I don’t even know where to start on Winston Peters’ latest idea.  It is completely bonkers, at least, depending on how far he plans to take it.

If you haven’t caught up on it, Peters is arguing that we should rebuild the New Zealand in such a way that we reduce our reliance on the rest of the world.

He wants to bring back domestic manufacturing and, according to him, if things can be manufactured locally within 15 per cent of the global price, they should have to be made here in the future.

It’s remarkable that he’s saying this because he lived through the last time we tried this with cars and TVs and it went badly. Those industries had to be protected.  But in the end, when we let the world in, the economics didn’t stack up.  And they won’t stack up now.

15% is not negligible, by the way. 15% on a $2000 fridge is $300. It’s the difference between you buying local and expensive versus buying cheap and imported.  It’s a no brainer.

This idea, by the way, goes hand in hand with his party’s other idea of banning exports. The most recent example was Shane Jones’ plan to ban the log exports.

His argument is that we should process the logs here, but why would we process something here and then sell it overseas for a small margin, when we could export it raw for a bigger margin?

Put these concepts together and you’ve got a one way ticket to a poorer New Zealand.

Now, to be fair, some private businesses might decide to do exactly what Winston’s suggesting: move some of their manufacturing back to New Zealand.  Given what’s going on in the world - with disrupted supply lines and sick workers offshore - they might decide it’s a smart business move to manufacture here. Maybe the certainty is worth the added cost.

But private businesses can figure that out themselves. We don’t need the state to get involved and force it. That’s when this country will start going into strange places with import licences and levies and a world that starts looking a heck of a lot like Muldoon’s 1970s.

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I don’t know that Winston actually expects this to happen.

He’s released this idea knowing full well his fellow cabinet minister David Parker has just written an international comment piece with the trade ministers of Australia, the UK and Singapore arguing how important global trade is.

Winston’s throwing this out because it’s election year. This is what he’s always been about. Nostalgia politics. The way things used to be.  

Whether it’s reminding us of a New Zealand before the wave of Asian migration of the 90s or a New Zealand where all government department buildings are carpeted with wool or a New Zealand that made its own TVs, this is classic NZ First politics.

But let’s be honest. We live in a better New Zealand now, don’t we?  Who would really prefer the isolated NZ of the 1970s to what we have now: a global, connected, cool country where we are the envy of much of the world.