Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters was inducted into the Whangārei Boys' High School Fideliter Fellowship, essentially a hall of fame, on Friday. Photo / WBHS
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters was inducted into the Whangārei Boys' High School Fideliter Fellowship, essentially a hall of fame, on Friday. Photo / WBHS
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has attended a formal assembly at Whangārei Boys’ High School to be inducted into the institution’s esteemed Fideliter Fellowship.
The fellowship serves as a hall of fame in which former students may be recognised for their success in business, politics, sports, the arts and more.
Peters entered the fellowship having attended the school from 1959 until 1960, joining the likes of comedian Billy T James, former Prime Minister John Marshall and equestrian Blyth Tait.
Head boy Jack Saunders welcomed Peters to the event on Friday and made sure to outline the Whangārei-born minister’s lengthy career not just in politics, but also law and education.
“Mr Peters’ tenure in politics has been marked by his tenacity for fairness and accountability,” Saunders said.
The event marked the first time in the minister’s decades-long career that he has accepted such an award, and he told the school the recognition came as a surprise.
“This is the first [award] I have accepted in a long career
“In the profession of politics, so many people get honours they don’t deserve and I don’t want to be one of them.”
Peters reminisced on his time attending the school when he used to have to walk across the longest footbridge in the Southern Hemisphere from Whananaki North and catch three buses to school and back again each day.
He said it was during his time at Whangārei Boys’ High School that he went into commercial practice, which gave him the basic skills for keeping the books.
“When I became the treasurer of this country I had a rough idea of what I was talking about,” he joked, leading to scattered laughs from the crowd.
Peters dished out some advice to the attending students to find a career they enjoy and take the time to do so.
Head boy Jack Saunders hands the fellowship to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters. Photo / WBHS
He said education served as the best way to gain life skills and could take people as far as they want in life.
“Get on that escalator guys and go as far as it possibly takes you.”
In his case, he’s been able to travel around the world about 45 times, he said, more recently as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Peters told the Advocate after the assembly that he had felt compelled to accept the award – the first of its kind in his political career.
He shared that it was an uphill battle after leaving school and going to study at university level, especially if you had a Māori background.
Nowadays, there are more opportunities for rangatahi Māori to achieve, he said.
“There are far, far more opportunities [for Māori] now and that began because we [politicians] took from our experiences.”
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters was farewelled with a whole-school haka on Friday. Photo / WBHS
He said the inaccessibility at the highest level of education needed to change so that more rangatahi Māori could study at that level.
It was important to him that regardless of someone’s background they should be “educated to the max”.
“We want [people] to be productive to the economy.”
When asked if there was anything within the education system he would change, Peters said the change needed to be focused on the “fundamentals” so that people gained the skills required to go “as far as they can”.
