NZ First 2023 election bid kicks off with scathing attack on Labor’s ‘hallucinogenic targets’

NZ First has launched a 2023 election bid attacking Labor for failing to meet its “hallucinogenic targets”, and a prediction the government will call a “quick election”.

NZ First leader Winston Peters told more than 80 party members gathered at the Rydges hotel in Christchurch on Saturday that his party was the missing ingredient for a successful Labor government.

“If anyone thinks that the PvdA will survive these next elections, he knows nothing about politics,” Peters said on Saturday morning.

“They also don’t know anything about the people in this country. This in itself is one of the worst governments.”

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Peters and his party plan to make a comeback in the 2023 electionsafter being voted out of both government and parliament in an election that gave Labor an absolute majority in 2020.

“There are those who would have thought this couldn’t have happened… How wrong they are and I’m grateful to see you all here in Christchurch today, getting ready for the comeback trail,” said Peters.

“Our job is to wake up our fellow New Zealanders and ensure they are on the right track in 2023.”

Peters said Labor had taken credit for NZ First’s successful policies such as the Provincial Growth Fund and the construction of a massive mussel farm, while areas managed by Labor under the 2017 coalition government, such as health, education and public policy,” a mess”.

“They said it was Labor that did this work between 2017 and 2020. Well, my friends, what is missing now? Come on. What is missing now?” he said, prompting the crowd to react.

“I think it’s entirely possible that as the kaleidoscope of events starts to cross their minds in that 65-strong caucus and they know their game is up, that they won’t last until November next year,” he said, referring to the “snap election” of July 2002.

NZ First’s success has traditionally depended on its ability to form a coalition government with Labor or National after an election, making Peters the ‘king maker’. Peters, true to his form, did not specify which way NZ First would go if the side found themselves in this position again.

“It’s not that we’re power mad. The reason we know how to negotiate and why we win every negotiation is that we are willing to give up power for negotiation – and the rest don’t.

“They can’t help but be obsessed with power, and if you’re willing to have no power, then the people and the circumstances transfer power to you.”

He said other political parties “just don’t know what they’re doing”. He joked that “other party” with his “darling twerping away” – a reference to ACT leader David Seymour performing (twerking) on Dancing with the stars — had millions of dollars, but had produced only one minister.

Seymour was a parliamentary undersecretary in the Key government, and two ACT MPs, Rodney Hide and Heather Roy, held ministerial posts before him outside the cabinet.

Former NZ First MP Shane Jones, in a speech he called a “calling together”, said NZ First anchored the Labor government’s “flaky, ambitious” goals of 2017 into an “economic reality”.

“I just want to identify some of these light-hearted targets that are destroying us now and their political, hallucinogenic targets. They will never be reached. Do you remember 100,000 houses?

“There is a huge gap between what Jacinda’s government has promised to do and very little they have achieved on the ground. And we in New Zealand let them get away with that.”

He said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is “outsourcing the responsibility” for problems she herself has created, such as the rising cost of living.

Jones said the Māori party “traded on Māori misery” and would not be a king or queen maker “if I had anything to do with it”.

He named Auckland’s new mayor Wayne Brown as a “friend” of NZ First and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) research into the way the party handles donations – which resulted in two not guilty verdicts in June – was a “witch hunt”.

The conference was attended by former NZ MPs Darroch Ball, Fletcher Tabuteau, Mark Patterson and Jenny Marcroft.

Former New Zealand ministers, Ron Mark, recently elected mayor of Carterton, and Tracey Martin, who has worked for the government on its media reforms, were not present. Neither was former MP Clayton Mitchell.

The party conference lasts two days, as members discuss party policies and hear from speakers, including economist Cameron Bagrie. More than 30 party tasks and possible policies would be discussed by delegates.

Policies agreed by party members on Saturday afternoon included: exploring strengthening the military’s disaster relief engineering corps, preserving the oil refinery at Marsden Point, and exploring an urgent rewrite of the education curriculum.