New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told the media on Thursday that it was “deeply regrettable” that he had to take action over Goff’s comments and that he would have done so if they had been made about any other leader.
Goff’s comments were “deeply disappointing” and made the envoy’s position “untenable,” Peters said.
“When you’re in that position, you represent the government and the policies of the day — you’re not able to free-think; you are the face of New Zealand,” he added.
Goff, a former leader of New Zealand’s Labour Party and former foreign minister, was appointed as high commissioner in 2022.
The case echoes the affair surrounding Kim Darroch, who resigned from his role as U.K. ambassador to the U.S. in 2019 after a series of confidential emails emerged in which the ambassador described the then Trump administration as “clumsy and inept.”