The mysterious Mister Peters

By Peter Calder

The only blue pinstripe suit in the Avondale Market fits as if tailor-made on the small, dapper man wearing it.

A tracery of creases on the high-cut tail is the only sign that since the previous afternoon he has driven from Te Kaha on the East Coast to Manurewa in South Auckland, with an overnight stop in Tauranga.

"Good on ya, Winston," says a stallholder, alerted by the craning photographers. "I've always voted National and I always will."

"Nobody's perfect," fires back his famous customer. He flashes a dazzling Tony Curtis smile, one he never shows for television.

He even winks. "I'm not National. New Zealand First is my party."

Unflappable politeness is part of the campaigning politician's stock-in-trade. And the NZ First leader doesn't waste any of it on the media. As he turns from the table, a teenager shakes his hand, then spins round to show the large letters on the back of his T-shirt: "YOU SUCK!" The motor-drives chatter.

"Don't you guys ever tire of tackling the same guy over and over," growls their target. "If you had any guts and integrity, you would."

Guts and integrity are what Winston Peters would call his hallmarks. He says those qualities have attracted what support he and his party enjoy. The Sunday paper headline says NZ First is "on the ropes," but he dismisses the assessment as "ignorance on the part of so-called commentators."

"I'm not worried about the polls because I know there are two weeks to go."

If NZ First's MPs do sit on the cross-benches, Mr Peters may have plenty of influence on the next Government. In theory, if not in practice, it raises the spectre of a three-year daily round of the which-way-will-he-jump anxiety that attended the last coalition talks.

It is a position of great potential power, but Mr Peters says power doesn't interest him. "I've shown that twice, by walking away from it."

But the question remains whether this notoriously bristly individual, whose list of allies-turned-opponents is long, can work with anyone for the good of the nation.

It is in that spirit that we tried to peek behind the immaculately groomed Peters facade, to get some sense of the man. We had been told we would come to the same conclusion as Dorothy Parker did about Los Angeles: that there is no "there" there.

It still seemed worthwhile trying. But, in the end, his deftness at dodging questions about himself was more than equal to the challenge.

Rewording the question is, of course, a Peters trademark. Thrown the observation that he thrives on drama, that he may be a man who is addicted to a sense of crisis, he plays it neatly off his pads.

"No," he says, barely waiting for the question to finish and certainly not waiting to think about his answer. "I'm a man in a country where the politics after 1984 were very, very corrupt and I sought to expose it, and if that's living on the edge, I don't know."

Apparent lack of artifice can be the greatest artifice of all. George Burns was not talking about politics, though he might have been, when he said that if you can fake sincerity you've got it made. So it's hard to separate Mr Peters from his political persona - if indeed they are two different things.

Sitting in a cafe, he is served a strong short black in a glass with a small jug of water on the side. "How does this operate?" he wonders with a helpless smile. "It's the first time I've had coffee served like this."

It is hard to believe that the style of service in an Avondale coffee bar could bamboozle a man so notoriously partial to Wellington nightclubs, particularly when he then goes on to talk about how they serve coffee in Cuba.

But Mr Peters enjoys reminding us of his simple roots: three times in the day he mentions he's a Whananaki boy, the sixth of 11 kids, a lad who milked cows before school. Is this lack of pretension his most studied pretence?

Mr Peters isn't saying. Even approached head-on, he is reluctant to discuss his personal strengths.

"There is an old Maori saying that the kumara never sings how sweet it is," he says. "I'm not going to get caught up in that. That's an invitation to immodesty."

So what about his failings?

"People are very poor judges of their own strengths and weaknesses, but I suppose I've got my drawbacks like anybody has. I haven't sat down and thought about them.

"Everybody has weaknesses and strengths ... I don't think that people who go round introspectively looking at their own strengths and weaknesses actually amount to much."

The NZ First leader arrives in this campaign trailing a persistent - and, in electoral terms, potentially damaging - impression that he is impossible to work with. But he is having none of it.

"I would say I was a very easy guy to work with. I don't set impossible standards. I'm a forgiving guy. But I do insist on certain things. I hate a fact being wrong. I hate it when people open their mouths without knowing what they're talking about."

(In his speech at Avondale Market, Mr Peters told a large and interested gathering that the 1982 oil price was $US32.50 a barrel (it was $US34) and that petrol was 61c a litre (it was 71c). Oil was $US12.50 a barrel now, he said (it was $US23.50), and per litre petrol prices are nudging $1 - they are.)

Mr Peters breaks off as a passerby strolls over to the table.

"I used to support you in the area, Winston," he says. "I still do. You just keep your foot flat down on the pedal."

As the man walks off, the politician's face creases into that charming smile and he dissolves into a long, hearty chuckle. I ask him why he is laughing.

"I liked what he said," he says. "'Keep your foot flat down'."

He turns and calls up the road after the supporter.

"That's the only way to go, too, mate," he hollers, lighting another cigarette.