Winston Peters
Winston Raymond Peters is a New Zealand politician. He has led the political party New Zealand First since he founded it in 1993, and since November 2023 has served as the 25th minister of foreign affairs. A long-serving member of Parliament, Peters was re-elected for a fifteenth time at the 2023 general election, having previously been an MP from 1979 to 1981, 1984 to 2008 and 2011 to 2020. He served as the 13th deputy prime minister of New Zealand from November 2023 to May 2025. This was his third time in the role, previously serving from 1996 to 1998 and 2017 to 2020. In addition to his Foreign Affairs portfolio, Peters concurrently serves as the 8th minister for racing and the 29th minister for rail.
Peters first entered the New Zealand House of Representatives for the National Party in the 1978 general election, taking office in 1979 after a high court ruling initially nullified his victory. Peters rose in prominence during the 1980s as an eloquent and charismatic Māori conservative, first gaining national attention for exposing the Māori loan affair in 1986. He first served in the Cabinet as minister of Māori affairs when Jim Bolger led the National Party to victory in 1990. He was dismissed from this post in 1991 after criticising his own Government's economic and foreign ownership policies, particularly the neoliberal reforms known as Ruthanasia. Leaving the National Party in 1993, Peters briefly served as an independent and rewon his seat in a by-election. He then founded New Zealand First, a populist party with a distinctly Māori character, backed by ex-Labour and National voters alike disenchanted with neoliberalism. Peters started the Winebox Inquiry in 1994, which concerned companies using the Cook Islands as a tax haven.
As leader of New Zealand First, he held the balance of power after the 1996 election and formed a coalition with the National Party, securing the positions of deputy prime minister and treasurer, the latter position created for Peters. However, the coalition dissolved in 1998 following the replacement of Bolger by Jenny Shipley as prime minister. In 1999, New Zealand First returned to opposition before entering government with Labour Party prime minister Helen Clark, in which Peters served as minister of foreign affairs from 2005 to 2008. In the 2008 general election, after a funding scandal involving Peters and his party, New Zealand First failed to reach the 5% threshold. As a result, neither Peters nor New Zealand First were returned to Parliament.
In the 2011 general election, New Zealand First experienced a resurgence in support, winning 6.8% of the party vote to secure eight seats in Parliament. Peters returned to Parliament and spent two terms in opposition before forming a coalition government with the Labour Party in 2017. The new prime minister Jacinda Ardern appointed Peters as deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. Peters was acting prime minister from 21 June 2018 to 2 August 2018 while Ardern was on maternity leave. He failed to be elected for a third time in the 2020 election, but staged another comeback in 2023 and helped form the Sixth National Government. After entering into a coalition agreement with National leader Christopher Luxon, Peters served as Luxon's deputy prime minister from 27 November 2023 to 31 May 2025, when he was succeeded by David Seymour as part of a rotation agreement.
Early life and education
Peters's birth certificate records his birth in Whangārei and his registration as Wynston Raymond Peters. His father was Māori, primarily of the Ngāti Wai iwi, but also of Ngāti Hine and Ngāpuhi. His mother was of Clan MacInnes Scottish ancestry. Two of his brothers, Ian and Jim, have also served as MPs, and another brother, Ron, has also stood as a New Zealand First candidate. According to the journalist Ian Wishart, Peters is not fluent in the Māori language because as a child English was the language in his home and children were not allowed to speak Māori at his primary school.He grew up on a farm in Whananaki, and after attending Whangarei Boys' High School and Dargaville High School, Peters studied at the Auckland Teachers' Training College. In 1966 he taught at Te Atatū Intermediate School in Auckland but the next year went to Australia where he became a blast-furnace worker with BHP in Newcastle, New South Wales and later a tunneler in the Snowy Mountains.
In 1970 Peters returned to New Zealand and studied history, politics and law at the University of Auckland. During his university years, Peters joined the New Zealand Young Nationals, the youth wing of the centre-right New Zealand National Party, and became acquainted with Bruce Cliffe and Paul East, who later served as Cabinet ministers in the Fourth National Government. Like his brothers Ron, Wayne, and Allan, Peters played rugby. He was a member of the University Rugby Club in Auckland and captain of the Auckland Māori Rugby team. In 1973, Peters graduated with a BA and LLB. He married his girlfriend Louise, and later worked as a lawyer at Russell McVeagh between 1974 and 1978.
Early political career
Peters entered national politics in 1975 general election, standing unsuccessfully for the National Party in the electorate seat of Northern Maori. Securing 1,873 votes, Peters did not lose his deposit, which is rare for a National candidate in a Māori seat. This followed a successful campaign by Peters and other members of his Ngāti Wai iwi to retain their tribal land in the face of the Labour government's plan to establish coastal-land reserves for the public. As a result, the government of the day took virtually no ancestral land in the Whangārei coastal areas, and the initiative helped inspire the 1975 Land March led by Whina Cooper.Peters first became a member of parliament following the 1978 general election, but only after winning in the High Court an electoral petition which overturned the election-night result for the seat of against Malcolm Douglas, the brother of Roger Douglas. Peters took his seat—six months after polling day—on 24 May 1979. He lost this seat in 1981, but in 1984 he successfully stood in the electorate of Tauranga.
After re-entering parliament Peters was appointed Shadow Minister of Māori Affairs, Consumer Affairs and Marketing by National leader Sir Robert Muldoon. When Muldoon was replaced as leader by Jim McLay, Peters retained only Māori Affairs in a reshuffle but was also allocated the transport portfolio. In March 1986 when McLay was replaced by Jim Bolger as leader, Peters was nominated for the deputy leadership, but he declined the nomination.
On 16 December 1986 Peters exposed the Māori loan affair in Parliament; this involved the-then Māori Affairs Department attempting to raise money illegally through a NZ$600 million loan-package offered by the Hawaiian businessman Michael Gisondi and the West German businessman Max Raepple. Peters became the National Party's spokesperson on Māori Affairs, Consumer Affairs, and Transport. In 1987 Jim Bolger elevated him to National's Opposition front bench as spokesperson for Māori Affairs, Employment, and Race Relations. After National won the 1990 election, Peters became minister of Māori affairs in the fourth National government, led by Jim Bolger.
As minister of Māori affairs, Peters co-authored the Ka Awatea report in 1992 which advocated merging the Ministry of Māori Affairs and the Iwi Transition Agency into the present Te Puni Kōkiri.
Peters disagreed with the National Party leadership on a number of matters—such as the Ruthanasia economic policies—and frequently spoke out against his party regarding them. This earned him popular recognition and support. However, his party colleagues distrusted him, and his publicity-seeking behaviour made him increasingly disliked within the party. While the party leadership tolerated differences of opinion from a backbencher, they were far less willing to accept public criticism from a Cabinet minister, which was undermining the National government. In October 1991, Bolger sacked Peters from Cabinet.
Peters remained as a National backbencher, continuing to publicly criticise the party. In late 1992, when the National Party was considering possible candidates for the elections in the following year, it moved to prevent Peters from seeking renomination. In Peters v Collinge, Peters successfully challenged the party's actions in the High Court, and in early 1993, he chose to resign from the party and from Parliament. This prompted a by-election in Tauranga some months before the scheduled general election. Peters stood in Tauranga as an independent and won easily.
Fourth National Government (1993–1999)
Shortly before the 1993 election in November, Peters established New Zealand First in July of the same year. He retained his Tauranga seat in the election. Another New Zealand First candidate, Tau Henare, unseated the Labour incumbent in Northern Maori, helping to convince people that New Zealand First was not simply Peters's personal vehicle. So began a strong association of the party with Māori voters, according to scholar Todd Donovan. Peters started the Winebox Inquiry in 1994, which concerned companies using the Cook Islands as a tax haven.During the 1992 and 1993 electoral reform referendums, Peters advocated the adoption of the mixed-member proportional electoral system. In the 1996 general election, the MMP system delivered a large increase in representation for New Zealand First. Instead of the 2 seats in the previous parliament, the party won 17 seats and swept all of the Māori electorates. More importantly, it held the balance of power in Parliament. Neither National nor Labour had enough support to govern alone. Neither party could form a majority without the backing of New Zealand First, meaning Peters could effectively choose the next prime minister. As a result, Peters became known as the "kingmaker".
It was widely expected that he would throw his support to Labour and make Labour leader Helen Clark New Zealand's first female prime minister. Peters had bitterly criticised his former National colleagues, and appeared to promise that he would not even consider a coalition with Bolger. However, after over a month of negotiations with both parties, Peters decided to enter into a coalition with National. Michael Laws, then New Zealand First's campaign manager, later claimed that Peters had already decided to enter into an agreement with National and used his negotiations with Labour simply to win more concessions from Bolger.
Whatever the case, Peters exacted a very high price for allowing Bolger to stay on as prime minister. Under the terms of a detailed coalition agreement, Peters won a number of concessions that were highly unusual for a junior coalition partner in a Westminster system, especially one as new as New Zealand First. Peters became deputy prime minister and treasurer, the latter post created especially for him. He also had full latitude to select the ministers from his own party, without approval from Bolger. Initially, there were concerns about whether Peters would be able to work with Bolger, who had previously sacked him from Cabinet, but the two did not seem to have any major difficulties.
Later, however, tensions began to develop between Peters and the National Party, which only worsened after Jenny Shipley staged a party room coup and became prime minister. After a dispute over the privatisation of Wellington International Airport, Shipley sacked Peters from Cabinet again on 14 August 1998. He immediately broke off the coalition and led New Zealand First back into opposition. However, several MPs, including deputy leader Henare, opted to stay in government and leave New Zealand First. It later came out that Henare had tried to oust Peters as leader, but failed. Henare and other disaffected New Zealand First MPs formed the short-lived Mauri Pacific party. None of the MPs who opted to stay in government retained their seats in the next election.