Foreign Minister Winston Peters. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins
Investment into foreign affairs is a tough sell to New Zealanders but it pays lucrative dividends, Foreign Minister Winston Peters told MPs at an Estimates hearing with Parliament's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee this week.
The hearing was part of Scrutiny Week, a key fixture of Parliament's never-ending financial scrutiny cycle.
On Parliament's calendar, you'll see that there are two of them, this one in June, which puts intended spending under the microscope, and another in December, the annual review hearings, which looks at past spending.
Both weeks consist of hours and hours of hearings in which select committees question ministers and senior officials about their portfolios.
The scope of that questioning is relatively prescriptive; Estimate Scrutiny Week focuses on the estimates for each area of the budget (called a Vote).
The Government's foreign affairs priorities have been development, security in an increasingly turbulent world, climate resilience, continuing the Pacific reset, and securing trade deals with the likes of India and Latin America.
Peters and MFAT have been allocated $1.8 billion in the 2025/26 financial year. One of the first questions asked of Peters during Tuesday's hearing was whether he was satisfied with that figure.
"Any Minister of Foreign Affairs that is satisfied with their budget is not fit for the job," Peters replied.
Convincing the taxpayer that the price of diplomacy is worth paying can be a difficult task, according to Peters.
"We've just got to get our country to understand that there's modelling out there, like Singapore, like Ireland, like Croatia that are dramatically showing that the investment in foreign affairs, trade, utilities and staffing capacity has a payoff in a big way. That's been very hard to sell inside New Zealand," Peters told MPs.
Those sceptical of increasing foreign affairs spending often argue that money should instead be spent at home addressing the bread-and-butter issues of housing, health, and education.
Since he was given the portfolio 18 months ago, Peters has been on about 25 trips as Foreign Minister, mainly to the Pacific. The trips weren't explicitly scrutinised, but MPs wanted to know what Peters had learnt while overseas.
"In so many areas, restraint of economy or modesty of engagement has not been good for us," Peters said.
"We've just got to go the extra mile and spend the extra time and also understand how rapidly the world's changing. And you can do it by Zoom and you can do it by email, you can do it by phone, but there's nothing like the old Pacific way, face to face."
Although there are points of disagreement between parties on specific issues, New Zealand's foreign policy has traditionally been a bastion of bi-partisan consensus in an otherwise divisive political landscape.
In a week where other ministers may have felt like they were sitting in front of a room of vexatious interrogators, the Foreign Affairs hearing felt more like a friendly briefing than a gruelling cross-examination.
Except for an occasional on-brand quip in some exchanges with the Green's Steve Abel and Labour's Vanushi Walters on topics like Gaza and West Papua, the calmness of Peters in defending his approach to the role was palpable.
Questions relating to the travel he had done in the role were often prefaced with compliments and congratulations from both Government and Opposition MPs.
Peters seems to have convinced many lawmakers of his proficiency in foreign relations, but as he told the committee: the difficulty is winning over New Zealanders to the value of investing in it.
To listen to the audio version of this story, click the link near the top of the page.
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