The deputy PM has backed down after a three-day row with the Greens, but only after the Mexican Embassy got pulled in. Stewart Sowman-Lund explains in today’s edition of The Bulletin.

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Mexican Embassy prompts Peters back down

Winston Peters has backed down – via a spokesperson – after comments he and his deputy leader made about Green MPs were labelled “racist”. It all started in the debating chamber on Tuesday, explained RNZ’s Anneke Smith, when Peters responded to heckles by a pair of Green MPs and demanded they “show some gratitude” for being in New Zealand. The two MPs, Lawrence Xu-Nan and Francisco Hernandez, are migrants. During the same session in the House, Shane Jones was heard yelling “send the Mexicans home”, seemingly addressed at Mexican-born Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March, who called the remark “outwardly racist and xenophobic”. In the days since, both Peters and Jones have been unrepentant. Now, it’s prompted the Mexican Embassy to wade in.

The duality of Winston Peters

The Herald’s Jamie Ensor reported yesterday afternoon that the Mexican Embassy was “following up on this matter through diplomatic channels”. It prompted a diplomatic response from the deputy prime minister, who said via a spokesperson that he was aware of the concerns and would be seeing the Mexican ambassador at Waitangi next week. “In the heat of the moment in the robust environment of Parliament, sometimes some members say things when provoked that, on reflection, may have been expressed differently.” Ensor’s report was published at about 4pm, just a few hours after Peters had expressed a wholly different perspective on the matter on social media and in person to reporters. “The Green Party need to stop the pearl clutching and the faux outrage when confronted with the truth,” Peters said in a tweet yesterday morning. Speaking to reporters, he added: “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.”

Jones, reported Stuff’s Glenn McConnell, hasn’t yet apologised. Instead, he doubled (tripled?) down, claiming a Green MP “supports terrorism” and was a “communist”.

PM can’t catch a break

The furore has been bubbling away now for three days, proving an unwelcome headache for the prime minister in a week he has already been struggling for cut through. The Herald’s Audrey Young, in her weekly subscriber newsletter (paywalled), suggested it was all part of Winston Peters’ reelection plan for 2026. “If it sounds like Peters is out of control, think again. It appears to be a deliberate strategy in a two-year election campaign,” she wrote. On ThreeNews, Jenna Lynch suggested New Zealand First was “gearing up for a full-blown culture war with the Greens” to stir up its voter base. That will also be on the environmental front, said Lynch, with Jones poised to make a mining announcement today.

Christopher Luxon was finally forced to address the comments while speaking to media yesterday, RNZ reported, pulling out the classic line that they weren’t “remarks I’d make myself”. And, in what has become rather common with the prime minister, he said he hadn’t actually seen the remarks himself. At that point, Luxon said he hadn’t spoken with either Peters or Jones and instead made general comment about rhetoric across the House. “Across the parties there’s been MPs from lots of parties making comments I think that aren’t appropriate or helpful.” This is part of a recurring track record with the PM and exposes the difficulty of leading a three-headed coalition, as Newsroom’s Laura Walters wrote last year. It’s a lot harder for the PM to wade into issues regarding New Zealand First or Act than it is to take action against something involving a National MP. The starkest exception to that is when Luxon publicly reprimanded both David Seymour and Shane Jones for “ill-considered” comments they made about the Waitangi Tribunal last April.

Luxon urged to take a stand

Opposition MPs have been calling for further action all week, and certainly won’t be satisfied with Peters getting off for issuing a statement via a spokesperson. Ricardo Menéndez March, reported RNZ’s Rayssa Almeida, said Peters’ change in tone after the Mexican Embassy got involved showed a failure by the prime minister to take a stand. Te Pāti Māori, which this week faced an accusation from Act of being “race fanatics”, has called for Peters to step down. “New Zealand relies on migrants,” said party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. “Migrant doctors, migrant nurses, many of our Pacific whānau who come over here and work on our orchards, and many of those things. We’ve got to be able to ensure that Aotearoa’s a safe place.”

38 sections of state highway up and down the country are about to have their speed limits increased. The Bulletin’s Stewart Sowman-Lund explains why.

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Speed limits going back up

On Tuesday morning, prime minister Christopher Luxon joined Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking for his first weekly interview of 2025. It was a rather combative exchange, somewhat unusual given the cosy rapport the pair seem to have. “You’re too much yak* and not enough do,” Hosking said to Luxon. Later: “My frustration with you is that I think you’re well-intentioned, but you’re running out of time.” And then: “You’re going to run out of runtime if you don’t start kicking some arse and getting this country moving.” Hosking took issue with a number of areas he perceived the government as being sluggish, but he saved his final blow for something close to his heart: speed limit changes. Luxon said he’d “get onto it”, and just shy of 24 hours later, an outcome (though not exactly the one Hosking had been asking for). As we touched on yesterday, the government has confirmed it will reverse speed limit reductions implemented by the former government across 38 sections of state highway up and down the country in a bid to bolster productivity. A further 49 sections of state highway will be put out for public consultation.

*Not the animal.

‘Triumph for common sense’ or a ‘political decision’?

In announcing the decision, newly-minted transport minister Chris Bishop said the government wanted to make it easier for people to get from A to B “which will help drive economic growth and improved productivity.” Act’s leader David Seymour said it was a “triumph for common sense” (the pledge to increase speed limits was included in the National-Act coalition agreement). In Wairarapa, where the announcement was made, the changes could amount to about three minutes of travel time saved. However on shorter stretches of road, calculated Stuff’s Karanama Ruru, it could be as little as 15 seconds. Bishop argued it was worth it. “While these changes may appear small in some cases, collectively when you add up the volume of traffic across all these corridors every day, it makes a big difference,” he said.

The opposition has claimed that it’s a purely political decision and one that will cost lives. As reported by ThreeNews last night, the announcement was made on the corner of a road where someone had previously lost their life. Labour’s Chris Hipkins, speaking to reporters, went so far as to suggest National would be responsible for any increase in road deaths. “If more people die on those roads because of the political decision to increase the speed limits then that’s going to be on National,” he said. The transport minister said drunk and drug drivers were the major cause of road deaths and the government has committed to tackling this problem, as we looked at for The Bulletin last year.

‘Higher speeds often result in increased costs’

The government’s position is that by allowing people to get where they need to be faster – albeit only slightly – it will mean they can achieve more. The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire looked at the debate, and the strong opposition to the government’s moves, in an explainer published last August. Though campaigned on well before Christopher Luxon started talking about economic growth in practically every sentence, the pledge has been rolled out as part of the government’s plan to reinvigorate the economy. In a piece for The Conversation last year, urban planning expert Timothy Welch argued that thinking was flawed. “Higher speeds often result in increased costs rather than improved efficiency,” he wrote. That can be caused by “disproportionate increases in fuel consumption”, but also the heavy financial burden from increased road accidents, explained Welch.

Canterbury university’s Simon Kingham, a former chief science advisor at the Ministry of Transport, made similar arguments in a piece for Newsroom, noting that the government was only pitting time savings against accidents and “ignoring pollution emissions… ignoring mode shift which is a really big one because if you make a speed limit slower, you encourage walking and cycling”.

As RNZ reported, the government will face a legal challenge from a safety advocacy group over its decision.

Local decision making ‘undermined’

Meanwhile, it’s been claimed the government’s decision to take a blanket approach to speed limit adjustments overrides the views of local communities. The Spinoff’s Joel MacManus made a similar point in a piece for The Spinoff last year, arguing that while some local councils had been responsible for reducing speed limits in their towns, the government – that has advocated for local solutions to local issues – had decided to take a wholesale approach. Tina Law, reporting for The Press, said that the Christchurch City Council had been working to reduce speed limits outside schools to 30km/h at all times of the day, but the government will require this only to be in force during pick up and drop off times. Harrison McEvoy from the group Greater Ōtautahi said this ignored community preference and undermined local decision making.