NZ Deputy Leader Chastises Falling Standards After Expletives Used in Parliament’s Question Time

‘Our House of Representatives has become a House of Chaos,’ the veteran MP and Deputy Prime Minister wrote on X.

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - JANUARY 28: Deputy Prime Minister and NZ First Leader Winston Peters looks on at Parliament on January 28, 2025 in Wellington, New Zealand. Parliament has resumed with it's first sitting day of 2025 following the summer break. Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Deputy prime minister and leader of one of the three parties in New Zealand’s coalition government, Winston Peters, has taken to social media to chastise fellow MPs for professional standards following the use of offensive language during Question Time.

He outlined his concerns in a post on X, saying, “From relaxing the dress standards in our House to now having utter disorder and the worst of offensive words uttered in question time ... with no reaction or repercussion. We have MPs wearing t-shirts and sneakers, hats, sunglasses, and jerseys, and even occasionally barefooted.”

Peters is known for wearing double-breasted suits, usually pinstriped, and has long been a critic of declining dress standards. But of late, he has been left appalled by more than the appearance of some MPs.

“We have out-of-control MPs who flout the rules and intimidate others with outrageous hakas and offensive language and now getting banished for weeks,” he wrote, referencing the suspension of the Māori Party for disrupting a vote with a haka (Māori challenge) and the use of an expletive by Minister Brooke van Velden and Labour MP Jan Tinetti.

The latter incident arose after a newspaper published an opinion column after the government scrapped pay equity negotiations. Tinetti then asked an oral question of van Velden, the minister responsible, in which she referenced the column.

That led to van Velden using the expletive in Parliament—something she said she had first cleared with the Clerk’s office.

Speaking to Newstalk ZB this morning (May 16), Peters said Tinetti should not have introduced the column in her question. “But also her leader [Chris Hipkins] carries the can, and he says they made a mistake. Well, it’s a bit late now. Didn’t they read and see what [the columnist] had written?”

“How should we as politicians expect the people of New Zealand to view us all now?” Peters later wrote on social media.

Peters believes the actions of MPs still matter to New Zealanders, despite a 2022 study showing that the proportion of people who feel connected to Parliament had hit a new low of 13 percent (pdf).

“Where are the standards of democracy that we all as a country together once fought for and stood up for? To accept this drop in standards is to accept that we have given up. I have never seen this level of degradation of our democracy in my many years of politics.

“New Zealanders should be more fearful than outraged. We are in danger of losing this battle for decency, values, and the principles our country was built on. Standards must be restored, and now. Before it’s too late,” Peters said.

The deputy prime minister, his NZ First colleague Shane Jones and third-ranked National MP Chris Bishop—all ministers—had tried to dissuade Speaker Gerry Brownlee from allowing Tinetti’s question.

“We’re not happy at all, and we’re going to be raising this matter,” Peters said on radio.

“The great things we’ve got in our country—a Judeo-Christian background, the law that’s been refined—these things are the exception worldwide and the exception down through the thousands of years of humanity.

“We’re the lucky inheritors of it ... unlike other societies where things are organised despotism and anarchy, we have got something good and worth preserving.”