Winston Peters on how ‘spectacular’ eclipse brought America together, and his searing rebuke of Helen Clark’s Aukus attack

Winston Peters watching the eclipse in New York. Photo / Winston Peters

Foreign Minister Winston Peters is no stranger to history, having made a fair bit of it himself.

This week, he had a chance to see history of a different kind. In New York City for one of the last legs of a long diplomatic mission to the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, Peters found himself on a street corner watching the rare solar eclipse that was partly visible from the city.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday morning, he described the event as “spectacular”, but he said it was significant for another, more societal and political reason.

“One thing about the eclipse which I think people overlook: America is seen as a very divided country, but for a moment yesterday or a few hours yesterday, all of a sudden it looked like a seriously united country. Maybe we need a whole lot more of that.”

This trip saw Peters step out into a more threatening world. At Nato meetings in Brussels, he continued talks on the renewal of New Zealand’s “long-standing partnership” with the organisation through what is called an “Individually Tailored Partnership Programme”.

He said this was expected to be concluded “in the coming months”, perhaps in time for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to unveil at a Nato’s leaders’ summit in Washington DC in July, an event there is strong speculation he will attend.

New Zealand is closely aligned with Nato on the issue of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and is increasingly likeminded on the issue of the Indo-Pacific’s geopolitical frenemy, China, which Nato has dubbed a “systemic challenge” in 2022.

At the United Nations in New York City, Peters gave a strongly-worded speech on Israel’s bloody invasion of Gaza, which followed Hamas’ terrorist attacks in October last year.

Peters now heads to Washington DC where he will have meetings with his American counterpart Antony Blinken, and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell.

Campbell has held senior positions in both the Biden and Obama administrations and is seen as a key voice on Asia policy in Washington. He has recently been talking up the large remit of the Aukus deal between the US, the UK, and Australia, and the prospect of other countries, including New Zealand, joining the non-nuclear pillar 2 part of the deal.

The prospect of New Zealand joining up to pillar 2 has some in the foreign policy establishment here spooked for fear it would compromise the vaunted “independence” that has for decades sat at the heart of New Zealand’s approach to foreign affairs, and the fact it would associate famously nuclear-free New Zealand with a deal that is primarily about supplying nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

One of the strongest critical voices is former Prime Minister Helen Clark, the person under whom Peters served his first term as foreign minister from 2005-2008. In a joint column in the Herald, Clark and her former rival Don Brash urged Luxon to either “reassert New Zealand’s independent foreign policy by making it clear that we want no part of Aukus” or to acknowledge that the idea of an independent foreign policy had been “abandoned”.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has been a critic of the pivot to Aukus. Photo / Zahn Trotter

More recently, Clark told the Australian Associated Press that the pursuit of Aukus was undemocratic, because there had been little public consultation with voters.

“There was no warning of the lurch that we are seeing now away from hitherto bipartisan settings,” Clark told AAP.

“There is something profoundly undemocratic about what is happening.

“New Zealand has worked carefully on a bipartisan basis for decades to balance its economic interests, democratic values, and nuclear free and independent foreign policy.

“This continues to be possible if politicians keep their nerve and are not drawn into geopolitical games driven from elsewhere,” she said.

Speaking from the United States, Peters made a rare criticism of Clark and her recent comments on Aukus, saying that the Government’s decision to at least explore association with Aukus pillar 2 was no different to the policy of the previous Labour Government, which also said it would at least look at the idea.

“I cannot conceive why she made that comment at this point in time and what she bases it on.

“She has no substance to make that suspicious comment or forecast given we inherited from Chris Hipkins and Andrew Little the position in respect of Aukus pillar 2 as a putative subject to study and examine,” Peters said.

He said times had changed since Clark was Prime Minister, which she dubbed a “benign strategic environment” - although that remark was made in March 2001, before 9/11 changed the environment significantly.

“If you thought... that NZ lived in a benign strategic environment, which was Helen Clark’s comment then maybe you just don’t understand what is going in the world or what is happening right here and right now,” Peters said.

Peters said that comment from Clark was never true, not even when it was said in 2001, because the strategic environment had never been benign.

“It was not relevant two decades ago, nor is it relevant today, and it wasn’t relevant four decades before that, that is my point.

“Helen Clark has got a past experience of being far more capable than that and I would think she would regret the comments she is making because they are based on no substance at all.”

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.