Editorial: Peters loses sight of the real issues

Winston Peters and New Zealand First have given the country two fingers of their three-digit election-year salute. So far we are promised extra care and spending for the old and a crackdown on undesirable immigrants. Concomitantly, the party's performance in public opinion polls has improved and, predictably, it is emerging as a force that both left and right will need to court before and possibly after the general election.

No matter how hard Mr Peters might try to declare this election a three-horse race, his party remains the significant other, too big to ignore, too small to be a leader in any coalition. It is, for all its leader's protestations, a niche party in the very nature of the MMP electoral system. With a tailwind, all the disaffected superannuitants, migrant-wary middle New Zealanders and Peters' devotees would struggle to claim more than, say, 15 per cent in the polls. That is a long way short of the mid-30s to 40s that a major party requires to be credible and it is a long way from New Zealand First's present standing of around 8 per cent.

This year there is a distinct difference in the way Mr Peters is raising immigration concerns. His big hit in 1996 was to inflame concern at the scale of migration from countries of Southeast and North Asia. In 1999, having been in government and fighting for his personal political survival, he achieved far less bang for his baht, yuan and rupiah. By 2002, he was angling on to the structural issues of migration: the effect of high annual migration targets on society's ability to cope and on infrastructure. This time he has segued into his immigration policy from a far narrower platform - concern at the number and nature of migrants from Baathist Iraq and other Arab and Islamic nations in light of the War on Terror and the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Two of the headline-grabbing policies will be the formation of a flying squad to crack down on immigration fraud and the creation of an "undesirables" category of migrant.

Using the cloak of security and fraud to target particular groups of migrants is a less contentious approach than one so obviously racial as his early, unpleasant and harmful slights on all Asian migrants. Yet it carries the same danger of maligning all members of a much smaller group, for example the Iraqi community, if the security concerns are invalid or overstated.

The Government has already signalled moves to streamline the removal from New Zealand of undesirable migrants, possibly replacing the Refugee Standards Appeals Authority which declared Ahmed Zaoui a man worthy of asylum. The timing last week of its announcement of an immigration review drew accusations from Mr Peters that it was attempting to steal his thunder.

Which begs the question: is immigration quite the issue it once was? Is there, really, any thunder to steal? The results of the Herald-Digipoll survey of voters' major concerns, published today, would suggest not. When asked about the most important issue facing the country, just 2.4 per cent of respondents offered immigration, less than half the total for "moral issues" and about a sixth of those worried about education and tax. Way out on top is health, cited by 18.8 per cent as the issue of the day.

The disappearance off the political radar of public fears over the Treaty of Waitangi - exploited by National leader Don Brash and smothered by the attentions of a ruthless Labour Party - prompted New Zealand First to pull finger, as it were, and remove that target from its existing three-fingered symbol. Just because Mr Peters says that immigration is still a major concern to New Zealanders does not make it so. The party's recent advance by a few percentage points up the opinion-poll ladder might well have been based on the higher profile of its leader rather than the fabled playing of the immigration or race cards.

A party serious about being a major coalition player needs to save at least one finger for the real issues.