Labour leader Chris Hipkins has said he will not work with Winston Peters and his party, New Zealand First, after the next election. He says Peters cannot be foreign affairs minister in any government he leads.

The foreign affairs minister is the person who represents New Zealand to other countries. Hipkins said Peters was not fit for that job after what happened in Parliament last Wednesday. Peters, who is the current foreign affairs minister, was being heckled — that is, interrupted and called out — by Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan. Peters told Xu-Nan, who was born in China, to go back to his "own country." Hipkins said Peters could not represent New Zealand on the world stage and called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to sack him The Post.

The comment drew a pointed response from China's ambassador to New Zealand, which means what started as an argument inside Parliament became a diplomatic issue between two countries RNZ. Peters had separately told reporters he was not concerned by China's new ethnic unity law, saying it has no power in New Zealand RNZ.

In New Zealand, parties usually need to join forces with other parties to form a government, because no single party often gets enough votes to govern alone. Hipkins said he had already ruled out working with Peters and NZ First before the last election and had not regretted it. He also pointed to comments by another NZ First MP, Shane Jones, which Hipkins described as racist towards Indians, as part of the problem RNZ.

Luxon, who is the current Prime Minister, spoke to Peters about the comments but did not rule him out as foreign affairs minister in the future. He said it was a private conversation between the two of them RNZ. That is a very different response from Hipkins, who said flatly that Peters should go.

Hipkins has been building toward this position for a while. In a speech to the Labour Party Conference in December 2024, he said he had ruled out working with Peters and that Labour would restore New Zealand's independent foreign policy Labour Party. Around the same time, he said a Labour government would not join AUKUS, a security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States Labour Party. Peeni Henare took over Labour's foreign affairs role in May 2025 Labour Party, though the party's website also lists Vanushi Walters in the role Labour Party.

Hipkins and Peters have clashed repeatedly. Peters ruled out working with Hipkins "permanently" in May 2025, which Hipkins pushed back on RNZ. A month earlier, Hipkins said Peters and Luxon should "grow up" and stop "embarrassing" the country RNZ. In March 2025 the two traded insults after Peters accused Labour of abandoning workers RNZ.

The broader context here is that Hipkins has now made two separate points about Peters. First, that Labour will not form a government with NZ First. Second, that Peters specifically should not hold the foreign affairs job. The first point has been Labour's position since before the 2023 election. The second is newer and ties Peters' fitness for the foreign affairs role directly to his behaviour in Parliament and the diplomatic fallout that followed. By also naming Shane Jones' comments about Indians, Hipkins is arguing that this is a pattern of behaviour across NZ First, not just one bad moment.

For Luxon, the situation is harder. He needs NZ First's votes to pass laws, because they are part of his coalition government. His decision to treat the comments as a private matter rather than a reason to discipline Peters reflects that. Whether that position holds as the diplomatic fallout continues is the question that will shape what happens next.