So, New Zealand First Then?
So, New Zealand First Then?
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2:17 pm, September 4th, 2025 - 43 comments
Categories: election 2026, labour, national, nz first, uncategorized, winston peters -
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In 2026 New Zealand First in all likelihood will be back in power because Labour and National will need them to form government.
New Zealand First are currently polling around 9%, just 1% below the Green Party.
As Mark Daalder at Newsroom has pointed out, in 2023 Labour lost a lot of voters to New Zealand First, and that’s the reason New Zealand First are back in Parliament and in power today.
They will be back. Labour was only able to lead the 2003 and 2017 governments due to New Zealand First choosing to govern with them. They don’t need electorate seats. New Zealand First have ruled out a coalition with Labour if it’s headed by Chris Hipkins, which means on current polls in 2026 there is higher chance of New Zealand First being in power than Labour.
NZ First are highly likely to be in government again next year. Why?
- Reliability
This is caused by specificity in their agreements and lack of policy overreach beyond that during the term. New Zealand First are very good at nailing down specific coalition agreements.
In both 2017 and in 2023 New Zealand First formed detailed coalition agreements, and it’s one of the clearest performance metrics we have to go by in our politics. Here’s the 2023 one.
The New Zealand First influence is clear in the sections on infrastructure, energy, and natural resources, and in health, seniors, and strengthening democracy and freedoms.
Voters for New Zealand First can be assured that they will get another detailed agreement, and that it will be delivered.
- Leadership
For as long as he wishes to Winston Peters is and will be the leader of New Zealand First. He is the most highly skilled politician New Zealand has, and the best politician in New Zealand since the retirement of John Key in 2016.
Winston treats the media with the same contempt they show for him, and clearly there are people that like that. He is played by no one in politics and tends to come out on top in any fight. At age 80 and after 50 years in the business he is still tracking at 7% preferred Prime Minister. He shows no sign of slowing down nor of stepping down.
NZ First has many weak ministers and people in senior portfolios. But while Winston leads the party, leadership is a core NZ First strength.
- Adaptability
It is very easy to characterise New Zealand First as largely narrow-band conservatives entrenched within a post-WW2 modernist sensibility of a monocultural society, a resource-based economy, and a tight political economy between business and government.
But if that were the case their vote would have died out with the rapidly shrinking scope of the state, the rise of multiculturalism through the 1990s, and the diversification of business beyond primary agriculture.
They have evolved.
Winston really has themes rather than principles. He used to be strongly anti-immigration, and is less so now. He used to be strongly against public asset privatisation such as the sale of Wellington Airport to Infratil, but that barely rated a mention when debated by Wellington City Council over the last three years. He used to be strong in rooting out public corruption, but for over a decade party funding now comes from major businesses. His patrician demeanour used to look like he was above the rabble, but he was the first and only Minister to front to the protesters occupying Parliament grounds in early 2022. Since then he has brought in anti-establishment figures into his party and into national leadership positions.
There is also clearly a segment of conservative Maori who gravitate only to Winston. They want their provincial towns to thrive, they want the economy to dominate national politics rather than Maori culture, they want hierarchical leadership with the state as sovereign over the nation.
While some of his older voters have died off or switched back and forth to Labour, he has also picked up new niche voter audiences. This constant audience refreshing is at the core of turning adaptability into an electorate strength. It may seem politically perverse to be both reliable and adaptable, but that insults an electorate who can clearly distinguish between policy delivery and audience responsiveness.
So New Zealand First are polling at the best level they’ve had.
Through their coalition agreements they will continue to deliver. They are highly likely to be in the next government.
New Zealand First need to be taken very seriously.
NZ First will disappear when Winston dies/ retires. Shane Jones is too lazy to assume the leadership role & lacks any sort of charisma/leadership skills. NZ First is Winston's creature & without him, they're just a red neck rabble.
I agree about the ultimate fate of NZF – however, it's almost certainly not going to be the case in 2026.
Which is what matters for forming the next government.
On current polling, Peters will again hold the balance of power.
Winston has already made it clear that he won't go with Labour
Given that nzf has become openly corrupt I hope labour understand chippie or whoever rules him out, ypu lie down with dogs you get fleas!
If Peters holds the balance of power in 2026 – no doubt your policy would comfort the left as they sit on the opposition benches again.
Politics is the art of the deal. If you want any chance to implement at least some of your political agenda, you have to deal with people whose policies you don't agree with, and who, frankly, you may not like much.
I'd rather see them in opposition than teaming up with the corrupt fuckers, shane jones isn't even trying to hide it , costello bought and paid for by big tobacco, winston so desperate to stay relevant he'll hope into bed with fringe nutters.
If you truly believe that the current government is a disaster for NZ – then why is dealing with Peters a bridge too far?
Because a line needs to drawn when it comes to corrupt, populist rubbish politicians. If new Zealand puts this lot back in they get the government they deserve,
Well, yes. The country gets the government it votes for (in general).
However, are you *really* saying that your preference would be for a National/ACT/NZF government, rather than a Labour/Greens/TPM/NZF government?
Because I don't think that disliking Peters is a reason to return Seymour or Luxon to power.
Assuming that NZF won't be re-elected is probably (absent a political disaster for them) – not going to be the reality in 2026.
All signs so far (yes, remembering that we're not in election year yet, and there's a lot of political water to go under the bridge) – are that NZF's vote is holding up well – and they will be back in parliament.
NZF have been out of government and out of parliament before. I'm not making any assumptions either way.
Yep, the CoC govt (by the sorted, for the sorted) is speed-wrecking Aotearoa NZ – please, please Hipkins (and Labour), continue to have nothing to do with NZF.
Unless NZF change their leader – is Peters a sacrifice they're willing to make
DMK, I read the article about Ol' Jaap .IMO definitely a few screws loose, as it were.
Much worse IMO, he…
This esp since ..
And is employed by NZ's DIA, which stated…
it's well beyond disagreement. Peters is saying Labour have to change leader to be in government.
So where does that leave the left if they need Peters to form a government?
Is Hipkins a sacrifice they're willing to make
A L/NZF government isn't left. At best it's centre left, but I would say by 2026 it's centrist.
The left is fucked unless we can pull off a L/G/TPM government.
As for Hipkins, people who want to see him replaced (myself included) never have a good account of who should replace him. It's been the same with the Greens, lots of talk over the years about how this or that leader is useless and should be replaced, but really it's an internal party matter. Unless we see Labour members talking about it seriously, it's hard to think it would happen barring a crisis. We all got lucky with Little stepping aside and Ardern waiting in the wings. Probably a bit much to expect that again.
I'm also increasingly aligned with Res Publica's position that the left has to build something over the longer term and that the most important thing is Labour leading the next election. I hope that doesn't mean with NZF. Peters is a plague on all our houses.
I'm all for pragmatism, and Peters is nothing if not an opportunist. But the degree to which he is willing to play with the far right to run his populist agenda is really concerning. Exhibit A today is Benjamin Doyle's resignation. Quite the win for Peters who hates the Greens, but also loves the voters who hate the queers because he can play to them while it suits him.
"As for Hipkins, people who want to see him replaced (myself included) never have a good account of who should replace him."
It's incredibly sad that at a time when we have massive global problems we have such small leaders. In Aotearoa’s case National have no-one while Labour have McAnulty and…? Hipkins is a timid, uninspiring centrist. And Labour are no longer even centre-left as you hint at.
"It's been the same with the Greens, lots of talk over the years about how this or that leader is useless and should be replaced, but really it's an internal party matter."
Not quite, because if we have no faith in them they lose our support.
Meanwhile the Greens do have Swarbrick.
"Unless we see Labour members talking about it seriously, it's hard to think it would happen barring a crisis." Aren't we in a crisis on many levels?
As for building things over the longer term, we haven't got a longer term, even if many voters refuse to face that.
Basically, we're fucked, big time.
That's not quite what I meant. I meant that I'm not seeing analysis from Labour insiders or people who know, about potential leaders. One of the reasons for that not doubt is Labour want to win the next election. They had many brutal years of leadership woes being played out in public, no-one will want to do that again.
I like McAnulty, but I have no idea if he is leadership material. But I'd be surprised if no-one in Labour was capable of leading.
I also didn't mean that Labour are centrist. There are centrists in the party, but also left wing people. But a L/NZF government would not be a move left 😉
I have mixed feelings about Swarbrick. She's smart and has lots of skills including how to deal with the media. But she's also got a level of hubris that I find surprising, although she does show some signs of taking feedback from people who disagree with her. The shift to radical was inevitable for the Greens, but Shaw is a great loss, not just for the party. There was this great idea about engaging with the grassroots and building a movement, no idea what's happened/happening with that, I still see some signs and maybe it needs to happen out of the public eye. But the GP list/MP issues have been huge, and I don't know if they've ended yet. Mostly I'm unclear on what the Greens are trying to achieve or what the direction is.
Yes, but not an acute one that would force Labour to change leaders.
Have you been reading Res' posts? Their thesis (my paraphrasing) is that to be in a position to prevent tipping over into fascism, we can only do that if we have political power, and the political power we have atm is utterly dependent on a Labour-led government, therefore it's imperative to win the next election. And that building an alternative can only come from actually building something, not revolution.
Another way of looking at that is, we have indeed run out of time for the kind of strategy we used to hold: creating a left/green alternative, or an actual lw party. If those were going to work, they would have by now, but NZ doesn't want that.
Maybe, and probably for the traditional left. But for those of us on the regenerative/transition edge, we know that huge amounts of work have been done in the counter culture. My hope these days is largely based on tipping point theory, that we go through waves of potential tipping points and those times present great potential for change, but we have to be prepared to push the tip in the right direction. I see our work at this time as preparing for that. That includes making sure we have the best kind of parliamentary power available to us.
We need to be talking Labour up, not dissing them. I would normally wait for election year, but I think we have to start now. It's a challenge because I agree with you about Hipkins, and it's so much easier to criticise.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply Weka. I'll think on your points and reply later. I've got some chainsawing to do today.
would love to hear your thoughts when you have time.
Surely, from your perspective, even a centre-left government is better than a centre-right one?
I think that Hipkins is still tarred with the Covid brush. He was a very senior minister, with direct responsibility in significant areas, in the government which closed boarders and imposed lockdowns.
Regardless of whether you support all of these actions, you (generically, not you in particular) have to agree that it's a very significant voting barrier for many people.
And, then there is the issue that his personality seems to not be engaging for the NZ public (ongoing low rankings in the leadership polls). [Yes, Luxon has the same issue]
If there is any possibility that a left-aligned grouping of parties need NZF to form a government, then surely Labour has to be thinking about who could replace Hipkins.
Personally, I dislike Peters and everything he stands for. However, there is no denying that he plays the political game with outstanding success. Ruling him out of the 2026 election seems an unlikely horse to bet on.
The error there imo is assuming that NACTFirst are a centre right government instead of a hybrid neoliberal right/populist/FR one using a trumpian playbook that at best sets us up for authoritarianism down the track and at worst is actively proto-fascist now.
The left/liberals have ruined the use of the term fascist by throwing it at anyone they don't like, but we're not in Kansas anymore. We no longer have a centre left/conservative swing population of voters. The rise of populism is intentional, and we can see how this is playing out in the US and the UK. We're just a big further behind. And the left is largely still thinking the old spectrum is in play, but it's not.
So the issue because at what point refusing to support people like Peters into positions of power becomes a necessity. Everyone serious I've read on fascism says you have to stop it early on. By the time it becomes obvious it's too late. It's not about disliking Peters, it's about understanding how dangerous he is and how dangerous is the game he is playing.
Otoh, Res Publica is making a strong case for winning the next election being the most important thing in preventing the rise of fascism. Even if that means working with Peters. I'm not sure RP is wrong.
It's a very difficult position to be in for the left and centre left.
Dunno about that, I'd want to see the polling on that specific question. I think there are some people with hard feelings about Labour and covid, but mostly I think people pay attention to the current election cycle and state of their lives. Consider Peters getting the boot by voters after he betrayed them, but the following election he was back in.
Voters are weird.
Winston signalling to those with that long held resentment about covid etc imho as he's going to need all he can get with act and others wanting that vote also.
Jones, Costello etc a bit of sunlight on the reality of their deeds before the election and it could all go up in smoke on the day.
NZ could just stub out NZF and tell itself off for ever starting that deadly habit again.
Well done, very apt allusions. (aye, stub them out : )
One can only hope
In the last Roy Morgan a couple of days ago NZF had 7.0% and the Greens 13.5%.
Better to refer to the aggregate
Actually, not quite, i think he said he could not go into any arrangement with Labour if Hipkins was still Labours leader.
That's what the post says.
The 2017-2020 Labour/NZF government was (as a millennial) the best government we've had in my lifetime. Transformational, reformist, a little Keynesian but not too much not too little.
Labour, NZF and the Greens have a lot of overlap when it comes to Keynesian economic policies, foreign ownership, local manufacturing, public transport, housing and wages.
Winston Peters, Ron Mark and Tracey Martin were excellent ministers, far far far better than the Labour ministers who took on their portfolios after 2020.
Labour actually needs Nzf or a party like it to keep it in check on social issues and identity politics because with the destruction of the mass union movement Labour and the Greens have become wildly out of touch with regular working class people and how they think and talk.
Labour and the Greens are essentially upper middle class bubbles full of post modern academics, feminists, queer activists , professional managers and environmentalists whose worldviews are utterly alien to working class people.
Nzf kept Labour and the Greens in check on these issues from 2017-2020, but the second NZF was gone Labour shit the bed and went full idpol and collapsed a 25% poll lead in 16 months because kiwis felt Labour had lost the plot.
Helen Clark got this, she inspired fear in her caucus and ruled over her cabinet with an iron fist because she understood kiws are ultimately socially conservative people who believe in a society that takes care of one another and not fixing something if it ain't broken, not a hyper liberal reformist nation.
Without Winston Peters or a Helen Clark figure scaring the labour party caucus, we ended up with Jacindas cabinet, a bunch of people picked not for their identity and party status not qualifications (a foreign minister afraid of flying? A justice minister without a law degree when there's a top NZ lawyer who literally wrote the textbook on law in the back bench?!?)
And as soon as jacinda left her undisciplined, arrogant caucus shit the bed one after another and collapsed the party.
Labour needs to be in power for atleast 9 years to get anything done and cement the gains, but labour and greens worldviews alienate the f*** out of middle NZ, so without a Helen Clark figure who is able to moderate the lefts alienating radical social tendencies a party like NZF is needed to keep us from going nutty.
However, we should rule out working with NZF until they get rid of Shane Jones everytime they rule us out.
Failing NZF, there is Top, who in most polls would bring in 2-3 seats and be a centerist reformist party that appeals to male voters which I genuinely think we need.
Quite who you’re talking about is unclear. There were three minsters of justice after Andrew Little moved on to other ministerial roles.
But I’d have to say that you read like someone who is politically ignorant and a managerial dimwit. You appear to have far more skill knowing more about being a parrot than politics. Let me explain why why I think that..
I don’t expect politicians to require skills or degrees in their portfolios. Politicians are elected as representatives. They aren’t hired for their professional skills. That would simply be ridiculous. Clearly you have never been exposed to political theory. Or for that matter, basic history.
Expertise and skills is what Minsters have a ministerial staff for. You know ones who are expert in the different portfolio areas, and on the branches of portfolio. This isn’t hard to understand. If you had a commercial lawyer like Judith Collins, how effective would she be in a area like employment law compared to Andrew Little?
Or your mythic backbencher who “wrote the textbook on law” – waht kind of law and what text book? Even I did law courses in my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I used different textbooks in undergraduate commercial law compared to the one in the MBA even though they were in the same general branch of law – commercial. They were working at two different levels. In one I was assumed to be someone who needed an introduction, then the latter I was a graduate who could research and only needed targeted nuances.
My partner at that time was doing a joint law and commerce degree. Her text books were completely different fro each course and branch of the law. I know because, I’m a inveterate reader, so I read them, as well as most of her typed course notes, as she went through her 2nd ad 3rd year courses. They were a lot easier reading than the computer programming and hardware that I was acquiring after the MBA.
A understanding of legal principles would be helpful as Minister of Justice. Thta helps with the language when talking to legal staff. Exactly the same reason why I did law course in a BSc and MBA – I needed an overview sufficient to understand the language and precepts of legal theory. But ultimately Ministerial posts are political posts, not professional. In business terms they are directorships, not managerial or professional posts. They look at strategy and communications to other actors, they aren’t there to get bogged down in tactical or implementation details.
By your criteria, a Minister of Defence, should have gone through professional training as a military officer or non-commissioned officer. Offhand Ron Mark were the only one who had. Wayne Mapp had served as a territorial officer. I’m pretty sure that since 2005 they were the only two who had any military experience.
Judith Collins and Andrew Little were also professionally lawyers. Jonathon Coleman was a doctor. Gerry Brownlee was trained as a Teacher. Mark Mitchell was trained as a policeman. By your criteria, my years of being a territorial medic, and later seven years of programming and deploying training systems for overseas military would have made me a better choice as minister of defence than a seasoned politician. Something that I find as a ludicrously stupid idea.
Hell – based on when I briefly met him, I suspect that Ron Mark would laugh in your face. He’d been army all the way. His knowledge of the professional intricacies of air and naval military theory and practices would have been limited.
While I rate him highly as Minister of Defence, there are a number of other non-military Minsters of Defence who were better.
That is why I rate you as a political idiot, and probably some kind of brainless parrot echoing something you have heard – rather than have thought about.
Good to see Winston building on the excellent Labour policy of Kiwisaver.
He wants to up contributions to 8% and then 10% of income.
Winston Peters wants to hike KiwiSaver contributions to 10% | The Post
Kiwisver for both of us is by far the best-performing investment we have over the last 3 years. The yearly ups-and-downs of tracking its level give a more real sense of the risk of investment than housing does.
The critical element in any Kiwisaver increase is that it be over and on top of the existing salary. There are too many jobs (especially minimum wage ones) – where the employer's Kiwisaver payment comes out of the employee's 'total salary package'. So that increasing the employer contribution results in a cut to the employees take home pay.
Otherwise, there is little change that people will be in an economic position to save 10%+ of their income – in a cost of living crisis.
I wonder why Peters isn't advocating for the rest of NZ to have the same sweetheart deal that MPs have with their gold-plated superannuation scheme…. /sarc/
You know this post is being interpreted as a Labour position by others such as TDB don't you? After WP's speech yesterday, especially, it will be hell freezes over before I will ever agree that Labour should go with NZ First. Mind you, some are clearly for turning like Chris Trotter, who was a speaker at their conference.
Obviously I timed it to introduce the NZFirst conference.
If Green Party support keeps collapsing there just won't be a choice:
Ardern swallowed the NZF dead rat no problem, so prepare to pass the tomato sauce.
better dead than black?
I mean, I agree, but politically it's difficult. How will this play out in the election campaign? What happens if the Greens increase in vote because swing left voters want more left, and in response swing centrist voters shift from Labour to NZF?
Wishful, wilful, or woeful?
Darien, I DMd you.
In opposition you have no power. All you can do is oppose – and say that if our party was elected in the future we would do something different.
There can be no purity in democratic politics.
The question with MMP is how many dead rats are acceptable to enable power to do a limited good.
Like the 2017 to 2020 government with Labour and NZ First
2020 was the Green coalition. But I agree with your point. Add sauce to the dead rat and knife and fork it.
2020 was a Labour majority government. The Greens and Labour had a co-operation agreement, and the GP had reduced ministerial positions. It wasn't a Green coalition. Maybe it looks like it superficially, but if you followed how much James Shaw bit his tongue during those three years, it's obvious it wasn't.
Whatever.
Later in the day you make another different and incorrect claim about Green involvement in the 2020-23 Labour Government. There is no excuse for your wilful ignorance.