KEY POINTS:
New Zealand First leader and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has exceeded even his own characteristically pugnacious standards in the past week as he has continued to deflect questions about the cash donations made either to him or to his party. Promising much but delivering nothing in terms of clearing the air, he has engaged in behaviour which has been at times hard to distinguish from the paranoid and irrational.
The nadir came on Wednesday when he seemed (but may not in fact have been) on the point of holding an impromptu press conference on a Parliamentary landing, but stalked off ("Forget it then") when reporters apparently did not stand on the step he deemed they should be standing on. "That's pathetic," said one, whose obvious exasperation would have been music to Peters' ears. "Well, do as you're told then," Peters said as he left, though it was too late for that.
He had promised he would explain to the House on Tuesday what the "massive difference" was between his party getting funding from corporate donors via secret trusts and other parties getting it. In the event, he did nothing of the sort, contenting himself with describing the furore as "a media ego-explosion", bizarrely, adding that, "not one question [remains] with respect to the matters raised".
This had followed a quite extraordinary press conference the day before, in which Peters' conduct seemed like something from the absurdist English television comedy Yes, Minister. (Sample exchange: Q: "It's a simple question, Mr Peters: was the Spencer Trust used to fund New Zealand First?" A: "It may be a simple question but that would represent a simple mind. You're not going to go beyond the law here and get away with the kind of innuendo that some of your colleagues have.")
It is difficult not to see Peters' actions as those of a man committing slow political suicide. His party's poll ratings (which is to say his; there has never been a significant distinction) are averaging barely 3.5 per cent, a long way from the threshold that would ensure its return to Parliament (he seems beyond unlikely to recapture the Tauranga seat).
But what is much more likely is that his behaviour is both shrewdly calculated and tactically astute. Fighting for his political life, Peters is interested in appealing only to the small number of voters - most of them lapsed NZ First loyalists who are making eyes at National - who can push his party over the threshold. If he alienates and exasperates the rest of the country, generous wealthy donors, his political opponents and even his coalition partners in the process, that is neither here nor there.
It is of even less significance that he drives the press gallery to distraction by promising answers then, far from delivering them, abusing those who ask perfectly legitimate questions. Peters' fan club has always lapped up his derision of journalists even when it has been breathtakingly incoherent, as it was this week. To most onlookers, his attacks on the media seem presumptuous and - given the high standards of accountability he demands from others - hypocritical. But the party faithful, actual and potential, just see the Winston they have always known and loved.
Until now, the Prime Minister has adopted a legalistic wait-and-see approach, saying she must let matters run their course. It is notable that her endorsements of Peters, never warm, are becoming steadily cooler. But it is intolerable that she should allow one of her ministers the freedom to manipulate the democratic process.
Up to now, she has had to consider the implications for the coalition's stability of alienating Peters, but this week, as the last of the Budget legislation is passed, represents the last procedural opportunity for NZ First to bring the Government down and force an early election. Come Friday, the PM could, and should, sack the minister and expose him to the chill electoral winds that are blowing his way. It would be a good thing for the country if those winds, once and for all, blew him from the political stage.
