In Palmerston North, Winston Peters, NZ First and their band of faithfuls never lost sight of the fight: the culture wars.<\/p>\n
In the span of seven hours, the word \u201cwoke\u201d was said 21 times in speeches during the last day of the New Zealand First convention in Palmerston North. There were robust debates, policy announcements, the least surprising \u201csurprise\u201d speaker in former Labour minister Stuart Nash and a few too many security guards for the number of protestors there were holding greyhounds.<\/p>\n
The big policy announcement was Peters\u2019 early campaign promise that NZ First would raise compulsory employee and employer Kiwisaver contributions to 10%. It would be funded by cutting taxes elsewhere.<\/p>\n
But mostly it was a hectic affair and The Spinoff braved the mean streets of the Manawat\u016b to deliver the moments worth remembering (or forgetting, depending on your woke levels).<\/p>\n
Winston Peters reiterates his \u2018war on woke\u2019 and immigration<\/p>\n
The grand finale of the weekend, the words of wisdom from Winston Peters, saw more than a thousand people spill out of the main room of the Palmerston North Convention Centre onto the second floor level. There was a cinema-style trailer showing Peters walking through parliament, walking through protestors, walking through building sites and businesses, while reiterating his commitment to the \u201cwar on woke\u201d. \u201cWow,\u201d whispered voices in the crowd. \u201cWow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winston Peters on the podium (Photo: Lyric Waiwiri-Smith).<\/p>\n
It ain\u2019t been easy, Peters told his people, with accusations of the party being xenophobic (\u201cthey love that word because it has a lot of vowels\u201d) and the threat of 50% of Aotearoa\u2019s population consisting of immigrants within the next 15 years. But there\u2019s a way out from bad times: smarter immigration policies, which would see NZ First demand that all new migrants sign up to a \u201cKiwi Values document\u201d. If they\u2019re not keen on that, \u201cwe\u2019ve got a very fair answer: don\u2019t come\u201d.<\/p>\n
But back to the culture wars. There was a list of issues to address, from climate change to Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori to Covid-19 and those who see themselves as \u201cit, they\/them, and furry\u201d (which Peters pronounced as \u201cfury\u201d). No protestors managed to slink their way in, so the only boos heard were those reacting to the idea of transgender people using changing rooms or playing sport, or to Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick being prime minister. \u201cAnd in the words of Starship, nothing is gonna stop us now,\u201d Peters grinned. The exit music was Ray Charles\u2019 \u2018Hit the Road Jack\u2019.<\/p>\n
A rare win for the non-binary community<\/p>\n
What ate up the largest chunk of the convention were debates over the 55 proposed NZ First remits. On Saturday, the first 21 remits were passed, including pledges to set an end date for the Waitangi Tribunal, investigating the removal of Round Up<\/a> in urban areas, reestablishing the Jobs for Nature programme and exploring the use of Thorium Nuclear Fission and Nuclear Fusion.<\/p>\n A reminder to engage in polite and productive debate over the remits went down like a lead balloon with the crowd, of which the median age was those who are eligible for a SuperGold card. If you wanted a turn to speak, you could raise the mini New Zealand flag provided for you at your table, or loudly mutter away in your seat until someone paid attention to you.<\/p>\n By Sunday, members were deliberating over a policy to \u201cestablish funding for a health check for all women at the age of 45\u201d \u2013 the immediate problem with this one being, as identified by the women in the crowd, that it\u2019s too exclusive. After all, who\u2019s thinking about the need for prostate cancer checks? \u201cYou want to delete \u2018women\u2019?\u201d emcee Julian Paul asked. Yes, the crowd responded, and now the approved remit reads: \u201cestablish funding for a health check for all New Zealanders over the age of 45\u201d \u2013 a rare win for the non-binary community.<\/p>\n Members didn\u2019t get through all 55 remits, with the 30th \u2013 \u201cencourage and actively promote adoption\u201d \u2013 dragging things out a bit. It was an important policy, minister Mark Patterson reckoned, because it\u2019d address those niggly issues that no one really knows how to fix head-on, like upping our birth rates and lightly discouraging abortion. The crowd asked some hard questions in response: doesn\u2019t this wording still promote abortion? What\u2019s to be done about \u201cchildren being promoted abortion\u201d at schools? And will this actually fix our birth rates?<\/p>\n So, after a lot of back and forth, the remit is now: \u201csupport adoption as an option for informed decision-making\u201d.<\/p>\n Chris Trotter was off his rocker<\/p>\n A wistful Chris Trotter, union-man-turned-free-speech-man, gave a rousing but outr\u00e9 mid-morning speech, which managed to hit all the populist talking points within 30 minutes. He warned of threats to free speech \u2013 as seen in the recent arrest of Graham Linehan, punished \u201cfor the crime of upsetting people online\u201d (the court was told Linehan<\/a> had \u201crelentlessly\u201d posted abusive comments about a teenage transgender campaigner) \u2013 as well as a \u201cconspiracy of magicians who can transform into men and women with a puff of a pronouns\u201d, and the benefits of Trumpism and New Zealand First, which maybe aren\u2019t so different: they both value nostalgic times, and they\u2019re both \u201cdaggers in the heart\u201d of neoliberalism.<\/p>\n But not all coalition partners are made equal, Trotter warned. For example, there\u2019s housing minister Chris Bishop, who is \u201cdetermined to stack future generations of New Zealanders 15 storeys high, in the sort of affordable housing made famous by the East Germans\u201d. Or workplace minister Brooke van Velden, otherwise known as \u201cHerr\u201d and apparently inspired by General Pinochet (whose coup killed thousands of communists, so this might be a compliment). And who could forget deputy prime minister David Seymour, who is \u201cperfecting the art of making progressives choke on their breakfast news\u201d.<\/p>\n But we all know NZ First are the best at trolling the left, Trotter declared. There were highs, there were lows, there was a lot of quoting English poet Ebenezer Elliott at the end of it. God save the people.<\/p>\n Sausage roll eaters, steamed flags and a song about Aotearoa<\/p>\n Putting on a convention for a few hundred members is no easy feat. You need to provide the feeds, and at brunch time, it was rows of sausage rolls. Perfectly average, perfectly middle New Zealand, perfectly a symbol for nostalgic times. And by the time Peters called Chris \u201cHopkins\u201d a \u201csausage roll eater\u201d during his leader\u2019s speech, the laughter suggested that everyone else had already forgotten they were guilty of the same act that morning.<\/p>\n Prepping the convention centre for Peters and his punters required delicate work. A Young NZ First representative was tasked with steaming out the creases of the five flags positioned behind Peter\u2019s podium. Meanwhile, the national anthem played on repeat, and the word \u201cAotearoa\u201d rang out through the centre. The only thing missing was Peters saluting the flag when he got onstage.<\/p>\n Benjamin Doyle still a target<\/p>\n On Friday, Green MP Benjamin Doyle resigned from parliament<\/a> amid \u201can onslaught of hate, vitriol and threats of real-world violence\u201d following bussygate, a scandal ignited and flamed by Peters himself<\/a>. Police last week confirmed they had investigated 10 reports of threats against Doyle, some of which were ongoing. Peters took the opportunity to continue to fan the flames of conspiracy. When asked by The Spinoff how he felt about Wellington mayor Tory Whanau suggesting his actions led to the threats and ultimately Doyle\u2019s resignation, Peters was not happy.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly a mind like yours \u2013 ill-trained, ill-educated and not experienced enough \u2013 would come up with that allegation\u201d, he said. Just another ordinary Sunday for Winston Peters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Palmerston North, Winston Peters, NZ First and their band of faithfuls never lost sight of the fight:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[492,42,137,43,12242,135,12243,40,38,41,39,136],"class_list":["post-9740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-comments-enabled","tag-headlines","tag-new-zealand-first","tag-news","tag-nz-first","tag-politics","tag-shane-jones","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-winston-peters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9740","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=9740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The NZ First members raise their flags to vote. (Photo: Lyric Waiwiri-Smith)<\/p>\n
The merchandise available for the supporters. (Photo: Lyric Waiwiri-Smith)<\/p>\n
Brunch is served. (Photo: Lyric Waiwiri-Smith)<\/p>\n