New Zealand is a different place 30 years on from the passing of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. "The sorts of things that were being said and the descriptions given by people - you just wouldn't tolerate today." Peter Dunne, MP. Photos: ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY

Thirty years ago if you got HIV it was a case of "you're dead", says Winston Peters.

If MPs had known in the 80s there would be such an advance in medicine for treating HIV Peters reckons they would never have voted against a bill to legalise gay sex.

On July 9,1986, the NZ First leader was one of 44 MPs who voted against the Homosexual Law Reform bill, which passed with 49 votes in favour and legalised consensual sex between men aged 16 and older.

VIRGINIA WOOLF NZ First leader Winston Peters says nobody knew in 1986 that medicine for HIV would advance so quickly.

As for whether Peters would have voted differently if he knew then what he knows now - he says he doesn't deal in hypotheticals.

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Looking back on that night Peters says "the mass majority who were against the change were facing the crisis of Aids, which at the time had no solution or answer to it and looked like a massive problem was coming and the change in law would facilitate that".

"As it turns out the medical response was huge in a very short time so the concern was allayed, but at the time of that debate a great number of MPs thought an absolute health crisis was on our doorstep."

"I've got no doubts that if the MPs back then knew there was going to be such an advance in health treatment then they wouldn't have made that decision," Peters said.

But Labour deputy leader Annette King who supported the bill, which came up one year after she first joined Parliament, says she never heard the medical argument.

"I'm not saying it wasn't Winston's reason as I can't recall his comments at the time but I don't believe that was what drove people to oppose it."

She said the crux of the issue for MPs on the other side of it was "straight out opposition to homosexuality".

HIV in the 1980s was a "far bigger" concern than the Zika virus is today ahead of the Rio Olympics, says Peters.

"It was a case of you get it, you're dead, you're going to have a truncated life."

"The level of prejudice in New Zealand at that time and the psychological angst it caused is not really capable of being explained or measurable. New Zealand is a different place today and we all welcome that."

Peters said he thought his decision to vote against the bill was "the responsible thing to do".

"The fact that medical science has found a way to treat Aids is something that is seriously welcomed but back then, like Hepatitis C, it was a truncated, terrible finish to one's life if somebody had it."

Peters says he was never abused for his position on the bill and has never been called a homophobe for it.