At a campaign meeting in Masterton today, he said suggestions in a story - quoting National’s campaign manager Chris Bishop - that there could be a second election were "a lie".
He held up National’s ads in the Herald on Sunday and Sunday Star Times which promoted the notion of there being no clear election winner, eight weeks of coalitions talks and a stalled economy.
"The last talks I was involved in, it took 11 days after we found out the special vote result.
"This is scaremongering … the economy doesn’t stall while you are having talks …"
"That is bovine scatology."
"It is a slight," he said later. "It is a mistruth, but sadly, we just have to get on with the job and keep going. We are not going to be derailed by that sort of talk because people can work out that it’s a lie."
He railed against the news media, with specific references made to Herald on Sunday columnist Liam Dann, his brother and RNZ Morning Report host Corin Dann, RNZ political editor Jane Patterson, Q&A host Jack Tame, Newshub Nation host Rebecca Wright, Stuff journalist Andrea Vance and Post editor Tracy Watkins.
He said he would hold a commission of inquiry into the mainstream news media if he was elected - his party has set up a petition for such a commission and is just shy of 5000 signatures.
He mocked the campaign coverage of photo opportunities of National’s Christopher Luxon driving a tractor and Chris Hipkins gorging himself on sausage rolls, pies and icecream up and down the country.
That meant they weren’t covering real issues such as crime and what a mess Pharmac was in. He said the media was fill of "compliant leftist shills".
He also wrongly claimed that the media never turned up to cover his meetings.
Peters was 20 minutes late for the meeting, but the audience was forgiving when he told them why.
"Sorry for being late, but you have got some of the slowest roads in the country," he said.
Previous speed limits of 100km/h from the south have been cut to 80km/h and, in some parts, 70km/h.
Peters took a rough guess and suggested the new limits had been imposed without consultation.
"We were consulted, but we were ignored," one man responded.
Peters took the audience of about 200 on a tour of the history of New Zealand politics, starting with a four-minute video that touched on the Māori loans affair of the 1980s, the Winebox inquiry of the 1990s, the SuperGold card from his time in government with Helen Clark, and 1800 extra police officers from the coalition with Labour.
He reminded them of his role in the electoral petition in 1987, in which Labour’s Reg Boorman (nicknamed landslide Reg) had his one-vote majority overturned for Wyatt Creech.
He made frequent references to opposing racist and separatist policies.
He had one view on the Treaty of Waitangi, and as Dame Whina Cooper had said at the Commonwealth Games in 1990: "We signed the Treaty because we wanted to become one people."
"That’s our aim. That’s the objective and we are not going to compromise on this, and we are going to stare down people who call us racists and call them the very words that they themselves are."
"They are racists. They are for apartheid, and they need to be confronted and stopped in this campaign."
As he left the Copthorne Hotel where the meeting was held, he was confronted by former National-Act ad man John Ansell (the ‘Iwi-Kiwi’ billboards of 2005) over a 2017 election policy to hold a referendum on Māori seats.
"You lied to my face about the binding referendum [being a] bottom-line coalition condition in 2017. How do you expect them to believe …
Peters: "Listen sunshine, naff off. Naff off. Don’t tell me I tell lies."
Ansell: "You told lies. You broke that promise."
Peters: "Naff off. Run along."
Ansell: "Your promises have about as much integrity as a plate at a Greek wedding."
He said Peters had pledged that a referendum would be a bottom line, but reneged on contact with former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern.
"And he expects us to believe his bulls*** now."
By Audrey Young
