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National

Winston Peters tells Aussie TV about New Zealand's 'woke guilt industry'

Former deputy prime minister Winston Peters was discussing controversial issues when he appeared on an Australian news show yesterday.

Peters, the leader of the New Zealand First Party, has been keenly commenting on politics on Twitter since his party was unseated in the last general election.

But yesterday he appeared on The Bolt Report on Sky News and commented on what he called the "woke guilt industry" that New Zealand was dealing with.

Peters referred to the modern Māori "idyllic perception" of New Zealand recognising colonialism as a big bad situation and the theory that if the colonisers hadn’t come to Aotearoa, the Māori would be living in a "modern-day Shangri La".

“This is an awful fiction as you know and those of us who have Māori in our background know William Wilberforce was getting rid of slavery in 1832 and we had it still during the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.”

'Twenty thousand Māori were killed'

Peters said people should stop romanticising historical inaccuracies and fantasies, and take the best parts of the colonising history and move forward.

“if you think that what was happening in the Māori world was perfect, and I dare say it goes the same for other indigenous cultures around the place, then reflect on this - in the brief period leading up to 1840 in New Zealand 20,000 Māori were killed in fighting between themselves.”

Peters said those losses had been the most significant losses Māori have suffered in any wars since recording total Māori losses in combat.

“I'm asking people to have a bit of honesty, a bit of truth and, if we do that, we have a far better chance of moving forward as a united people; seeking to ensure it is unity that will be our strongest foundation.”

Peters said that New Zealand is currently marred by sociological and historic revisionists claiming that New Zealand would have been heaven on earth without the Pākehā’s appearance.

“Some people are in the guilt game because they are in the business of elitism, which is of no help to the ordinary person in our society; the ordinary European, the ordinary Māori or the ordinary anybody in New Zealand.”

“The No 1 priorities, which are human and necessary, are overlooked by these cancel-culture programmes that are beloved by too many people of the western world.”

Peters then went on to tell The Bolt Report's Andrew Bolt that Jacinda Ardern's Labour government was in serious trouble and that the 'gloss' has come off the globetrotting leader.

“I think there are going to be significant shifts.”