Irrepressible Peters

Winston Peters hasn't had a holiday since last year, can get by on four hours' sleep a night and insists the gruelling saga of undeclared donations has not taken a toll on him.

Fresh from a week when the media spotlight, with Peters caught in its glare, rarely dimmed, the suspended Minister of Foreign Affairs won't entertain for a moment the suggestion the Owen Glenn donation might have taken its toll on him.

Taken its toll, he wants to know? "How do you mean?"

Moments later he answers: "No, I'm enjoying myself."

He's unfazed by the Prime Minister Helen Clark calling him "belligerent" during a week which saw him defending his testimony in the face of conflicting evidence from billionaire Monaco-based businessman Glenn over a $100,000 donation.

Does he agree he was belligerent?

"Well yes, I think that is not a comment I am going to argue with. Wouldn't you be belligerent if you are being attacked by all and sundry, interviewing each other, without the facts, in without the evidence in?"

As for his relationship with the Prime Minister, he says: "Well I've never lied to her and that's number one. Number two, I respect the office and I think I have a duty to make it work for the time there is an undertaking to do just that. I did so with Jim Bolger. No one can say I didn't, despite our past, put it all aside in the interest of stable government."

It is Peters' way of saying he has no hard feelings over the Prime Minister's name calling.

A politician since 1978, Peters is no stranger to being out on a limb in big battles, most notably the Winebox inquiry, but in hindsight would he have handled things differently over the donations/Spencer Trust claims?

"Not really because I couldn't, I didn't know, I couldn't have done anything differently."

He resents the alleged pecuniary interest inference in the Glenn affair.

"What could that possibly be? If there is no debt and there's no gift, what pecuniary interest could there be if there wasn't a cent involved in it for me. There is only a downside for me."

With the conflict in evidence between Peters and Glenn he concedes the truth could lie somewhere in the middle, between two men who are remembering their version of events from three years ago and aren't remembering correctly.

"Possibly. The fact is Owen came to the select committee with only two pieces of evidence, both technical, but no memo, files or anything else surrounding them. Now that's extraordinary."

While viewers watching televised excerpts of Peters giving evidence to Parliament's privileges committee observed he looked to be a man under pressure, Peters denies this was so. Neither was he nervous, he says.

But he was under pressure leading up to the hearing, due to the fact he had less than a day to prepare a written response to Glenn's testimony.

"It was an extraordinary short time in what is a trial."

He got even less sleep than usual the night before but insists it was "enough". "Do you want to live a life and say that for 32 years of it you were asleep?"

Now he's through the most gruelling of rounds in the Glenn battle, Peters is almost jovial, ready to poke at least a little fun at himself. Like when he explains where he gets the energy to bounce back.

"Part genetic," he says. "I mean I'm half Scots, I'm half Maori... nobody's perfect." It's a line he has delivered before and the timing is spot on. "It gives you a natural suntan and a desire to save money."

BUT WHILE he jokes about the suntan, he hints at the "blind prejudice" against his Maori background. He wasn't "blind to the environment" he faced when he entered politics in the late 70s, the opposition he encountered, he says.

"It is easy to analyse why people say that then and now but I'm never going to admit it because to admit it is to be defeated before you start.

"I know clearly why they say it, why he shouldn't be Foreign Minister, he shouldn't be this, he shouldn't be that. You know, if you admit those things then you become the creature of someone else's prejudice and you are defeated before start."

What prejudices?

"Oh I know why it is but you are never going to get me saying it."

That he shouldn't be Foreign Affairs Minister because he's Maori?

There's laughter, then: "I am not going to say it, I didn't say that."

So what drives Peters to keep going?

"Great causes," he says. A belief politics was a job in which great damage could be done but conversely "you could rectify things in such a short time".

But at the end of a week that no one could envy, is it worth it?

"Well of course it's worth it because you are only one of many people who make these sacrifices and are prepared to this stance and in that context you are not alone."

He insists he doesn't let it get to him, that he doesn't have sleepless nights. In fact he doesn't sleep long enough - often not more than four hours a night - to wake worrying.

"You have got to unwind. Worry is a wild horse and it can take control of your life and you have to understand, know how to deal with it. If you have done all you possibly can do, what is the sense in worrying about it?"

WHILE POLITICS consumes most of his life, more so lately, he'll relax by reading or watching a good movie or documentary and what he calls "outdoor things".

"Unfortunately of late they have become sort of ambitions rather than reality because you haven't got time. But you've always got something to look forward to.

"If you have got two or three hours off you have really got to make that a holiday that some people need three weeks to enjoy because it's time."

So if there's to be no holiday this year, what about next year?

"Oh, I think, you know, first things first." One of those things would be the job as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He "of course" wants it back.

With the election set for November 8, Peters is ready to hit the ground running. He knows he'll have a tough campaign ahead in Tauranga, with National's candidate Simon Bridges ready to make the most of the tarnishing Glenn's evidence has given Peters' image.

"I've always loved campaigning. Campaigns are the real determinants of polls. It's only a small country until you start campaigning and then you realise how big it is. Two months to go, that's great. A short hard run."