Winston Peters renews criticism of Jenny Shipley following Mainzeal court ruling

Former Prime Minister and business leader Dame Jenny Shipley has been ordered to pay a $6m share of $36m to creditors of Mainzeal. Photo / NZ Herald

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has renewed his attack on former National Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley in the wake of a court ruling on the collapse of the Mainzeal construction firm.

Shipley and other Mainzeal directors were ordered by the High Court to pay combined compensation of $36 million to Mainzeal creditors.

Mainzeal went into receivership and liquidation in February 2013, owing unsecured creditors about $110m. It was found to have traded while insolvent for nine years.

Peters, speaking to reporters from Fiji, where as Foreign Minister he is leading a delegation of MPs and ministers, was asked what the Government was doing about Shipley remaining on high-profile boards.

"What are you journalists going to do about it?," he responded.

"I've been telling you for years... about this person's incompetence and the incompetence of a number of National Party people to actually understand business or to represent our country properly."

"I've told the public for decades what's wrong and here you've got a screaming example of it," Peters said in comments broadcast by 1 News.

Radio New Zealand reported today that sources had told it Shipley's role on the executive board of the New Zealand China Council had already been discussed among senior Cabinet ministers following yesterday's High Court ruling.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was also asked today what the Government would do about Shipley's position on high-profile boards.

"It would very much depend on which boards you might referencing," she told reporters.

Ardern declined to comment further while an appeal might be under consideration.

Peters' attack on Shipley was his second in as many weeks.

He made similar comments last week after an article appeared in China's People's Daily under her byline which complimented China on its reforms and the Belt and Road Initiative.

When asked by reporters to comment on the article, Peters questioned her credentials to chair the China Construction Bank NZ and he referenced the BNZ crisis of the early 1990s when she and he were both in the National Party.

"It is actually extraordinary that some who has so little knowledge of banking, for example, should be in the second biggest bank in China," Peters said at Parliament.

Shipley later denied she was the author of the opinion piece but Peters did not backtrack on his comments.

The animosity between the two goes back to 1998, when Shipley sacked him as treasurer and deputy prime minister in a coalition government.