Howard sent handwritten note to former NZ prime minister saying: ‘Dear Bill … there is no justice in politics’

Last year’s New Zealand election result was “disappointing, unjust and unfair”, John Howard has said as he opened the NZ National party conference, drawing a stinging rebuke from the acting prime minister, Winston Peters.

Labour’s Jacinda Ardern became prime minister in October after the election produced no clear winner. National won more seats than Labour, but Winston Peters of New Zealand First threw his support behind Ardern, who was able to form a coalition government with the added support of the Green party. Peters has been acting prime minister while Ardern is on maternity leave,

The former Australian prime minister was in New Zealand for National’s first conference since it elected Simon Bridges as leader in succession to Bill English, who retired in February.

Howard revealed that after the election he had sent a hand-written note to English offering his condolences.



“I said ‘Dear Bill … there is no justice in politics,’ and I felt that way,” Howard said. “But although there may have been little justice in that result, you as Nationals can take enormous pride in what your government achieved year after year.”



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Peters retorted that Howard should keep out of New Zealand’s affairs and not make “lazy, idle” remarks, Newshub reported.

“We don’t really get very enthusiastic when people come over from overseas and start telling us how to run our country and run our democracy – which, I might add, has some very fine features to it superior to that of Australia, with greater transparency to that of Australia,” Peters said on Monday afternoon.

“Making those sorts of comments begs the question, ‘Why are you blaming the Russians for the American campaign in 2016 if foreign interference is not a matter of importance?’

“We’re a sovereign nation and to say that’s unjust and unfair without being able to particularise and itemise that, is rather a lazy, idle comment.”

Asked whether he was comparing Howard’s comments to Russian interference in the US presidential election, Peters said: “No, I’m saying everybody’s dancing up and down about that, and yet someone who’s a four-time prime minister from Australia is here criticising the make-up of this government without being able to itemise, particularise with any exactitude what on earth he’s talking about.”

Howard said in his speech New Zealand had prospered under English and his fellow former National prime minister Sir John Key.

“It was an example and time and time again people in Australia would say, ‘why doesn’t our government do what’s happening in New Zealand?’”

National has done well in opinion polls since Bridges took over, although Ardern remains ahead as preferred prime minister.

National launched a new Bridges campaign video at the conference, aimed at showing a warmer side of its new leader, who has been criticised as “flinty”.

Bridges named Howard as one of his political heroes, which led some New Zealanders to question whether Bridges supported Howard’s policies on asylum seekers and the rights of Indigenous Australians.

Sam McDonald (@SamNZLabour) Sad to see the @NZNationalParty invite former PM John Howard to open their conference this weekend. There are plenty of centre right leaders, without a disgraceful disregard for the human rights of aboriginals, refugees and innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Key also put in an appearance at the conference, endorsing Bridges as leader and saying the party’s best hope of winning the next election was to “stay the course”.

“You are starting to see a slowdown in the economy and I think that in part reflects the business confidence,” Key said, adding that the new government had made the business community edgy.

Peters dismissed Bridges as a credible threat to the coalition government, saying his poor polling meant he was likely to be rolled before too long.