RNZ<\/a><\/p>\nIn a wide-ranging interview with Family First, Peters also said some abortions could, depending on their timing, shade into “murder or assassination”.<\/p>\n
But National’s leader Christopher Luxon has quickly shot down any suggestion the debates might be reopened under his prime ministership.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Family First’s Bob McCoskrie, Peters said NZ First would have fought the conversion-practices law if it had been in Parliament when it passed in 2022.<\/p>\n
Asked whether there should be moves to overturn or relitigate the law, Peters replied: “I sure hope so.”<\/p>\n
But he stopped short of making repeal an election policy.<\/p>\n
McCoskrie also asked Peters what he would do if presented with evidence of increasing late term abortions or even babies surviving abortions.<\/p>\n
‘Murder or assassination… any name you like’<\/p>\n
On abortion, Peters said “the facts” were worth revisiting and repeated his view that life begins at conception.<\/p>\n
“What you are talking about, at its worst, and it’s a matter of timing, but it shades into a thing called murder,” Peters said.<\/p>\n
“It shades into a thing called murder or assassination, get any name you like.”<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters in Kapiti, Luxon said the laws were settled and he would not be changing them.<\/p>\n
“I said in 2023 I would not be changing them as prime minister, and I’ve met that commitment, and I’ll continue to meet that commitment,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There will be no changes under me as prime minister.”<\/p>\n
Luxon also shot down Peters’ hopes for reversing the conversion therapy ban: “No, we’re not overturning that at all. That’s not changing whatsoever.”<\/p>\n
Asked for his response, Labour campaign chairperson Kieran McAnulty said Peters was just making outrageous comments as a “distraction tactic”.<\/p>\n
“Winston Peters makes all these claims with no intention of following it up,” he said.<\/p>\n
McAnulty said Luxon and National campaign chair Simeon Brown would probably be pleased by Peters’ remarks given their personal views on abortion.<\/p>\n
But he said Labour was focused on the cost of living.<\/p>\n
“No one so far in this campaign… has come up to me and said we need to reverse conversion therapy and we need to change the laws around abortion.<\/p>\n
“Almost everybody that’s come up to me has talked about the cost of living.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says he hopes the country’s ban on conversion therapy is overturned. By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[134,64776,111,137,43,139,69,135,270122,136],"class_list":["post-623969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-health","tag-lgbttqia","tag-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand-first","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-vote-2026","tag-winston-peters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623969","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=623969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}