(For a start he lied about He Puapua being unknown to him)
It used to be that this art was confined almost solely to used car salesman and politicians but our education and entertainment systems have now equipped even ordinary people with this “skill”.
It comes in many forms; re-defining words to mean something different is a favourite tactic, like the word “vaccine”. This is much easier than constructing Sir Humphrey-like word palaces.
But it has also involved simply pretending that you never said what you once did and incredibly this continues even in a world where the Internet is forever, especially for politicians like Winston Peters who, in a last-gasp-of-his-life effort to get back inside his favourite watering hole, Parliament, is now appealing to the people hurt and damaged by our extremist responses to General Tso’s Sickness.
But this has worked for him before. I wasn’t here in New Zealand in 1996 but the Internet existed sufficiently for me to stay abreast of that year’s election in New Zealand and so I was aware of NZ First’s success at getting both the Maori electorates and the Old White People vote, by lambasting the Bolger government as having allowed Rogernomics to continue and be embedded.
And then he went into coalition with that government, resulting in a huge drop in votes in 1999 and the permanent loss of the Maori seats, which scurried back to their other betrayers, the Labour Party.
After 2008 it seemed Winston was finished. Old, grumpy, and cleverly excluded from power in advance by John Key’s public refusal to go into coalition with him, thereby spiking his usual gun. There was also the stench of corruption around him that was stronger than ever.
But then in 2017 he came roaring back to life courtesy of “nice guy” Bill English not learning from Key, and a newish batch of Winston voters who this time believed that he’d provide “spine” to National – and of course he promptly stabbed them in the back by going with Jacinda, leading to the last six years of incompetence, waste, failure and division.
And now he’s found a new bunch of potential marks. It seems incredible given his track record and age, but Winston could be back again this year.
But only if people have no memory, and luckily for Winston he only needs 5% in a world where at least 50% of the population either cannot or do not wish to remember.
Of course both the ACT and National leaders could spike his guns again simply by issuing a mild apology about their 100% support of Labour’s Covid 19 responses. It likely would not be genuine but as long as it contained the words “sorry” or “apology” it could be padded with all the usual stuff about what they didn’t know, etc.
However, they apparently can’t bring themselves to do that, and the only other gun-spiking that can be done is the Key option of publicly saying they won’t go into government with him. So far only ACT has ruled that out.
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If you want to see more doublespeak in action then the Twitter account, Defiant L’s, is your primary source. Some recent examples
Of course that last is just the usual political betrayal, as has been practiced for hundreds, or even thousands of years.
Winston makes his case about the report during his recent interview with Peter Williams at 18:50 or so:
Winston Peters: When you have a document like that, you have to report to the UN about what you’re doing about it and that’s what that first Cabinet meeting was about. Now, guess who that report should come to? The guy who’s dealing with the United Nations. Me.
Peter Williams: The Foreign Minister.
Winston P: Yes, they hid it. That means they have a little conspiracy going on inside the [apparatus] of Government and the Labour leaders and the Prime Minister knowing [about it] and my evidence for that was: I said to the media, “well go and ask her if she’s going to fire Mahuta because you’re claiming, Prime Minister, [that] you don’t know and if the answer’s no, I’m not [firing] Mahuta then Prime Minister, you’re not telling the truth”
[…]
Peter W: The cabinet signs off on the commissioning of a report and you’re part of that Cabinet…
Winston P: No, it’s not signing off on anything, it’s saying “we need a report, we’re sitting here, it’s in the minutes, so let’s go and get one and see what our response is”
Peter W: So who was the Minister then, that got Claire Charters and her group to write the report?
Winston P: Nanaia Mahuta
Peter W: But you’re saying that it should have been you as the Foreign Minister that perhaps put that commissioning group into place?
Winston P: No, if I’d have seen what the commissioning group was, I’d have refused them in the first place. I was never shown the commissioning group’s raison d’être in this case.
Peter W: Or its makeup, even?
Winston P: Yes, because I knew, the moment I saw that, I’d have known they were biased and were never going to be independent of it.
Interview link here https://youtu.be/P1cPGsHZ8R0?t=1131
Peters has always been good in arguing/denying when cornered, but against this is a history of either outright bullshit (Owen Glenn, loans, etc) or deceptive talk:
1996: when his attacks on National were so constant and vociferous that nobody, certainly not his voters in the Maori seats NZ First won, and the oldies, thought he’d go into coalition government with them.
2017: same shit in reverse, with all his followers online talking about how he was needed “to give National a spine”. Nobody thought he’d go with Labour, especially after National got 44% in the election.
He’ll go with whoever gives him the most baubles, esp Foreign Minister since, TBF, he’s quite good at that role, but whoever he thinks he can most easily manipulate.
From Winston’s Wikipedia page, some of his 2017 election promises do seem rather fanciful now.
“At New Zealand First’s convention in South Auckland on 16 July 2017, Peters announced that if elected his party would hold a double referendum on eliminating the Māori seats [this was later kiboshed during coalition negotiations with Labour] and reducing the number of MPs in Parliament from 120 to 100 in mid-term 2017–2020. Peters also outlined his party’s policies which included reducing immigration to 10,000 a year and nationalising the country’s banks. Peters also proposed making KiwiBank the New Zealand government’s official trading bank. In terms of law and order, Peters said that his party would build no more prisons but would make prisoners do hard labour six days a week.”
Winston Peters…… the Eddie jones of the NZ political scene.
Loves themselves above all else
Theres always somebody stupid enough to re-employ them
They both have cunning schemes
Their schemes work for a short time, then the shit hits the fan.
They both operate well above their competency levels.
They are therefore both well compensated, when they are employed, with other peoples money
We all wish they would both disappear.
When they leave there is always a bad smell.
It’s quite unbelievable that there are 5% worth of suckers out there who weren’t sufficiently burned by Winston the first two or three times. I hope that proves not to be the case. But even if it does, it looks like National may only get 52 or 53 seats at best – which will be insufficient to allow them to play off ACT and NZ First against each other, as they gleefully have in the past.
I am hopeful that ACT will be able to provide unfettered leadership in the next government, which would be a positive outcome with at least some of their agenda.
The DimPost explained this way back in 2008 with Winston in Crisis, especially with the final point: