Editorial: Confusion about Peters beyond our shores

We remarked last Wednesday that Winston Peters' position becomes more ludicrous by the week. That was in response to his decision not to sit on the Cabinet's external relations and defence committee where the decisions a Foreign Minister implements are largely made. Since then he has made his first sojourn as this country's Foreign Minister, to the Apec meeting in South Korea, where another difficulty of his ambiguous position became all too evident.

Soon-to-be Trade Minister Phil Goff, who was also at Apec, let it be known that Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer sought from him a clarification of Mr Peters' relationship with the Government. Naturally, those who deal with New Zealand will need that. They will need to know whether they are talking to a member of the Government or a mere emissary. They will have been advised by their own foreign officials that the new representative of this country is not from the governing party and, though he has agreed to support it in Parliament at crucial times, he is determined to keep his distance from it. Thus he steadfastly denies he is part of the Government.

This position may be comprehensible - just - to New Zealanders who know the finer points of our electoral system and the difficulties it has presented to parties in coalition. But to those elsewhere who do not take an abiding interest in our politics, the reasons for Mr Peters' equivocal status will be a complete mystery. The difficulties it creates for those dealing with us should have been foreseen by the Prime Minister before she agreed to this ridiculous arrangement.

Had it been foreseen, she and Mr Goff might have been better prepared to explain the position to the likes of Mr Downer. It appears the best Mr Goff could do was to compare Mr Peters to one's mother-in-law, who is more likely to maintain good relations with the family if she is not living in the same house. Quite what the Australians made of that, we have not been told. Mr Downer did say he was surprised Mr Goff made his query publicly known. Almost certainly, Mr Goff's act of disclosure told the Australian Foreign Minister even more about the tensions in the New Zealand camp than he must have inferred from the mother-in-law analogy.

Mr Goff returned none too pleased with the reporting of his candid comments at Apec and Mr Peters thinks it "treason" to discuss his domestic political difficulties while he is trying to represent the national interests overseas. Mr Goff's comments were a matter of public importance and Mr Peters is possibly alone in believing his invidious domestic position can be kept from his counterparts abroad. Mr Peters made this bed for himself. He could not resist the trappings of office even though he wanted to keep his distance from Labour.

He wants to keep his distance because New Zealand First came to grief in the first coalition under MMP and the Alliance Party suffered a similar fate in the second. Smaller partners' voters seem to treat coalitions as an effective merger. More recently, small parties have been content to promise a Government support only on crucial votes. They have not, until now, expected a ministerial post if they will not form a coalition.

Helen Clark acknowledges Mr Peters is venturing in uncharted constitutional waters with this attempt to be independent of the Government in everything outside his portfolio. It is a pity he chose a portfolio that projects confusion beyond this country. As Hamlet said of Polonius: "Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house".