Deborah Coddington: Halls decked for return of right-wing dream team

Winston Peters should not be underestimated. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Just as some prisoners become so badly institutionalised that when they're released they end up committing a crime so they can return to the familiarity of incarceration, so too it seems some politicians long to get back to Parliament.

There's speculation whizzing around about Winston Peters, Michael Laws and NZ First. October is the time of the party's annual conference and, if rumours are to be believed, this once magical - if inflammatory - combination is planning a comeback in the form of Laws standing for either Whanganui or Dunedin North.

Still crazy after all these years.

In typical Laws fashion, he accused the journalist who wrote the story of, variously, using his derriere as a source, being tired and emotional and making it all up (Laws' language was less elegant).

Why anyone who has experienced life inside Parliament would want to return is a mystery to me, and it may not happen but some will excitedly anticipate seeing Peters go head to head again with Rodney Hide (assuming Act and NZ First are on opposing benches).

Pity that Richard Prebble, the master Peters blaster, is so happy in his post-politics life.

Seriously, though, NZ First is the party that will not die. A Roy Morgan poll last week had this party, with no MPs in Parliament, on 4.5 per cent.

Such powers of recovery. How many voters remember, in intricate detail, the trouble Peters got himself into in the months leading up to the last election? All they really recollect are the endless shots of him holding up that placard with "NO" written on it.

And he only needs 5 per cent of voters to get back in. If you look at the facts, it is scarily easy for NZ First to achieve that goal, for various reasons.

One is because the Act Party, either accidentally or deliberately, filled the vacuum left by NZ First in 2008, thus keeping their policies alive.

Act went populist instead of remaining principled. Take its opposition to the repeal of S59 of the Crimes Act, giving children equal status before the law if assaulted.

A liberal party, which opposes the initiation of force, should have supported this. How can hitting children, or using unreasonable force, be defined as self-defence?

Act's "Laura Norder" policies are now taken straight from NZ First's pages, so we end up with a (three strikes) legislation that sees an elderly man suffering from dementia caught by this statute and sent to jail.

National, too, has made the time ripe for NZ First to sweep back as it dithers around over issues such as the overseas landowner rules, ballooning student debt and haphazard liquor licensing/drink-driving law changes.

At least no one can accuse the National Party of not having principles. They just have different principles for different occasions, depending on the audience.

The campaigning stage has been bedecked for Peters and Laws. No, we won't sell our farms to non-New Zealanders, they'll say to haul in the voters.

They'll shrug off accusations of racism by saying foreigners can lease land off Kiwis if they're really keen.

I can see Peters now, visiting the jail in person to escort aforementioned dementia patient into a rest home, proclaiming Act stole his policy and wrecked it.

And, while he's at it, he'll rescind the current money-saving drive by district health boards to cut home help for the elderly. He'll probably produce a Foil Card - free housework for frail and feeble.

It remains to be seen how the Peters/Laws duo could tackle the country's booze and student loan problem (methinks the two are not unrelated) but, then again, their reconciliation is merely pure speculation at this stage.

But, it's been said by political commentators many times, Peters should never be underestimated. If he wants to be back, he will return. He's an extraordinary person whom the media can't resist.

Just recently his old law professor, Bernard Brown, said in an interview that Peters spent much of his student years at the feet of Sir Robert Muldoon, and Muldoon once told me in an interview: Winston always knows just when to smile.