KEY POINTS:
NZ First leader and Foreign Minister Winston Peters says he has been misunderstood over his pledge in the last election to reject "the baubles of office".
He said last night at the launch of an academic book on the election titled The Baubles of Office that while it
was flattering to have "altered the political lexicon" it was based on a false understanding of the term.
"You see a 'bauble' is defined as 'a trinket or decoration not worth having'.
"So to state that one does not seek to have something not worth having would seem a totally reasonable proposition for a politician to make."
It was regrettable, Mr Peters said, that the media missed the "subtle irony" of its use.
"But it astounds me that those among the echelons of our academic community failed to grasp the ironic value of the phrase. We expect you to educate those who need it, not echo their ignorance."
Mr Peters said that gaining a confidence and supply agreement full of policy concessions with a significant ministerial post "seems eminently consistent with rejecting a trinket or decoration not worth having - in other words the baubles of office".
The term gained great currency after the election when, after rejecting "the baubles of office", Mr Peters sought the post of Foreign Minister in the Labour-led minority Government which his party, New Zealand First, supports on confidence and supply, but remains outside Government.
Mr Peters also accepted a ministerial house and a car, having eschewed them when he was previously Treasurer.
The book is a collection of essays published by Victoria University Press and he titled the speech "Never judge a book by its cover".
The cover has a picture of Mr Peters taken the day in the election campaign when he pulled his cellphone stunt - holding a red cellphone and a blue cellphone and taking phoney calls from both.
He said it had been a humorous way to illustrate the impossibility of the question "who will you go with"?
During the election campaign in his speech "Who Will NZ First Go With?" Mr Peters said: "NZ First will not be in Government ... it involves for my colleagues a real sacrifice, but we willingly make it.
"For my part, I never took as Deputy Prime Minister ministerial cars or a house, so we genuinely don't care about the baubles of office. We do not think there is sufficient common ground to base a formal coalition on - and we are not prepared to compromise our principles simply to pursue the perks of office."
