page_title: Winston Peters
section_title: Early political career
hierarchical_section_title: Winston Peters / Early political career
caption_attribution_description: English: Jim Bolger in 1992
context_page_description: Winston Raymond Peters PC MP is a New Zealand politician who has served since 2017 as the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was previously Treasurer of New Zealand and Deputy Prime Minister from 1996 to 1998. Peters has led the populist New Zealand First party since its foundation in 1993. He has been a member of Parliament since 2011, having previously served from 1979 to 1981 and 1984 to 2008.
  Peters was born in the Northland city of Whangārei. He is of mixed parentage, his father being Māori and his mother being of Scottish descent. Widely known simply as "Winston", Peters has had a long and turbulent political career since first entering Parliament following the National Party win of the 1978 general election. Throughout his career, he has called for more focused and restrictive immigration policies. He has advocated benefits for senior citizens, criticised the media and "elitism", and has favoured socially conservative policies.
  Peters first served as a Cabinet minister when Jim Bolger led the National Party to victory in 1990.
context_section_description: Peters entered national politics in 1975 general election, standing unsuccessfully for the  National Party in the electorate seat of Northern Maori; he gained 1,873 votes, and became the first National candidate in a Māori seat for some years who did not lose his deposit. This followed a successful campaign by Peters and other members of his Ngati Wai iwi to retain their tribal land in the face of the Labour government's plan to establish coastal-land reserves for the public. As a result, the government of the day took virtually no ancestral land in the Whangarei coastal areas, and the initiative helped inspire the 1975 Land March led by Whina Cooper.
  Peters first became a member of parliament following the 1978 general election, but only after winning in the High Court an electoral petition which overturned the election-night result for the seat of  Hunua (an electorate in the southern Auckland city area) against Malcolm Douglas, the brother of Roger Douglas. Peters took his seat – six months after polling day – on 24 May 1979. He lost this seat in 1981, but in 1984 he successfully stood in the electorate of Tauranga.
  On 16 December 1986 Peters exposed the Māori loan affair in Parliament; this involved the-then Māori Affairs Department attempting to raise money illegally through a NZ$600 million loan-package offered by the Hawaiian businessman Michael Gisondi and the West German businessman Max Raepple. Peters became the National Party's spokesperson on Māori Affairs, Consumer Affairs, and Transport. In 1987 Jim Bolger elevated him to National's Opposition front bench as spokesperson for Māori Affairs, Employment, and Race Relations. After National won the 1990 election, Peters became Minister of Māori Affairs in the fourth National government, led by Jim Bolger.
  As Minister of Māori Affairs, Peters co-authored the Ka Awatea report in 1992 which advocated merging the Ministry of Māori Affairs and the Iwi Transition Agency into the present Te Puni Kōkiri (Ministry for Māori Development).
  Peters disagreed with the National Party leadership on a number of matters and frequently spoke out against his party regarding them. This made him relatively popular with the public. However, his party colleagues distrusted him, and his publicity-seeking behaviour made him increasingly disliked within the party. While National may have tolerated differences of opinion from a backbencher, they were far less willing to accept public criticism from a Cabinet minister, which (they determined) was undermining the party. In October 1991 Bolger sacked Peters from Cabinet.
  Peters remained as a National backbencher, continuing to criticise the party. In late 1992, when the National Party was considering possible candidates for the elections in the following year, it moved to prevent Peters from seeking renomination (under any banner). In Peters v Collinge, Peters successfully challenged the party's actions in the High Court, and in early 1993, he chose to resign from the party and from Parliament. This prompted a  by-election in Tauranga some months before the scheduled general election. Peters stood in Tauranga as an independent and won easily.
caption: Peters became an outspoken critic of his party leader, Jim Bolger (pictured in 1992).
exif: {"Image Tag 0x0301": "20000/9091", "Image Tag 0x0303": "0", "Image Tag 0x5110": "1", "Image Tag 0x5111": "3779", "Image Tag 0x5112": "3779"}