Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters has taken a swipe at former Australian Prime Minister John Howard over remarks he made at the National Party’s annual conference over the weekend.
Howard called last year’s election result – which gave Peters the balance of power – an “unjust and unfair political result,” calling the MMP system of Government “crook.”
Speaking at his last post-Cabinet press conference as Acting Prime Minister – confirming Jacinda Ardern would resume the Prime Ministership on Thursday – Peters did not take kindly to Howard’s remarks.
“He used to be called honest John – he had a departure from his character when he said that.”
Peters told reporters that New Zealanders don’t get “very enthusiastic” when people from overseas start “telling us how to run our country and our democracy.”
He says MMP is a superior system to the one used in Australia.
“We’re a sovereign nation, to say [the election] was unjust and unfair without being able to particularise and itemise that is rather a lazy and idol comment.”
Despite his comments, Peters says he still has a lot of respect for Howard, saying he has been to the rugby with him and his wife.
“It’s clear to me, with John Howard and John Key, that the National Party’s favourite film is Back To The Future.”
Peters also had a few words of warning for National Party President Peter Goodfellow.
At the weekend conference, Goodfellow said National had “dodged a whisky-swilling, cigarette-smoking, double-breasted and irrational bullet” – a jab at the Acting Prime Minister.
Peters was less than amused.
“One thing that’s not going to happen here, is someone like him thinking he can have a free hit on Winston Peters.”
“He did it the first time at a conference, probably emboldened by the fact that he’s still there.”
Peters says it’s “astonishing” that Goodfellow is still the Party’s President.
When pressed, Peters said: “If he opens his mouth, I’ll tell you why.”
“If he wants to repeat his comment one more time, I’ll tell you why he shouldn’t be the president of the National Party.”
After that, he left the podium and did not answer follow up questions.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, Goodfellow did not appear to be too concerned with Peters' comments.
"I remember working for Winston as a young Nat when he got elected in Hunua, so it's just about having a bit of a thick skin."
Asked if his comments were meant to offend Peters, Goodfellow was evasive saying he "didn't actional mention him."
"I just made a number of comment about the bullet we dodged - I didn't mention his name."
39 Comments
You're right - everyone has an opinion and only too happy to express it. The fact, however, is that with MMP you get what you get, and the emotional cripples have voted in just another bunch of intellectual retards, and led by someone who is quite unfit for the job.
For the sake of absurdity – there are 5 parties and 100 seats.
One party gets 24% of the vote – the other 4 get 76% - the other 4 have a general level of commonality and values and can work together in cooperative government.
But no – the 24% should choose apparently – but sadly they have no friends, and thus no choices.
Nationals clever bully boys spectacularly failed in understanding our electoral system – and thus paid the price.
Sorry Mr Howard – a long way to come to utter such mindless blather.
Leaving poor old Merkel alone – as I recall it really was the below that particularly fired a number of people up – especially those against Muldoon – a rather divisive character – loved however (and loathed) by many.
That, and around that time impressive showings by Social Credit and the New Zealand Party that resulted in basically zero representation set the stage for change.
After admittedly a few spluttering starts (90’s especially) I am quite happy with our current system and prefer it over FPP.
“Criticism of the unfairness of the first past the post (FPP) voting system intensified after the 1978 and 1981 general elections. On each occasion the Labour Opposition actually secured more votes overall than National, but National won more seats in Parliament and remained in government.”
What you are wanting is first past the post which is effectively a two party system. In that case most of the votes for greens, top and Maori would have gone to labour, ACTs to national. Who knows where the nz first votes would have gone. I doubt you can be sure that national would have won that.
Zach........So you had no problem with the confidence and supply agreements National had with Act, United Future and the Maori Party which gave the National Government a majority on major legislation. National also had a signed memorandum of understanding with the Green Party after 2008. You cant have it both ways to suit yourself.
Nar, that's just how MMP works Zachary Smith. If you Google search; "How does the NZ MMP system work" - lots of information comes up. Parties aren't forced to work together under our system Zachary. For National to have formed a government alone, they would have needed 61 seats.
Also, remember, voters didn't like the National COL and voted two of their support partners completely out of parliament. Think you might need a wee refresher course of how our electoral system works.
Hope that helps Zachary :)
I have yet to find a national party voter that was not influenced by idiotic symbols such as taxinda, was too busy working long hours to know what was occurring all around them, was not influenced by narrow selfish interests (property speculators being prime examples) or were very uniformed petty businessmen that had zero coherent arguments for why they voted for such a nationally destructive party.
Any one with even half a working brain should understand that venues such as Youtube have to be negotiated with understanding. Its value lies in a very good measure of informational freedoms unlike the thought control of OUR mainstream media. On Youtube, one IS able to find trusted information sources, but I leave it to the intelligence of users as to what can be trusted. Too many here are not correctly informed about very important issues.
In YouTube you can reinforce any view point you want, should you do desire, which was my point in a roundabout way. You can cry about the MSM all you want and subscribe to whatever fatalism you choose and consider yourself informed, but I’m not sure that makes it so.
You posted before I had a chance to. Agree, YouTube is the Wild West of Information and misinformation. How someone works out what is truly true and not just perceived as true due to confirmation bias escapes me. A good example of humans capacity to perceive the truth differently is the existence of 4,000 plus religions in the world. If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to be bailed up by a fundamentalist you’ll see the same zeal in Climate Change types. Doesn’t make it right.
Honestly, MMP makes perfect sense, National failed to secure a governing majority in parliament, while the CoL did... Not that difficult to get to that point. Also, National seems to cannabalise it’s support parties, no wonder only Dancing David is the only one willing to get into bed with them, they’re the only people who will let him in. The sourness of the National apologists here is really something else..
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