1 April 2025
By John Braddock
and Tom Peters
Winston Peters, New
Zealand’s deputy prime minister and leader of the
right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, delivered a Trumpian
“state of the nation” speech in Christchurch on March
23. Peters’ statements are an indication of the increasing
lurch to the far-right by the entire political
establishment, as the economic crisis deepens and as New
Zealand is integrated more closely into US imperialism’s
war plans.
Peters, who is also the foreign
minister, addressed approximately 750 party members and
supporters a few days after his return from the United
States, where he met with Trump officials, including US
Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The discussions were aimed
at strengthening New Zealand’s alliance with the US, which
is preparing for war against China and unleashing war
throughout the Middle East.
The NZ First
event was targeted by pro-Palestine protesters. Peters’
speech was disrupted on multiple occasions by protesters in
the audience, all of whom were quickly removed by security
officials. Around 10 people were ejected while Peters
shouted for them to be thrown out, in the style of Donald
Trump at his election rallies.
The government has
refused to condemn the resumption of Israel’s genocidal
bombing and starvation of Gaza. Peters has previously
indicated that he is amenable to any US-dictated plan for
seizing and “reconstructing” Gaza.
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Peters’
speech, in its content, language and delivery, channeled
Trump-style far-right politics. Against a backdrop of New
Zealand flags, Peters declared NZ First to be a “true
nationalist party” and raised the slogan: “Make New
Zealand First Again,” with the rallying cry: “Together
we are going to take back our country.” His address was
pitched as preparing the ground for the next election, which
is not due until October next year.
In a semi-coherent
tirade, Peters lambasted protesters as “left-wing
fascists,” “communist, fascist and anti-democratic
losers” and “Marxist whingers.”
This echoed
similar statements made in January by David Seymour, leader
of the ACT Party in the coalition government, warning about
the “danger” of “Marxism” and “the hard left,”
which he said was appealing to young people hit by soaring
living costs.
Such comments reflect growing fears in
ruling circles about the shift to the left among workers and
young people, in response to soaring social inequality,
austerity, genocide and war. The 2025 Edelman Trust
Barometer, a recent global survey, found that only 19
percent of New Zealanders believe the next generation will
be better off compared to today, while 68 percent agree that
“the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of
taxes.”
NZ First and ACT are seeking to steer
popular anger in the most reactionary direction possible.
They are attempting to stoke racial animosity towards
indigenous Māori, bigotry towards transgender people,
anti-immigrant chauvinism, and anti-science
quackery.
The two right-wing parties received just 6
percent and 8 percent in the 2023 election and are extremely
unpopular, but are largely setting the agenda of the
coalition government nominally led by the conservative
National Party.
Peters promised to carry
out a “war on woke”—a term which the far-right uses to
refer to everything from identity politics and affirmative
action programs, to education about the brutal history of
colonisation, protections against discrimination,
environmental regulations, science-based public health
policies, and other constraints on corporate
profit.
Peters trumpeted NZ First’s
bill to remove targets related to “diversity, equity and
inclusion” (DEI) from the public service, saying that
“all public service hiring [should] be based on merit,
skill, and competence.”
The implication that people
have been given jobs based on race, not merit, is intended
to inflame racial divisions and to justify the
government’s assault on public sector jobs. It goes
hand-in-hand with ACT and NZ First’s false claims that
Māori have been given a “privileged” status due to
policies and handouts linked to the Treaty of
Waitangi—which have in fact benefited only a narrow,
wealthy layer.
Like the Trump administration, the NZ
government is exploiting widespread hostility to divisive
identity politics—heavily promoted by the opposition
Labour Party, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and their
supporters—which blames white people and men for the
deeply entrenched social inequality caused by
capitalism.
While Peters conflated DEI with
“cultural Marxism,” identity politics has nothing to do
with socialism. It is a form of middle class politics, which
serves to divide the working class while funnelling wealth
and resources to a small number of entrepreneurs, public
servants, academics and others, based on gender and
race.
The media and political establishment’s
promotion of identity politics as “left wing” has
enabled the far-right parties to hypocritically posture as
the champions of “equal rights”—even as the government
accelerates the assault on living standards and public
services, embraces the fascist Trump, and seeks to demonise
anti-genocide protesters.
In his Christchurch speech,
Peters viciously attacked transgender people, declaring that
NZ First would stop them from participating in women’s
sport and using women’s bathrooms. The far-right crowd
cheered when Peters said the party had been instrumental in
removing gender and sex education guidelines in
schools.
The deputy prime minister also called for
“a re-evaluation” of New Zealand’s commitments under
the 2016 Paris climate accord and dismissed efforts to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions as an “idealistic flight
of futility.” The government, with NZ First playing a
critical role, is pushing to expand mining for fossil fuels,
including in national parks.
In an appeal to
anti-science quackery, Peters denounced the requirement for
councils to fluoridate drinking water. In words that bring
to mind the mad general Jack Ripper in the film Dr.
Strangelove, Peters called mandatory fluoridation “a
despotic Soviet-era disgrace.” Water fluoridation is a
basic public health policy which, according to the Ministry
of Health, “is estimated to lead to 40 percent lower
lifetime incidence of tooth decay among children and
adolescents.”
NZ First and ACT have also attacked
the public health measures used early in the COVID-19
pandemic, including temporary lockdowns and vaccine
mandates, and are seeking to ensure that such life-saving
measures are never used again.
Much of Peters’
“state of the nation” speech was devoted to attacking
the opposition Labour Party, which led the government from
2017–2023. Labour, he said, did not represent working
people—which is undeniably true, but it is equally true of
NZ First and all the parliamentary parties, which represent
different sections of big business.
Peters blamed
Labour for the recent recession, claiming that it had lied
about the state of the economy and had mismanaged the
country’s finances. In fact, the recession was
deliberately triggered by the austerity measures and
monetary policies supported by the entire parliamentary
establishment.
After Jacinda Ardern’s Labour
government bailed out the rich during the first years of the
COVID-19 pandemic, the ruling elite took steps to force the
working class to pay the bill, through deep cuts to public
services including health and education. These measures,
combined with soaring living costs, led to Labour’s
devastating loss in the 2023 election, in which it gained
only 25 percent of the votes.
A year and a half later,
Peters acknowledged that conditions facing workers were
still “tough,” but claimed that “there is real hope on
the horizon.” In fact, the National-led coalition is
exacerbating the social crisis with further attacks on
healthcare, a reduction in the minimum wage and welfare
benefits, smaller and less nutritious school lunches, and
mass job cuts and frozen wages across the public
sector.
Peters’ attempt to posture as the
representative of ordinary workers—he declared that
“some of us know what poverty tastes, feels and smells
like”—is utterly absurd. The 79-year-old politician is a
fixture of the establishment. He founded NZ First in 1993 in
a split from the National Party and built his political
career on populist nationalist dog whistling and
anti-immigrant bigotry.
While NZ First has always been
deeply unpopular, it receives financial support from some of
the country’s wealthiest individuals, including
billionaire investor Graeme Hart, real estate mogul John
Bayley, fishing magnate Peter Talley, and various property
development and horse racing interests.
NZ First has
also been embraced by both the major parties and sections of
the trade union bureaucracy. The party played a major role
in the Labour-led coalition government from 2017 to 2020,
which also included the Greens.
After the inconclusive
2017 election, Peters played a crucial role in bringing
Labour into power, with the overt support of Washington.
Then US ambassador Scott Brown made extraordinary public
statements signalling the outgoing National Party-led
government was too soft on China, and supporting a NZ
First-Labour coalition government.
Ardern then gave NZ
First significant power, making Peters the deputy prime
minister and foreign minister—the same position he has
today under the National-led government. Labour also adopted
NZ First’s anti-immigrant policies, to shift the blame for
the housing crisis, low wages and unemployment onto
vulnerable migrants.
The elevation of NZ First and ACT
must serve as a warning to working people. The extreme
right-wing agenda represented by Trump is not a uniquely
American phenomenon. In response to the breakdown of
capitalism the ruling class in every country, including New
Zealand, is embracing the most toxic forms of nationalism,
bigotry and racism. The government is seeking to demonise
opposition, especially from the socialist left, as it
carries out social counter-revolution at home and prepares
for imperialist war abroad.
There is no shortage of
anger and hostility towards the government, but the great
danger is that the working class is not politically prepared
for the struggles it now confronts. To provide the necessary
socialist program and leadership, workers and youth must
take up the fight to build a genuine socialist and
internationalist party, in opposition to Labour and its
allies, including the union bureaucracy, which has
suppressed any organised action against war and austerity.
The urgent task is to build a section of the International
Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist
movement, in New
Zealand.
