Asked if there were moves to \u201coverturn\u201d or \u201crelitigate\u201d the conversion therapy law, Peters said: \u201cI sure hope so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The party leader said \u201cwe inherited that\u201d and claimed the bill would not have passed if NZ First had been in Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt in my mind if we had been there at the time that would not pass through. We would have made a pretty strong fight against that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peters stopped short of committing to make overturning the law an NZ First policy.<\/p>\n
In a statement to the Herald today, Peters said his party was \u201copen to reviewing\u201d the legislation but was not in favour of scrapping it completely.<\/p>\n
He argued there were \u201csome legitimate concerns voiced at the time\u201d and believed it was beneficial to review the law. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are serious and legitimate reasons about certain practices and treatment of vulnerable people that needed to be addressed by this law, and those concerns are legitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n
National leader Christopher Luxon ruled out changes to abortion and conversion therapy. Photo \/ Cameron Pitney<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters this morning in K\u0101piti, Luxon appeared to rule out any changes to conversion therapy settings.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, we\u2019re not overturning that at all. That\u2019s not changing whatsoever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Also in yesterday\u2019s interview, the pair addressed abortion, with Peters saying it was important to ascertain \u201cthe facts\u201d with respect to the time abortion was employed, while reiterating the need for legal, safe abortion.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt its worst, and it\u2019s a matter of timing, but it shades into a thing called murder. You got me here?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shades into a thing called murder or assassination, get any name you like. But that\u2019s the purpose. We\u2019ve got to know the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2021, Luxon said his own pro-life position meant he likened abortion to murder but subsequently assured voters he would not touch abortion laws.<\/p>\n
He reiterated that to reporters this morning when asked about Peters\u2019 comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said in 2023 I would not be changing them as Prime Minister and I\u2019ve met that commitment and I\u2019ll continue to meet that commitment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a good debate about that in 2018, 2019. Those laws are settled; there will be no changes under me as Prime Minister.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald\u2019s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei and the Herald in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked if there were moves to \u201coverturn\u201d or \u201crelitigate\u201d the conversion therapy law, Peters said: \u201cI sure hope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,112671,806,12974,16426,108282,306763,82084,93420,1887,4527,5903,1888,702,8307,13489,16427,3556,111,43,139,69,5493,3111,6729,6046,16860,16134,102330,80018,6122,2687,1886,3422,6728,80],"class_list":["post-624077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-any","tag-as","tag-change","tag-christopher","tag-clarifies","tag-clarifying","tag-concerning","tag-conversion","tag-countrys","tag-doesnt","tag-election","tag-first","tag-it","tag-law","tag-leader","tag-luxon","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-open","tag-out","tag-peters","tag-potential","tag-reform","tag-remarks","tag-repealing","tag-reviewing","tag-rules","tag-saying","tag-support","tag-therapy","tag-winston","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624077","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=624077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}