Winston Peters has given an interview to Jo Moir from Fairfax and it is very interesting indeed.
He has started signalling where his preferences lie…and they aren’t where the left-wing thinks they are:
According to Peters, Labour were on the right track last year with their controversial Chinese-sounding surnames story, which revealed Chinese buyers accounted for 39.5 per cent of buyers compared to the 9 per cent of Auckland’s population recorded as being ethnically Chinese in the last census.
Where they went wrong is that “they lost their nerve”.
That was NZ First’s “missed opportunity”, if Peters had to name one.
“We got the Chinese names story but we didn’t run with it because I didn’t have time to quantify it and it was clear to me they weren’t going to give us time.”
He won’t say whether his party would have done a better job of handling it – “I’m not going to knock Labour so close to Christmas”.
However, he is critical of their memorandum of understanding with the Greens, dismissing suggestions his criticism is based on his well-known dislike for the party.
“It’s not about the Greens – it damages the Labour brand. This is a 100-year-old party that used to stand for something.
“From a strategic point of view I can’t figure out why they did it.”
Does he think Labour has it in them to beat National? Peters won’t go there, but says it’s clear that “[Bill] English isn’t a game-changer”, regardless of what the opposition or media say.
Winston Peters is a smart man.
He is dead right. We all know he thinks the Greens are lunatics, he’s shafted them before with Helen Clark. But he is right in that the Greens damage Labour’s brand, such as it is now. Go into any workingmen’s club in the country these days and you’d struggle to find anyone who can say what Labour stands for. The once great party is a shadow of its former self.
-Fairfax
As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.
They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.
He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.
Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.
To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.
