Minister for Funny Walks
October 17, 2005New Zealand recently had an election, in which the current Prime Minister barely managed to win by making deals with other political parties.
One of those deals was to make an anti-immigration politician the Foreign Minister of New Zealand. Interestingly enough, the new Foreign Minister won’t have a position in Cabinet. This could be interesting.
Last year Peters warned of an immigrant invasion which would turn New Zealand into an “Asian colony” and this year complained Muslim extremists were being allowed in the country.
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The Australian government said it would work with whoever is New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister. But international relations expert Terence O’Brien said Peters’ views on immigration would create a negative impression among Asian neighbours, while excluding the foreign minister from cabinet would have disastrous effect on the country’s international relations.
Mr Peters’ skills will be tested early in the new year when he is expected to front moves to open a dialogue with the US to try to bury the 20-year-old dispute over nuclear ships. But he is unlikely to be brought into play as negotiations on a China free-trade deal - which he opposes - are finalised.
So a Foreign Minister with Anti-Asian views (and who has yet to publically recant from them) may have to negotiate with an Asian country. This could be interesting. The current Prime Minister of Australia (John Howard) also opposed Asian migration at one time, but now has forged political ties with Indonesia. So I reserve hope that Mr. Peters can keep his latent prejudices in check. Nevertheless, I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens next.
