Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hits back at NZ First leader Winston Peters' claims

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has hit back at New Zealand First's leader Winston Peters' claims from the weekend's party conference saying "some of them are plain wrong".

Appearing on TVNZ's Breakfast Show, responding to Peter's statements over the weekend, Ardern shrugged and said with a laugh: "Oh...it's just that time of the [election] cycle again."

"I'm wary - on some of the more extreme statements - just wary of, I guess, giving them any more headlines. Because some of them are just plain wrong," she told TVNZ's Breakfast show.

Ardern said she was otherwise happy to discuss things like the agricultural emissions proposal that had been put forward because NZ First ultimately voted for the Zero Carbon Act, which set a target to reduce emissions.

"Now our job is to get on with finding ways to do that - and that's what we're doing."

Asked if she could work with Peters again, Ardern gave another shoulder shrug.

"We've demonstrated our ability to work with others under difficult circumstances.

"We've shown that we can create strong and stable Government - I think that's the most important thing that you can take away from our time in coalition, that that is what Labour is able to deliver."

But ultimately, there was still some time between now and the election and she acknowledged that it would not be known for some time whether or not there was a need to work with other parties.

Asked if Peters was on his way back from the political wilderness, Ardern said was not going to make any predictions about him.

"But I've also, in more recent times, also made sure not to re-write history. We were in government together and we did good things when we were in government together."

But she said unlike him, she was not going to take a revisionist view on that.

NZ First leader Winston Peters told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking this morning that he would be standing in the 2023 election.

"One can't rest these days with how things are going," he said.

Peters said nobody in Labour had told him about what Hosking described as the "Māorification of New Zealand legislation".

"Prime Minister denied it and Willie Jackson as you know let things out of the bag.

"He Puapua was ordered and came to Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta. The PM said they did not know about it so I said if they did not know about it then she hid it from them and she should have been sacked for it."

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has hit out at NZ First leader Winston Peters, who she is pictured with on October 24, 2017. Photo / Getty

Speaking about Mahuta, Peters said there were wider things of grave concern.

"In Foreign Affairs if we go off-shore we should be apolitical. That's sad how things have been let go.

"On a domestic level there are too many things going wrong at the moment.

"With respect to family connections there are too many questions now about certain things."

Hosking asked whether it was a scandal, Peters replied if he had done it, it would be all over headlines "day in and day out".

Peters also said he had met Mahuta's partner Gannin Ormsby but couldn't say if he knew him.

Peters said he saw a contract for a high-placed job for a cancer specialist which had a lot about the Treaty of Waitangi.

"There is no way a specialist in cancer, a treatment which every ethnic group in this country needs when they are ill, could fill out that form.

"I told [the person thinking of applying] this will require you to go do a two-year sociological course at University so you can answer the paper.. this country is going mad."

The percentage of disgruntled voters was not a problem, Peters told Hosking.

"If there is 10 per cent of that disgruntled vote going nowhere then there's a chance for them to line up and seriously get some say in New Zealand politics.

"That's why we are hitting the roads in our listening tour, that's why we are packing the halls, I am going to go and do it because we are not getting a fair go with the mainstream media."