The Prime Minister’s office has confirmed it cannot produce any internal correspondence to support Christopher Luxon’s claim that Winston Peters mischaracterised his position on the United States war with Iran. RNZ reported on Wednesday 21 May that an Official Information Act request seeking documentation behind the claim had been refused on the grounds that no such material exists.
The decision is the latest twist in a dispute that began in late April when Peters, leading New Zealand First, released a series of emails from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Those emails showed senior MFAT staff discussing what they described as the Prime Minister’s preference for more explicit support of the US action against Iran, action which followed the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the fuel price spike that has rolled through every household budget in the country.
Peters argued in the same email chain that the government should hold what he called the careful line we established yesterday, which neither condemns nor gives explicit support. His position prevailed at the time. When the emails became public, Luxon was furious. His office said in a written statement that Peters had acknowledged he made a mistake by releasing the correspondence, and accused the New Zealand First leader of putting politics ahead of the national interest. Luxon also visited Peters’ office the night before publication, according to reporting at the time.
In the weeks that followed, the Prime Minister maintained that Peters had not accurately reflected his views. RNZ sought to see the documents that would have supported that claim under the Official Information Act. The reply from Luxon’s office, published in the most recent RNZ story by Russell Palmer, was unambiguous. Searches of this office’s information holdings have located no relevant emails, the response said. The request was refused under section 18(e), the provision that allows an agency to decline a request because the information does not exist or cannot be found.
That answer leaves the Prime Minister in the position of having publicly criticised a senior coalition partner for misrepresenting him, while being unable to point to any internal communication that records what his position was in the first place. Part of the request was forwarded to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which may yet hold further material. For now, however, the Prime Minister’s own office has nothing to offer.
Luxon’s office did point RNZ to a Hansard entry from 3 March, in which the government acknowledged the US action against Iran without explicitly endorsing it. That public statement is consistent with the line Peters described in the emails, rather than the more explicit support the MFAT officials referenced. The 3 March wording is also the same line that senior National ministers used in interviews at the time the emails surfaced, when several declined to publicly back Luxon’s account of his own thinking.
The dispute matters for several reasons. The first is the substance. Iran’s strikes on US targets and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz triggered the fuel crisis that is still pushing diesel and petrol prices higher across New Zealand, and any explicit endorsement of one side of that conflict by the Prime Minister carries real diplomatic and economic weight. The second is process. The coalition arrangement that put Luxon into office depends on Peters as Foreign Minister, and on the assumption that the country speaks with one voice on questions of war. A public falling out about who said what to whom, with no paper trail to settle it, is an unusual look for a Beehive in its second year.
The third reason is precedent. RNZ has now twice asked the Prime Minister to produce material backing his version of events, in a story published earlier in May and in the latest update. On both occasions the answer has been to refer to public statements rather than internal records. The 3 March Hansard reference is helpful, but it tells us what the government said in the House. It does not tell us what the Prime Minister wanted his officials to say in advance.
Peters, for his part, has not retreated from the original release. The MFAT emails he published showed a Foreign Minister actively pushing back against pressure from above, and the documents do exist, signed and dated. The Prime Minister’s account that Peters got the story wrong has, by contrast, become harder to defend with every refusal.
What happens next is largely a matter of how much pressure Luxon faces in caucus and in the press. The Budget on Thursday will absorb most political oxygen for the rest of the week, and Peters has now moved on to other fronts, including summoning the Israeli ambassador over the Gaza humanitarian flotilla incident. But the Iran emails will not disappear simply because the news cycle does. The Prime Minister has now publicly admitted that the file he claimed should exist, does not.
New Zealand’s voting tool walks voters through where each party sits on foreign policy, fuel, and the relationship with Washington, and is a useful place to start before next year’s general election.
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This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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