The highs, lows and WTFs of Winston Peters, deputy prime minister
Thank you for your service, Winston Raymond Peters.
On Saturday, Winston Peters will finish his third stint as deputy prime minister of New Zealand, so here's a selection of highlights from the storied career of the National-NZ-First-coalition-deputy-prime-minister-turned-outcast-turned-Labour-NZ-First-coalition-deputy-prime-minister-turned-outcast-turned-NZ-First-Act-National-coalition-deputy-prime-minister-turned … ?
High: The king kingmaker
The MMP system has (mostly) been kind to Winston Peters. The NZ First leader's willingness to partner with either major political party has led to him essentially deciding the outcomes of the 1996, 2017 and 2023 general elections, each time having enough bargaining power to secure the role of deputy prime minister. Perhaps the kingmaker was the king all along.
WTF: Causing the 1998 coalition collapse
A dark time in Peters' career, though it certainly kept him in the headlines: following the introduction of MMP in 1996, NZ First formed the first coalition government with National, which lasted about 21 months before Peters was sacked from cabinet. He and prime minister Jenny Shipley – who had staged a coup against Jim Bolger in 1997 – had failed to see eye-to-eye over her plans to sell off the government's shares in Wellington Airport, and Peters walked out of government altogether.
The coalition may have been over, but Shipley's government limped on with the backing of some of Peters' former NZ First colleagues who were unwilling to join him on the opposition benches. Only one of the people mentioned above is still in government now, so who's the real loser?
High: Covering Jacinda Ardern's maternity leave
As deputy prime minister to the Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern from 2017 to 2020, Peters' primary role was handbrake, whether it was preventing the introduction of a capital gains tax, delivering Auckland's much-mythologised light rail system, reaching a settlement for the Ihumātao occupation, repealing three strikes legislation, putting cameras on fishing boats or passing hate speech legislation in light of the March 15 terror attacks, among other things.
Then, for six weeks in 2018, Peters got to be prime minister while Ardern took maternity leave, and despite concerns from some quarters, his tenure passed pretty uncontroversially.
WTF: Bussygate
It was a fine Saturday morning when Peters took to X to let everyone know that Green MP Benjamin Doyle had used the word 'bussy' and was also a parent. What ensued was about two weeks of political reporters running around the halls of parliament trying to figure out what 'bussy' really meant, if we should be offended, and whether a spiral emoji was a kind of Batman symbol for paedophiles.
In the end, it must not have mattered that much to Peters after all, because he declined a one-on-one conversation with Doyle and has moved onto fighting hecklers at Wellington central train station. But it was kinda weird and homophobic, and made a good case for government officials needing to follow at least five young gay people on Instagram before purporting to speak for all New Zealanders.
High: Foreign affairs, ministered
There's something to be said about a minister who manages to do his best work outside of the country. Three-time deputy prime minister and three-time foreign affairs minister, Peters has been described as a ' born diplomat ', and his air miles leave no question of his commitment to the role. During this term alone he has spent 152 days travelling, visiting 44 countries, pushed for Aotearoa to retain an independent foreign policy, made Phil Goff jobless, and faced Trump officials.
It really all goes to show that sometimes the best export a country can have is a crotchety older gentleman.
Low: Something something Mexicans?
Despite the strides made in foreign affairs, maintaining positive domestic relations with New Zealanders who also happen to be immigrants (specifically from Mexico or something frighteningly similar, like perhaps the Philippines) has been a sore spot for Peters and his cohort lately. While his NZ First deputy Shane Jones has called to 'send the Mexicans home', Peters has opted for a softer policy, one which asks for New Zealanders born overseas who have the gumption to see themselves as New Zealanders to 'show some gratitude' and also never, ever use the word Aotearoa. No intel yet on whether a Latin America Reset will be established.
WTF: Putting the PM in his place
Slagging off the prime minister is not a skill you'd expect his deputy to have, and yet here we are. Luxon was 'struggling' in the top job because he was 'so new to politics', Peters told The Post in November, and by March the deputy prime minister was reminding everyone he had 'made' Christopher Luxon the PM. Come April, Peters told Luxon (via RNZ) that he should 'call me next time' before giving a speech to world leaders that supposedly included some 'hysterical' takes on the US trade war. Watch this space.
High: Living to see another day
Peters turned 80 in April. Surely that's something to celebrate.
High: Some great comebacks
'Lefty shill'; 'wokester loser'; 'you look like bollocks'; 'moron'; 'don't be a stupid little schoolboy'; 'on the marae, Megan, you keep quiet'; to name a few.
Low: Entrenching woke in the parliamentary vernacular
Some things should only exist on the internet.
High: Fighting declining parliamentary standards
It's just not the same place it was back in 1979.
Low: What is a woman?
Who the fuck cares?
WTF: Whatever comes next
A snap election? An increased focus on fighting the war on woke? and sending him in an ambulance hitting 100km/h? Basically more of the same? Only time will tell.
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Equity Rights: UBI, SUI, BUI, HUI, Or GUI?
Opinion – Keith Rankin The missing ingredient from the capitalism that most of us know is 'public equity'. The crisis of capitalism can be addressed through development of public property rights, which we may call 'public equity'. It is the establishment of public property … Capitalism is in crisis, and our species' imagination to save ourselves is sorely lacking. There are of course understandings out there, and solutions; but they are so heavily gate-kept that conversations about saving ourselves are well-nigh impossible. It remains a puzzle why those political and intellectual leaders who would most benefit from a regime of socially inclusive capitalism have been so avid in their anti-reform gatekeeping. The missing ingredient from the capitalism that most of us know, or know of, is 'public equity'. Capitalism is presented to us all as a system of markets, individualism, laws, and private property rights. The crisis of capitalism can be addressed through the development of a set of public property rights, which we may call 'public equity'. It is the establishment of public property rights that is necessary to democratise capitalism. New Zealand's surprising history of universal income At the end of my Zero-Sum Fiscal Narratives (22 May 2025), I suggested that we need to promote a narrative of 'public equity over pay equity as an efficient means to correct destabilising inequality'. In global capitalism, the first real narrative of public equity – even though it wasn't called that – belongs to the New Zealand social security reforms of 1938. And the particular policy announced in those reforms, and implemented in the 1940 financial year, was known as Universal Superannuation. This was the activation of a human right; the right of a country's citizens, once they reached a certain age, to receive a private income in the form of a public dividend. Irrespective of race, sex, or creed. At its initial conception, the 'Super' was modest; but was projected to grow, in accordance with affordability constraints and fiscal prioritisation. Most good big things start with small beginnings. An annual payment of $20 was set to commence in 1940. And it commenced in 1940. And the 1938 universal welfare state came in under budget (refer Elizabeth Hanson, The Politics of Social Security, 1980). The concept of Universal Superannuation proved to be extremely popular; a policy from the radical centre that pleased most of the public, though – until its popularity was demonstrated in 1938 – few of the politicians and other 'opinion leaders'. The policy came to be because Michael Joseph Savage felt that his Labour Government had to come good on its most important 1935 promise, and because the 'left' and 'right' proposals favoured by each of the two main factions of the Labour Government (fortunately) cancelled out in the political numbers game. The universal proposal came through the middle, between left-wing attempts to radically extend redistributive measures favouring working-class families and Labour right-wing attempts to bring in an actuarial pension system based on the supposed 'miracle' of compound interest. The latter idea, pushed by the finance industry, was to create a contributory 'money mountain' from which pensions from some future date would be paid to retired working men. (This idea disclaimed the obvious reality that all spending of pension income – not just public pensions – represents a slice of present [not past] economic output.) (On the miracle of compound interest, it is useful to imagine persons born around 1920 saving regular percentages of their salaries from early adulthood until age 65. Such persons became rich from home-ownership, not from compound interest.) This retirement-income policy based on public equity was not successfully exported to the wider world. The war got in the way, and unconditional non-means-tested payments to citizens of a certain age never caught on internationally. The post-depression environment – a relatively sexually-egalitarian time – was displaced by a post-war environment, which favoured men. The more common post-war welfare model was, in its various guises, 'social insurance'. And even Universal Superannuation in New Zealand came to be seen, increasingly, through a 'social insurance lens'; recipients widely believed it was a contributory scheme. The aim of initially Labour, and subsequently National, was to gradually raise the amount of Super paid until it would render redundant (and henceforth displace) the alternative means-tested Age Benefit. National became increasingly committed to the concept of universal income support, favouring taxable universal benefits which would in practice confer more to each low-income recipient than to each high-income recipient. In the 1950s and 1960s, income tax rates were much more heavily graduated than they have been since the 1980s. ('Graduation' of income tax rates means higher 'marginal tax rates' faced by people with higher incomes.) By 1970, the full convergence between Universal Superannuation and the Age Benefit had still not been achieved. Retired persons would still choose either US or AB. The convergence eventually took place, in 1976. The universality of Super was lost twice, by the same man, who came from 'working class aristocracy': Roger Douglas. Douglas replaced Super with an actuarial ('money mountain' for men) system in 1974; a system which became 'the election issue' in 1975. This plan was conceived in the days before Equal Pay for women; ie conceived when 'labour' was still a highly male-gendered word in certain Labour circles. (Equal pay for women was legislated for in 1972, when Robert Muldoon was Finance Minister.) Robert Muldoon won a resounding victory – like Savage in 1938 – by committing to Universal Superannuation (albeit under the name National Superannuation). Muldoon, when recreating Super, did so by retiring the Age Benefit, leaving Super as the only publicly-sourced retirement income. About Douglas's 1974 scheme, Margaret McLure (A Civilised Community, 1998) wrote (pp.190/91): 'Douglas' plan was rooted in early and mid-twentieth century English labour history… It drew on the 1904 ideas of Joseph Rowntree which had helped shape English social insurance, and on the English Fabian Society's promotion of a union's industrial pension plan of 1954… It rewarded the contribution of the fulltime long-serving male worker and provided him [and his dependent wife] with comfort and security in old age.' The full earnings-related benefit would only be payable on turning 60 to life-long workers born after 1957. It was less generous to others, and represented a backward-looking 'narrow vision for the late twentieth century'. While more like the current bureaucratic Australian scheme (with its many hidden costs) than today's New Zealand Superannuation, the Douglas scheme had inbuilt disincentives for people of 'retirement age' to continue in some form of paid work after becoming eligible for a pension. An older population – as in the 2030s – requires older workers with work-life flexibility. Douglas, in the later-1980s, again removed the universality of Super by introducing a 'tax surcharge' on superannuitants' privately-sourced income, an indirect way of converting Super into a means-tested Age Benefit. Douglas renamed National Superannuation 'Guaranteed Retirement Income'. (Douglas liked the word 'guaranteed', using it as a label for other benefits too. 'Guaranteed' implies a 'safety net – ie an income top-up – rather than an unconditional private income payable to all citizens of a certain age. Income top-ups come with poverty traps; very high [sometimes 100%] 'effective marginal tax rates', when increased income from one source displaces [rather than adding to] income from another source.) Super was restored in 1997 as a universal income when Winston Peters was Treasurer in a coalition government; Peters, the heir to the universalist tradition within the National Party as it once was, has enabled Savage's enlightened 'public equity' reform to survive to the present day, albeit as an international outlier. A Right. Or a Benefit? The presumption against universalist principles has come from Generation X, the generation born either side of 1970 who have never known any form of capitalism other than 1980s' and post-1980s' neoliberalism. (And noting that Roger Douglas was the poster-'child' in New Zealand of the neoliberal revolution which acted to restore capitalism to its neoclassical basics; markets, individualism, laws, private property, and public sector minimalism). This week I read this from Liam Dann, journalist on all matters relating to capitalism, and very much a 'Gen Xer', who wrote: Inside Economics: Should you take New Zealand Superannuation if you don't need it? 4 June 2025. Dann is trying to resolve the clear view of his parents' generation that Super is a 'right', against his own view that Super is an age 'benefit'; a benefit that should be bureaucratically 'targeted'. (A benefit in this sense is a redistributive 'transfer'. By contrast, an income 'right' is a shareholder's equity dividend; in a public context, the word 'shareholder' equates to the word 'citizen'.) Liam Dann asks an excellent question though – 'Should rich people opt out of NZ Super?' – albeit by misconstruing the opting process. New Zealand Super is in fact an 'opt-in' benefit, as Dann comes to realise. Much of the present opposition to Super comes from people who would rather that the money paid to the rich was instead paid to bureaucrats to stop the rich from getting it. In reality, there is probably a significant number of rich older people who don't get Super because they never bothered applying to MSD to get it. As Dann notes, the government is remiss in not collecting data on the numbers of eligible people who do not opt in to NZS. (And journalists, before Dann, have been remiss in not asking for that data.) We should also note that, in spite of indications that 'first-world' life expectancies are levelling out, and indeed falling in some countries, Denmark is looking to raise its age of eligibility for a public pension to 70. In my view, this is moving in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, it is possible to both move in the direction that I am suggesting below, while raising what might be called the age of 'privileged retirement', meaning the age at which older people are entitled, as of right, to a higher pension or pension-like income than other citizens. The Denmark policy is discussed in Denmark to raise retirement age to highest in Europe, BBC, 23 May 2025. UBI A Universal Basic-Income has come to mean an unconditional publicly-sourced private income, available to all 'citizens' above a certain age, which satisfies some kind of sufficiency test. Thus, a UBI is meant to be sufficient, on its own; a 'stand-alone income'. New Zealand Super (NZS) – the present name for Universal Superannuation (from 1940) and National Superannuation (from 1976) – is such an income, designed to meet a sufficiency test. In particular, the 'married-rate' Super – $24,776 for a year before tax – is a UBI in Aotearoa New Zealand, payable to people aged over 65 who meet a certain definition of 'citizenship'; a definition that neither discriminates on the basis of sex, race, nor creed. However, a UBI is considered, by many of its advocates, to be a sufficient adult income, not just a retirement income. Just as NZS is in practice, a UBI needs to be a complement to wages, not a substitute for wages. Technically, it is very simple to convert the 'married-rate' NZS into a UBI for all adults. Just two things would need to be done: lower the age of entitlement to 18, and pay for it by removing the concessionary income tax brackets (10.5%, 17.5%, 30%). (The higher 'non-married' rates would continue to apply to people over 65.) Under this proposal, there would no longer be MSD benefits nor student allowances, though there would still be some benefit supplements for MSD to process, such as Accommodation Supplements and NZS 'single-rate' supplements. This UBI proposal would not be fiscally neutral; though it would be less unaffordable than many people would guess. (In practice, a fiscal stimulus at present could pay for itself in increased growth-revenue in just a few years; it might even 'return New Zealand to surplus' sooner than realistic current projections.) For present superannuitants working part-time, it would represent a small reduction in after-tax income, given that they would be paying income tax on their wages at what is commonly known today as the 'secondary tax rate'. Other than fiscal non-neutrality, two objections to such a UBI would be these: New Zealand has too many workers who would not meet the present NZS definition of 'citizen'; and the UBI would be too generous to young people not working and living with their parents. So, while it might be less unworkable than many people would expect, this instant-UBI policy is not one I would favour. SUI SUI stands for Simple Universal-Income. Self. We note that the prefix 'sui-' means 'self'; equity rights are a development of liberal individualism, not of 'socialism' or 'communism'. Some people equate public property rights with Marxian collectivism, with the 'nationalisation of the means of production'. They couldn't be more wrong. Collectivist schemes involve full government retention of citizens' incomes; they are schemes of government control; completely the opposite of universal income. A universal private income drawn as a dividend from public wealth is individualism, not collectivism. Indeed, the natural political home of reformed capitalism is the political centre-right, not the left; albeit the new centre-right, not the privileged and stale centre-right politics which New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has so far represented. A 'universal private income drawn from public wealth' is different from a ' privileged private income drawn from public wealth'. It would be very simple to create an SUI in Aotearoa New Zealand. New Zealand's income-tax scale has five rates: 10.5%, 17.5%, 30%, 33% and 39%. The 33% rate has formed the backbone of the New Zealand tax scale since 1988. As with the UBI example above, the SUI proposal simply eliminates the 10.5%, 17.5% and 30% rates. In return every adult economic citizen – effectively every 'tax resident' – would receive an annual SUI (ie dividend) of $10,122.50; that's $195.66 per week. For all people receiving Benefits – including Superannuation, Student Allowances, Family Tax Credits – the first $195.66 per week of their benefit payments would be recategorised as their SUI dividend. That's it. (The dividend of $10,122.50 is simply a grossing-up of the maximum benefit accrued through those lower tax rates.) Unlike the UBI option, all existing benefits and bureaucratic infrastructure would be retained; at least until they can be reconfigured in an advantageous way. From an accounting viewpoint, existing Benefits would be split into unconditional and conditional components. It means no change for all persons earning over $78,100 per year ($1,502 per week) before tax. And it means no change for all persons receiving total Benefit income (after tax) more than $195.66 per week. (These people could continue to be called 'Beneficiaries', but without stigma. Without stigma, Superannuitants can be happy to be classed as Beneficiaries.) People whose present total weekly Benefit income is currently less than $195.66 would cease to be called Beneficiaries; they would cease to be clients of the MSD, the Ministry of Social Development. What this means is that most New Zealanders, on Day One, would see no change in their bank accounts. Nobody would receive a lower income. And for most who receive a higher income, it would be only higher by small amount. This begs the question, if most people's disposable incomes do not increase, or only increase by a trivial amount, then why bother? The important societal benefits would be dynamic; would be around incentives. First, individuals (of all adult ages, male and female, regardless of their position in their households) would be incentivised to take employment risks – including self-employment risks – if they receive a core unconditional income that they do not stand to lose when risk doesn't pay off. Labour supply is boosted; as is the economy's 'surge capacity' (technically, the elasticity of labour supply increases). Second, lower-paid individuals – many of whom are women – would have increased bargaining power (through unions and as individuals) and would not have to resort to contestable narratives such as 'pay equity' in order to achieve a fair wage. Third, individuals would be better able to negotiate weekly hours of work to optimise their work-life balance. The SUI would minimise the present 'twin evils' of overwork and underwork. Fourth, and especially for today's high-income workers, the SUI represents an unconditional form of income insurance to facilitate the acquisition of basic needs during a period of what economists call 'frictional unemployment'; being 'between jobs'. Or a period of 'voluntary unemployment', such as attending to the health needs of another family member. Fifth, the SUI would count as a democratic dividend, an acknowledgement that each society's wealth arises from both (present and past) private and public enterprise, and that – for that reason – both private and public dividends should be part of societies' income mix. All citizens would have both private 'skin in the game' and a sense of 'public inclusion', motivating all citizens to have an 'us' mentality, rather than a divisive and exclusionary 'them and us' mentality. The SUI is my preferred option for New Zealand for the year 2026. BUI BUI stands for 'Basic Universal-Income'. In the New Zealand context, it could be easily created by removing the 10.5%, 17.5%, and 33% income brackets. Thus, except for high-income-earners (say the five-percenters), there would be an effective flat tax set at 30% of production income. It would work much as the SUI. I have calculated that, for New Zealand, the BUI would be $7,779.50 per year, effectively $150 per week. To partially offset the tax cut that would be payable to people earning more than $78,100 per year, the income threshold for the 39% tax rate should come down (to $146,000, from $180,000). Tax cuts would be received by all persons earning between $78,100 and $180,000, with the maximum tax cut of just over $2,000 (just over $39 per week) being payable to someone earning $146,000. With this BUI, compared to the SUI, there would be more day-one beneficiaries (ie more better-off people) on higher incomes, and fewer day-one beneficiaries on lower incomes. Nobody would be worse off. The dynamic benefits discussed in relation to the SUI would still apply. This is a policy that the Act Party should embrace, given its stated commitments to liberal-democracy, individualism, enterprise, and the future of capitalism. A wider benefit of BUI is that it could represent a small beginning to something bigger and better. Just as with Universal Superannuation, the 'establishment fear-factor' soon dissipated. And universal benefits came to be embraced in the 1950s by both 'left' and 'right' in Aotearoa New Zealand; a decade in which there were very few persons of working age relative to persons classifiable as 'dependents'. HUI HUI represents Hybrid Universal-Income; a mix of UBI and SUI. What would happen is that the age of entitlement to New Zealand Superannuation would be lowered, but not all the way to age 18. Today the 'threshold age' is 65. Under a HUI, all adult tax residents under the new threshold age would receive a SUI, on the same basis as described above. A variant of HUI would be more flexible; a flexible Hybrid Basic Income. Everyone between say 30 and 70 would be able to have a UBI for say ten years; otherwise they would have an SUI. (This might be a policy that would work well for Denmark.) Today a large proportion of babies are born to mothers aged 30 to 40. Many of these mothers might prefer to have children while in their early thirties, but, for financial reasons, end up having their children later. If all adults could choose when to have their ten years UBI, I could imagine many women choosing their thirties, and many men choosing their forties. Thus, women would be able to leave paid work to a greater or lesser extent around when they would most like to have children, and their partners could take their UBI after the mothers of their children have returned to fulltime employment. For persons in their forties, parenting non-infant children fits with the life-stage when many people would like to be establishing their own businesses and becoming employers. This would create incentives to both working-class (and bourgeois) human reproduction, more enterprise, and more employment opportunities in the private sector for youngish and oldish workers. A further variant of this variant could be to extend the SUI to a UBI for individuals over 60 who lose their jobs on account of redundancy. This would help the many women such as those who were caught out by the Labour Government's barely-noticed 2020 decision to remove NZS entitlements to 'non-qualifying-spouses' (ie people who become redundant, mostly women, whose life-partners are already on New Zealand Superannuation). (We might also note that the Sixth Labour Government – 2017 to 2023 – cut the after-tax wages of all women [and men too] by not inflation-adjusting income-tax bracket thresholds. Looked at in full historical context, Labour governments in New Zealand have not been kind to women.) GUI We might note that the UBI case, first-mentioned above, would be very close to a Generous Universal-Income. In this case, only the 39% income-tax rate would be retained, and the UI would be an annual GUI dividend of $20,922.50 (ie $402.36 per week). All income would be taxed at 39% and all economic citizens would receive a weekly private (but publicly-sourced) dividend of just over $400. Conclusion The UI policies presented above (possibly excepting the GUI, and the UBI) reflect a liberal non-establishment centre or centre-right political perspective. The GUI and UBI, in practice, realistically reflect only future policy directions (given their clear fiscal non-neutrality), whereas the SUI, BUI, and HUI all represent changes that could be easily implemented in the May 2026 Budget. My preference, for immediate implementation, is the SUI. In inclusive capitalist societies, public equity returns to individuals are a right. Much of societies' capital resource is not privately owned. As in 1938 to 1940, New Zealand can set an example for the democratic reformation of global capitalism. Unfortunately, the 1938 to 1940 reform – Universal Superannuation – was not taken up by an otherwise distracted world. (Sadly, New Zealand's misguided 1989 monetary policy 'reform' – the Reserve Bank Act – was taken up by a then-attentive wider world. Unnecessarily high interest rates have caused huge grief on a global scale.) We can choose to have a 2026 reform – a technically simple reform, that, through being promoted to the wider world as an example of how capitalism can be democratic and inclusive – which can have beneficial global consequences. Do our leaders have the intellect, imagination and courage that Michael Joseph Savage revealed in 1938? Hopefully 'yes', but realistically 'no'. Note: Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
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The David Seymour ‘Bots' Debate: Do Online Submission Tools Help Or Hurt Democracy?
Article – RNZ The ACT leader's comments raise questions about how forms are changing the way people engage with politics. , (Ngāpuhi, Te Māhurehure, Ngāti Manu) Longform Journalist, Te Ao Māori A discussion document on a Regulatory Standards Bill is not, on the face of it, the sort of thing that might have been expected to prompt 23,000 responses. But in an age of digital democracy, the Ministry for Regulation was probably expecting it. The bill, led by ACT Party leader David Seymour, is controversial. It sparked a response from activists, who used online tools to help people make their opposition known. Of the 23,000 submissions, 88 percent were opposed. Seymour this week told RNZ's 'bots' generating 'fake' submissions. He did not provide evidence for the claim and later explained he wasn't referring to literal bots but to 'online campaigns' that generate 'non-representative samples' that don't reflect public opinion. Seymour has previous experience with this sort of thing. The Treaty Principles Bill got a record 300,000 submissions when it was considered by the Justice Committee earlier this year. Is Seymour right to have raised concerns about how these tools are affecting public debate? Or are they a boon for democracy? Submission tools used across the political spectrum Submission tools are commonly used by advocacy groups to mobilise public input during the select committee process. The online tools often offer a template for users to fill out or suggested wording that can be edited or submitted as is. Each submission is usually still sent by the individual. Taxpayers' Union spokesperson Jordan Williams said submitting to Parliament used to be 'pretty difficult'. 'You'd have to write a letter and things like that. What the tools do allow is for people to very easily and quickly make their voice heard.' The tools being used now are part of sophisticated marketing campaigns, Williams said. 'You do get pressure groups that take particular interest, and it blows out the numbers, but that doesn't mean that officials should be ruling them out or refusing to engage or read submissions.' The Taxpayers' Union has created submission tools in the past, but Williams said he isn't in favour of tools that don't allow the submitter to alter the submission. He has encouraged supporters to change the contents of the submission to ensure it is original. 'The ones that we are pretty suspicious of is when it doesn't allow the end user to actually change the submission, and in effect, it just operates like a petition, which I don't think quite has the same democratic value.' Clerk of the House of Representatives David Wilson said campaigns that see thousands of similar submissions on proposed legislation are not new, they've just taken a different form. 'It's happened for many, many years. It used to be photocopied forms. Now, often it's things online that you can fill out. And there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's a legitimate submission.' However, Wilson pointed out that identical responses would likely be grouped by the select committee and treated as one submission. 'The purpose of the select committee calling for public submissions is so that the members of the committee can better inform themselves about the issues. They're looking at the bill, thinking about whether it needs to be amended or whether it should pass. So if they receive the same view from hundreds of people, they will know that.' But that isn't to say those submissions are discredited, Wilson said. 'For example, the committee staff would say, you've received 10,000 submissions that all look exactly like this. So members will know how many there were and what they said. But I don't know if there's any point in all of the members individually reading the same thing that many times.' But Williams said there were risks in treating similar submissions created using 'tools' as one submission. 'Treating those ones as if they are all identical is not just wrong, it's actually undemocratic,' he said. 'It's been really concerning that, under the current parliament, they are trying to carte blanche, reject people's submissions, because a lot of them are similar.' AI should be used to analyse submissions and identify the unique points. 'Because if people are going to take the time and make a submission to Parliament, at the very least, the officials should be reading them or having them summarised,' Williams said. 'Every single case on its merits' Labour MP Duncan Webb is a member of the Justice Committee and sat in on oral submissions for the Treaty Principles Bill. He said he attempted to read as many submissions as possible. 'When you get a stock submission, which is a body of text that is identical and it's just been clicked and dragged, then you don't have to read them all, because you just know that there are 500 people who think exactly the same thing,' he said. 'But when you get 500 postcards, which each have three handwritten sentences on them, they may all have the same theme, they may all be from a particular organisation, but the individual thoughts that have been individually expressed. So you can't kind of categorise it as just one size fits all. You've got to take every single case on its merits.' Webb said he takes the select committee process very seriously. 'The thing that struck me was, sure, you read a lot [of submissions] which are repetitive, but then all of a sudden you come across one which actually changes the way you think about the problem in front of you. 'To kind of dismiss that as just one of a pile from this organisation is actually denying someone who's got an important point to make, their voice in the democratic process.'
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Proposed Punishment For Te Pāti Māori MPs For Treaty Principles Haka Stands
Article – RNZ Opposition parties tried to reject the recommendation, but did not have the numbers to vote it down. Parliament has confirmed the unprecedented punishments proposed for Te Pāti Māori MPs who performed a haka in protest against the Treaty Principles Bill. Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi will be suspended for 21 days, and MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke suspended for seven days, taking effect immediately. Opposition parties tried to reject the recommendation, but did not have the numbers to vote it down. See how it all unfolded in Parliament The heated debate to consider the proposed punishment came to an end just before Parliament was due to rise. Waititi moved to close the debate and no party disagreed, ending the possibility of it carrying on in the next sitting week. Leader of the House Chris Bishop – the only National MP who spoke – kicked off the debate earlier in the afternoon saying it was 'regrettable' some MPs did not vote on the Budget two weeks ago. Bishop had called a vote ahead of Budget Day to suspend the privileges report debate to ensure the Te Pāti Māori MPs could take part in the Budget, but not all of them turned up. The debate was robust and rowdy with both the deputy speaker Barbara Kuriger and temporary speaker Tangi Utikare repeatedly having to ask MPs to quieten down. Tākuta Ferris spoke first for Te Pāti Māori saying the haka was a 'signal of humanity' and a 'raw human connection'. He said Māori had faced acts of violence for too long and would not be silenced by 'ignorance or bigotry'. 'Is this really us in 2025, Aotearoa New Zealand?' he asked the House. 'Everyone can see the racism.' He said the Privileges Committee's recommendations were not without precedent, noting the fact Labour MP Peeni Henare, who also participated in the haka, didn't face suspension. Henare attended the committee and apologised, which contributed to his lesser sanction. MP Parmjeet Parmar – a member of the Committee – was first to speak on behalf of ACT, and referenced the hand gesture – or 'finger gun' – that Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer made in the direction of ACT MPs during the haka. Parmar told the House debate could be used to disagree on ideas and issues, and there wasn't a place for intimidating physical gestures. Greens co-leader Marama Davidson said New Zealand's Parliament could lead the world in terms of involving the indigenous people. She said the Green Party strongly rejected the committee's recommendations and proposed their amendment of removing suspensions, and asked the Te Pāti Māori MPs be censured instead. Davidson said The House had evolved in the past – such as the inclusion of sign language and breast-feeding in The House. She said the Greens were challenging the rules, and did not need an apology from Te Pāti Māori. NZ First leader Winston Peters said Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party speeches so far showed 'no sincerity, saying countless haka had taken place in Parliament but only after first consulting the Speaker. 'They told the media they were going to do it, but they didn't tell the Speaker did they? 'The Māori party are a bunch of extremists,' Peters said, 'New Zealand has had enough of them'. Peters was made to apologise after taking aim at Waititi, calling him 'the one in the cowboy hat' with 'scribbles on his face'. He continued afterward, describing Waititi as possessing 'anti western values'. Labour's Willie Jackson congratulated Te Pāti Māori for the 'greatest exhibition of our culture in The House in my lifetime'. Jackson said the Treaty bill was a great threat, and was met by a great haka performance. He was glad the ACT Party was intimidated, saying that was the whole point of doing the haka. He also called for a bit of compromise from Te Pāti Māori – encouraging them to say sorry – but reiterated Labour's view the sanctions were out of proportion with past indiscretions in the House. Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the debate 'would be a joke if it wasn't so serious'. 'Get an absolute grip', she said to the House, arguing the prime minister 'is personally responsible' if The House proceeds with the committee's proposed sanctions. She accused National's James Meager of 'pointing a finger gun' at her – the same gesture coalition MPs had criticised Ngarewa-Packer for during her haka – the Speaker accepted he had not intended to, Swarbrick said it was an example where the interpretation can be in the eye of the beholder. She said if the government could 'pick a punishment out of thin air' that was 'not a democracy', putting New Zealand in very dangerous territory. An emotional Maipi-Clarke said she had been silent on the issue for a long time, the party's voices in haka having sent shockwaves around the world. She questioned whether that was why the MPs were being punished. 'Since when did being proud of your culture make you racist?' 'We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost,' she said, calling the Treaty Principles bill was a 'dishonourable vote'. She had apologised to the Speaker and accepted the consequence laid down on the day, but refused to apologise. She listed other incidents in Parliament that resulted in no punishment. Maipi-Clarke called for the Treaty of Waitangi to be recognised in the Constitution Act, and for MPs to be required to honour it by law. 'The pathway forward has never been so clear,' she said. ACT's Nicole McKee said there were excuses being made for 'bad behaviour', that The House was for making laws and having discussions, and 'this is not about the haka, this is about process'. She told The House she had heard no good ideas from the Te Pāti Māori, who she said resorted to intimidation when they did not get their way, but the MPs needed to 'grow up' and learn to debate issues. She hoped 21 days would give them plenty of time to think about their behaviour. Labour MP and former Speaker Adrian Rurawhe started by saying there are 'no winners in this debate', and it was clear to him it was the government, not the Parliament, handing out the punishments. He said the proposed sanctions set a precedent for future penalties, and governments may use it as a way to punish opposition, imploring National to think twice. He also said an apology from Te Pāti Māori would 'go a long way', saying they had a 'huge opportunity' to have a legacy in The House, but it was their choice – and while many would agree with the party there were rules and 'you can't have it both ways'. Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi said there had been many instances of misinterpretations of the haka in The House and said it was unclear why they were being punished, 'is it about the haka… is about the gun gestures?' 'Not one committee member has explained to us where 21 days came from,' he said. Waititi took aim at Peters over his comments targeting his hat and 'scribbles' on his face. He said the haka was an elevation of indigenous voice and the proposed punishment was a 'warning shot from the colonial state that cannot stomach' defiance. Waititi said that throughout history when Māori did not play ball, the 'coloniser government' reached for extreme sanctions, ending with a plea to voters: 'make this a one-term government, enrol, vote'. He brought out a noose to represent Māori wrongfully put to death in the past, saying 'interpretation is a feeling, it is not a fact … you've traded a noose for legislation'.
