It should not come as a surprise that Prime Minister Luxon favoured New Zealand taking a more positive response to the United States' attacks on Iran. Luxon's seeming inability from the outset of the conflict to clearly articulate New Zealand's position raised early suspicions that he would have preferred to take a stronger line in support of the United States and was not entirely comfortable New Zealand was not doing so. 

The recently released exchange of emails between Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters shows that at the very least Luxon raised the question of New Zealand taking a stronger line. It could just as clearly be inferred from the emails that Luxon was actively pushing back against the more cautious approach Peters and Foreign Affairs were advocating and wanted New Zealand to position itself much more explicitly in the United States’ camp. His claim to have been misrepresented because he was merely testing the waters is hard to take seriously.

Either way, it leaves the impression that Luxon’s muddled explanations at press conferences were because he did not fully agree with his own government’s decisions. That, in itself, is an extraordinary reflection on the Prime Minister’s standing within the coalition.

One of the ironies of this current situation is that it is Peters who seems to be pushing the moderate line. In his earlier stints as Foreign Minister in the Clark and Ardern governments Peters generally favoured a more pro-United States line than the government of the time was prepared to take. Nevertheless, he will feel vindicated in his present stance by the Ipsos poll result showing 87% of New Zealanders agree that New Zealand should avoid direct military involvement in the conflict.

Aside from the differences of opinion between Luxon and Peters and their respective roles in situations like this that the emails reveal, there is another disturbing aspect to this incident. In the normal business of government free and frank exchanges of views and advice often occur at a personal level between Ministers. That is expected and a standard part of the way the government works. What is unusual, and arguably unwise in this instance, given the discoverability of written communications under both the Official Information Act and the Archives Act, is that sensitive exchanges were happening through written communications, not face-to-face discussions. It was inevitable that, one way or another, they would make their way into the public arena at some point.

In that regard, Luxon has a point about Peters’ judgement in releasing the emails, but Luxon was also at fault in responding to them the way he did. For his part, Peters could equally argue that his proactive release of the material simply acknowledged the inevitability of it becoming public at some future, potentially more politically embarrassing, point. But both overlook the reality that both could have prevented the uproar that has now occurred by just talking directly to each other about it. Common-sense, let alone political judgement, should have strongly suggested that.

At a wider level, this incident says much about the state of relations within the coalition government, or at least one part of it, six months from the election. It does not mean that the coalition is on the point of falling apart, or that it will not be renewed if the centre-right bloc has the numbers after the election. (Peters has, after all, as recently as last week unusually emphatically ruled out working with Labour to form a government.) But it does confirm, backed up by its recent surge in polling support, that New Zealand First is clearly staking out the ground now to be a far more influential, if not dominant, player in a future centre-right coalition, and that National is having some difficulty in getting used to that idea.

Peters and New Zealand First will obviously carry on with that strategy until at least the election, much to National’s frustration and embarrassment. And if it continues to respond the way it has so far, with public rebukes and put downs, National will carry on being seen as ineffectual in dealing with the far wilier Peters. Moreover, it will continue to shed disillusioned former supporters to New Zealand First, now more confident than ever that they can support New Zealand First seemingly without the risk of putting Labour in power.

Therefore, the best way for National to counter Peters’ game of being part of the government and collective responsibility only as it suits him – a novel constitutional idea – is to lock him more firmly into what the government is doing, rather than shun him the way Luxon is seeking to at present. Their aim should be to stifle Peters’ opportunities to credibly distance himself from the government with the impunity he has been.

As far as Iran is concerned, National should be going overboard to make sure Peters is key to and locked into, publicly and privately, all the government’s foreign policy and economic decisions. This would leave him little room to sneer at and shun them, the way he has been able to do, claiming that that he has not been fully involved. Perversely, the more National seeks to marginalise Peters and New Zealand First, the more it strengthens and emboldens them. So, perhaps it is time for National to pick up Michael Corleone’s line from The Godfather Part II, “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

For New Zealanders generally, who will not be all that interested in the minutiae of these events, the more worrying and tedious prospect is that more of what has been happening between National and New Zealand First can be expected in the lead-up to the election, and potentially afterwards, if the coalition is renewed. Their bottom-line general view, with which it is hard to disagree, will be that this is not what a good and stable government should look like.