1998: Coalition Crash

August 14, 2025

By AHNZ

Today in New Zealand history, 14 August, 1998, the National 4.0 coalition with Winston Peters’ New Zealand First party was done in. There was about 1 year to go before the 1999 General Election and it was time to start campaigning for it. Time for the ‘frenamies’ to go back to being enemies again so they could fight over votes.

Things had happened pretty quickly. The new MMP voting system was approved by a referendum in 1992 and led in the General Election of 1993 a massive win for Winston Peters’ party. New Zealand First won all the Maori Seats along with Tauranga (Peters) which topped up to 17 seats in the House thanks to the MMP ‘list’ system. Now came a bidding war between the major parties of Jim Bolger’s National and Helen Clark’s Labour to see which one Winston would make King. He decided to form a coalition with his old party, National, and keep that Ministry going.

Bolger, while offshore, had been ousted by one of his Ministers- Jenny Shipley on 8 December 1997. But how was Jenny going to govern without the support of Winston’s seats?

Simple really- break up New Zealand First for parts! Then, the Coalition could be ended over a disagreement which turned out to be the privatisation of Wellington airport, and put back together again with Winston’s lost team mates.

These “turncoats” and “weak links” in Winston’s team, as Chris Trotter calls them, were: Tau Henare, Tuku Morgan, Rana Waitai, Ann Batten, Jack Elder, Deborah Morris, Tuariki Delamere, Peter McCardle. Apart from those last 3 names all joined Tau Henare’s new Mauri Pacific political party after he had tried and failed to take over New Zealand First itself.

“Both National and New Zealand First were looking for a pretext to put the coalition out of its misery, and on 14 August 1998 they found it. Peters refused to sanction the privatisation of Wellington Airport, and Shipley dismissed him as treasurer. It was the end of the coalition and it should have been the end of the government. The small stock of legitimacy National had been able to draw on under Bolger was now entirely expended. But Shipley and her advisers had devoted many hours to detaching the weakest links from New Zealand First’s chain of command and, with the support of these turncoats, her ministry was able to struggle on for another fifteen months. Jenny Shipley might proudly boast that she was New Zealand’s first woman prime minister. But politically, from August 1998, she was a dead man walking.” –  No Left Turn, Chris Trotter (2007)

“In August 1998, the coalition started to become unstable, and internal tensions arose within New Zealand First itself. When Shipley sacked Peters from Cabinet on 14 August 1998, Peters pulled New Zealand First out of the coalition. However, Henare and several other New Zealand First MPs left the party to sit as independents. They offered their support to National, allowing the government to maintain a slim majority.” – Wiki

Tau Henare’s lot generally met with oblivion; The New Zealand voter did not reward their rejection of the man, Winston, who had led them to the dance in the first place. The so-called ‘Tight Five’ found new ways to look after their political careers.

Jenny Shipley and Winston’s rats governed on but Shipley’s Radical Conservatism campaign platform was not quite enough to beat Helen Clark. Labour 5.0 took power and Shipley resigned the leadership and retired from politics at the turn of year 2002.

New Zealand First carried on but had some re-building to do. In 2005, 2017, and 2023 Peters’ had led his party into Ministerial coalition. Ultimately each one has been a repeat of 1998 in terms of a bitter divorce with the former partner although this trend has yet to be proven for the 2023 National 6.0 Coalition. However, with a General Election in 2026 you can be quite sure that National, New Zealand First, and ACT will start murdering each other quite soon and outrageous scandals will start hatching out. It would be wise to put that off until 2029 but I just don’t think they can help themselves.

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Image ref. Garrick Tremain (1998,) AHNZ modification

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