Editorial: Expect more dinner dates

Winston Peters.

News last week of Winston Peters' dinner dates with Trade Minister Todd McClay are unlikely to cause many ripples.

In November, McClay took the New Zealand First leader to London, Paris and Milan, paying $4000 from the public purse for his hotels and feeding him foie gras and escargots (that's snails) at top Paris restaurants - all on the taxpayer.

Mr Peters explained that the meetings were "seriously important".

Brexit was uppermost in their minds, which might at least explain a trip to London, though one might think such matters of state could be discussed in little old New Zealand over a flat white and a potato top.

As I say, unlikely to be many ripples ... Firstly, as we all know, Winston Peters both eschews the baubles of office and cannot countenance the flagrant misuse of our tax dollars; and it seems we have all become inured to ministers and MPs living it large at our expense.

This week's political poll - while primarily checking how National was doing under Bill English - showed NZ First possibly holding the balance of power come September's election, giving Winston his favoured role of king-maker.

I first saw him in 2000 - holding court on TV, of course - and immediately dismissed him as a slick opportunist and charlatan. I think he was playing the race card from his pack of jokers.

He would be gone by lunchtime, I concluded. If I - fresh off the boat - could see through his ego and insincerity, there was no way a country as liberal and civilised as New Zealand would put up with him for long.

How wrong I was.

Once astutely dubbed "the man they couldn't hang", the master manipulator knows how to push the buttons and touch the nerves to prove xenophobia is alive and well.

I predict many more helpings of escargots for Mr P.

- Mark Dawson is Wanganui Chronicle editor.