KEY POINTS:
Alas poor Winston, I knew him well. Actually, I first noticed him more than a quarter of a century ago when he was a very different man from the one he is now.
As National's candidate for Northern Maori in 1975 he was campaigning heavily for his iwi's
cause of saving its coastal land from being ripped off by a well-meaning Labour government. He was instrumental in bringing to public attention the cause that began Dame Whina Cooper's historic land march.
Barely a decade later he would be campaigning to stop the "Treaty grievance industry". Go figure?
It was the first of a series of contradictions that would be the hallmark of his brilliant but tragically flawed political career.
I met him when he won a High Court electoral petition over the results of the Hunua seat in 1981, ousting the successful candidate Malcolm Douglas (Roger's brother).
It was the first but not necessarily the last litigious step in his political career. I was impressed.
In opposition, backed by the support of his dogged researcher Michael Laws, he broke sensational story after sensational story.
I was with him in Hawaii in the late 1980s as we both dug into the Hawaiian Loans Affair. It destroyed Labour's Maori Affairs Minister Koro Wetere, the Head of Maori Affairs, and the department itself.
I was with him one day shortly after when he walked out of a committee hearing and a young Maori man lounging in the corridor loudly sneered contemptuously at him, "Honky!"
He was seen as a betrayer of his people. A decade later he would do a clean sweep of all the Maori seats.
Yet once Bolger came into government it was Peters who became Minister of Maori Affairs and many Maori saw him as their saviour.
He launched Ka Awatea, an ambitious but ultimately empty plan for Maori, before Bolger fired him because of his obsession with the Winebox Affair and the delusion that somehow there was a conspiracy by greedy big business to destroy the nation.
After a TV3 interview Bolger explained to me, "I had to fire him. He fell asleep in Cabinet meetings!"
I felt guilty. The need for sleep probably was attributable to the fact Radio New Zealand's Richard Griffin and I had kept him out in the Green Parrot until near dawn.
God, he was a party boy in those days. Come to think of it, so was I.
Then he split from National and his long marriage and he was broke.
He had long complained to me that while his former National colleagues, flatmates and friends were enriching themselves in cosy financial deals he always felt the "Maori boy" was being excluded.
It became a burning point of antagonism.
I was with him when he set up New Zealand First, at the hallelujah rallies, when he honourably resigned his seat and won again in a by-election in Tauranga.
I was with him in Howick the day he launched his barely disguised racist attack on Asian immigration. It won him nearly 5 per cent public support that he never lost.
Crippled by a marriage settlement that I suspect saw him almost destitute and by a succession of unsuccessful court cases, a desperate Winston entered his 50s and the new millennium ripe for someone like Ross Meurant, who he hired as an adviser and party bagman.
The dollars came into the party as he became the kingmaker and, although he professed disdain for the baubles of power, he became rich and successful off the back of it, loving every moment.
As I came to learn more of this man I lost faith in him, as he cynically became what he always professed to despise.
A common jibe was his party was Winston First. Now it is Winston Last.
I lament the wasted potential of a man who could have been a real contender.
