Winston Peters’ war on woke heads to the classroom as he’s compared to Donald Trump
Thursday, 13 March 2025
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has claimed victory as sex education guidelines have been removed from the Ministry of Education’s website.
Peters was claiming victory on Thursday, after the Ministry of Education pulled the guidelines about teaching for relationships and sexuality.
During the 2023 election campaign Peters claimed there was “gender ideology” being taught to children. National then agreed to remove and replace the guidelines in its coalition agreement with NZ First.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said Peters’ focus on diversity and relationships in education showed the NZ First leader was imitating Donald Trump. He said the Government was putting children in danger by removing the guidelines.
Why it matters
Sexual health experts echoed Hipkins’ concerns that these changes, which they saw as political posturing, would have a real impact on young people. They said taking away guidelines, without replacing them, meant teachers were relying on out-of-date information from the early 2000s.
The Education Review Office has already raised concerns that boys aren’t being taught the basics of consent.
Discussion about gender, sexuality and relationships became a heated topic during the recent US presidential election. So too did “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) policies. On both of these topics, Peters has been vocal this week as he declared he would “put an end to woke left-wing social engineering”.
The breakdown
A spokesperson for Education Minister Erica Stanford said Cabinet “endorsed” a plan to remove the sexuality and relationship education guidelines in December. The Ministry of Education removed the 2020 guidelines from its website on Friday.
Scrapping the guidelines was in the NZ First-National coalition agreement, and Winston Peters, the NZ First leader and deputy prime minister, has said they were “woke”, “out of touch” and “indoctrinating our kids”.
Schools would still be expected to teach these topics, but would have to rely on the 2007 curriculum.
Who said what
Hipkins said kids were being put “in danger” if their teachers couldn’t access up to date material about relationships, online safety, and sexual health.
“We’ve got to be realistic here. Our kids need good, robust, impartial information to keep themselves safe. The guidelines that they removed aren’t just about sex,” he said.
He said the now removed guidelines covered information about online safety, sexting, how to keep yourself safe on social media and other things that didn’t exist for kids when the curriculum was written in 2007.
“It’s a step back - 20 years, more than 20 years. I don’t think this is good enough for our kids,” Hipkins said.
Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa public health director Fiona McNamara said the change left teachers in the dark.
“The 2020 version was up to date and covered social media, cyber bullying and sexting. We need to make sure we are giving people high quality, accurate information,” she said.
Stanford was approached for comment.
The ministry’s acting curriculum centre leader, Pauline Cleaver, said new guidelines were being worked out. She said schools wouldn’t need to change their lesson plans as a result of the guidelines being removed.
Of the upcoming changes to the curriculum, she said: “The focus will be on ensuring RSE content is age-appropriate, evidence-informed, and clear about what to teach and when each year of school.”
Peters, writing on social media, claimed the guideline’s removal as a win for NZ First.
In other news
After being questioned about whether NZ First employed the “DEI” policies he’d been campaigning against on Wednesday night, Peters faced further questions on Thursday.
Peters has been arguing that the Government should put an end to policies which encourage diversity in the public sector workforce.
But NZ First’s own constitution states that the list ranking of MPs should be made with consideration of “the need for different genders, social groups, ages and ethnic groups to be represented”.
When Stuff asked Peters if that was a DEI policy, he replied: “What has that got to do with DEI?”
When Stuff read the NZ First diversity clause to Peters, he walked away while shouting: “Listen moron, I’ve just told you once.”
Hipkins, on Thursday, accused Peters of imitating Trump.
“He has seen something that Donald Trump’s doing. He adores Donald Trump. He wants to be like him, and so he’s just adopting that policy, even if it’s completely contradictory with things that he was doing just last year,” Hipkins said.
Peters claimed that the difference between NZ First’s policy and the Public Service Act was that the act required “quotas”.
But there doesn’t appear to be any mention of “quotas” or “targets” in the Public Service Act.
Public Service Minister Judith Collins said she wasn’t aware of any such quotas.