Give Peters fair go, pleads Goff

Former Foreign Minister Phil Goff returned to New Zealand yesterday pleading that Winston Peters be given a fair go as his replacement and disputing news reports that all was not well between them.


The pair travelled back to New Zealand together from Apec ministerial meetings in Busan, Korea, the first occasion on which Mr Peters has represented NZ since being made Foreign Minister a month ago.


Mr Goff was livid at the coverage and said it was the result of "bored journalists trying to justify their airfares. It is entirely inaccurate that there was any problem personally or professionally between myself and Winston Peters".


He said there had been an element of "hounding" going on with Mr Peters. "I think the guy has to be given a fair go," Mr Goff said.


"I believe he is capable of doing the job properly and professionally and that the arrangement in terms of his role and his interaction with the Government can be made to work and will work.


"It would make no sense at all for either Winston or I to try to undermine the other in terms of the carrying out of our portfolios and we didn't."


Mr Peters will attend his party's annual conference in Rotorua tomorrow at the same venue where he declared during the election campaign that he would not accept the "baubles of office".


Mr Peters is Foreign Minister outside the Cabinet and has collective Cabinet responsibility only for his own portfolio issues.


Mr Goff took issue yesterday at the importance attached in news reports to Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer inquiring about the arrangements for Government.


"There is hardly anything surprising when a new Government is being sworn in, a new Foreign Minister is being sworn in, that Foreign Minister representing a party other than the parties that are in Government, that the Australian Foreign Minister would say, 'What does that mean in terms of foreign policy?' "


Mr Downer had understood the explanation, Mr Goff said.


"Having your own space does increase the prospect of this arrangement working in a way that the last arrangement didn't work under a National-led Government."


A comparison Mr Goff made between Mr Peters and a mother-in-law related to that.


"Drawing on my own experience of my late mother-in-law having a granny flat on our property, got on well with her but it was important that both we and she had our own space."


* Fran O'Sullivan, who reported from Busan for the Herald, responds:


Phil Goff is as adept as any of his international counterparts at the diplomatic art of plausible deniability. But his attempt to shift the blame to bored New Zealand journalists up in Busan for the embarrassment his successor Winston Peters suffered at Apec will not wash.


It was Mr Goff who revealed to journalists that Alexander Downer had sought clarification over the Peters appointment, not Mr Peters.


Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton had earlier tried to get at least one journalist to "ask Mr Peters what Downer said" - but did not break confidentiality himself.


It was also Mr Goff who revealed to journalists that Mr Downer had subsequently decided to check the understandings with him personally, a factor that caught the Australian Foreign Minister by surprise in a later interview with those same Apec journalists.


"How do you know I asked Phil Goff these questions?" was the Downer response when asked for clarification. "I'm a bit surprised he's told you that."


Clearly Mr Downer had expected his request for a clarification from firstly Mr Peters, then Mr Goff, would remain private.


Perhaps it was boredom on the part of Mr Goff - unaccustomed at Mr Peters getting the main Apec limelight - that encouraged him to divulge what others, particularly Mr Downer, would have expected to remain private.