showing that New Zealand steps up when it matters, working with Pacific partners to tackle shared challenges and build a stronger, more secure Pacific region.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald\u2019s chief political reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a statement to the Herald, a spokesperson for Peters said the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16751,12796,9218,6727,2082,4756,13573,12022,3096,6722,117,111,43,139,1536,69,28243,13572,6729,13911,61,18324,6728,1530,80],"class_list":["post-596936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-affairs","tag-approval","tag-before","tag-cabinet","tag-for","tag-foreign","tag-forum","tag-host","tag-islands","tag-minister","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-offered","tag-pacific","tag-peters","tag-sought","tag-to","tag-wasnt","tag-winston","tag-years","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596936","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=596936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}